incumbent upon him to beget heirs of his body, he followed the example of his medical friend, and married the accomplished Miss Sophia Seymour in the year '74. By a strange coincidence--which you, my dear sister, will have no difficulty in recalling--the lady of Mr. Bellairs also died within a year of her nuptials, leaving, as a pledge of love to her sorrowing husband, our dear Olive. On hearing of his friend's loss and gain, Dr. Carson wrote a kind and judicious letter, in which he proposed that, further to cement their early friendship, his son Angus should be contracted in marriage with Mr. Bellairs's daughter Olive. To this proposition Mr. Bellairs readily agreed, with the proviso that the ceremony should not take place until his child attained the age of twenty-one years. On this basis the matter was arranged, and for the last twenty years Olive and Angus have been betrothed, although--the first dwelling in England, and the second restrained by filial duty in India--they have never met to enjoy in one another's company the pre-nuptial pleasures of Cupid's votaries. But these chaste delights will no longer be deferred, for, now that the lamented father of young Mr. Carson has journeyed to that bourne whence no traveller returns,' the impatient lover is hastening to greet his lovely, but, alas! fatherless, mistress. What joy it will be to you, my dear Rubina, to witness the coming together of these young hearts, to contemplate their amiable qualities, and discreetly to superintend their joyous meeting.

"Mr. Carson is a gentle and well-bred youth of twenty-five, not without parts, although of too retiring a nature to display them in company. He is tall, slender, elegant in shape, and from his mother inherits a somewhat swart complexion. Indeed, so apparent are the traces of his foreign blood, that in England, doubtless, he will be taken for a native of Italy. His hair and eyes, and the thick moustache which adorns his upper lip, are black in the extreme, resembling in their hue that 'raven down which clothes the night's vast wings;' and although I own to a predilection for the golden fairness of our Saxon race, yet I cannot deny that this young gentleman is prepossessing in no ordinary degree. I regret to say, however, that, like many half-castes, he is delicate in health, and owns that his heart is weak, so much so, indeed, that when excited in any violent degree, he is liable to be so overcome by emotion as to lapse into a state of insensibility. Therefore, my dear sister, when he greets your charge, be careful that you restrain his transports of joy, else it's more than probable that you will see him extended at your feet--a calamity which may cast a shadow over the united pair. I must admit that 

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