kind and considerate for some high-minded young gentleman, like my Lord Spoonbill, to save them from the stupidity of a common-place husband, and consign them to infamy and a broken heart. Nothing of course can be a greater manifestation and proof of sensibility and fine feeling, than seducing engaged affections, and, if Lord Spoonbill had written his own history, we should have heard of as much sympathy being expressed for him as there has been for Werter and such like coxcombs; but as we do not suffer his lordship to speak for himself, our readers must be content to contemplate his character in all the baldness of truth. While thoughts as above described were occupying the mind of his lordship, he drew nearer to the domain of Smatterton, and as the view of the castle and village opened upon him, he saw more lights in the cottages than usual at that time in the evening, and he heard at a little distance sounds of more than ordinary movements. And presently there came galloping towards him a servant from the castle. Thinking that it was a messenger sent for himself, he stopped the man to ask what was the matter. The man drew up his horse just for a moment, and in hurried accents replied that Dr Greendale had been taken seriously ill, and that the Earl had given orders to ride over to M---- to fetch his lordship’s own physician. Waiting for no further interrogations the messenger rode off as fast as before. Will it be believed that at this moment one of the first and promptest thoughts that occurred to Lord Spoonbill was the idea, that should this illness terminate fatally, the event might facilitate his designs upon Penelope? Yet so it was. This was his first and strongest feeling. He had forgotten all the fatherly kindness of that good man. He was insensible to any impression from the numberless acts and words of friendship received from the pious and holy rector. Dr Greendale had been for many years an intimate friend of the family at the castle. The Earl, though a haughty man and of very strong aristocratic feelings, had never regarded the worthy rector with any other feeling than friendship and respect; and the Countess, though not insensible to the charms and fascinations of fashionable life, yet delighted in the moral repose and the sober beauties of the pastor’s character. The Earl and Countess did not condescend to visit at the rectory, but the doors of the castle were most cheerfully open for the doctor, and there was sincerity in their language, when the noble inhabitants of the mansion declared that a more welcome guest never crossed their threshold. There must have been something good and pre-eminently good in the character of a man who could thus as it were command the moral homage of minds in the highest walks of society. The doctor was not a man of fortune or of family. His respectability was altogether personal and individual. This good man had taken very especial notice of the heir of Smatterton,