I was out shooting with the curate on a burning First of September, and we had stopped for a minute by an old hedge.

Looking round, I discovered for the first time a venerable pile, to which the enclosure before us belonged.  An air of melancholy hung about it, and just at that instant I saw pass between the trees a young lady with a book in her hand.  The curate sat him down on the grass and told me that was the daughter of a neighbouring gentleman of the name of Walton, whom he had seen walking there more than once.

“Some time ago,” he said, “one Harley lived there, a whimsical sort of man, I am told.  The greatest part of his history is still in my possession.  I once began to read it, but I soon grew weary of the task; for, besides that the hand is intolerably bad, I never could find the author in one strain for two chapters together.  The way I came by it was this.  Some time ago a grave, oddish kind of a man boarded at a farmer’s in this parish.  He left soon after I was made curate, and went nobody knows whither; and in his room was found a bundle of papers, which was brought to me by his landlord.”

“I should be glad to see this medley,” said I.

“You shall see it now,” answered the curate, “for I always take it along with me a-shooting.  ’Tis excellent wadding.”

When I returned to town I had leisure to peruse the acquisition I had made, and found it a little bundle of episodes, put together without art, yet with something of nature.

The curate must answer for the omissions.

II.—­The Man of Feeling in Love

Harley lost his father, the last surviving of his parents, when he was a boy.  His education, therefore, had been but indifferently attended to; and after being taken from a country school, the young gentleman was suffered to be his own master in the subsequent branches of literature, with some assistance from the pastor of the parish in languages and philosophy, and from the exciseman in arithmetic and book-keeping.

There were two ways of increasing his fortune.  One of these was the prospect of succeeding to an old lady, a distant relation, who was known to be possessed of a very large sum in the stocks.  But the young man was so untoward in his disposition, and 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.  As the crown did not draw so much rent as Harley could afford to give, with very considerable profit to himself, it was imagined this lease might be easily procured.  However, this needed some interest with the great, which neither Harley nor his father ever possessed.

His neighbour, Mr. Walton, having heard of this affair, generously offered his assistance to accomplish it, and said 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.