The venerable old Mr. Wentbridge lived to the great age of eighty-eight, and died in the most tranquil resignation, leaving his property equally divided between his three children. His second son, the Captain, followed him in about six months, bequeathing thirty thousand pounds to his maritime nephew, one thousand each for a ring to his brother, his sister, Lady Hambden, and our hero; and dividing his patrimonial two thousand between his brother and sister. Within the year he was followed by his brother, who left to his sister both his father’s and brother’s bequests. A landed property of five hundred a year he left to his elder nephew, burdened with a jointure of two hundred and fifty pounds a year to his sister; he left five thousand pounds each to Captain Hamilton and Lady Hambden. The old laird of Etterick survived his daughter near six years, and confessed he was much more comfortable now, than ever he had been since he was a bachelor. He rarely spoke of the Sourkrouts, either mother or daughter; and seeing the happiness of William and Maria, Hambden and Charlotte, and contrasting these ladies with his mother-in law and wife, he thought he must have been wrong in his original notion, that the supreme object in marriage is a _well-tochered lass_. Even his daughter, he could not call to mind, without pain and humiliation; and therefore called her to mind as little as possible. Often he told his old friend, the parson, that Providence ordered every thing for the best. The old gentleman accompanied his nephew to visit Mr. Burke, whose astonishing powers, as versatile as gigantic, met the nephew on all the depths of learning and philosophy, and in all the details and principles of existing politics; met his uncle on spring wheat, barley, and horse beans; on the different operations and effects of turnips and hay in fattening cattle; and treated these subjects with a minuteness and circumstantiality, which hardly any hind could equal; and surpassed the laird himself, though one of the best farmers in Scotland. When alone with his nephew, the uncle declared, he did not believe there was a more sensible man in the world. “He might give a lesson to Andrew Peebles our _grieve_ (land-bailiff), who has not his match in _aw_ Tweedle, the Forest, or Tiviotdale.” Etterick, some years after, expressed deep regret for the death of his Beaconsfield host; the best farmer, he said, with whom he had ever conversed. The old gentleman himself, within two years after, departed this life; and the Scottish rents having still rapidly risen, the whole property exceeded ten thousand a-year.