MORLAND'S MARRIAGE, AND TEMPORARY REFORM.
After leaving his father, Morland plunged into a career of wildness and dissipation, amidst which, however, his extraordinary talents kept his name still rising. While residing at Kensall Green, he was frequently thrown in the company of Ward, the painter, whose example of moral steadiness was exhibited to him in vain. At length, however, he fell in love with Miss Ward, a young lady of beauty and modesty, and the sister of his friend. Succeeding in gaining her affections, he soon afterwards married her; and to make the family union stronger, Ward sued for the hand of Maria Morland, and in about a month after his sister's marriage, obtained it. In the joy of this double union, the brother artists took joint possession of a good house in High Street, Marylebone. Morland suspended for a time his habit of insobriety, discarded the social comrades of his laxer hours, and imagined himself reformed. But discord broke out between the sisters concerning the proper division of rule and authority in the house; and Morland, whose partner's claim perhaps was the weaker, took refuge in lodgings in Great Portland Street. His passion for late hours and low company, restrained through courtship and the honey-moon, now broke out with the violence of a stream which had been dammed, rather than dried up. It was in vain that his wife entreated and remonstrated—his old propensities prevailed, and the post-boy, the pawnbroker, and the pugilist, were summoned again to his side, no more to be separated.