Biographers.

closes his " best " brother's weaknesses in this direction. He argues that a life as sketched by a biographer should be a picture, which cannot be good if the peculiar features are left out. Scars and blemishes as well as beauties ought to be expressed. Otherwise it is but an outline filled up with lilies and roses, so that in describing various essays at marriage he intends to be " more solicitous and declaratory than elsewhere." He had good reason to be apologetic for the sketch. What he gives of his brother's course of conduct must have been truly hu miliating. The only valid excuse, poor as it is, is that it was not peculiar to Francis North. The biographer gives but a picture of the then current methods of English so ciety. Husbands buy their wives, and fathers and mothers sell their daughters. North's conduct is disclosed with such undisguised frankness as to make the purchase and sale uncommonly conspicuous. There were at least four projects in suc cession of marriage. These are so curiously illustrative of the manners of the time that we pause to refer to them. It was a matter that sat very hard upon our lawyer's spirits, as to the way in which he should give a fair answer to the preliminary question that was sure to be asked, " What jointure and settlement?" He used to own that he had but one rood of ground in the world that yielded him any profit, which was Westminster Hall, — truly a meagre showing, unless he might have added, as Finch did, his bar gown, valued at £20,cxx>. His first encounter was with "an old usurer of Gray's Inn," presumably a brother lawyer of the note-shaving and money-get ting sort, to whom he made a visit, and who nonplussed him by inquiring what es tate his father intended to settle upon him for maintenance of wife and children. To this the cunning Francis replied, that when he was pleased to declare what portion he intended to give his daughter he would write to his father and report his answer; and so they parted. The biographer frankly shows 14

the mercenary character of the proposals by the candid remark that if his brother had had " real estate to settle, he should not have stooped so low as to match with the daugh ter; and " thenceforward he despised the alliance." He next essayed the " flourishing widow" of an intimate friend, who was very rich. Never was lady more besieged with wooers. No less than five younger brothers sat down before her at one time; " and she held them in hand, as they say, until she cut the thread, and after a clancular proceeding and match with a jolly knight of good repute, she dropped them all at once, and so did herself and them justice." This matter evidently worried our lawyer, for " he was held at the long saw above a month doing his duty as well as he might, and that was but clumsily, for he neither dressed nor danced, when his rivals were adroit at both, and the lady used to shuffle her favors amongst them affectedly, and on purpose to mortify his lordship,1 and at the same time be as civil to him with like purpose to mortify them. All this was very grievous to him, that had his thoughts upon his clients' concerns, which came in thick upon him, to be held in a course of bopeep play with a crafty widow; " and he was never more rejoiced than when told that Madam was married. Being sick now, not of love but of mortification, he turned his mind from undertaking any more such pro jects, and so he went on his way. This is an emphatic warning to a young lawyer who would wed, not to have his thoughts exclu sively upon his clients' concerns. But what he was pleased to call his affec tions were to be tried at least once more. This time the proposition comes from the lady's father, Lord Mayor of London, through a city broker. The good mayor had many daughters to settle in life, and those "re puted beauties " too. The fortune was to be £6,000. The lawyer dined with the alderman, and liked the lady, '* who (as the way is) 1 Francis was not at that time " his lordship," though he afterwards became so.