While he was occupied bodily with his sandwich, he was also mentally engaged in reflections on days that were gone; and he could not but think that his hours were not so heavy when he was toiling at the study of law, as now when his rank was higher, and when his residence was one of the most splendid seats in the kingdom. He thought it was very hard that he should stand in awe of an old humorist, and he had for a moment thoughts of emancipating himself from trammels, and assuming to himself the direction of his own actions; but then, on the other hand, he also considered that without the assistance of the old gentleman, he should not be able to clear off the encumbrances with which his own hereditary estate had been burdened by his anticipations. His only resource was an advantageous match; but the difficulty was how to accomplish that object, and to preserve his dignity. In the same street in which Lord Martindale, his father, lived, there was an heiress, but not altogether unobjectionable. Her origin was plebeian; her wealth was commercial; her connexions decidedly vulgar, notwithstanding all her pains to keep them select, and to curtail the number of her cousins; her manners awkward, and her taste in dress most execrable. Whenever Philip Martindale felt impatient of controul, he thought of Miss Celestina Sampson, and of the many thousands which her industrious father had accumulated by the manufacturing of soap; and by thinking much on the subject, he had been gradually led to consider the match as not altogether intolerable. He thought of many other persons of as high rank as himself, and even higher, who had not disdained to gild their coronets with city gold. There was nothing glaringly or hideously vulgar in Miss Sampson’s manners, though she was not the most graceful of her sex. Then her person was rather agreeable than otherwise, especially when she was not over-dressed; and as for her cousins, they might be easily cut.