So long, however, as his dependence upon his father endured, it was useless for Andre to anticipate the day when he might don the king’s livery.  The repugnance with which his first motion in the matter was greeted, and the affectionate opposition of his mother and sisters, seem to have at least silenced, if they did not extinguish his desires.  And when the death of his father, in 1769, left him free to select his own pathway through the world, a new conjuncture of affairs again caused him to smother his cherished aspirations.

The domestic relations of the Andre family were ever peculiarly tender and affectionate; and in the loss of its head the survivors confessed a great and a corroding sorrow.  To repair the shattered health and recruit the exhausted spirits of his mother and sisters, the son resolved to lead them at once away from the daily contemplation of the grave to more cheerful scenes.  The medicinal waters of Derbyshire were then in vogue, and a tour towards the wells of Buxton and of Matlock was undertaken.  Among the acquaintances that ensued from this expedition was that of the family of the Rev. Mr. Seward of Lichfield; and while a warm and lasting friendship rapidly grew up between Andre and Miss Anna Seward, his heart was surrendered to the charms of her adopted sister, Miss Honora Sneyd.

By every account, Honora Sneyd must have been a paragon of feminine loveliness.  Her father was a country-gentleman of Staffordshire, who had been left, by the untimely death of their mother, to the charge of a bevy of infants.  The solicitude of friends and relatives had sought the care of these, and thus Honora became virtually a daughter of Mrs. Seward’s house.  The character of this establishment may be conjectured from the history of Anna Seward.  Remote from the crushing weight of London authority, she grew up in a provincial atmosphere of literary and social refinement, and fondly believed that the polite praises (for censure was a thing unknown among them) that were bandied about in her own coterie would be cordially echoed by the voices of posterity.  In this she has been utterly deceived; but at the same time it must be confessed that there was much in the tone of the reigning circles at Lichfield, in those days, to contrast most favorably with the manners of the literary sovereigns of the metropolis, or the intellectual elevation of the rulers of fashion.  At Lichfield, it was polite to be learned, and good-breeding and mutual admiration went hand in hand.

In such an atmosphere had Miss Sneyd been educated; and the enthusiastic, not to say romantic, disposition of Miss Seward must have given additional effect to every impulse that taught her to acknowledge and rejoice in the undisguised admiration of the young London merchant.  His sentiments were as pure and lofty as her own; his person was as attractive as that of any hero of romance; and his passion was deep and true.  With the knowledge and involuntary approbation of all their friends,