laugh; but you-hanged if I don't think she loves you, and I've sometimes wondered you didn't speak out. eyes in my head. Do you think I have no When you first began to fight shy of coming to the house, I thought you might have had some explanation or other." "Prince," (for he had got into the way of calling him by his nickname) said Ernest, "Miss Norton is everything that is noble and good, but," he added, as he rung his friend's hand, "she is not too good for you. Forgive me," he added, "if I have ever unconsciously cost you a pang in that quarter. We are dear friends and nothing more." It was evident by the sudden radiance which illumined the Prince's countenance that the honest fellow's heart was considerably lightened by this intelligence, and he began to chatter away in the satisfaction of his feelings, not observing the pre-occupied and rather melancholy look which his friend's features wore. We will suppose all the adieus, and the re grets, and the promises of remembrance with which Ernest left New York, and bade adieu to friends, to convivial artist meetings, pleasant evenings spent at theatres and private parties. He did not know till the time for separation how much he had valued Pearson, who, though not so gay as the Prince, had a deep love for art, which united Ernest and himself in bonds of sympathy. ERNEST BASIL. PART I. CHAPTER I. THE TOWN OF Y - IN SCOTLAND AN OLD BA CHELOR-CLASSIC BEAUTY-ANTONY AND CLEO. PATRA. Y—, we suppose was neither better nor worse than other provincial towns either in England or Scotland :-It had its editors who spoke of it as our good city and sent forth weekly strictures upon politics and morals for the guidance, not merely of the provincial sphere in which their papers circulated, but for the benefit of the world at large, and occasionally maintained their credit as oracles with their subs cribers by a fearful onslaught upon some unconscious author or man out of office. It had its acknowledged aristocrats moving like "mag nificent refrigerators" within their own orbits, and its would-be aristocrats toadying most diligently those above and frowning with infinitely greater superciliousness than those they aped, upon the class beneath: it had its fair proportion of bigots who thundered against every religious foible but their own; its share of venemous spinsters who thrived on tea and scandal, and did good service to the cause of morality, or, at any rate, of hypocrisy, by the fear which their tongues inspired; of milk-andwater and bread-and-butter young ladies who made the fear of the aforesaid spinsters or public " censores morum" serve instead of more profound principles, whose conversation and accomplishments breathed the happy atmosphere of mediocrity; also of young gentlemen who did duty certain hours of the day in the principal street of Y-, sucking the nobs of their canes and acting as walking advertisments of their tailors by exhibiting the last year's London fashions in coats, pantaloons, and boots, &c. There were also the usual number of young gentlemen going through a regular course of tuition in the noble art of dissipation, living or rather dying on whiskey, abstracting door bells and knockers and chaffing policemen, and of young hypocrites who sinned less openly and passed themselves off on deluded mamas and maiden aunts as steady young men. In this respect Y did not differ materially from other English or Scotch or Colonial towns but in no town that he had yet seen did religious bickerings run so high, as the following extract from one of his letters written to a confidential friend about this time will testify. "In the first place there is the great implacable feud between Papist and Protestant and the Calvinist and Episcopalian, while each of these latter churches are split into two distinct branches, the one into the free church and established Kirk of Scotland, the other into Tractarian or Semi-Papal, and Evangelical or Semi-dissenting. As an Episcopalian I am almost at a loss what church to go to for the Episcopal body here are represented by three |