father and mother-in-law to spoil this young lady, and to make her consider herself as the first and only object of consequence in this world, has been done--and yet she is not in the least spoiled. Shame to all systems of education! there are some natures so good, that they will go right, where all about them go wrong. My father will not admit this, and will exclaim, Nonsense!--I will try to say something that he will allow to be sense. Miss Panton’s own mother was of a good family, and, I am told, was an amiable woman, of agreeable manners, and a cultivated mind, who had been sacrificed for fortune to this rich city husband. Her daughter’s first principles and ideas of manners and morals were, I suppose, formed by her precepts and example. After her mother’s death, I know she had the advantage of an excellent and enlightened friend in her father’s partner, Mr. Gresham, who, having no children of his own, took pleasure, at all his leisure moments, in improving little Constance. Then the contrast between her father and him, between their ignorance and his enlightened liberality, must have early struck her mind, and thus, I suppose, by observing their faults and follies, she learned to form for herself an opposite character and manners. The present Mrs. Panton is only her step-mother. Mrs. Panton is a huge, protuberant woman, with a full-blown face, a bay wig, and artificial flowers; talking in an affected little voice, when she is in company, and when she has on her _company clothes and manners_; but bawling loud, in a vulgarly broad cockney dialect, when she is at her ease in her own house. She has an inordinate passion for dress, and a _rage_ for fine people. I have a chance of becoming a favourite, because I am ‘of a good _fammully_,” and Mrs. Panton says she knows very well I have been egg and bird in the best company. “My patient--observe, my patient is the last person of whom I speak or think--is nervous and hypochondriac; but as I do not believe that you have much taste for medical detail, I shall not trouble you with the particulars of this old gentleman’s case, but pray for his recovery--for if I succeed in setting him up again, it will set me up.... For the first time I have, this day, after many calls, seen Godfrey’s friend, young Mr. Henry. He is handsome, and, as you ladies say, _interesting_. He is particularly gentlemanlike in his manners; but he looks unhappy, and I thought he was reserved towards me; but I have no right yet to expect that he should be otherwise. He spoke of Godfrey with strong affection. “Yours, truly, “ERASMUS PERCY.”