"I should like, I own, to make a clean breast of it; and perhaps I may profit by your advice.

You know, in the first place, that after I left college, my father, seeing me indisposed for the Church, to which he had always destined me in his own heart, and for which, indeed, he had gone out of his way to maintain me at the University, gave me the choice of his own business as a surveyor and land-agent, or of entering into the mercantile profession.

I chose the latter, and went to Southampton, where we have a relation in business, to be initiated into the elementary mysteries.

There I became acquainted with a good clergyman and his wife, and in that house I passed a great part of my time." "With the hope, I trust, on better consideration, of gratifying your father's ambition and learning how to starve with gentility on a cure." "Not much of that, I fear." "Then the clergyman had a daughter ?" "You are nearer the mark now," said Mainwaring, colouring,--"though it was not his daughter.

A young lady lived in his family, not even related to him; she was placed there with a certain allowance by a rich relation.