protection, which the younger repaid with defer

ence.

During Tremaine's professional studies, this intimacy had been farther cultivated by correspondence; but his avocations confining him to London, and Evelyn having travelled some years abroad, by degrees it dropped, as many a correspondence has dropped before, without any diminution of esteem on either side.

Tremaine's later life, however, had been so totally different from Evelyn's, that he might be almost said to have forgotten him, except when any particular circumstance brought him to his memory; when he always thought of him with pleasure and

esteem.

Evelyn had been a second son, and was bred a scholar, and (by choice) a churchman. He had à critical mind and acute powers of reasoning, which fixed his faith where his heart most wished it. They also, it was said, made him not indisposed to that collision with another man's understanding, known by the name of argument; in which, though always persevering, and sometimes dogmatical, he was not unfrequently playful, and never uncivil. To say truth, he loved arguing, though only as he loved exercise, which he always held was as necessary for the health of the mind as of the body.

Evelyn's temper, naturally cheerful, had become

more so from the choice he had made of a profession. The family living, which he enjoyed, had been a fortune sufficient for his wishes, when its competency was increased by his succeeding also to the family estate. This was about two thousand pounds a-year, and came to him by the death of his elder brother. Before this, he had married a woman of a character congenial to his own, whom he tenderly loved. Her death had been a severe, but not an irretrievable blow to his happiness. Submission first, and travelling afterwards, by which he distracted his melancholy, and cultivated a high natural taste, completed his restoration; and an only daughter, as she grew up, filled (without displacing her, if I may use the expression) the room in his heart which had been occupied by her mother.

He was forty-five years of age, and though he had seen much of the world, and kept the best company both at home and abroad, he cheerfully returned to the functions of a parish priest, only varied by residing in the hall of his ancestors, in which he maintained a useful life, with the plainest simplicity of manners.

It may be supposed that the greeting of such a man was not displeasing to Tremaine; but, exclusive of his wish to see his old friend, he was excited also by a little curiosity. Whenever he had heard of Evelyn, although glad of his welfare, he generally

blamed his choice of life. To throw away his talents on the church, he thought was at best a mistake; and to immure himself in a rectory, or a country hall, instead of leading in the first ranks of society, was at least as bad. And as Tremaine had now had experience of the inefficacy of even a brilliant solitude to confer happiness, he was eager, without knowing it, to detect and criticise the error of his friend.

"Poor man!" said he, "he seeks me, and well he may, to relieve his desert life, tied down as he must be to mere mechanical occupations, which must deprive him of all the leisure necessary for elegant retirement."

He wrote a kind answer to his letter, and fixed the next day for seeing him.

The meeting was unaffectedly pleasing to both, though without the rapture which characterizes youth. Evelyn's countenance was lighted up with a sincere but tempered satisfaction: Tremaine's unbent more, because it had more to unbend.

His friend, indeed, was struck with a sort of saturnine turn of feature which had not originally belonged to the face he had formerly known, and which with great concern he attributed to his illness.

The rosy health, the good-natured intelligence, the well-regulated happiness that appeared in

Evelyn, could not fail to strike Tremaine, who, had he not known his age, would have thought him several years younger than he was. "This man has not been buried in a desert, nor has he wanted enjoyment," said Tremaine to himself.

After the first salutations, Evelyn, lamenting the cause that brought his friend into the county, lamented still more that he had ever abandoned it ; "and to tell you the truth, my good friend," said he, "I do not think your retreat from the world has done much for you.”

"I have been ill," said Tremaine, "which none of us can help; otherwise I should have reaped from it all the advantages I had expected, after a stormy life; though I fear I cannot say that retirement has done as much for me as it seems to have done for you."

"For me," replied Evelyn, " I assure you I never retired !”

"I thought you had been a recluse like myself, only of a longer standing," pursued Tremaine ; "and my only fear for you was, the sad destruction of your time, occasioned by the irksome and unsatisfying duties which your living obliged you to perform."

"Those duties are my best friends," said Evelyn, "for they are not only very much to my taste, which one's business does not always happen to be,

but they give the real value and zest, I believe, to all my less serious employments."

Tremaine expressed, as politely as he could, a kind of incredulous assent to these assertions of Evelyn, who continued-

"When you favour me with a visit at Evelyn Hall, which I hope you will soon be able to do, I trust you will find nothing there that is either irksome or unsatisfactory."

They now fell on other matters. Evelyn inquired, and Tremaine recounted the particulars of his Northamptonshire retirement, the business that had forced him from it, and the steps necessary to be taken; by which it appeared to Evelyn that, from sheer indolence alone, Tremaine was about to lose great advantages from an inclosure, that was pending in parliament, to an immense extent. He allowed that he had been to blame; but laid it upon his illness; and Evelyn perceiving that he did not like to be cátechized, did not push the inquiry. The meeting ended in offers of service from Evelyn, which, from influence in his neighbourhood, he was very capable of affording; and in a promise of Tremaine, to return the visit as soon as possible, at Evelyn's mansion.

Left to himself, Tremaine could not disguise the advantage which his friend seemed to have over him (although seven or eight years older) in the