without influencing my reason or conduct."

"I profess, my good lady," replied I, "that had any one but you
made such a declaration, I should have thought it as capricious
as that of the clergyman, who, without vindicating his false
reading, preferred, from habit's sake, his old Mumpsimus to the
modern Sumpsimus."

"Well," answered my aunt, "I must explain my inconsistency in
this particular by comparing it to another. I am, as you know, a
piece of that old-fashioned thing called a Jacobite; but I am so
in sentiment and feeling only, for a more loyal subject never
joined in prayers for the health and wealth of George the Fourth,
whom God long preserve! But I dare say that kind-hearted
sovereign would not deem that an old woman did him much injury if
she leaned back in her arm-chair, just in such a twilight as
this, and thought of the high-mettled men whose sense of duty
called them to arms against his grandfather; and how, in a cause
which they deemed that of their rightful prince and country,

'They fought till their hand to the broadsword was glued,
They fought against fortune with hearts unsubdued.'

Do not come at such a moment, when my head is full of plaids,
pibrochs, and claymores, and ask my reason to admit what, I am
afraid, it cannot deny--I mean, that the public advantage
peremptorily demanded that these things should cease to exist. I
cannot, indeed, refuse to allow the justice of your reasoning;
but yet, being convinced against my will, you will gain little by
your motion. You might as well read to an infatuated lover the