l, then, shapes itself thus," said Bridgenorth:--"You are
willing to lead my only child into exile from her native country, to
give her a claim to kindness and protection from your family, which you
know will be disregarded, on condition I consent to bestow her hand on
you, with a fortune sufficient to have matched your ancestors, when
they had most reason to boast of their wealth. This, young man, seems
no equal bargain. And yet," he continued, after a momentary pause, "so
little do I value the goods of this world, that it might not be utterly
beyond thy power to reconcile me to the match which you have proposed to
me, however unequal it may appear."

"Show me but the means which can propitiate your favour, Major
Bridgenorth," said Peveril,--"for I will not doubt that they will be
consistent with my honour and duty--and you shall soon see how eagerly I
will obey your directions, or submit to your conditions."

"They are summed in few words," answered Bridgenorth. "Be an honest man,
and the friend of your country."

"No one has ever doubted," replied Peveril, "that I am both."

"Pardon me," replied the Major; "no one has, as yet, seen you show
yourself either. Interrupt me not--I question not your will to be
both; but you have hitherto neither had the light nor the opportunity
necessary for the display of your principles, or the service of your
country. You have lived when an apathy of mind, succeeding to the
agitations of the Civil War, had made men indifferent to state affairs,
and more willing to cultivate their own ease, than to stand in the gap
when the Lord was pleading with Israel. But we are Englishmen; and with
us such unnatural lethargy cannot continue long. Already, many of those
who most desired the return of Charles Stewart, regard him as a King
whom Heaven, importuned by our entreaties, gave to us in His anger. His
unlimited licence--and example so readily followed by the young and the
gay around him--has disgusted the minds of all sober and thinking men.
I had not now held conference with you in this intimate fashion, were
I not aware that you, Master Julian, were free from such stain of the
times. Heaven, that rendered the King's course of license fruitful,
had denied issue to his bed of wedlock; and in the gloomy and stern
character of his bigoted successor, we already see what sort of monarch
shall succeed to the crown of England. This is a critical period, at
which it necessarily becomes the duty o