Under these impressions, whilst I was preparing to resume my studies with increased attention, and repair the time not profitably past of late, I received a summons, which opened to me a new scene of life. I was called for by Lord Halifax to assume the situation of his private confidential secretary: it was considered by my family and the friends and advisers of my family, as an offer, upon which there could be no hesitation. They took the question as it struck them in their view of it, they could not look into futurity, neither could they take a perfect estimate either of my fitness for the situation held out to me, or of the eventual value of the situation, from which I was about to be displaced. What the prosecution of my studies might have led me to in that line of life, to which I had directed my attention, and fixed my attachment, is a matter of speculation and conjecture; what I might have avoided is now become matter of experience, and I can only say that had certain passages of my past life been then stated to me as probabilities to occur, I would have stuck to my college, and endeavoured to have trodden in the steps of my ancestors.

I was not fitted for dependence; my nature was repugnant to it; I was most unfortunately formed with feelings, that could ill endure the assumed importance of some, or submit to take advantage of the weakness of others. I had ambition enough, and it may be more than enough; but it was the ambition of working out my own way by the labours of my mind, and raising to myself a character upon a foundation of my own laying. I certainly do not offend against truth when I say I had an ardent wish to earn a name in literature: I had studied books; I had not studied men, and perhaps I was too much disposed to measure my respect for their characters by the standard of their talents. I had no acquaintance with the noble Lord, who now invited me to share his confidence, and receive my destiny from his hands. My good father did what was perfectly natural for a father to do in the like circumstances, he availed himself of the opportunity for placing me under the patronage of one of the most figuring and rising men of his time. There was something extremely brilliant and more than commonly engaging in the person, manners and address of the Earl

of Halifax. He had been educated at Eton, and came with the reputation of a good scholar to Trinity College, where he established himself in the good opinion of the whole society, not only by his orderly and regular conduct, but in a very distinguished manner by the attention which he paid to his studies, and the proofs he gave in his public exercises of his classical acquirements. He was certainly, when compared with men of his condition, to be distinguished as a scholar much above the common mark: he quoted well and copiously from the best authors, chiefly Horace; he was very fond of English poetry, and recited it very emphatically after the manner of Quin, who had been his master in that art: he had a partiality for Prior, which he seemed to inherit from the celebrated Lord Halifax, and would rehearse long passages from his Solomon, and Henry and Emma, with the whole of his verses, beginning with Sincere oh tell me-and these he would set off with a great display of action, and in a style of declamation more than sufficiently theatrical. He was married to a virtuous and exemplary lady, who brought him a considerable fortune, and from

whom he took the name of Dunk, and was made a freeman of London to entitle him to marry in conformity to the conditions of her father's will. His family, when I came to him, consisted of this lady, with whom he lived in great domestic harmony, and three daughters; there was an elderly clergyman of the name of Crane, an inmate also, who had been his tutor, and to whom he was most entirely attached. A better guide and a more faithful counsellor he could not have, for amongst all the men it has been my chance to know, I do not think I have known a calmer, wiser, more right-headed man; in the ways of the world, the politics of the time and the characters of those, who were in the public management and responsibility of affairs, Doctor Crane was incomparably the best steersman, that his pupil could take his course from, and so long as he submitted to his temperate guidance he could hardly go astray. The opinions of Doctor Crane were upon all points decisive, because in the first place they were always withheld till extorted from him by appeal, and secondly, because they never failed to carry home con

viction of the prudence and sound judgment they were founded upon.

This was the state of the family to which I was now introduced. In the Lord of the house I contemplated a man regular in his duties, temperate in his habits, and a strict observer of decorum: in the lady a woman, in whom no fault or even foible could be discovered, mild, prudent, unpretending: in the tutor a character not easy to develope, or rightly and correctly to appretiate, for whilst his qualities commanded respect, the dryness of his external repulsed familiarity; in short I set him down as a man of a clear head and a cold heart: the daughters were children of the nursery.

I went to town attended by a steady and intelligent servant of my father's; this person, Anthony Fletcher by name, who then wore a livery, has since, by a series of good conduct and good fortune, established himself in an affluent and creditable situation at Bath, where he still lives in a very advanced age in the Crescent, well known and universally respected. Lord Halifax's house was in GrosvenorSquare, but I found lodgings taken for me by his order in Downing-Street, for the purpose,