prompt to assist us.

Mr. Charles Argent is naturally more familiar than his father. He
has a little dash of pleasantry in his manner, with a shrewd good-
humoured fashionable air, that renders him soon an agreeable
acquaintance. He entered with singular felicity at once into the
character of the Doctor and my mother, and waggishly drolled, as if
he did not understand them, in order, I could perceive, to draw out
the simplicity of their apprehensions. He quite won the old lady's
economical heart, by offering to frank her letters, for he is in
Parliament. "You have probably," said he slyly, "friends in the
country, to whom you may be desirous of communicating the result of
your journey to London; send your letters to me, and I will forward
them, and any that you expect may also come under cover to my
address, for postage is very expensive."

As we were taking our leave, after being fully instructed in all the
preliminary steps to be taken before the transfers of the funded
property can be made, he asked me, in a friendly manner, to dine
with him this evening, and I never accepted an invitation with more
pleasure. I consider his acquaintance a most agreeable acquisition,
and not one of the least of those advantages which this new opulence
has put it in my power to attain. The incidents, indeed, of this
day, have been all highly gratifying, and the new and brighter phase
in which I have seen the mercantile character, as it is connected
with the greatness and glory of my country--is in itself equivalent
to an accession of useful knowledge. I can no longer wonder at the
vast power which the British Government wielded during the late war,
when I reflect that the method and promptitude of the house of
Messrs. Argent and Company is common to all the great commercial