CHAPTER VI. "I will marry, sir, at your request; but if there be no great love in the beginning, yet Heaven may decrease it on better acquaintance, when we are married, and have more occasion to know one another. I hope upon familiarity will grow more contempt; but if you say marry her, I will marry her, that I am freely dissolved." SHAKESPEARE. WE left the happy and philosophical Mrs. Auget in her literary boudoir. Pages of abstruse investigation lay unfolded before her. But at this moment her interest in mental phenomena and trigonometry, in polarisation of light, and the theory of equilibrium, had waned and faded away before the all-engrossing vision of Emily's approaching union with Henry Molyneux. Titles and coronets, those phantasms of earlier days, had become, in her regard, not matters of indifference, but objects of disdain. Mrs. Auget exceedingly wondered how such vain and empty gauds could, at any time, have been deemed as important. But, then, her illustrative memory recalled the analogous circumstance of progress from error to wisdom, in all branches of thought, science, and art. Intellectual ascendancy she had discovered to be infinitely more noble and more illustrious than hereditary permission to frank letters, and to write one's' signature without prefixing 'one's' Christian name, which Mrs. Auget now perceived to be the chief distinguishing characteristic of peers, as opposed to commoners. And then she remembered the minds of men were hallucinated by the Ptolemaic system of the universe, and how the clear philosophy of Copernicus triumphed at last. How similar had been the triumph of her better judgment in discerning the incalculable superiority of intellectual merit over mere aristocratic name! True, that the graceful, in taste and bearing, might characterise the aristocracy as a class; but Henry Moly neux, the chosen of Emily, in this respect the only meritorious one, already ranked amongst the noblest-what more could be desired? Again, Mrs. Auget properly considered herself very young to possess a married daughter; it therefore became a matter of no insignificant consolation that her son-in-law was so youthful. How shocking it would have been to be pointed out as the mother to some middle-aged lord-nay, perhaps, some old, worn-out earl, of immeasurable antiquity in name, but faded with years; of unspotted escutcheon, but of bilious aspect; of a shield mosaic with quarters, but of shrivelled or flannelled extremities. For, however convinced herself that the education, beauty, and wealth of Emily, made her daughter perfectly "homogeneous" with any noble of the land, Mrs. Auget had studied all kinds of statistics too closely not to be aware that youthful dukes and marquesses have no objection to behold the trinity of charms united in young ladyships, and that they do not hunt after them in tradesmen's offspring par excellence. A thousand such philosophic, ethical, and interesting musings, sprang forward in busy competition for the honour of interfering with Mrs. Auget's study, until they conquered, and her attention refused any longer to lend itself to scientific inquiry; she, therefore, deliberately closed the learned tome, and sought one more congenial to her present mood. Dwelling upon the interesting youthfulness of the betrothed, she placed before her the works of Franklin, and opened it at his anti-Malthusian, but pleasant essay, upon early marriages. Over every sentence and every sentiment of the sturdy old republican did Mrs. Auget ponder and concur, until her mind was saturated with this particular portion of her subject. Then she bethought her of some old black-letter ballads, which told, in uneasy rythm, and more uneasy rhyme, of pages fair and excellent, but unwealthy enamoured of Lady Rosalies and Angelinas, sole daughters of old barons, and heiresses of their broad lands and broad pieces. And then she thought of Henry Molyneux, and his love for Miss Auget, together with Emily's "great expecta -- tions." The analogy was obvious, it was quite poetical. Mrs. Auget was enraptured at the discovery, and instantly sought pen and ink for an appropriate impromptu. The first portion of the impromptu occasioned Mrs. Auget some trouble, and many transcriptions. The whole was not destined to be completed that day-c'étoit dommage. Impromptus, several days under the process of manufacture, are seldom so smart and so racy as those hit off at half a dozen sittings. Mrs. Auget, in the agony of authorship, had expatiated upon the similarity of taste, and the tender sympathy of passion, between the lovers, and was in vain searching every corner of her reluctant memory for a word to rhyme to "homogeneous," when the footsteps of an intruder were heard upon the stairs, and the noisy creaking of boots scared away the timid muse. "How eminently provoking!" exclaimed Mrs. Auget, consigning the crippled impromptu to the custody of her escrutoire: "I must resume it to-morrow." But her countenance became instantly ra |