this dream of riches and popularity would be his waking probably in a few months a

beggar: in which case could he be called an eligible husband for Annette?
As to the variety of crimes laid to his charge, he would agree that but one side had been heard, but whose fault was it? Why did he not, if his cause would bear it, defend himself? Why truly he chose to take the matter in dudgeon; to look highly, and feel himself offended because people chose to believe what they heard! This might be a good cloak to hide a weak plea, but did not at all look like innocence, which so far from fearing investigation, he said, always sought it.
Had any thing like this been seen in Mr. Hazard? So sar from seeking the smallest explanation, had he not industriously shunned all such opportunities? Nay, was he not so conceitedly proud, so ridiculously vain, when he had been supposed—for to this moment it was not a certainty—to have behaved generously, as to reject with contempt the acknowledgement of this imaginary kindness? and disclaim the friendship of the man he would fain be thought to have obliged!
Upon the whole, he said, these were his ideas: that, in a worldly point of view, Mr. Gloss was infinitely

a preferable husband for Annette. His talents were brilliant, he was himself very popular, and would most probably one day be in a most elevated situation. On the contrary, Mr. Hazard—whose talents also were very conspicuous, and whose accomplishments were not inferior to any man's—by a perverse pride and false consequence, would every day become lower in the world's opinion, till he found himself starving with independant principles.
'However,' said Sir Sidney, 'you have named yourself the compact, and I subscribe to it: while I find Annette obedient, I shall not be unreasonable. In the interim, as I sincerely believe that Mr. Gloss will certainly be possessed of both honour and fortune—more perhaps than I have a right to expect in a son-in-law—I desire he may be considered in the light of one whom I have chosen to fill that character.'

This retrospective chapter shews how matters stood in Sir Sidney's family about the time Charles began to be a projector, from which moment, to that in which his name appeared in the Gazette, he gradually sunk in the opinion of the baronet; for, through the connivance of the forestallers of law and beef, his name was bandied about in the newspapers like a tennis ball; in which inoffensive

amusement