ants at my Cousin Castlewood's house and buying a horse at Oakhurst have very nearly put me on the necessity of making another draft upon my honored mother or her London or Bristol agent."

"You have done both, Sir. You have trodden on the corn, and received the pardon," said Mr. Johnson, and went on mumbling some verses, swaying to and fro, his eyes turned toward the ground, his hands behind him, and occasionally endangering with his great stick the honest, meek eyes of his companion-author.

These feats of activity over, the four gentlemen now strolled out of the tavern-garden into the public walk, where, by this time, a great "They do not see very well, my dear Mulso," deal of company was assembled: upon whom he says to the young lady, “but such as they Mr. Jack, who was of a frank and free nature, are, I would keep my lash from Mr. Johnson's with a loud voice, chose to make remarks that cudgel. Your servant, Sir." Here he made a were not always agreeable. And here, if my low bow, and took off his hat to Mr. WarringLord March made a joke, of which his lordship ton, who shrank back with many blushes, after was not sparing, Jack roared, "Oh, ho, ho! saluting the great author. The great author Oh, good Gad! Oh, my dear earl! Oh, my was accustomed to be adored. A gentler wind dear lord, you'll be the death of me!" "It never puffed mortal vanity. Enraptured spinseemed as if he wished every body to know," sters flung tea-leaves round him, and incensed writes Harry, sagaciously, to Mrs. Mountain, him with the coffee-pot. Matrons kissed the "that his friend and companion was an Erl!" slippers they had worked for him. There was There was, indeed, a great variety of charac-a halo of virtue round his nightcap. All Euters who passed. M. Poellnitz, no finer dress- rope had thrilled, panted, admired, trembled, ed than he had been at dinner, grinned, and sa- wept, over the pages of the immortal, little, luted with his great laced hat and tarnished kind, honest man with the round paunch. Harfeathers. Then came by my Lord Chesterfield, ry came back quite glowing and proud at having in a pearl-colored suit, with his blue ribbon and a bow from him. "Ah!" says he, "my lord, star, and saluted the young men in his turn. I am glad to have seen him!"

"I will back the old boy for taking his hat off against the whole kingdom, and France, either," says my Lord March. "He has never changed the shape of that hat of his for twenty years. Look at it. There it goes again! Do you see that great, big, awkward, pock-marked, snuff-colored man, who hardly touches his clumsy beaver in reply. D- his confounded impudence-do you know who that is?"

"No, curse him!

Jack, with an oath.

"Seen him! why, dammy, you may see him any day in his shop, I suppose?" says Jack, with a laugh.

"My brother declared that he, and Mr. Fielding, I think, was the name, were the greatest geniuses in England; and often used to say, that when we came to Europe, his first pilgrimage would be to Mr. Richardson," cried Harry, always impetuous, honest, and tender, when he Who is it, March?" asks spoke of the dearest friend.

"It's one Johnson, a Dictionary-maker, about whom my Lord Chesterfield wrote some most capital papers, when his dixonary was coming out, to patronize the fellow. I know they were capital. I've heard Horry Walpole say so, and he knows all about that kind of thing. Confound the impudent schoolmaster!"

"Hang him, he ought to stand in the pillory!" roars Jack.

"That fat man he's walking with is another of your writing fellows-a printer—his name is Richardson; he wrote 'Clarissa,' you know."

"Great Heavens! my lord, is that the great Richardson? Is that the man who wrote 'Clarissa?"" called out Colonel Wolfe and Mr. Warrington, in a breath.

Harry ran forward to look at the old gentleman toddling along the walk with a train of admiring ladies surrounding him.

"Indeed, my very dear Sir," one was saying, "you are too great and good to live in such a world; but sure you were sent to teach it virtue!" "Ah, my Miss Mulso! Who shall teach the teacher?" said the good, fat old man, raising a kind, round face, skyward. "Even he has his faults and errors! Even his age and experience does not prevent him from stumbl. Heaven bless my soul, Mr. Johnson! I ask your pardon if I have trodden on your corn."

"Your brother spoke like a man," cried Mr. Wolfe, too, his pale face likewise flushing up. "I would rather be a man of genius than a peer of the realm."

"Every man to his taste, Colonel," says my lord, much amused. "Your enthusiasm-I don't mean any thing personal-refreshes me, on my honor it does."

"So it does me-by gad-perfectly refreshes me," cries Jack.

"So it does Jack-you see-it actually refreshes Jack! I say, Jack, which would you rather be?—a fat old printer, who has written a story about a confounded girl and a fellow that ruins her-or a peer of Parliament with ten thousand a year?"

"March-my Lord March, do you take me for a fool?" says Jack, with a tearful voice. "Have I done any thing to deserve this language from you?"

"I would rather win honor than honors: I would rather have genius than wealth. I would rather make my name than inherit it, though my father's, thank God, is an honest one," said the young Colonel. "But pardon me, gentlemen," and here making them a hasty salutation, he ran across the parade toward a young and elderly lady, and a gentleman, who were now advancing.

"It is the beautiful Miss Lowther. I remem

morals, the mainstay of religion, of all which points the honest printer himself was perfectly convinced.

courtesy to the two gentlemen, and received
their salutation in return.
She stopped oppo-

site to Harry; she held out her hand, rather
to his wonderment:

"Have you so soon forgotten me, Mr. Warrington ?" she said.

Do not let any young lady trip to her grandpapa's book-case in consequence of this eulogium, and rashly take down Clarissa from the shelf. She would not care to read the volumes, Off went Harry's hat in an instant. He over which her pretty actresses wept and thrilled started, blushed, stammered, and called out a hundred years ago; which were commended Good Heavens! as if there had been any celestial wonder in the circumstance! It was Lady Maria come out for a walk. He had not been thinking about her. She was, to say truth, for the moment so utterly out of the young gentleman's mind, that her sudden re-entry there and appearance in the body startled Mr. Warrington's faculties, and caused those guilty blushes to crowd into his cheeks.

by divines from pulpits and belauded all Europe over. I wonder, are our women more virtuous than their grandmothers, or only more squeamish? If the former, then Miss Smith of New York is certainly more modest than Miss Smith of London, who still does not scruple to say that tables, pianos, and animals have legs. Oh, my faithful, good old Samuel Richardson! Hath the news yet reached thee in Hades, that thy sublime novels are huddled away in corners, and that our daughters may no more read Cla-ed-he would not have been surprised to meet rissa than Tom Jones? Go up, Samuel, and be reconciled with thy brother scribe, whom in life thou didst hate so. I wonder whether a century hence the novels of to-day will be hidden behind locks and wires, and make pretty little maidens blush.

No. He was not even thinking of her! A week ago-a year, a hundred years ago it seem

A

her any where. Appearing from amidst darkling shrubberies, gliding over green garden terraces, loitering on stairs, or corridors, hovering even in his dreams, all day, or all night, bodily or spiritually, he had been accustomed to meet her. A week ago his heart used to beat. "Who is yonder queer person in the high week ago, and at the very instant when he head-dress of my grandmother's time, who stops jumped out of his sleep, there was her idea and speaks to Mr. Richardson?" asked Harry, smiling on him. And it was only last Tuesday as a fantastically-dressed lady came up, and per- that his love was stabbed and slain, and he not formed a courtesy and a compliment to the bow-only had left off mourning for her, but had foring printer.

Jack Morris nervously struck Harry a blow in the side with the butt-end of his whip. Lord March laughed.

"Yonder queer person is my gracious kinswoman, Katharine, Duchess of Dover and Queensberry, at your service, Mr. Warrington. She was a beauty once! She is changed now, isn't she? What an old Gorgon it is! She is a great patroness of your book-men; and when that old frump was young, they actually made verses about her."

The Earl quitted his friends for a moment to make his bow to the old Duchess, Jack Morris explaining to Mr. Warrington how, at the Duke's death, my Lord of March and Ruglen would succeed to his cousin's dukedoms.

"I suppose," says Harry, simply, "his lordship is here in attendance upon the old lady?" Jack burst into a loud laugh.

"Oh yes! very much! exactly!" says he. "Why, my dear fellow, you don't mean to say you haven't heard about the little Opera-dancer?"

"I am but lately arrived in England, Mr. Morris," said Harry, with a smile, “and in Virginia, I own, we have not heard much about the little Opera-dancer.”

Luckily for us, the secret about the little Opera-dancer never was revealed, for the young men's conversation was interrupted by a lady in a cardinal cape, and a hat by no means unlike those lovely head-pieces which have returned into vogue a hundred years after the date of our present history, who made a profound

gotten her!

"You will come and walk with me a little ?" she said. "Or would you like the music best? I dare say you will like the music best."

"You know," said Harry, "I don't care about any music much except"-he was thinking of the evening hymn-"except of your playing." He turned very red again as he spoke; he felt he was perjuring himself horribly.

The poor lady was agitated herself by the flutter and agitation which she saw in her young companion. Gracious Heaven! Could that tremor and excitement mean that she was mistaken, and that the lad was still faithful? "Give me your arm, and let us take a little walk," she said, waving round a courtesy to the other two gentlemen: "my Aunt is asleep after her dinner. Harry could not but offer the arm, and press the hand that lay against his heart. Maria made another fine courtesy to Harry's bowing companions, and walked off with her prize. In her griefs, in her rages, in the pains and anguish of wrong and desertion, how women remember to smile, courtesy, caress, dissemble! How resolutely they discharge the social proprieties! how they have a word, or a hand, or a kind little speech or reply for the passing acquaintance who crosses unknowing the path of the tragedy, drops a light airy remark or two (happy self-satisfied rogue!), and passes on. He passes on, and thinks that woman was rather pleased with what I said. "That joke I made was rather neat. I do really think Lady Maria looks rather favorably at me, and she's a dev'lish fine woman, begad she is!" Oh you wiseacre!

know he likes for dinner. Show him the children's copies and the reports of their masters. Go with Missy to the piano, and play your artless duet together; and fancy you are happy!

There go Harry and Maria taking their evening walk on the common, away from the village which is waking up from its after-dinner siesta, and where the people are beginning to stir and the music to play. With the music Maria knows Madame de Bernstein will waken: with the candles she must be back to the tea-table and the cards. Never mind. Here is a minute. It may be my love is dead, but here is a minute to kneel over the grave and pray by it. He certainly was not thinking about her: he was startled and did not even know her. He was laughing and talking with Jack Morris and my Lord March. He is twenty years younger than she. Never mind. To-day is to-day in which we are all equal. This moment is ours. Come, let us walk a little way over the heath, Harry. She will go, though she feels a deadly assurance that he will tell her all is over between them, and that he loves the dark-haired girl at Oakhurst.

CHAPTER XXVII.

PLENUM OPUS ALEE.

Such was Jack Morris's observation and case | wretch! Smilingly lay before him what you as he walked away, leaning on the arm of his noble friend, and thinking the whole Society of the Wells was looking at him. He had made some exquisite remarks about a particular run of cards at Lady Flushington's the night before, and Lady Maria had replied graciously and neatly, and so away went Jack perfectly happy. The absurd creature! I declare we know nothing of any body (but that, for my part, I know better and better every day). You enter smiling to see your new acquaintance, Mrs. A. and her charming family. You make your bow in the elegant drawing-room of Mr. and Mrs. B.? I tell you, that in your course through life you are forever putting your great clumsy foot upon the mute, invisible wounds of bleeding tragedies. Mrs. B.'s closets, for what you know, are stuffed with skeletons. Look there under the sofa-cushion. Is that merely Missy's doll, or is it the limb of a stifled Cupid peeping out? What do you suppose are those ashes smouldering in the grate ?-Very likely a suttee has been offered up there just before you came in: a faithful heart has been burned out upon a callous corpse, and you are looking on the cineri doloso. You see B. and his wife receiving their company before dinner. Gracious powers! Do you know that that bouquet which she wears is a signal to Captain C., and that he will find a note under the little bronze Shakspeare on the mantle-piece in the study? And with all this you go up and say some uncommonly neat thing (as you fancy) to Mrs. B. about the weather (clever dog!), or about Lady E.'s last party (fashionable buck!), or about the dear children in the nursery (insinuating rogue!). Heaven and earth, my good Sir, how can you tell that B. is not going to pitch all the children out of the nursery window this very night, or that his lady has not made an arrangement for leaving them, and running off with the Captain? How do you know that those footmen are not disguised bailiffs? that yonder large-looking But-plished gentleman, and has seen service everyler (really a skeleton) is not the pawnbroker's man; and that there are not skeleton rotis and entrées under every one of the covers? Look at their feet peeping from under the table-cloth. Mind how you stretch out your own lovely little slippers, Madam, lest you knock over a rib or Remark the Death's-head moths fluttering among the flowers. See the pale windingsheets gleaming in the wax-candles! I know it is an old story, and especially that this preacher has yelled vanitas vanitatum five hundred times before. I can't help always falling upon it, and cry out with particular loudness and wailing, and become especially melancholy, when I see a dead love tied to a live love. Ha! I look up from my desk, across the street; and there come in Mr. and Mrs. D. from their walk in Kensington Gardens. How she hangs on him! how jolly and happy he looks as the children frisk round! My poor, dear, benighted Mrs. D., there is a Regent's Park as well as a Kensington Gardens in the world. Go in, fond

two.

"LET me hear about those children, child, whom I saw running about at the house where they took you in, poor dear boy, after your dreadful fall?" says Maria, as they paced the common. "Oh, that fall, Harry! I thought I should have died when I saw it! You needn't squeeze one's arm so. You know you don't care for me."

"The people are the very best, kindest, dearest people I have ever met in the world," cries Mr. Warrington. "Mrs. Lambert was a friend of my mother when she was in Europe for her education. Colonel Lambert is a most accom

where. He was in Scotland with his Royal Highness, in Flanders, at Minorca. No natural parents could be kinder than they were to me. How can I show my gratitude to them? I want to make them a present: I must make them a present," says Harry, clapping his hand into his pocket, which was filled with the crisp spoils of Morris and March.

"We can go to the toy-shop, my dear, and buy a couple of dolls for the children," says Lady Maria. "You would offend the parents by offering any thing like payment for their kindness."

"Dolls for Hester and Theo! Why, do you think a woman is not woman till she is forty, Maria ?" (The arm under Harry's here gave a wince-perhaps ever so slight a wince.) "I can tell you Miss Hester by no means considers herself a child, and Miss Theo is older than her sister. They know ever so many languages. They have read books-oh! piles and piles of books! They play on the harpsichord and sing

together admirable; and Theo composes, and | bert; but pleasure, life, gayety, the desire to sings songs of her own."