the one is no news to the other--conversation is a frozen ocean, and

"You speak,

Only to break

The silence of that sea."

Now these were not mornings to Lady Mandeville's taste. As for the dinners, she had only one comfort, that of abusing them after;--an unspeakable consolation, by the by, in most cases. I cannot see why a taste for the country should be held so very indispensable a requisite for excellence; but really people talk of it as if it were a virtue, and as if an opposite opinion was, to say the least of it, very immoral.

1

Lady Mandeville's was essentially a town nature. She was born to what she was fit for; she was originally meant to be ornamental, rather than useful. In short she exactly resembled a plume of ostrich feathers, or a blond dress; now, these are best worn in the metropolis. The inference from all this is, that though Lord Mandeville often talked of settling at his country seat, he never actually settled.

The walk was ended, for the domains were not very extensive, and the gentlemen returned home. They afterterwards rode out; and Emily felt very happy in the mere consciousness that the cavalier at her bridle rein was Edward Lorraine.

That vague, self-relying, uncalculating happiness, how delicious it is that which we never know but once, and which can have but one object! Emily quite forgot how wretched she had been. She recalled not the once agony of his presence-the despondency in his absence. She never looked at him; she scarce spoke, but she heard his voice, and she saw his shadow fall by her side.

Curious, that of the past our memory retains so little of what is peculiarly its own. The book we have read, the sight we have seen, the speech we have heard, these are the things to which it recurs, and that rise up within it. We remember but what can be put to present use. It is very extraordinary how little we recollect of hopes, fears, motives, and all the shadowy tribe of feelings; or indeed, how little we think over the past at all. Memory is that mirror wherein a man "beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was." We are re

proached with forgetting others; we forget ourselves a thousand times more. We remember what we hear, see, and read, often accurately: not so with what we felt--that is faint and uncertain in its record. Memory is the least egotistical of all our faculties.

"WHAT! loitering still, Emily? said Lady Mandeville, when, on entering the breakfast-room, she found her and Edward Lorraine employed, apparently, in looking over some scattered drawings--in reality in talking. Emily, happy without thinking it at all necessary to analyse, and so destroy her happiness; and Edward, if not exactly thinking, yet feeling, it a very pleasant thing to have a most absorbed listener, who was not the less agreeable for being, young and pretty. He was engaged in turning the leaves, occasionally referring to his companion. Edward possessed one great fascination in discourse. He had the air of truly valuing the opinion he asked.

"Nous ne nous aimions pas, mais notre indifférence
Avait bien les symptômes de l'amour,"

thought Lady Mandeville. "I must disturb the study of one branch of the fine arts for the sake of another. You must leave the picture for the mirror--be most devout in the sacrifice you offer to the graces to-day."

"What conquest," replied Emily, smiling, "do you meditate for me?"

"What conquest? What a young-lady question! None: this is an affair of glory, not of sentiment. Mr. Lara Trevyllian dines here to-day. You must dress for his suffrage, not his heart. Most persons are born with a genius for some one thing: Mr. Lara Trevyllian is born with a genius for two --he piques himself on his knowledge of gastronomy, and his knowledge of women.'

Edward Lorraine.- --" I should be more inclined to defer to his knowledge of the science than of the sex."

Lady Mandeville.-" Ah, now-to use an expression of his own-- you men will never allow any merit to each other,'"

Edward Lorraine.—“It was not with a view to detract from his powers of feminine analyzation that I spoke; but because I think that either man's or woman's character stand in a relative position to each other, like the covered statue of Isis, whose veil mortal hand hath not raised. We never see each other but through the false mediums of passion, or affection, or indifference--all three equally bad for observation."

Lady Mandeville.--" I differ from you; but truly, I cannot sacrifice myself to my opinions. It is too late in the day to dispute; for haste and perfection no toilette ever yet united."

Edward Lorraine-“ Unhappy is he who relies on female friendship! You sacrifice my argument to a curl. Well might the old poet say:

'Oh, take, if you would measure forth the worth of woman's mind, A scale made of the spider's web, and weights made of the wind.'

The party was very small, and the fire very large; therefore the half hour before dinner was not so dull as it is generally said to be. By the by, that half hour has always seemed to me to be peculiarly ill treated. Some evil disposed person has called it stupid. An invidious epithet is always remembered and re-applied; and that one half hour will go to its grave with its appellation of stupid; no exceptions made in its favour---no pleasant reminiscences, not even a single flirtation, brought, like a solitary witness, to give it a good character. Alas! a cruel and striking epithet is

"One fatal remembrance, one shadow that throws, Its bleak shade alike o'er our joys and our woes.' Now really, the half hour to-day was rather agreeable: we should have said "very," of any other of the forty-eight. Lord Mandeville and Mr. Morland were deciding, to their mutual satisfaction that a neighbouring gentleman, on whom they had been calling that morning to suggest an improvement in an adjacent road, was certainly the most singu lar mixture of silliness and stolidity they had ever encountored. Now these qualities do not often go together the frivolity of the one interfering with the heaviness of the

other stupidity is the masculine of silliness. But the Rev. Dr. Clarke had at once vague and stubborn ideas respecting his own dignity and his own interests; the one he supported by disdain, the other by selfishness; and in his own mind identified both with church and state. The little boy, who, in the hurry of a game of marbles, forgot to take off his ragged cap to him, he foresaw would come to the gallows; and the farmer, whom hard necessity forced to delay the payment of his tithes, he denounced as committing sacrilege, and as nothing better than an atheist. Surely the time passed in expatiating on the reverend Doctor's faults was rather profitably passed than otherwise.

Edward Lorraine and Emily were a little out of the circle, carrying on one of those conversations, low-voiced and sweet," whose nothings have often a charm which defies the writer, but which the reader's memory may perchance supply. Lady Mandeville and Mr. Lara Trevyllian were seated together on a sofa. He had just arrived from London, and was detailing its novelties with a novelty essentially his

own.

The days of description (personal and panegyrical) are passing rapidly away. No one now ushers in a new character by dwelling on "his large blue eyes, beaming with benevolence," or with "raven curls on a brow of marble whiteness." All that is necessary is to state that Mr. Trevyllian had l'air bien distingué; which means, that he was slight, pale, well-dressed, and that his manners united much grace with more nonchalance.

The essence of Mr. Trevyllian's existence belonged to a highly polished state of society. His habits, tastes, opinions, feelings, were all artificial, and in this consisted his most striking peculiarity; for it was singular how a character, which was so much an acquired one, could yet be so original. He possessed great knowledge, both that acquired from books--for he had read largely,--and that acquired from observation-for he had seen much of society. His reasoning, rather than his imaginative faculties were developed. He soon exhausted pleasure, and then reasoned upon it he soon exhausted it, because he wanted that colouring enthusiasm which creates more than half of what it enjoys; and he reasoned upon it, because his activity of mind, not having been employed on fancies, remained entire for realities.

His perception of the ridiculous was as keen as it was in

vestigating. He set forth absurdity, cause and effect; and the absurdity grew doubly absurd from having its motive placed by its side. He possessed self-appreciation rather than vanity; he was too suspicious to be vain. Vanity seeks for, and believes in praise; he would certainly have doubted the motive or the sincerity of the praise he was offeredand disbelief takes refuge in disdain.

It may be questioned whether he was generally popular. There were two reasons against it: first, he was not always understood--and whatever people in general do not understand, they are always prepared to dislike; the incomprehensible is always the obnoxious. Secondly, he often and openly expressed his contempt of the selfishness, meanness, and littleness that enter so largely into the composition of the present: now, a general compliment is utterly thrown away, but a ge neral affront every one individualises. Yet no person could be more delightful in conversation: it was amusement, to whose service various powers paid tribute; there was ob servation, thought, mirth, and invention. Mr. Trevyllian was witty, though certainly not what is so often called wit: he made no puns--he gave no nicknames--and was not particularly ill-natured.

One sweeping censure, in passing, on our now-a-days style of conversation. Its Scylla of sarcasm, its Charybdis of insincerity, which, one or other, bid fair to engulf its all of originality or interest. Ridicule is suspended, like the sword of Damocles, in every drawing-room-but, unlike that sword, is over every head: hence, every one goes into society with the armour of indifference, or the mantle of deceit. None say either what they think or what they feel. We are the Chinese of conversation; and, day by day, the circle grows less and less. A flippant, vapid discourse, personal in all its bearings, in which "who peppers the highest is surest to please," and from which all intellectual subjects are carefully excluded--who shall deny, that if dialogues of the living were now to be written, such would be the chief matériel?

Books, works of art, the noble statue, the glorious picture, how rarely are any of these the subjects of conversation? Few venture to speak on any topic that really interests them, for fear they should be led away by the warmth of speaking, and, by saying more than they intended, lay themselves open to the sarcasm which lies, like an Indian in ambush, ready to spring forth the moment the victim is off