nts his father used to convince him of the
vanity of his desires, nor the soft society of a most endearing and
accomplished wife, render him easy under the many disappointments he
received in the prosecution of this favourite aim.

The death of his father soon after, however, filled his bosom with
emotions which he had never felt before in any painful degree; he was
for some time scarce able to support the thoughts of having lost so
tender and affectionate a parent: but as nothing is so soon forgot as
death, especially when alleviated by the enjoyment of a greater
affluence of fortune, his grief wore off by pretty swift degrees, and
he was beginning to renew his pursuits after preferment, with the same
assiduity and ardency as ever, when his wife died in bringing into the
world a son. This second subject of sorrow struck indeed much more to
his heart than the former had done, as he now wanted that comforter he
had found in her.--All the consolation he had was in that little
pledge of their mutual affection she had left behind; and it was for
the sake of that dear boy, at least he imagined it so, that his
ambition of making a great figure in the world again, revived in him,
if possible, with greater energy than ever.

As he was now in possession of a very fine estate, had an agreeable
person, rendered yet more so by all the advantages of education and
travel, and not quite six-and-thirty, when he became a widower, his
year of mourning was scarce expired, before all his friends and
acquaintance began to talk to him of another wife, and few days past
without proposals of that nature being made; but either the memory of
the former amiable partner of his bed, or the experience he had in his
own family of the ill effects that second marriages sometimes produce,
made him deaf, for a long time, to any discourses on that head, though
urged by those who, in other matters, had the greatest ascendant over
him.

Though he was far from being arrived at those years which render a man
insensible of beauty, yet he was past those which had made him look on
the enjoyment of it as the supremest bliss:--the fond desires that
once engrossed him, had for some time given way to the more potent
ardors of ambition;--he now made not love his _business_ but
_amusement_; the amours he had were only transient, and merely to fill
the vacancy of an idle hour: his thoughts were so wholly taken up with
advancing himself, and becoming a man of consequ