Suffice it, then, to say, that Blenkinsop,--that is to say, the father of our Blenkinsops,--was a mechanic, in a country town. In his early youth his conduct was exemplary; but yielding at length to the force of temptation, he was so unfortunate as to be guilty of--matrimony. For a time all went well; but punishment is sure, sooner or later, to overtake the evil-doer, as, one fine morning, it overtook Blenkinsop. An improvement in machinery threw him suddenly out of employ, and after ten years' reckless indulgence in domestic felicity, he found himself with a wife and six children, and without wages. He was now, of course, obliged to break up his establishment. The Union offered its benevolent institution for his accommodation, but the asylum was proffered in vain. Its salutary regulations were repugnant to his fastidious taste. Among other things, its corrective arrangements displeased him. The rod of affliction, he impertinently said, he could kiss, but not that which was to flog his children. He had also an unreasonable objection to the system of separate maintenance, and put a most perverse construction on a certain moral precept which seemed to forbid it; as if that applied to paupers! He therefore spurned the parochial paradise, and betook himself, in hopes of finding something to do, to London. The only piece of good fortune that befell him there was, that the small-pox provided for three of his family. The same complaint, too, affecting the eyes of his wife-- But we are violating the principle which we have prescribed to ourselves. Let us be brief. Mrs. Blenkinsop labours under a privation of vision; her husband under a paralytic state of the extremities; and the whole family are mendicants. It is the divine Shakspere who thus sings:-- "Sweet are the uses of Adversity; Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head." The jewel of adversity, therefore, is the moral which it furnishes to the reflective mind: as in the persons of the young Blenkinsops it offered to the pretty little Adeline, daughter of Sir William and Lady Grindham. The elegant child was exercising her observant and contemplative faculties at the window of the magnificent drawing-room in -------- Street. The fond eye of her Papa was resting, in tranquil admiration, on her graceful proportions; that of her Mamma, which would otherwise have been similarly employed, was directed towards an expensive mirror. "Oh! dear Papa," suddenly exclaimed Adeline, "look, do look!" "At what, my love?" replied the doting parent. "Oh! Papa--those poor children!" "What of them, dearest?" "Poor little things!--how they shiver! Do look at them." Sir William advanced to the window, and, elevating his eye-glass, directed his attention on the objects which had so powerfully excited the sympathy of Adeline:--they were the Blenkinsops! [Illustration: 046] "Oh!" said Sir William; "ah!--yes, I see, love."