My uncle did as his ancestors had done before him; and, cheap as the dignity had grown, went up to court to be knighted by Charles II. He was so delighted with what he saw of the metropolis, that he foreswore all intention of leaving it, took to Sedley and champagne, flirted with Nell Gwynne, lost double the value of his brother's portion at one sitting to the chivalrous Grammont, wrote a comedy corrected by Etherege, and took a wife recommended by Rochester. The wife brought him a child six months after marriage, and the infant was born on the same day the comedy was acted. Luckily for the honour of the house, my uncle shared the fate of Plimneus, king of Sicyon, and all the offspring he ever had (that is to say, the child and the play,) "died as soon as they were born." My uncle was now only at a loss to know what to do with his wife, that remaining treasure, whose readiness to oblige him had been so miraculously evinced. She saved him the trouble of long cogitation,--an exercise of intellect to which he was never too ardently inclined. There was a gentleman of the court celebrated for his sedateness and solemnity; my aunt was piqued into emulating Orpheus, and six weeks after her confinement she put this rock into motion,--they eloped. Poor gentleman! it must have been a severe trial of patience to a man never known before to transgress the very slowest of all possible walks, to have had two events of the most rapid nature happen to him in the same week. Scarcely had he recovered the shock of being ran away with by my aunt, before, terminating for ever his vagrancies, he was ran through by my uncle. The wits made an epigram upon the event; and my uncle, who was as bold as a lion at the point of a sword, was, to speak frankly, terribly disconcerted by the point of a jest. He retired to the country in a fit of disgust and gout. Here his own _bon naturel_ rose from the layers of art which had long oppressed it, and he solaced himself by righteously governing domains worthy of a prince, for the mortifications he had experienced in the dishonourable career of a courtier. Hitherto I have spoken somewhat slightingly of my uncle; and in his dissipation he deserved it, for he was both too honest and too simple to shine in that galaxy of prostitute genius of which Charles II. was the centre. But in retirement he was no longer the same person, and I do not think that the elements of human nature could have furnished forth a more amiable character than Sir William Devereux, presiding at Christmas over the merriment of his great hall. Good old man! his very defects were what we loved best in him; vanity was so mingled with good nature that it became graceful, and we reverenced one the most, while we most smiled at the other. One peculiarity had he, which the age he had lived in, and his domestic history, rendered natural enough, viz. an exceeding distaste to the matrimonial state: early marriages were misery; imprudent