like the “tempest-loving raven,” delight in changes, and anticipate, with guilty joy, the overturn of states in which they have nothing to lose, and have hopes of rising on the ruins of others. The lawyers, too, foresaw that the harvest they were now reaping from the new mode of inquiry into disputed titles, could not be of long duration. They did not lay a regular plan for the subversion of the existing order of things; but they infected the once plain and primitive conversation of the people with law jargon which spread like a disease, and was the more fatal to elegance, simplicity, and candour, as there were no rival branches of science, the cultivation of which might have divided people’s attention with this dry contentious theme. The spirit of litigation, which narrowed and heated every mind, was a great nuisance to madame, who took care not to be much troubled with it in conversation, because she discountenanced it at her table, where, indeed, no petulant upstarts were received. She was, however, persecuted with daily references to her recollections with regard to the traditionary opinions relative to boundaries, &c. While she sought refuge in the peaceable precincts of the gospel, from the tumultuous contests of the law which she always spoke of with dislike, she was little aware that a deserter from her own camp was about to join the enemy. Mr. H. our chaplain, became, about this time, very reserved and absent; law and politics were no favourite topics in our household, and these alone seemed much to interest our divine. Many thought aunt was imposed on by this young man, and took him to be what he was not; but this was by no means the case. She neither thought him a wit, a scholar, or a saint; but merely a young man, who, to very good intentions and a blameless life, added the advantages of a better education than fell to the lot of laymen there; simplicity of manners, and some powers of conversation, with a little dash of the coxcomb, rendered tolerable by great good nature.