Augusta a paper-cutter to Miss. The family was secured. All discipline was immediately set at defiance, and the young Duke passed the greater part of the half-year with his affectionate relations. His Grace, charmed with the bonbons of his aunt and the kisses of his cousins, which were even sweeter than the sugar-plums; delighted with the pony of St. Maurice, which immediately became his own; and inebriated by the attentions of his uncle,—who, at eight years of age, treated him, as his Lordship styled it, ‘like a man’—contrasted this life of early excitement with what now appeared the gloom and the restraint of Castle Dacre, and he soon entered into the conspiracy, which had long been hatching, with genuine enthusiasm. He wrote to his guardian, and obtained permission to spend his vacation with his uncle. Thus, through the united indulgence of Dr. Coronet and Mr. Dacre, the Duke of St. James became a member of the family of St. Maurice.     

       No sooner had Lord Fitz-pompey secured the affections of the ward than he entirely changed his system towards the guardian. He wrote to Mr. Dacre, and in a manner equally kind and dignified courted his acquaintance. He dilated upon the extraordinary, though extremely natural, affection which       Lady Fitz-pompey entertained for the only offspring of her beloved brother, upon the happiness which the young Duke enjoyed with his cousins, upon the great and evident advantages which his Grace would derive from companions of his own age, of the singular friendship which he had already formed with St. Maurice; and then, after paying Mr. Dacre many compliments upon the admirable manner in which he had already fulfilled the duties of his important office, and urging the lively satisfaction that a visit from their brother’s friend would confer both upon Lady Fitz-pompey and himself, he requested permission for his nephew to renew the visit in which he had been ‘so happy!’ The Duke seconded the Earl’s diplomatic scrawl in the most graceful round-text. The masterly intrigues of Lord Fitz-pompey, assisted by Mrs. Dacre’s illness, which daily increased, and which rendered perfect quiet indispensable, were successful, and the young Duke arrived at his twelfth year without revisiting Dacre. Every year, however, when Mr. Dacre made a short visit to London, his ward spent a few days in his company, at the house of an old-fashioned Catholic nobleman; a visit which only afforded a dull contrast to the gay society and constant animation of his uncle’s establishment.     

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