world or the next!-And there stood her coffin on its trestles-the husband she had dishonoured kneeling beside it-and the son whose existence she had embittered scarcely refraining from words of execration as he gazed!— Appalling résumé of the life of a woman of Fashion! Mihi frigidus horror Membra quatit, gelidusque coit formidine sanguis! CHAPTER V. La vie ne se révèle à nous-mêmes qu' avec le choc des occasions.-BRUCKER. Curæ leves loquuntur, ingentes stupent.-SENEC. : I SCARCELY know how to account for it but the nature of the scenes I had been witnessing inspired me with an insuperable objection to return to my service at Windsor, or my pleasures at Sunning Hill.-It was not that my views towards Sophronia Vavasour were in the smallest degree influenced by so cruel an exposition of the chances of matrimonial life. But my self-love had been so severely wounded, that I felt myself too much degraded in my own estimation to appear immediately in presence of one before whom it was my ambition to shine in the brightest colours. I resolved, therefore, to absent myself for a time. The King, with his usual good-natured consideration, gave me a lengthened leave of absence; and at Danby's suggestion, I resolved to spend a few weeks in Paris. "A total change of scene and companionship will afford a new colouring to your ideas," said he. "But for the claims of my father and daughter, I could fain bear you company. Weighty duties, however, await me here. A stirring moment is at hand, Cecil.-Our friend Dawson's speech last August, which so excited the rage and amazement of my brother-in-law, was a more important indication than Herries then inferred. I flatter myself my personal influence has been instrumental, and will become still further instrumental, in accomplishing a measure without which the age we live in must fail to establish its claims with posterity to the title of enlightened."— Such was the first hint I received of the important measure about to paralyze the wis dom of parliament,-the Catholic relief bill; -a measure received with rough music by the rabid rage of Protestant intolerance; and branding even the sacred Gog and Magog of Torvism, Wellington and Peel, with the infamy of having grown in wisdom as they grew in years, and swallowing with a good grace the salutary dose about to be inflicted as a drench. Malum consilium est, quod mutari non potest; but though satisfied of the wisdom of the recantation of the Tories, I was not sorry to avoid hearing the matter battled over at Windsor,-next to Oxford the stiffest stronghold of High Churchism. Arguments against an inevitable measure are to me as insupportable as the whistling of an easterly wind; and when, some weeks afterwards in Paris, I improved my mind with the reported speech of plausible Sadler, the fiddle-faddler, the man in armour set up by the Newcastle interest to do battle for the great tithe-cause, it afforded me a relief almost as great as that conceded to the Catholics, to have escaped hearing its clauses subdivided into slips, and distributed at dessert at all the dinner tables of the season like the mottoes of French sugar plumbs. Let it not be imagined, ad interim, by my gentler readers, that I had courage to tear myself from England, without having fully ascertained that all was well at Silwood. But Greysdale and his father-in-law were not expected to arrive in England before the end of March; and, remote from the influence of Sophronia's eyes, and viewing the question dispassionately, I was now more than ever of opinion that it was indispensable to submit my pretensions, in the first instance, to the paternal wisdom of Mr. Vavasour. I had chosen Paris as the object of my excursion, simply because suggested by my brother, for I was in the humour to be impelled hither or thither by any one who felt interest enough in me to direct my movements.— |