and the advantages which may arise to you from the connexion which equally, of course, for her advantage as for yours, I am desirous of establishing between you.

"I need not tell you, cousin Stephen, who, by the blessing of Heaven upon your worthy endeavours, have already been able in a little way to see what law is,—I need not, I say, point out to you at any great length, how much there must of necessity be to do in the management of an estate and of funds which bring in a net income somewhat exceeding fourteen thousand pounds per annum. Now I learn from my excellent friend Mrs. Mowbray, that her late husband transacted the whole of this business himself; an example which it is impossible, as I need not remark, for his widow and sole legatee to follow. She is quite aware of this, and by a merciful dispensation of the Most High, her mind appears to be singularly ductile, and liable to receive such impressions as a pious and attentive friend would be able to enforce on all points. In addition to this great and heavy charge, which it has pleased Providence, doubtless for his own good purposes, to lay upon her, she has also the entire management, as legal and sole guardian of a young Irish heiress, of another prodigiously fine property, consisting, like her own, partly of money in the English funds, and partly in houses and lands in the north part of Ireland. The business connected with the Torrington property is therefore at this moment, as well as every thing concerning the widow Mowbray's affairs, completely without any agent whatever; and I am not without hopes, cousin Stephen, that by the blessing of God to usward, I may be enabled to obtain the same for you.

"I know the pious habit of your mind, cousin, and that you, like myself, never see any remarkable occurrence without clearly tracing therein the immediate finger of Heaven. I confess that throughout the whole of this affair;—the sudden death of the late owner of this noble fortune; the singular will he left, by which it all has become wholly and solely at the disposal of his excellent widow; the hasty and not overwise determination to renounce the executorship on the part of this petulant Sir Gilbert Harrington; the accident or rather series of accidents, by which I have become at once and so unexpectedly, the chief stay, support, comfort, consolation, and adviser of this amiable but very helpless lady;—throughout the whole of this, I cannot, I say, but observe the