ad by this time risen to the lucrative situation
of Commercial Resident at Salem. His sister was now making a little
excursion, under the care of the lady who had superintended her
education, Miss Jane Nicolson, a daughter of Dr. Nicolson, Dean of
Exeter, and granddaughter of William Nicolson, Bishop of Carlisle,
well known as the editor of The English Historical Library. To some
connections which the learned prelate's family had ever since his time
kept up in the diocese of Carlisle, Miss Carpenter owed the direction
of her summer tour.

[Footnote 139: In several deeds which I have seen, M.
Charpentier is designed "Ecuyer du Roi;" one of those
purchasable ranks peculiar to the latter stages of the old
French Monarchy. What the post he held was, I never heard.]

Scott's father was now in a very feeble state of health, which
accounts for his first announcement of this affair being made in a
letter to his mother; it is undated;--but by this time the young lady
had left Gilsland for Carlisle, where she remained until her destiny
was settled,

TO MRS. SCOTT, GEORGE'S SQUARE, EDINBURGH.

MY DEAR MOTHER,--I should very ill deserve the care and affection
with which you have ever regarded me, were I to neglect my duty
so far as to omit consulting my father and you in the most
important step which I can possibly take in life, and upon the
success of which my future happiness must depend. It is with
pleasure I think that I can avail myself of your advice and
instructions in an affair of so great importance as that which I
have at present on my hands. You will probably guess from this
preamble that I am engaged in a matrimonial plan, which is really
the case. Though my acquaintance with the young lady has not been
of long standing, this circumstance is in some degree
counterbalanced by the intimacy in which we have lived, and by
the opportunities which that intimacy has afforded me of
remarking her conduct and sentiments on many different occasions,
some of which were rather of a delicate nature, so that in fact I
have seen more of her during the few weeks we have {p.249} been
together than I could have done after a much longer acquaintance,
shackled by the common forms of ordinary life. You will not
expect from me a description of her person--for which I refer you
to my brother, as also