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Published by Houlston & Son Wellington Salop and 65 Paternoster Row London May 1.1828.

THE

Lady of the Manor.

BEING

A SERIES OF CONVERSATIONS

ON THE SUBJECT OF CONFIRMATION.
Intended for the Use of the Middle and Higher Ranks of

YOUNG FEMALES.

BY

MRS. SHERWOOD,

Author of "LITTLE HENRY AND HIS BEARER,"
&c. &c.

VOLUME VI.

Wellington, Salop:

PRINTED BY AND FOR HOULSTON AND SON.
And sold at their Warehouse, 65, Paternoster-Row, London.

1828.

[Entered at Stationers' Hall.]

1

27

OCT 1924

THE

LADY OF THE MANOR,

&c.

CHAPTER XXVI.

Third Conversation on our Duty towards our Neighbour.

ON OUR DUTY TOWARDS OUR SUPERIORS, OR THOSE PERSONS WHO HAVE THE ADVANTAGE OVER US IN WORLDLY MATTERS.

THE lady of the manor having again assembled her young people, proceeded to read to them the third narrative which had been promised, prefacing her lecture by the following remarks. "In the last two narratives which I have read to you, my dear young friends, as well as in that which I am about to read, it is possible you may perceive what will have the appearance of unnecessary repetition,a frequent reference to the great and important principle of humility. But let it be remembered, that this virtue is the basis of all our relative duties, whether to equals, inferiors, or superiors; and therefore the possession of such a quality, and the means of obtaining it, namely, by the operation of God's Spirit upon the heart, cannot be too seriously impressed upon us; the more especially, as the baneful evil of selfishness will lose its power in proportion to the influence which this lovely grace shall exercise over

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us; while the fruits of love, and joy, and peace, will obtain, in the place of those malevolent passions that injure and disgrace us.

The lady then took up her manuscript, and read as follows.

The Dominion of Envy.

It was precisely at the period in which I entered my eighteenth year, that I was indulged with the pleasure of accompanying my parents in a long-projected visit to a friend residing in Westmoreland.

We left our home in the month of June, and as we proceeded northward, we were regaled in every valley and on every plain with the breath of new-mown grass, and with the songs of village maidens, who appeared to rejoice in their escape from the distaff, and in the permission to dwell awhile amidst the green fields, and to taste the delights of rural life.

It is not, however, my present purpose to trouble my readers with an account of the various adventures which we encountered in our transit over at least two-thirds of the green and fragrant disk of our little island; nor to tell how my mother and I were terrified by a baker's boy, whom we mistook for a highwayman, not having at first observed his panniers through the gloom of twilight: but, passing these things over as unimportant, I shall take the liberty of conveying my friends, without further preface, to the end of our journey.

The persons for whom all these labours and terrors of the journey had been encountered by my mother, were an ancient couple without children, and the last of a highly respectable family, the ancestors of whom were traced as far back as the reign of Elizabeth.

The mansion in which they resided was nearly coeval with the first of the family, who had risen from the obscure mass of the ignoble vulgar; and, from the period of its first erection, had undergone few external changes. This building was a perfect specimen of that irregularity of architecture, in which our ancestors seemed to delight, no two rooms or two windows being in a straight line with each other, various gable ends and little turrets appearing in dif

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