of Emma's penetration, have shewn them, even to her, so deformed that she should scarcely have known them for her own.
This gentleman, however, seems to be meditating at a distance; and, as the course is left free for youth, sweetness, good nature, and ingenuity to pay their open court to beauty, modesty, and delicate sensibility, no wonder if, sanctioned by parents, strongly supported by irresistible advocates, and their mutual wishes being in their essence eminently congenial, a strong, and, one would think, indissoluble compact must naturally be formed between Charles and Annette.
To speak plain, which I, as well as Emma, think the best way, so many were the desirable ends an union between this amiable couple promised to aecomplish,

that, had it not been for their youth—though probably they would not have found that an objection—neither themselves, the fathers and mothers, connections and dependants, the two villages of Castlewick and Little Hockley—for Little Hockley was really now rising into same, in spight of Mrs. Swash and her unworthy propensities, for which, between the reader and I, she got well thrashed by her husband—not one of these I say but would have blessed the day which united this lovely pair, and, what to some of them would not have been an unwelcome object, have produced an extraordinary grand feast.
But whether fortune thought with Emma that virtues and passions are given us to be exercised and controlled, or whether the mind, like the constitution, is soberer in its age for having been taken down in its youth, I shall not pretend to decide here:—certain it is that the blind and varying goddess did not altogether take part with the friends of our hero and heroine; the reason why, and the manner how, she thought proper to dissent from this otherwise unanimous opinion, will hereafter be gradually developed. In the mean time, I am really concerned that, just when we find Charles and Annette in the full enjoyment of their friends' admiration, and that of one another, I should be under the

unpleasant necessity of throwing as complete a damp over all their spirits—such a scene of light and darkness is this life—as I had before presented to them of joy and exultation.
I am sure the very name of poor Lady Hazard will anticipate every word of the sad tale it is my unwilling duty to relate. This amiable lady, this lovely, this fatal sacrifice to complicated villany, whose fall was doomed to tear the heart of him who in early life had departed from the paths of honour: This charming victim, who it