This crotchet--for that is the only term fitted for it, as it was certainly neither a whim nor a caprice--this crotchet may be considered as a matter of history--of his history, I mean; for it depended upon foregone facts, which must be here explained. It is sad to overturn all that imagination may have already done for the reader on the very first news that Colonel Manners had a foregone history at all. He had not been crossed in love, as may be supposed, nor had he seen the object of his affections swept away by a torrent, burned in a house on fire, killed by an unruly horse, or die by any of those means usually employed for such a purpose. No; he had neither to bewail the coldness nor the loss of her he loved, because, up to the moment when we have set him before the reader, he had unfortunately never been in love at all. The fact is, that during his youth Colonel Manners had possessed one of the finest faces in the world, and every one of his judicious friends had taken care to impress deeply upon his mind that it was the best portion of all his present possessions or future expectations. By nature he was quite the reverse of a vain man; but when he saw that the great majority of those by whom he was surrounded admired the beauties of his face far more than the beauties of his mind, and loved him for the symmetry of his external person more than for the qualities of his heart, of course the conviction that, however much esteem and respect might be gained by mental perfections, affection was only given to beauty, became an integral part of that fine texture of memories and ideas which, though I do not think it, as some have done, the mind itself, I yet look upon as the mind's innermost garment. Such was the case when, at the age of about twenty, he was attacked by the smallpox. For a length of time he was not allowed to see a looking-glass, the physicians mildly telling him that his appearance would improve; that they trusted no great traces would remain: but when he did see a looking-glass, he certainly saw the reflection of somebody he had never seen before. In the mean while his relations had too much regard for their own persons to come near him; and when, after having purified in the country, he went to visit an antique female cousin, who had been a card-playing belle in the reign of his majesty of blessed memory, King George the First, the old lady first made him a profound courtesy, taking him for a stranger; and when she discovered who he was, burst forth with, "Good God, Charles! you are perfectly frightful!"