Puslapio vaizdai
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ventitious or fantastic appendages induces us to overlook inherent permanent qualities. Lady Madelina's zeal for the dignity of her family was so warmly exercifed in the defence of old Donald's galley, that she had no leisure to advert to the fearless intrepidity and the generous liberality with which her ancestors defended the rights of their clan, and fuccoured their oppressed dependents during the period that the house of Stuart fate upon the Scottish throne. " They shone the glory of the north" till after the restoration; but the reign of Charles the Second, fo fatal to principle and morality, first contaminated the house of Monteith, and sapped the foundations of its feudal greatness. In the voluptuous court of that dissipated monarch, the then earl forgot the wild thores of Loch Lomond, and the "flowery borders of the ancient Forth;" and abandoning his castle

castle to ruin, and his dependents to despair, glittered a faint satellite in the train of tinsel greatness. His extrava gance and prodigality were in some degree repaired by the alliance of his fucceffor with the heiress of a rich Blackwellhall factor; but the archives of the family are rather filent upon that head, and lady Madelina could never relate a single anecdote explanatory of the event of those disgraceful nuptials. Since that period, the Macdonalds had persevered in the plan of leaving the family estate, clear from incumbrances, to the eldest fon. The younger fons either fell in the defence of their country, or starved in some obfcure corner, while the daughters had only their high birth to add to the personal qualifications of merit and beauty, advantages not always fufficient to attract the mercenary heart of man. With

no other portion lady Madelina herself bestowed

bestowed on the fortunate head of the house of Frazer, the inestimable treasure of her hand. He was indeed far advanced into the vale of years, and his title was only simple Sir Simon; but her ladyship preferred him to all the dukes, marquises, and earls, who, according to the indubitable testimony of herself and her maid Peggy, had for more than twenty years unremittingly implored her compaffion.

The father of the young earl, whose nuptials with the heiress of Powerscourt have been announced in the beginning of this chapter, fell a victim to the demon of modern honour, about the fame time that the pale orgies of diffipation had made a visible inroad in his lady's health. The shock at the dreadful circumstances of his exit hastened the cruel attacks of disease, and the expired a few months after her lord. The noble pair had ever found each other's society too vapid to dispel the gloom of one domeftic evening; yet his lordship conceived himself obliged to resent the intrusion of a young officer, who entered her ladyship's box at the opera, at a time when the earl was of her party. He fell at the first fire, and the countess found it impossible to furvive him. The scandalous chronicles of the age afferted, that the colonel's appearance was neither unexpected nor unwelcome to any but the earl, and that disappointment and the neceffity of feclusion and economical retrenchment, barbed the mortal dart of woe in the bosom of the fair inconfolable. Till I am convinced that jealousy is the only motive which can direct the attention of a husband to his own wife, and that connubial forrow wants energy to break the fragile thread of female existence, I shall adhere to my own representation of this catastrophe.

Lord

Lord Monteith, following the example of his progenitors, left his estate totally unincumbered to his only fon James. His beautiful daughter Arabella found a protectress in the friendship of her aunt, lady Madelina, who adopted her as her own daughter, and publicly declared her resolution, in case she should produce no heir to the house of Frazer, to bequeath to her all the ample possessions with which Sir Simon's tender gratitude had endowed his beloved bride. At the age of seventeen, after having experienced the adulation and the luxury of two London winters, the lovely Arabella set out for her aunt's caftle, situated in the wilds of Lochaber, where, by the indisposition of fir Simon, now reduced to a state bordering upon second childhood, she had the melancholy prospect of being perfectly immured.

Her

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