sembles travelling through the East, with a few phrases of lingua franca-just enough for the ordinary purposes of life-enow of words to communicate a want, but not to communicate a thought! Then, again, though it be sweet to sit in the dim twilight, singing the melancholy song whose words are the expression of our inmost soul, till we could weep as the echo of our own music, still it is also very pleasant to have our singing sometimes listened to. At all events, it was much more agreeable to hear Lord Mandeville say, must have that song again-it is one of my great favourites," than Mrs. Arundel's constant exclamation, "Well, I am so sick of that piano!”

"We

One day led to another, till Emily passed the greater part of her time at the Abbey. Her spirits regained something of their naturally buoyant tone, and she no longer believed that every body was sent into the world to be miserable. Not that Lorraine was forgotten. Often did she think, "Of what avail is it to be loved or admired?—he knows nothing of it;" and often, after some gay prediction of Lady Mandeville's, of the sensation she was to produce next season, she would weep, in the loneliness of her own chamber, over one remembrance,

which distance, absence, and hopelessness, seemed only to render more dear.

"Is it possible," she often asked herself, "that I am the same person who, last spring, fancied a visit to London the summit of earthly enjoyment? I remember how my heart beat while reading Mr. Delawarr's letter: what did I hope for? what did I expect?-no one positive object. But how little it took then to give me pleasure!-how many things I then took pleasure in, that are now, some indifferent, many absolutely distasteful! I no longer read with the enjoyment I did: instead of identifying myself with the creations of the writer, I pause over particular passages-I apply the sorrows they depict to my own feelings; and turn from their lighter and gayer pages—they mock me with too strong a contrast. I do not feel so kind as I did. I wonder how others can be gratified with things that seem to me positively disagreeable. I ought to like people more than I do. Alas! I look forward to next year and London with disgust. I would give the world to remain quiet and unmolested-to make my own life like a silent shadow-and to think my own thoughts. I wish for nothing-I expect nothing."

Emily had yet to learn, that indifference is but another of the illusions of youth: there is a period in our life before we know that enjoyment is a necessity-that, if the sweet cup of pleasure palls, the desire for it fades too-that employments deepen into duties-and that, while we smile, ay, and sigh too, over the many vain dreams we have coloured, and the many vain hopes we have cherished—a period of re-action, whose lassitude we have all felt :this influence was now upon Emily. She was young for such a feeling-and youth made the knowledge more bitter.

"I do not think," said a welcome though unexpected visitor, in the shape of Mr. Morland, "that Miss Arundel's roses are so blooming in the country as they were in town. Pray, young lady, what have you done with your allegiance to the house of Lancaster ?"

"What!" exclaimed Lady Mandeville, “Mr. Morland among the rural philosophers, who talk of health as if it grew upon the hawthorns?"

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My dear Ellen," said her husband, who had his full share of love for the divers species of slaughtering,

"Whether in earth, in sea, in air,"

that make up the rustic code of gentlemanlike

1

tastes, I do wonder what you see in London to like."

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Every thing. I love perfumes: will you tell me the fragrant shower from my crystal flask of bouquet de roi is not equal to your rose, from which I inhale some half-dozen insects, and retain some dozen thorns? I love music: is not the delicate flute-like voice of Sontag equal at least to the rooks which scream by day, and the owls which hoot by night? Is not Howel and James's shop filled with all that human art can invent, or human taste display-bijouterie touched with present sentiment, or radiant with future triumph? Or your milliner's, where vanity is awakened but to be gratified, and every feminine feeling is called into action? Are not those objects of more interest than a field with three trees and a cow? And then for society-heaven defend me from localities, your highways and byways of conversation; where a squire, with a cast-iron and crimson countenance, details the covey of fourteen, out of which he killed five; or his lady, with the cotton velvet gown-her dinner-dress ever since she married-recounts the trouble she has with her servants, or remarks that it is a great shame-indeed, a

sign of the ruin to which every thing is hastening-that all the farmers' daughters come to church in silk gowns; a thing which the Queen will not allow in the housemaids of Windsor Castle. Then the drives, where you see no carriage but your own-the walks, where you leave on every hedge a fragment of your dress. Deeply do I sympathise with the French Countess, who (doomed to the society of three maiden aunts, two uncles-one of the farming, the other of the shooting species-and a horde of undistinguishable cousins) said, when advised to fish for her amusement, or knit for her employment, Alas! I have no taste for innocent pleasures.'

"that

"I do think," returned Mr. Morland, the country owes much of its merit to being unknown. The philosopher speaks of its happiness, the poet of its beauties, on the very reverse principle to Pope's: they should alter this line, and say,

6 They best can paint them who have known them least.'

Still, the country is very pleasant sometimes. I do not feel at all discontented just now," glancing first round the breakfast table, and