was an infant, I fell under the care of a widow, and childless aunt, house-keeper to my lord N———, at his seat in the county of ———, where she brought me up with all imaginable tenderness. I was not seventeen, as I am not now eighteen, before I had, on the account of my person purely, (for fortune I had notoriously none) several advantageous proposals: but whether nature was slow in making me sensible of her favourite passion, or that I had not seen any of the other sex who had stirr'd up the least emotion or curiosity to be better acquainted with it, I had till that age preserv'd a perfect innocence even of thought: whilst my fears of I did not well know what, made me no more desirous of marrying than of dying. My aunt, good woman, favour'd my timorousness, which she look'd on as a childish affection, that her own experience might probably assure her would wear off in time, and gave my suiters proper answers for me.
The family had not been down at this
