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matters, could have been content, in this one, to have shoved poor reason scurvily aside that passion might walk on unmolested. All general rules are, we know, attended by their exceptions; and the common mode of applying both, is to give the benefit of the rule to the world and of the exception to ourselves.

We are sorry truth compels us to confess that Aston was no exception to this practice on the present occasion. He admired exceedingly the high and honourable principle upon which Mr. Azledine had acted; still he thought there were several circumstances to warrant a suspension of it in his case; though, as we have seen, he was unable to bring forward any one of them when the decision of his case was left to himself. So great is the difference between knowing what we should like, and undertaking to show that we ought to have it.

He disdained, however, to take credit for a merit which did not belong to him. When he found he could not marry Arabella, in pursuance of his own resolution to do so, he did not suffer his father to suppose it was because he had changed his resolution. He took the earliest opportunity, on the contrary, of ac

quainting him with the exact truth; gave all the honour, where it was due, to Mr. Azledine, (whose firmness in resisting his entreaties he extolled with generous frankness,) and acknowledged that could he have prevailed over his scruples, he should have remained inflexible in his own purpose.

Mr. Aston was sensibly touched by this communication; but because it was accompanied with the declaration that his son would never renounce Arabella, and that he should wait resignedly till circumstances were more propitious to his desires, he could not prevail upon himself to do justice to either party. He felt that Mr. Azledine's conduct was full of moral dignity; that his son's was manly, open, and honourable; he wished to mark his sense of both, and to show himself capable of emulating both but his authority had been defied -it was still defied-and he could not brook the idea of tacitly yielding to this defiance by sanctioning what would have been usurped, if it could.

CHAPTER IV.

Now, good sir, what are you?

A most poor man, made lame by fortune's blows!

King Lear.

Ir is worldly wisdom neither to make nor exasperate an enemy. The meanest wretch may sometimes have it in his power to retaliate; and his retaliation will always be according to the degree of his natural baseness.

Mayfield, who would have been contented with seeing Stephen at Azledine Hall in full possession of all his future rights, now meditated a fresh vengeance. The blow which Mr. Azledine had struck him, and the contumelious language which accompanied it, rankled in his mind.

There remained for the offender one other infliction heavier even than that which had already fallen upon him. With this he resolved to glut his revenge.

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By his instigation, and his alone, — for Stephen, more than satisfied with what he was,

cared nothing for being better, a suit was instituted to compel the late possessor of the title and estates to account for all the rents collected since Sir Hildebrand's death.

When Mr. Azledine received notice of this suit, he saw at once the gigantic nature of the evil preparing for him, the complete, the irretrievable ruin by which he was about to be overwhelmed. A hasty computation (even without the addition of interest, either simple or compound,) presented to his dismayed mind an aggregate of not less than eighty thousand pounds. Where was this sum to be obtained? What alchemy was he master of, to transmute stocks and stones into uncoined gold? And without such a power, he might as well rack his brains to consider how he would reach the earth's centre, as by what means he should make the required restitution.

In the first agony of his feelings, as he pictured to himself the abject poverty that must thenceforth cling to his devoted family, he hung trembling on on the verge of self-destruction ! There was one awful moment -one

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frightful pause, during which the grim vision of a suicidal escape from all the sufferings of this world, passed darkly before his shuddering thoughts. It was but a moment that his piety and fortitude forsook him that his nobler faculties were eclipsed - and that he forgot there was another world! Bursting suddenly from the thraldom, he fell upon his knees, lifted up his heart in silent prayer to God, and rose a Christian - prepared to take up the cross of his divine Master, and follow him!

The suit went on. Mr. Azledine had nothing to oppose to it, but a plain unvarnished tale of what had been the real circumstances of his singular and unfortunate condition. Under an order of the Court, the required accounts were produced; and, by its final award, made with the most equitable consideration of the merits of the case, he was declared indebted to Sir Stephen Azledine in the sum of sixty thousand pounds.

He had everybody's pity. A degree of public commiseration even was awakened, and appeals were made by his friends, with more of generous sympathy than of well-considered consequences, to enable him to meet

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