round his neck; all things loved her, and she loved all things. It seemed doubtful at that time whether she would ever have sufficient steadiness and strength of character. Her beauty and her character appeared alike so essentially sexual, soft, yet lively, buoyant, yet caressing, that you could scarcely place in her that moral dependence, that you might in a character less amiable, but less yieldingly feminine. Time, however, and circumstance which alters and hardens, were to decide whether the inward nature did not possess some latent, and yet undiscovered properties. Such was Lucy Brandon in the year , and in that year, on a beautiful autumnal evening, we first introduce her personally to our readers.
She was sitting on a garden-seat by the river side, with her father, who was deliberately conning the evening paper of a former week, and gravely seasoning the antient news with the inspirations of that weed which so bitterly excited the royal indignation of our British Solomon. It happens, unfortunately for us—for outward peculiarities are scarcely worthy the dignity to which comedy, whether in the drama or the narrative, aspires,—that Squire Brandon possessed so few distinguish-
