having directed his squire to follow his track with the
horses.

Yet, whatever haste he made, it is absolutely necessary, for the reader's
satisfaction, that we should outstrip the chaise, and visit the ladies
before his arrival. We shall therefore, without circumlocution, premise,
that Miss Meadows was no other than that paragon of beauty and goodness,
the all-accomplished Miss Aurelia Darnel. She had, with that meekness of
resignation peculiar to herself, for some years, submitted to every
species of oppression which her uncle's tyranny of disposition could
plan, and his unlimited power of guardianship execute, till at length it
rose to such a pitch of despotism as she could not endure. He had
projected a match between his niece and one Philip Sycamore, Esq., a
young man who possessed a pretty considerable estate in the north
country; who liked Aurelia's person, but was enamoured of her fortune,
and had offered to purchase Anthony's interest and alliance with certain
concessions, which could not but be agreeable to a man of loose
principles, who would have found it a difficult task to settle the
accounts of his wardship.

According to the present estimate of matrimonial felicity, Sycamore might
have found admittance as a future son-in-law to any private family of
the kingdom. He was by birth a gentleman, tall, straight, and muscular,
with a fair, sleek, unmeaning face, that promised more simplicity than
ill-nature. His education had not been neglected, and he inherited an
estate of five thousand a year. Miss Darnel, however, had penetration
enough to discover and despise him, as a strange composition of rapacity
and profusion, absurdity and good sense, bashfulness and impudence,
self-conceit and diffidence, awkwardness and ostentation, insolence and
good-nature, rashness and timidity. He was continually surrounded and
preyed upon by certain vermin called Led Captains and Buffoons, who
showed him in leading-strings like a sucking giant, rifled his pockets
without ceremony, ridiculed him to his face, traduced his character, and
exposed him in a thousand ludicrous attitudes for the diversion of the
public; while at the same time he knew their knavery, saw their drift,
detested their morals, and despised their understanding. He was so
infatuated by indolence of thought, and communication with folly, that he
would have rather suffered himself to be led into a ditch with company,
than be at the pains of going over