rank superior to our own humble one, I wanted not much assistance from my father’s nice discernment to know that it existed there; and for these latter he would always claim that toleration from me, which he said he observed I was less willing to allow than to the former instances.  “We are told in holy writ,” he would say, “that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven.”  Surely this is not meant alone to warn the affluent:  it must also be understood as an expressive illustration, to instruct the lowly-fortuned man that he should bear with those imperfections, inseparable from that dangerous prosperity from which he is happily exempt.”—­But we sadly interrupt your story.—­

“You are very kind, ladies, to speak with so much indulgence of my foible,” said miss Withers, and was going to proceed, when little Louisa Manners asked, “Pray, are not equipages carriages?” “Yes, miss Manners, an equipage is a carriage.”  “Then I am sure if my papa had but one equipage I should be very proud; for once when my papa talked of keeping a one-horse chaise, I never was so proud of any thing in my life:  I used to dream of riding in it, and imagine I saw my playfellows walking past me in the streets.”

“Oh, my dear miss Manners,” replied miss Withers, “your young head might well run on a thing so new to you; but you have preached an useful lesson to me in your own pretty rambling story, which I shall not easily forget.  When you were speaking with such delight of the pleasure the sight of a farm-yard, an orchard, and a narrow slip of kitchen-garden, gave you, and could for years preserve so lively the memory of one short ride, and that probably through a flat uninteresting country, I remembered how early I learned to disregard the face of Nature, unless she were decked in picturesque scenery; how wearisome our parks and grounds became to me, unless some improvements were going forward which I thought would attract notice:  but those days are gone.—­I will now proceed in my story, and bring you acquainted with my real parents.

Alas!  I am a changeling, substituted by my mother for the heiress of the Lesley family:  it was for my sake she did this naughty deed; yet, since the truth has been known, it seems to me as if I had been the only sufferer by it; remembering no time when I was not Harriot Lesley, it seems as if the change had taken from me my birthright.

Lady Harriot had intended to nurse her child herself; but being seized with a violent fever soon after its birth, she was not only unable to nurse it, but even to see it, for several weeks.  At this time I was not quite a month old, when my mother was hired to be miss Lesley’s nurse—­she had once been a servant in the family—­her husband was then at sea.

She had been nursing miss Lesley a few days, when a girl who had the care of me brought me into the nursery to see my mother.  It happened that she wanted something from her own home, which she dispatched the girl to fetch, and desired her to leave me till her return.  In her absence she changed our clothes:  then keeping me to personate the child she was nursing, she sent away the daughter of sir Edward to be brought up in her own poor cottage.