Antony, losing all for love; Cleopatra-artful, cunning, inconstant, capricious, loving Antony, yet ruining him, great and almost amiable in her death"

"Ernest, I wonder at you. What can you find to admire in a character like Cleopatra, who, although a queen, was neither more nor less than an-an abandoned woman ?"

Ernest threw himself back in his chair and laughed till the tears ran down his face.

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Well," he said at length, when he had somewhat recovered from his paroxysm of mirth, "that is certainly a view of the question which should have prevented Shakespeare from ever writing, or me from admiring the drama. My dear mother, you do amaze me, so because poor Cleopatra was never legally married, you will hear nothing said in her favour. Why persist in looking at this heroine of history only from the worst point of view. Consider her for once only as the Egyptian queen, the serpent of old Nile", a woman born to magni

ficence and power, whose blood coursed like lava through her veins. I fancy I see her at this moment, a woman after the Italian type, who, out of jealousy would aim a dagger at your heart one moment, and smother you with embraces the next; one who, considering her opportunities of working good and evil, might have been infinitely worse as well as better. Let us be carried away by the mighty magician as you open the volume and read the matchless tale, All for love or the world were lost.' Aye, is it not impressive," he continued with flashing eyes, to find love represented no longer dwelling with sighing shepherds and lowly swains in retired valleys and Arcadian groves; but inspiring two beings, neither in the bloom or freshness of youth, both mighty, and rulers of men's destinies. Shakespeare has rightly conceived such characters as inspired by something more than mere caprice, or calculating interest. With what masterly sketches are we made to behold Queen Cleopatra sailing in triumphant

state down the Cydnus, while " the city cast its people out upon her."

“The wrangling queen,

Whom everything becomes, to chide, to laugh,
To weep."

And that last scene where she emulates the

death of Antony, who dies

"A Roman by a Roman, valiantly vanquished."

where she says

"Show me my woman like a queen. Go fetch
My best attires-I am again for Cydnus
To meet Mark Antony.

*

Give me my robe, put on my crown, I have
Immortal longings in me."

There is no knowing how long Ernest would have gone on multiplying quotations, had he not suddenly observed that Mrs. Basil had left the room; she had not waited to hear the defence of a character so notorious, so inexcusable, in her eyes, as Cleopatra Queen of Egypt.

Gradually the reserve which had characterized Miss Lawrence's manners began to wear off, and there is no knowing how far the amiability of character which each day unfolded might have influenced Ernest, had not the young

lady in question been obliged to quit Mrs. Saunders' family at the end of a week to pay a visit to some other old friends to whom she was engaged, and in the time that intervened previous to her return, Ernest had made the acquaintance of another young lady destined to have an important influence on his future

career.

Baillie Flaccid was one of those characters termed highly respectable, that is, he had never been discovered in the act of stealing, or setting fire to a church, or any crime punishable by law. He did his duty faithfully to society by constantly attending to his own and family's interest, and slowly and surely adding field to field, and barn to barn, and by being seen regularly at Kirk on the Sabbath, himself in a blue coat and bright buttons, his wife and daughters with every imaginable article of finery which money could purchase or fashion permit them to wear. The three Misses Flaccid were, in their mother's and their own opinion, and that of all respectable people in

Y-, model young ladies. No expense was spared upon their education, and accordingly they possessed just that amount of shreds and patches of useless knowledge which go to form modern young ladies-and if a young lady's, education is finished when she can thrum on the piano, and execute strange combinations of apple-dumpling clouds and water-bewitched on Bristol board, if woman's mission consists in promenading during certain hours of the day, dressed up like popinjays, reading novels and waiting to be married, then indeed are the Misses Flaccid model young ladies.

On the first of the month, Ernest had received a very elegant little note containing Mrs. Flaccid's compliments, and requesting the pleasure of Mr. Basil's company to a soirée on the twenty-first, and accordingly, on the evening in question, Ernest found himself in the middle of a throng which at first rendered it a matter of difficulty to approach and his respects to his hostess.

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