Where are you, and what are you doing, Arthur? By heaven, I never think of you without astonishment! You whom fortune favours, you so highly gifted to charm, to be sacrificing the age of delights, in a barbarous solitude! What, upon earth, can be your inducement? Your uncle pines for you. Certainly you must be either immoderately sure of your power over him, or desperately careless of your interest. All who concern themselves in your fate, apply to me for the explanation of your mysterious conduct; and, finding I am no more informed than themselves, they teaze me with their conjectures. Come, Arthur! come! banish melancholy and misanthropy till age shall have cramped your vigour and palsied your faculties! Then cast your dim sight upon the flying pleasures which you are no longer able to pursue, and rail, and be welcome! But now, while the power is your's, hasten to partake, to enjoy! The wealth of a nabob gilds the path before you! Beauty spreads her allurements for you! Come, insensible marble-hearted as you are, to the inticements of beauty--at least come to interest, if you cannot be interested; excite the sigh, the languor which you will not return! Be again as formidable as you once were; and let the meaner candidates, who triumph in your absence, sink back to insignificance and neglect! Does not the prospect fire you? I know it does--or, you are unfit to be the friend of CLEMENT MONTGOMERY LETTER XV FROM LORD FILMAR TO SIR WALTER BOYER One, two, three, or four pages, by Jupiter! cried I, as I opened your packet, Walter; and I ran over the first ten lines with a devouring greediness: for, would not any man have expected, as I expected when I had so lately written you two letters upon the projects and hopes that dance in gay attire before me, that your epistle must have contained comments innumerable, hints useful, and cautions sage. Neither comment, hint, nor caution, could I find. Nothing but four sides of paper covered with rhapsodies which have neither connection with nor likeness of any thing in heaven above, in the earth beneath, nor in the waters under the earth. Yet, negligent as thou art, still must I write on. My fancy is overcharged with matter, for I have done wonders: wonders, Walter! Yesterday at ten o'clock I talked with Lady Monkton's housekeeper; who once was Mrs. Valmont's housekeeper; and yesterday at four o'clock I talked with Mr. Valmont himself. Turn back to yesterday; and observe me, in Sir Gilbert's post coach, arrived with due state and precision before the venerable doors of Valmont castle, accompanied only by my father, and attended by Griffiths armed as all outward points like a beau valet, and like a skilful engineer within laying wait to spring a mine for his commanding officer. With measured steps, Mr. Valmont approached us three paces without the drawing room door. He conducted us to his lady; who, on a rich heavy and gilded sopha, sat in melancholy grandeur to receive us.