Sir Pitt had an unmarried half-sister who inherited her mother's large fortune, and though the baronet proposed to borrow this money of her on mortgage, Miss Crawley declined the offer, and preferred the security of the funds. She had signified, however, her intention of leaving her fortune equally between Sir Pitt's second son and the family at the Rectory, and had once or twice paid the debts of Rawdon Crawley in his career at college and in the army. Miss Crawley was, in consequence, an object of great respect when she came to Queen's Crawley, for she had a balance at her banker's which would have made her beloved any where.

upon his hands: and for his coach-horses, every mail proprietor in the kingdom knew that he lost more horses than any man in the country, from underfeeding and buying cheap. In disposition he was sociable, and far from being proud; nay, he rather preferred the society of a farmer or a horsedealer to that of a gentleman, like my lord, his son; he was fond of drink, of swearing, of joking with the farmers' daughters: he was never known to give away a shilling or to do a good action, but was of a pleasant, sly, laughing mood, and would cut his joke and drink his glass with a tenant, and sell him up the next day; or have his laugh with the poacher he was transporting, with equal good humor. His politeness for the What a dignity it gives an old lady, that fair sex has already been hinted at by Miss balance at the banker's! How tenderly we Rebecca Sharp-in a word, the whole bar-look at her faults if she is a relative (and onetage, peerage, commonage of England, did not contain a more cunning, mean, selfish, foolish, disreputable old man. That bloodred hand of Sir Pitt Crawley's would be in any body's pocket except his own; and it is with grief and pain, that, as admirers of the British aristocracy, we find ourselves obliged to admit the existence of so many ill qualities in a person whose name is in Debrett.

may every reader have a score of such), what a kind, good-natured old creature we find her! How the junior partner of Hobbs and Dobbs leads her smiling to the carriage with the lozenge upon it, and the fat, wheezy coachman! How, when she comes to pay us a visit, we generally find an opportunity to let our friends know her station in the world! We say (and with perfect truth), I One great cause why Mr. Crawley had wish I had Miss MacWhirter's signature to such a hold over the affections of his father, a check for five thousand pounds. She resulted from money arrangements. The wouldn't miss it, says your wife. She is baronet owed his son a sum of money out my aunt, say you, in an easy, careless way, of the jointure of his mother, which he did when your friend asks if Miss MacWhirter not find it convenient to pay; indeed, he had is any relative? Your wife is perpetually an almost invincible repugnance to paying sending her little testimonies of affection, any body, and could only be brought by force your little girls work endless worsted basto discharge his debts. Miss Sharp calcu-kets, cushions, and footstools for her. What lated (for she became, as we shall hear speed- a good fire there is in her room when she ily, inducted into most of the secrets of the comes to pay you a visit, although your wife family) that the mere payment of his cred- laces her stays without one! The house itors cost the honorable baronet several hun- during her stay assumes a festive, neat, dreds yearly; but this was a delight he could warm, jovial, snug appearance, not visible at not forego; he had a savage pleasure in other seasons. You yourself, dear sir, formaking the poor wretches wait, and in shift-get to go to sleep after dinner, and find ing from court to court, and from term to term the period of satisfaction. What's the good of being in Parliament, he said, if you must pay your debts? Hence, indeed, his position as a senator was not a little useful to him.

Vanity Fair-Vanity Fair! Here was a man, who could not spell, and did not care to read-who had the habits and the cunning of a boor: whose aim in life was pettifogging: who never had a taste, or emotion, or enjoyment, but what was sordid and foul; and yet he had rank, and honors, and power, somehow and was a dignitary of the land, and a pillar of the state. He was high sheriff, and rode in a golden coach. Great ministers and statesmen courted him; and in Vanity Fair he had a higher place than the most brilliant genius or spotless virtue.

your

self all of a sudden (though you invariably lose) very fond of a rubber. What good dinners you have-game every day, Malmsey-Madeira, and no end of fish from London. Even the servants in the kitchen share in the general prosperity; and, somehow, during the stay of Miss MacWhirter's fat coachman, the beer is grown much stronger, and the consumption of tea and sugar in the nursery (where her maid takes her meals) is not regarded in the least. Is it so, or is it not so? I appeal to the middle classes. Ah, gracious powers! I wish you would send me an old aunt-a maiden aunt-an aunt with a lozenge on her carriage, and a front of light coffee-colored hair-how my children should work work-bags for her, and my Julia and I would make her comfortable! Sweet-sweet vision! Foolish-foolish dream!

CHAPTER X.

MISS SHARP BEGINS TO MAKE FRIENDS.

struction is more effectual than self-instruction? The eldest was rather fond of books, and as there was in the old library at Queen's Crawley a considerable provision of works of light literature of the last century, both in the French and English languages (they had been purchased by the Secretary of the Tape and Sealing Wax Office at the period of his disgrace), and as nobody ever troubled the book-shelves but herself, Rebecca was enabled agreeably, and, as it were, in playing, to impart a great deal of instruction to Miss Rose Crawley.

AND now, being received as a member of the amiable family whose portraits we have sketched in the foregoing pages, it became naturally Rebecca's duty to make herself, as she said, agreeable to her benefactors, and to gain their confidence to the utmost of her power. Who can but admire this quality of gratitude in an unprotected orphan; and, if there entered some degree of selfishness into her calculations, who can say but that her prudence was perfectly She and Miss Rose thus read together justifiable? "I am alone in the world," many delightful French and English works, said the friendless girl. "I have nothing to among which may be mentioned those of the look for but what my own labor can bring learned Dr. Smollett, of the ingenious Mr. me; and while that little pink-faced chit Henry Fielding, of the graceful and fantasAmelia, with not half my sense, has ten tic Monsieur Crébillon the younger, whom thousand pounds and an establishment se- our immortal poet Gray so much admired, cure, poor Rebecca (and my figure is far and of the universal Monsieur de Voltaire. better than hers) has only herself and her Once, when Mr. Crawley asked what the own wits to trust to. Well, let us see if my young people were reading, the governess wits can not provide me with an honorable replied, "Smollett." "Oh, Smollett," said maintenance, and if some day or other I Mr. Crawley, quite satisfied. "His history can not show Miss Amelia my real superi- is more dull, but by no means so dangerous ority over her. Not that I dislike poor Ame- as that of Mr. Hume. It is history you are hia who can dislike such a harmless, good-reading?" "Yes," said Miss Rose; withnatured creature ?-only it will be a fine day when I can take my place above her in the world, as why, indeed, should I not?" Thus it was that our little romantic friend formed visions of the future for herself-nor must we be scandalized, that in all her castles in the air, a husband was the principal inhabitOf what else have young ladies to think, but husbands? Of what else do their dear mammas think? "I must be my own mamma," said Rebecca; not without a tingling consciousness of defeat, as she thought over her little misadventure with Jos Sed-paid him upon his proficiency. ley.

ant.

So she wisely determined to render her position with the Queen's Crawley family comfortable and secure, and to this end resolved to make friends of every one around her who could at all interfere with her comfort.

As my Lady Crawley was not one of these personages, and a woman, moreover, so indolent and void of character, as not to be of the least consequence in her own house, Rebecca soon found that it was not at all necessary to cultivate her good will indeed, impossible to gain it. She used to talk to her pupils about their "poor mamma;" and, though she treated that lady with every demonstration of cool respect, it was to the rest of the family that she wisely directed the chief part of her attentions.

With the young people, whose applause she thoroughly gained, her method was pretty simple. She did not pester their young brains with too much learning, but, on the contrary, let them have their own way in regard to educating themselves; for, what in

out, however, adding that it was the history of Mr. Humphrey Clinker. On another occasion he was rather scandalized at finding his sister with a book of French plays; but as the governess remarked that it was for the purpose of acquiring the French idiom in conversation, he was fain to be content. Mr. Crawley, as a diplomatist, was exceedingly proud of his own skill in speaking the French language (for he was of the world still), and not a little pleased with the compliments which the governess continually

Miss Violet's tastes were, on the contrary, more rude and boisterous than those of her sister. She knew the sequestered spots where the hens laid their eggs. She could climb a tree to rob the nests of the feathered songsters of their speckled spoils. And her pleasure was to ride the young colts, and to scour the plains like Camilla. She was the favorite of her father and of the stable-men. She was the darling, and withal the terror of the cook; for she discovered the haunts of the jam-pots, and would attack them when they were within her reach. She and her sister were engaged in constant battles. Any of which peccadilloes, if Miss Sharp discovered, she did not tell them to Lady Crawley, who would have told them to the father, or, worse, to Mr. Crawley; but promised not to tell if Miss Violet would be a good girl and love her governess.

With Mr. Crawley Miss Sharp was respectful and obedient. She used to consult him on passages of French which she could not understand, though her mother was a Frenchwoman, and which he would con

strue to her satisfaction: and, besides giving | fast walk without her (and the children, of her his aid in profane literature, he was kind course), when she would give her advice as enough to select for her books of a more se- to the trees which were to be lopped in the rious tendency, and address to her much of shrubberies, the garden-beds to be dug, the his conversation. She admired, beyond crops which were to be cut, the horses measure, his speech at the Quashimaboo- which were to go to cart or plough. Before Aid Society; took an interest in his pamph- she had been a year at Queen's Crawley, let on malt; was often affected, even to she had quite won the baronet's confidence; tears, by his discourses of an evening, and and the conversation at the dinner-table, would say "Oh, thank you, sir," with a which before used to be held between him sigh, and a look up to heaven, that made and Mr. Horrocks, the butler, was now alhim occasionally condescend to shake hands most exclusively between Sir Pitt and Miss with her. Blood is every thing, after all," Sharp. She was almost mistress of the would that aristocratic religionist say. How house when Mr. Crawley was absent, but Miss Sharp is awakened by my words, when conducted herself in her new and exalted not one of the people here is touched. I am situation with such circumspection and modtoo fine for them-too delicate. I must esty as not to offend the authorities of the familiarize my style-but she understands kitchen and stable, among whom her behait. Her mother was a Montmorency." vior was always exceedingly modest and Indeed it was from this famous family, as affable. She was quite a different person it appears, that Miss Sharp, by the mother's from the haughty, shy, dissatisfied little girl side, was descended. Of course she did not whom we have known previously, and this say that her mother had been on the stage; change of temper proved great prudence, a it would have shocked Mr. Crawley's re- sincere desire of amendment, or at any rate ligious scruples. How many noble emigrées great moral courage on her part. Whether had this horrid revolution plunged in pover- it was the heart which dictated this new ty! She had several stories about her an- system of complaisance and humility adoptcestors ere she had been many months in ed by our Rebecca, is to be proved by her the house; some of which Mr. Crawley after-history. A system of hypocrisy, which happened to find in D'Hozier's dictionary, lasts through whole years, is one seldom satwhich was in the library, and which strength-isfactorily practiced by a person of one-andened his belief in their truth, and in the high-breeding of Rebecca. Are we to suppose from this curiosity and prying into dictionaries, could our heroine suppose that Mr. Crawley was interested in her?-no, only in a friendly way. Have we not stated that he was attached to Lady Jane Sheepshanks?

twenty; however, our readers will recollect that, though young in years, our heroine was old in life and experience, and we have written to no purpose if they have not discovered that she was a very clever woman.

The elder and younger son of the house of Crawley were, like the gentleman and He took Rebecca to task once or twice lady in the weather-box, never at home toabout the propriety of playing at backgam-gether-they hated each other cordially: mon with Sir Pitt, saying that it was a god- indeed, Rawdon Crawley, the dragoon, had less amusement, and that she would be a great contempt for the establishment altomuch better engaged in reading "Thrump's Legacy," or " The Blind Washerwoman of Moorfields," or any work of a more serious nature; but Miss Sharp said her dear mother used often to play the same game with the old Count de Trictrac and the venerable Abbé du Cornet, and so found an excuse for this and other worldly amusements.

But it was not only by playing at backgammon with the baronet, that the little governess rendered herself agreeable to her employer. She found many different ways of being useful to him. She read over, with indefatigable patience, all those law papers, with which, before she came to Queen's Crawley, he had promised to entertain her. She volunteered to copy many of his letters, and adroitly altered the spelling of them so as to suit the usages of the present day. She became interested in every thing appertaining to the estate, to the farm, the park, the garden, and the stables; and so delightful a companion was she, that the baronet would seldom take his after-break

gether, and seldom came thither, except when his aunt paid her annual visit.

The great good quality of this old lady has been mentioned. She possessed seventy thousand pounds, and had almost adopted Rawdon. She disliked her elder nephew exceedingly, and despised him as a milksop. In return, he did not hesitate to state that her soul was irretrievably lost, and was of opinion that his brother's chance in the next world was not a whit better. "She is a godless woman of the world," would Mr. Crawley say; "she lives with atheists and Frenchmen. My mind shudders when I think of her awful, awful situation, and that, near as she is to the grave, she should be so given up to vanity, licentiousness, profaneness, and folly." In fact, the old lady declined altogether to hear his hour's lecture of an evening; and when she came to Queen's Crawley alone, he was obliged to pretermit his usual devotional exercises.

"Shut up your sarmons, Pitt, when Miss Crawley comes down," said his father; "she