“Why, Parr and I, and two or three more were dining once at poor T. M--‘s, the author of ‘The Indian Antiquities.’Major--, a great traveller, entered into a dispute with Parr about Babylon; the Doctor got into a violent passion, and poured out such a heap of quotations on his unfortunate antagonist, that the latter, stunned by the clamour, and terrified by the Greek, was obliged to succumb. Parr turned triumphantly to me: ‘What is your opinion, my lord,’ said he; ‘who is in the right?’ “Adversis major--par secundis,” answered I. “Vincent,” I said, after I had expressed sufficient admiration at his pun--“Vincent, I begin to be weary of this life; I shall accordingly pack up my books and myself, and go to Malvern Wells, to live quietly till I think it time for London. After to-day, you will, therefore, see me no more.” “I cannot,” answered Vincent, “contravene so laudable a purpose, however I may be the loser.” And after a short and desultory conversation, I left him once more to the tranquil enjoyment of his Plato. That evening I went to Malvern, and there I remained in a monotonous state of existence, dividing my time equally between my mind and my body, and forming myself into that state of contemplative reflection, which was the object of Vincent’s admiration in the writings of the ancients. Just when I was on the point of leaving my retreat, I received an intelligence which most materially affected my future prospects. My uncle, who had arrived to the sober age of fifty, without any apparent designs of matrimony, fell suddenly in love with a lady in his immediate neighbourhood, and married her, after a courtship of three weeks. “I should not,” said my poor mother, very generously, in a subsequent letter, “so much have minded his marriage, if the lady had not thought proper to become in the family way; a thing which I do and always shall consider a most unwarrantable encroachment on your rights.” I will confess that, on first hearing this news, I experienced a bitter pang; but I reasoned it away. I was already under great obligations to my uncle, and I felt it a very unjust and ungracious assumption on my part, to affect anger at conduct I had no right to question, or mortification at the loss of pretensions I had so equivocal a privilege to form. A man of fifty has, perhaps, a right to consult his own happiness, almost as much as a man of thirty; and if he attracts by his choice the ridicule of those whom he has never obliged, it is at least from those persons he has obliged, that he is to look for countenance and defence.