ess, returned all mine, to prevent a premature discovery, knowing
how soon his papers would fall into your hands. If it will give you
pleasure, you may peruse a correspondence of which, for almost twenty
years, you were the little hero. In reading my letters you will make
yourself master of the character of Lucilla. You will read the history
of her mind; you will mark the unfolding of her faculties, and the
progress of her education. In those of your father, you will not be
sorry to trace back your own steps."

Here Mr. Stanley making a pause, I bowed my grateful acceptance of his
obliging offer. I was afraid to speak, I was almost afraid to breathe,
lest I should lose a word of a communication so interesting.

"You now see," resumed Mr. Stanley, "why you were sent to Edinburg.
Cambridge and Oxford were too near London, and of course too near
Hampshire, to have maintained the necessary separation. As soon as you
left the University, your father proposed accompanying you on a visit to
the Grove. Like fond parents, we had prepared each other to expect to
see a being just such a one as each would have wished for the companion
of his child.

"This was to be merely a visit of experiment. You were both too young to
marry. But we were impatient to place you both in a post of observation;
to see the result of a meeting; to mark what sympathy there would be
between two minds formed with a view to each other.

"But vain are all the projects of man. 'Oh! blindness to the future!'
You doubtless remember, that just as every thing was prepared for your
journey southward your dear father was seized with the lingering illness
of which he died. Till almost the last, he was able to write me, in his
intervals of ease, short letters on the favorite topic. I remember with
what joy his heart dilated, when he told me of your positive refusal to
leave him, on his pressing you to pursue the plan already settled, and
to make your visit to London and the Grove without him. I will read you
a passage from his letter." He read as follows:

"In vain have I endeavored to drive this dear son for a short time from
me. He asked with the indignant feeling of affronted filial piety, if I
could propose to him any compensation for my absence from his sick
couch? 'I make no sacrifice to duty,' said he, 'in preferring you. If I
make any sacrifice, it is to pleasure.'"

Seeing my eyes overflow with grateful tenderness, Mr. Stanley said, "If
I can find his