The Man of Feeling | Page 5

accommodated himself so ill to her humour, that she died, and
did not leave him a farthing.
The other method pointed out to him was an endeavour to get a lease of
some crown-lands, which lay contiguous to his little paternal estate.
This, it was imagined, might be easily procured, as the crown did not
draw so much rent as Harley could afford to give, with very
considerable profit to himself; and the then lessee had rendered himself
so obnoxious to the ministry, by the disposal of his vote at an election,
that he could not expect a renewal. This, however, needed some interest
with the great, which Harley or his father never possessed.
His neighbour, Mr. Walton, having heard of this affair, generously
offered his assistance to accomplish it. He told him, that though he had
long been a stranger to courtiers, yet he believed there were some of
them who might pay regard to his recommendation; and that, if he
thought it worth the while to take a London journey upon the business,
he would furnish him with a letter of introduction to a baronet of his
acquaintance, who had a great deal to say with the first lord of the
treasury.
When his friends heard of this offer, they pressed him with the utmost
earnestness to accept of it.
They did not fail to enumerate the many advantages which a certain
degree of spirit and assurance gives a man who would make a figure in

the world: they repeated their instances of good fortune in others,
ascribed them all to a happy forwardness of disposition; and made so
copious a recital of the disadvantages which attend the opposite
weakness, that a stranger, who had heard them, would have been led to
imagine, that in the British code there was some disqualifying statute
against any citizen who should be convicted of--modesty.
Harley, though he had no great relish for the attempt, yet could not
resist the torrent of motives that assaulted him; and as he needed but
little preparation for his journey, a day, not very distant, was fixed for
his departure.

CHAPTER XIII
--THE MAN OF FEELING IN LOVE

The day before that on which he set out, he went to take leave of Mr.
Walton.--We would conceal nothing;--there was another person of the
family to whom also the visit was intended, on whose account, perhaps,
there were some tenderer feelings in the bosom of Harley than his
gratitude for the friendly notice of that gentleman (though he was
seldom deficient in that virtue) could inspire. Mr. Walton had a
daughter; and such a daughter! we will attempt some description of her
by and by.
Harley's notions of the ?a???, or beautiful, were not always to be
defined, nor indeed such as the world would always assent to, though
we could define them. A blush, a phrase of affability to an inferior, a
tear at a moving tale, were to him, like the Cestus of Cytherea,
unequalled in conferring beauty. For all these Miss Walton was
remarkable; but as these, like the above-mentioned Cestus, are perhaps
still more powerful when the wearer is possessed of souse degree of
beauty, commonly so called, it happened, that, from this cause, they
had more than usual power in the person of that young lady.
She was now arrived at that period of life which takes, or is supposed
to take, from the flippancy of girlhood those sprightlinesses with which
some good-natured old maids oblige the world at three-score. She had
been ushered into life (as that word is used in the dialect of St. James's)
at seventeen, her father being then in parliament, and living in London:

at seventeen, therefore, she had been a universal toast; her health, now
she was four-and-twenty, was only drank by those who knew her face
at least. Her complexion was mellowed into a paleness, which certainly
took from her beauty; but agreed, at least Harley used to say so, with
the pensive softness of her mind. Her eyes were of that gentle hazel
colour which is rather mild than piercing; and, except when they were
lighted up by good-humour, which was frequently the case, were
supposed by the fine gentlemen to want fire. Her air and manner were
elegant in the highest degree, and were as sure of commanding respect
as their mistress was far from demanding it. Her voice was
inexpressibly soft; it was, according to that incomparable simile of
Otway's,
- "like the shepherd's pipe upon the mountains, When all his little
flock's at feed before him."
The effect it had upon Harley, himself used to paint ridiculously
enough; and ascribed it to powers, which few believed, and nobody
cared for.
Her conversation was always cheerful, but rarely witty; and without the