and the women (nothing hates like a woman) were eating their hearts up about her. They abused her tout-a-tout. They said she was not stylish, (that's the word, since genteel is exploded,) but, like other angels, she was a sort of witch, and knew the fashions a month before the milliners. They said she was proud, but pride is bewitching in a woman whose lip is pretty. They said she was a flirt, and sarcastic, and couldn't read without spelling, but on these points, tout le monde et sa sœur had a different opinion. Nothing would do; she was a belle in spite of them-and that reminds me to go on with my story.

Cecile, I was saying, had been a belle for two wintersthat is to say, within that number of seasons she had refused the three "fine men," (there are never more at a time,) and provoked, beyond endurance, the three hundred fine women, (of whom there may be any quantity.) She had worn what she fancied, and the milliners had not resented it—said what she chose, and visited where she pleased, and cut all stupid people, authentic or not-and still the men swore (and the women admitted because they swore) that she was divine. Like another great conqueror, however, she soon exhausted her material, and wept for new worlds. The same eternal beaux kept at the same eternal distance—the same eternal vows from the same eternal whiskers-the same eternal daylight and candle-light, with their same eternal walks, suppers and dances-it was too much for even angelic patience -Cecile was ennyuée a mort !

And who wonders? Who, that has made a campaign of fashion in the city of Gotham, wonders at a feeling of toujours perdrix, at the very sound of its name, forever after? Broadway is well enough, but who loves to look all day at a panorama? The parties are brilliant-but who loves to make one of a belle's cordon, composed of every nation, and speaking every language under heaven? or, to maintain a monologue to a pale, exhausted, over-dressed creature, who would rather die than be at the trouble of a sentence? Then the eternal oysters, pickled and stewed, stewed and pickled, (the only variety seen at a party through the season,) with a salad concocted a la Goth, rolled into the rooms upon round tables, and rolled out again, before he who eats like a Christian could select and transfix one of proper proportions; and the pink champaign, sweet and sickish; and the short, ill-cravated, indigenous beaux, and the tall, discontented-looking exoticsstereotyped Manuel heads crowding upon the eye like the

multiplications of an incubus, and the slavish similarity of every article of dress to its neighbor-Bennett fast asleep over his cremona, and cotillons dancing upon two feet square -who, we again ask, in the name of the foul fiend, would not, of such a routine, tire and sicken?

Far be it from me, however, to indite an unqualified phillippic against the metropolis of our land. There is no place this side the water which gathers so much of the rich and rare-no place where the feet of the women are smaller, or the enterprise of the men more laudable-none where the pavé is so brilliantly thronged, the simple more dexterously enlightened, and the plethora of the pocket more speedily relieved-none, in short, where there are united such foci of people and things, or where one may learn faster the necessity of combining, in his individual person, the accomplishments of Briareus and Argus. It is London diminished. No place like it "to take the nonsense out of you." The first person singular is, to all but itself, a very indifferent pronoun. Nobody cares there whether you "cock your thumb" or no. Fanny Wright is no lion in Broadway, and the Frugal Housewife might eat her "hard gingerbread," and swear that it was "nice" uncontradicted.

How different from Boston! Here, every body knows every body, and his business. You cannot stir without feeling your importance. A very little stranger makes a "very splendid tiger," and a peculiar tie in a cravat gives you a three months' immortality. Your birth, religion, early history, finances, and probabilities of distinction transpire with your arrival. "Good society," at the same time, doubts while it discusses you, and though you are the cynosure of all eyes, you are suspected to be a rogue till you are known, by better than nature's authority, to be a gentleman. The shop-keepers are professedly honest, street smoking is disreputable, small feet and French slippers are not much worn, and the Tremont is the finest hotel, and Dudley the daintiest frizeur in the known world. For society, the belles are slightly blue, the suppers exquisite as a dream, and the beaux honest gentlemen traders, innocent of puns and neckclothiana, and good subjects for matrimony. Literary people die of the digito monstrari. Fanny Wright is held profane, and lady editors beat the

at Billingsgate. Virtue here deprives no man of "cakes and ale." Whiskers are no letters of introduction. Good English is preferred to bad French, and the pale of Unitarianism is the limit of gentility.

We have a great mind, since we are "i' the vein," to show up Philadelphia, with its comical contradictions-its rectangular streets, and its graceful women-its excessively dressed dandies, and its decent Quakers-its strict religion, and its European luxury. We should like to sketch Baltimore, gay and wicked, and Charleston, learned and aristocratic, and all the places and people in this salmagundi of a nation—but— we were talking of Cecile.

She was, as I said before, tired of everything about her. She got up in the morning, and could not think why she should be at the trouble of dressing. She walked, dined, dressed again, dissipated, and went to bed, wondering, with the naiveté of a seraph, why such a stupid world should have been created. It was at this crisis of things that Mr. Hyperion St. John, the very eidolon of a cravat, joined her, as usual, one morning, in Broadway. He was the best specimen of his class, and, having borne the caprices of my lady with more constant bienséance than his fellows, stood rather the first in her graces. She took his arm very much as one leans upon a fence in June, and lounged down towards the battery, listening to his exquisitisms as one, in the same idle month, listens to the running by of a stream. Mr. Hyperion had never seen her in so unoffensive a mood. He laid his forefinger against his dickey, to preserve its integrity, while he should look round at her face, and Cecile, at that moment having dropped her head to watch, for want of better amusement, the gliding in and out of her own lovely feet, it suddenly occurred to him that it was very like what he had heard called "a symptom"-his curricle to a jarvey, the lady was in love with him! With a silent blessing on Wheeler, (he had the grace to remember who made him,) he rallied his brains, (which, having rarely been rallied before, did not readily obey,) and remembering, that in all the stories he had read, the next thing to love was elopement, he, coolly, as if it was a matter in course, begged to know whether she would prefer his bays or his grays on the first stage of the journey. The diversion of this subject startled Cecile from her castle-building. She looked up, and seeing the unwonted smile of satisfaction on the face of her admirer, repeated his question twice over to herself before she quite comprehended him. first thought was "how absurd!"—her second, "how refreshing!" Here was a novelty! The world had not quite come to an end. She could do something she had never done before. Run away!-the thought was heavenly. She thanked

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Her

the gods as she turned on her heel, and retracing their steps up Broadway, they stopped to arrange matters more conveniently at Fontaine's-where our story found them.

Cecile rose from the table at 6 o'clock that afternoon, leaving her papa dosing over his Moselle and snuff-box, and ringing for her maid, ordered a trunk and bandboxes into her dressing room. She then turned the key, and laying her dresses all out upon chairs, sofa and fauteuil, selected two or three of the prettiest, (a plain white one among them,) and folded them in the trunk. She threw in next two or three handsful of cameos, coral necklaces, and other ornamentssome indefinite articles of dress, a muslin night-cap, and a vinaigrette to be used in the fainting scene-next, a pair of French slippers and a Bible-and last, a lovely French apron of a new pattern, with which she intended to astonish her lord at the first breakfast subsequent to the ceremony. Having chosen her prettiest hat, and laid it aside, every thing was complete, and she threw herself upon the sofa to dream away the time till the arrival of the note from Mr. St. John, announcing the hour when his bays would be at the door.

I shall not attempt to describe the dream, because the lady did not attempt it herself in telling me the story. It was, no doubt, like all city visions of matrimony, a long vista, closed in the blue distance by a four story brick house and iron railings, a servant in livery cleaning the door-plate, and a child in a pink frock and white pantalettes, playing in the verandah. The arrival of the note, whatever it was, put a stop to it very effectually. It was written on rose paper, and, being June, sealed with a cameo wafer. The first sentence. or two, being sentiment, Cecile passed over till the second perusal. The essential part of it was the naming of the hour, and glancing her eye down, she read, “I shall be at the door, in my kurrikle❞—it was quite enough. To run away with a man that couldn't spell!-oh, no! She took her pen and wrote a note declining the honor, rang for her maid, dressed and went to a party.

Six months after, she took matrimony, (as the doctors phrase it,) "the natural way," and when I saw her last, was the loveliest of Madonnas, in an oiled silk apron, getting very learned in corals and teeth-cutting.

TO A BRIDE.

FAREWELL! sweet cousin! ever thus
Drop from us treasures, one by one,
They who have been from youth with us,
Whose very look, whose very tone
Are linked to us like leaves to flowers-
They who have shared our pleasant hours—
Whose voices, so familiar grown,
They almost seem to us our own,
The echoes, as it were, of ours-

They who have even been our pride,

Yet in their hours of triumph dearest

They whom we most have known and tried,

And loved the most when tried the nearest-
They pass from us like stars that wane,
The brightest still before,

Or gold links broken from a chain
That can be join'd no more.

What can we wish thee? Gifts hast thou,
Richer than wishes ever give-
Gifts of the heart, and lip, and brow,

Gifts that thou couldst not lose and live-
Better are these than aught that we,
This side of heaven, can wish for thee.
Well then-ever may these increase-
Deeper thy heart-richer thy tone-

Still on thy brow be written peace,
Still be thine eye's kind spell its own-
Still may the spirit of thy smile

Have power, as now, all cares to lighten,
And may thine own heart feel, the while,
The sunshine in which others brighten.
Life be to thee the summer tide
"Twill seem to others by thy side!

ALLAN GRAY.

MISS EDGEWORTH affirms that none ever loved without a reasonable degree of hope: but as none of the passions wait upon the understanding, and love is the least controllable of them all, her assertion may be disproved by innumerable instances from the fabled days of Pygmalion down to those of Allan Gray, the Gardener.

Allan was the son of an English Gardener, who had come over to America in the hope of realizing those golden dreams