Looking across the fire, towards her accustomed chair, who has been the beloved partner of my hearth during the last half of my life, I often ask (for middle aged gentlemen have the privilege of repeating their jokes, their questions, their stories) whether two young people ever were more foolish and imprudent than we were when we married, as we did, in the year of the old King’s death? My son, who has taken some prodigious leaps in the heat of his fox-hunting, says he surveys the gaps and rivers which he crossed so safely over with terror afterwards, and astonishment at his own foolhardiness in making such desperate ventures; and yet there is no more eager sportsman in the two counties than Miles. He loves his amusement so much that he cares for no other. He has broken his collar-bone, and had a hundred tumbles (to his mother’s terror); but so has his father (thinking, perhaps, of a copy of verse, or his speech at Quarter Sessions) been thrown over his old mare’s head, who has slipped on a stone as they were both dreaming along a park road at four miles an hour; and Miles’s reckless sport has been the delight of his life, as my marriage has been the blessing of mine; and I never think of it but to thank Heaven. Mind, I don’t set up my worship as an example. I don’t say to all young folks, “Go and marry upon twopence a year;” or people would look very black at me at our vestry-meetings; but my wife is known to be a desperate match-maker; and when Hodge and Susan appear in my justice-room with a talk of allowance, we urge them to spend their half-crown a week at home, add a little contribution of our own, and send for the vicar.

Now, when I ask a question of my dear oracle, I know what the answer will be; and hence, no doubt, the reason why I so often consult her. I have but to wear a particular expression of face and my Diana takes her reflection from it. Suppose I say, “My dear, don’t you think the moon was made of cream cheese to-night?” She will say, “Well, papa, it did look very like cream cheese, indeed — there’s nobody like you for droll similes.” Or, suppose I say, “My love, Mr. Pitt’s speech was very fine, but I don’t think he is equal to what I remember his father.” “Nobody was equal to my Lord Chatham,” says my wife. And then one of the girls cries, “Why, I have often heard our papa say Lord Chatham was a charlatan!” On which mamma says, “How like she is to her Aunt Hetty!”

As for Miles, Tros Tyriusve is all one to him. He only reads the sporting announcements in the Norwich paper. So long as there is good scent, he does not care about the state of the country. I believe the rascal has never read my poems, much more my tragedies (for I mentioned Pocahontas to him the other day, and the dunce thought she was a river in Virginia); and with respect to my Latin verses, how can he understand them when I know he can’t construe Corderius? Why, this notebook lies publicly on the little table at my corner of the fireside, and any one may read in it who will take the trouble of lifting my spectacles off the cover: but Miles never hath. I insert in the loose pages caricatures of Miles: jokes against him: but he never knows nor heeds them. Only once, in place of a neat drawing of mine, in China-ink, representing Miles asleep after dinner, and which my friend Bunbury would not disown, I found a rude picture of myself going over my mare Sultana’s head, and entitled “The Squire on Horseback, or Fish out of Water.” And the fellow to roar with laughter, and all the girls to titter, when I came upon the page! My wife said she never was in such a fright as when I went to my book: but I can bear a joke against myself, and have heard many, though (strange to say, for one who has lived among some of the chief wits of the age) I never heard a good one in my life. Never mind, Miles, though thou art not a wit, I love thee none the worse (there never was any love lost between two wits in a family); though thou hast no great beauty, thy mother thinks thee as handsome as Apollo, or his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, who was born in the very same year with thee. Indeed, she always think Coates’s picture of the Prince is very like her eldest boy, and has the print in her dressing-room to this very day.

[Note, in a female hand: “My son is not a spendthrift, nor a breaker of women’s hearts, as some gentlemen are; but that he was exceeding like H.R.H. when they were both babies, is most certain, the Duchess of Aneaster having herself remarked him in St. James’s Park, where Gumbo and my poor Molly used often to take him for an airing. Th. W.”]

In that same year, with what different prospects! my Lord Esmond, Lord Castlewood’s son, likewise appeared to adorn the world. My Lord C. and his humble servant had already come to a coolness at that time, and, heaven knows! my honest Miles’s godmother, at his entrance into life, brought no gold pap-boats to his christening! Matters have mended since, laus Deo — laus Deo, indeed! for I suspect neither Miles nor his father would ever have been able to do much for themselves, and by their own wits.

Castlewood House has quite a different face now from that venerable one which it wore in the days of my youth, when it was covered with the wrinkles of time, the scars of old wars, the cracks and blemishes which years had marked on its hoary features. I love best to remember it in its old shape, as I saw it when young Mr. George Warrington went down at the owner’s invitation, to be present at his lordship’s marriage with Miss Lydia Van den Bosch —“an American lady of noble family of Holland,” as the county paper announced her ladyship to be. Then the towers stood as Warrington’s grandfather the Colonel (the Marquis, as Madam Esmond would like to call her father) had seen them. The woods (thinned not a little to be sure) stood, nay, some of the self-same rooks may have cawed over them, which the Colonel had seen threescore years back. His picture hung in the hall which might have been his, had he not preferred love and gratitude to wealth and worldly honour; and Mr. George Esmond Warrington (that is, Egomet Ipse who write this page down), as he walked the old place, pacing the long corridors, the smooth dew-spangled terraces and cool darkling avenues, felt a while as if he was one of Mr. Walpole’s cavaliers with ruff, rapier, buff-coat, and gorget, and as if an Old Pretender, or a Jesuit emissary in disguise, might appear from behind any tall tree-trunk round about the mansion, or antique carved cupboard within it. I had the strangest, saddest, pleasantest, old-world fancies as I walked the place; I imagined tragedies, intrigues, serenades, escaladoes, Oliver’s Roundheads battering the towers, or bluff Hal’s Beefeaters pricking over the plain before the castle. I was then courting a certain young lady (madam, your ladyship’s eyes had no need of spectacles then, and on the brow above them there was never a wrinkle or a silver hair), and I remember I wrote a ream of romantic description, under my Lord Castlewood’s franks, to the lady who never tired of reading my letters then. She says I only send her three lines now, when I am away in London or elsewhere. ’Tis that I may not fatigue your old eyes, my dear!

Mr. Warrington thought himself authorised to order a genteel ne............