his counsels;-Was this true honour? No: perish that petulance, that selfishness, that littleness of soul, which, in such circumstances, looks at any thing but the common weal! The scribblers of the day would, indeed, abound in invective. They would satirize his insatiable thirst for power, call upon him to renounce his vain expectations of aggrandisement, and retreat to that oblivion which best suited his confused ideas of govern ment, ere he was ignominiously driven from his station by a concentration of force he could not resist :-but posterity would do him justice, and they who venerated a Walsingham, a Faulkland, and a Clarendon, would honour the firm and upright Avondel.

Amid the vexation of threatened and actual resignatións, one coadjutor stood firmly at his side, and this was Lord Norbury. But as he could not

be prevailed upon to sacrifice his pleasures, so as to pay a steady attention to business, his assistance did little towards relieving the earl's fatigues. His name was, however, something, and his party was useful in counting a majority. Norbury used his political importance to prosecute his designs, not on the person, but on the reputation, of Emily. Her frigid indifference to all his assiduities, her careless insensibility to his self-valued graces, her steady attachment to her lord, evinced no less in her general‘behaviour than in the glowing rapture which lighted up her face whenever his actions and merits were discussed, taught the reluctant coxcomb to confess, that the virtue of one woman was inaccessible, at least till some extraordinary revolution shook her high-seated confidence. Yet, still he continued to haunt her in public as her shade,

and regardless of her contempt, pre served an air of intimacy on his part which might satisfy the censorious that Emily's reserve was the affected cover of criminal familiarity. Her features were too expressive of her real sentiments, and too little subject to controul, to allow her to conform strictly to Lady Glenvorne's advice, of treating Norbury like. any other indifferent person. His society was disagreeble, his attentions to her were disgusting. But her Lord continued to regard him as a political friend, and she knew enough of his difficulties to be convinced that the number of his adherents was too small to admit of being diminished without serious inconvenience. Besides, the marchioness had conjured her to be prudent, and had pointed out the fatal effects which often resulted from a wife's incautiously directing the resentment of her hus

band to the insulter of her honour. She had therefore only to endure, and count the days and hours till the close of the parliamentary campaign would remove her from this scene of persect tion.

CHAP. XVI.

Away! no woman would descend so low.
A skipping, dancing, worthless tribe you are,
Fit only for yourselves: you herd together,
And when the circling glass warms your vain hearts
You talk of beauties that you never saw,

And fancy raptures that you never knew.

ROWE.

NORBURY's constant attendance on the Countess of Avondel excited general observation, and that invidious defamer of female honour was well skilled in the art of giving observation a scandalous direction. He praised her beauty in the most rapturous terms, till it was impossible for any