upon his hands: and for his coach-horses, Sir Pitt had an unmarried half-sister who every mail proprietor in the kingdom knew inherited her mother's large fortune, and that he lost more horses than any man in though the baronet proposed to borrow this the country, from underfeeding and buying money of her on mortgage, Miss Crawley cheap. In disposition he was sociable, and declined the offer, and preferred the security far from being proud; nay, he rather pre- of the funds. She had signified, however, ferred the society of a farmer or a horse- her intention of leaving her fortune equally dealer to that of a gentleman, like my lord, between Sir Pitt's second son and the famhis son; he was fond of drink, of swearing, ily at the Rectory, and had once or twice of joking with the farmers' daughters: he paid the debts of Rawdon Crawley in his was never known to give away a shilling or career at college and in the army. Miss to do a good action, but was of a pleasant, Crawley was, in consequence, an object of sly, laughing mood, and would cut his joke great respect when she came to Queen's and drink his glass with a tenant, and sell Crawley, for she had a balance at her bankhim up the next day; or have his laugher's which would have made her beloved with the poacher he was transporting, with any where. 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 speedily, inducted into most of the secrets of the family) that the mere payment of his creditors cost the honorable baronet several hundreds yearly; but this was a delight he could not forego; he had a savage pleasure in making the poor wretches wait, and in shift- | 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 pow- | er, 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.

:

a good fire there is in her room when she comes to pay you a visit, although your wife laces her stays without one! The house during her stay assumes a festive, neat, warm, jovial, snug appearance, not visible at other seasons. You yourself, dear sir, forget to go to sleep after dinner, and find yourself 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!

1

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 lia: who can dislike such a harmless, good-reading?" "Yes," said Miss Rose; withnatured creature ?-only it will be a fine day out, however, adding that it was the history when I can take my place above her in the of Mr. Humphrey Clinker. On another ocworld, as why, indeed, should I not?" Thus casion he was rather scandalized at finding it was that our little romantic friend formed his sister with a book of French plays; but visions of the future for herself-nor must as the governess remarked that it was for we be scandalized, that in all her castles in the purpose of acquiring the French idiom the air, a husband was the principal inhabit- in conversation, he was fain to be content. ant. Of what else have young ladies to Mr. Crawley, as a diplomatist, was exceedthink, but husbands? Of what else do their ingly proud of his own skill in speaking the dear mammas think? "I must be my own French language (for he was of the world mamma," said Rebecca; not without a ting-still), and not a little pleased with the comling consciousness of defeat, as she thought over her little misadventure with Jos Sedley.

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 willindeed, 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

pliments which the governess continually paid him upon his proficiency.

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

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 gether, and seldom came thither, except Legacy," or "The Blind Washerwoman of when his aunt paid her annual visit. 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.