shall have to blush hereafter.

To proceed, then, with the various individuals of our party; Rose
was simple and natural as usual, and full of mirth and vivacity.

Fergus was impertinent and absurd; but his impertinence and folly
served to make others laugh, if they did not raise himself in their
estimation.

And finally (for I omit myself), Mr. Lawrence was gentlemanly and
inoffensive to all, and polite to the vicar and the ladies,
especially his hostess and her daughter, and Miss Wilson -
misguided man; he had not the taste to prefer Eliza Millward. Mr.
Lawrence and I were on tolerably intimate terms. Essentially of
reserved habits, and but seldom quitting the secluded place of his
birth, where he had lived in solitary state since the death of his
father, he had neither the opportunity nor the inclination for
forming many acquaintances; and, of all he had ever known, I
(judging by the results) was the companion most agreeable to his
taste. I liked the man well enough, but he was too cold, and shy,
and self-contained, to obtain my cordial sympathies. A spirit of
candour and frankness, when wholly unaccompanied with coarseness,
he admired in others, but he could not acquire it himself. His
excessive reserve upon all his own concerns was, indeed, provoking
and chilly enough; but I forgave it, from a conviction that it
originated less in pride and want of confidence in his friends,
than in a certain morbid feeling of delicacy, and a peculiar
diffidence, that he was sensible of, but wanted energy to overcome.
His heart was like a sensitive plant, that opens for a moment in
the sunshine, but curls up and shrinks into itself at the slightest