Bad | The New Monthly Magazine And Dumorist. Part.1

(9) THE GURNEY PAPERS. Tuar portion of the late Mr. Gurney’s memoirs which periodically ' appeared in this Magazine having been very favourably received by the public, I have been induced to continue my search amongst his manu- scripts in order to afford its readers some further information connected with the annals of his family. 4 The concluding words of the final portion of his papers which has been published are, “‘ We were MARRIED;”’ which words refer to his union with Harriet, eldest daughter of the Reverend Richard Wells, Rector of Blissfold in the county of Hants, After this event Mr. Gilbert Gurney, as every man when he marries should do, turned over a new leaf—in his common-place book; and I find a hiatus, “ valde deflen- dus,’ of nearly two months in his memoranda. Love, I presume, left him no leisure for literature, at least there is nothing discoverable in the way of detail affecting either the celebration of the wedding, or the subsequent excursion which fashionable delicacy appears to have rendered indispensable upon such occasions ; and the first resumption of his notes occurs on the first day of the year succeeding that in which he became a Benedick, and thus he writes :— I begin a new year in a new character—I am now a married man. “ Marriage,’ says Johnson, “ is the strictest tic of perpetual friendship, aud there can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity; and he must expect to be wretched who pays tu beauty, riches, and politeness, that regard which only virtue and picty can claim.’ Jvhnson was right. Cuthbert’s munificence has enabled me to establish myself in perfect comfort. He has made one stipulation—he desires to make our house his home; and when the young Falwassers, his wife’s children, have their schvol vacations, they are also to pass theirChristmas and Midsum- mer holidays here. ‘This is all right and pleasant—a combination not very common in the affairs of this world. Cuthbert has an apartment of two rooms, consisting of a study and bed-chamber, allotted to him, which open to Harriet’s flower-garden on the south side of the house ; for his long residence in India has rendered him extremely sensitive as far as our capricious climate is concerned. Fanny Wells is staying with iny wife, to whom she was always an affectionate sister; aud we are all as happy as we could wish, and perhaps even happicr than we deserve to be. I feel myself snatched from the follics and frivolities of an idle vagabond life, and placed by Providence in a haven of securityewhere nothing but quictness and comfort are to be found. ° There was certainly something remarkably odd in the way in which I was inveigled into matrimony. M’y father-in-law’s conduct might, in many other cases, have been attributed to interested motives, and his eagerness to conclude a matrimonial treaty between his daughter and myself, put to the account of his anxiety to get her off his hands, and scttle her advantageously in the world; byt that cannot be thought or imagined, the moment the smallness of my income is taken into con- sideration. What startles me most, and most powerfully excites my