Upon this, lo! the pert Fanny, hitherto so ready with her answers, began to cry bitterly; the words really pricked her conscience; and to be scolded is one thing, to be severely and solemnly reproached is another and before a man!

The official woman-hater was melted in a moment by the saucy girl's tears. "There-there," said he kindly; "have a little mercy. Hang it all! don't make a mountain of a mole-hill."

The official man-hater never moved a muscle. "It is no use her crying to me: she must give me a proof she is sorry. Fanny, if you are a respectable girl, and have any idea of being my heir, go you this moment and bring them home." "Yes, aunt," said Fanny, eagerly; and went off with wonderful alacrity. It was a very long apartment, full forty feet; and while Fanny bustled down it, Miss Maitland extended a skinny finger, like one of Macbeth's witches, and directed Vizard's 's eye to the receding figure so pointedly, that he put up his spy-glass the better to see the phenomenon.

As Fanny skipped out and closed the door, Miss Maitland turned to Vizard, with lean finger still pointing after Fanny, and uttered a monosyllable

"LAME!"

Vizard burst out laughing. "La fourbe!" said he. "Miss Maitland, accept my compliments; you possess the key to a sex no fellow can unlock. And now I have found an interpreter, I begin to be interested in this little comedy. The first act is just over. There will be half an hour's wait till the simulatrix of infirmity comes running back with the pilgrims of the Rhine. Are they the pilgrims of the Rhine' or the pilgrims of Love?' Time will show. Play to recommence with a verbal encounter: you will be one against

three; for all that, I don't envy the greater number."

66

"Three to one? No. Surely you will be on the right side for once. Well, you see, I am the audience. We can't be all dramatis persona, and no spectator. During the wait, I wonder whether the audience, having nothing better to do, may be permitted to smoke a cigar."

"So long a lucid interval is irksome, of course. Well, the balcony is your smoking-room. You will see them coming; please tap at my door the moment you do."

Half an hour elapsed, an hour, and the personages required to continue the comedy did not return.

Vizard, having nothing better to do, fell to thinking of Ina Klosking, and that was not good for him. Solitude and ennui fed his mania, and at last it took the form of action. He rang, and ordered up his man Harris, a close, discreet personage, and directed him to go over to Homburg and bring back all the information he could about the new singer; her address in Homburg, married or single, prude or coquette. Should information be withheld, Haris was to fee the porter at the opera house, the waiter at her hotel, and all the human commodities that knew anything about her.

Having dismissed Harris, he lighted his seventh cigar, and said. to himself, "It is all Ned Severne's fault. I wanted to leave for England to-day."

The day had been overcast for some time, and now a few big drops fell, by way of warning. Then it turned cool; then came a light drizzling rain, and, in the middle of this, Fanny Dover appeared, almost flying home.

Vizard went and tapped at Miss Maitland's door. She came out. "Here's Miss Dover coming, but she is alone."

Belton. I have not been able to get those lines out of my mind since you repeated them the other day. I have been reciting them to myself ever since, in a loud declamatory tone, striking an attitude, and repulsing with my breast the assault of the thunder. Tell me something more about this amazing Paine.

Mallett. After our conversation the other day, on my return home, I refreshed my own memory by reading a biographical sketch of him by his friend Mr. Charles Prentiss; and being in the vein, I then took up the life of Dr. Darwin, the famous poet, written by the scarcely less famous Miss Anna Seward. They amused me so much that I have brought them both down to the studio to read you some choice passages from each.

Belton. Pray do.

Mallett. To begin with Robert Treat Paine. Slightingly as you may think of his genius, he was thought to be the great poet of his age in America. Mr. Prentiss says of his poems that "they are the legitimate and indisputable heirs of immortality" and he boldly prophesies that "he will take his place, not by the

courtesy of the coming age, but by the full and consentient suffrage of posterity, on the same shelf with the prince of English rhyme "--by whom he means, of course, Dryden.

Belton. Does it not make one doubt our own judgment of our contemporaries, when we hear such trumpeting as this about a man whose very name has now passed into oblivion?

Mallett. Ah! you never came in contact with him personally, and you can therefore form little idea of the influence he exerted. Mr. Selfridge, his friend, says of him: "Once engaged he was an electric battery; approach him and he scintillated-touch him and he emitted a blaze."

Belton. What a tremendous fellow, to be sure!

Mallett. This was the judgment formed of his powers, not by common vulgar flatterers, but by men of ability and distinction, such as Mr. Selfridge and Mr. Prentiss, both of whom were men of very considerable power and repute.

Belton. All I can say is that it is simply amazing.

Mallett. Great as the temporary reputation of Paine was in America, the reputation of Dr. Darwin in England was higher and wider. The distinction which he won in his profession of medicine was overshadowed by his fame as a poet; and his admirable medical works were held in far less esteem than the pompous, artificial, and ingeniously absurd poems of 'The Botanic Garden,' and the Loves of the Plants,' with their gnomes and nymphs and ridiculous impersonations, which were afterwards so admirably travestied by Canning in his Loves of the Triangles.' If anything could be more absurd than

he poems themselves in their form, conception, and execution, it would be Miss Seward's criticisms of them. Indeed it is scarcely possible to believe that such a work as her 'Life of Dr. Darwin' could have been written in the present century: -its stilted style, its unnatural verbiage, its pompous solemnity, are so out of keeping with our modern habits of thought, feeling, and expression. Let me read you some passages

"Poetry," says Miss Seward, "has nothing more sublime than this, the picture of a town on fire.

ing the pole like two tame bears. But let me read you now some passages from Miss Seward's "Analysis of the Botanic Garden." "After that landscape of the scene which forms the exordium, the Goddess of Botany descends in gorgeous gaiety." Belton. "Gorgeous gaiety! Good heavens !

Mallett. Yes, gorgeous gaiety; and she thus makes her appear

ance

"She comes, the Goddess, through the whispering air, Bright as the morn descends her blushing car."

"Spring welcomes her with fragrance and with song, and to receive her commission the four elements attend. They are allegorised as gnomes, water-nymphs, and sylphs, and nymphs of fire. Her address to each class and the business she allots to them form the four cantos of the first part of the poem. The ladies of Ignition receive her primal attention."

Belton. No! You have invented that.

Mallett. I could not invent anything half so good. Be patient. "The picture with which her address commences is of consummate brilliance and grace. Behold it, reader, and judge if this praise be too glowing!"

"Nymphs of primeval fire! your vestal train,

Hung with gold tresses o'er the vast inane,

Pierced with your silver shafts the throne of night,

And charmed young nature's opening eyes with light."

Belton. "Vast inane" indeed! Mallett. Listen, and don't interrupt.

"The Darwinian creation which ensues charms us infinitely, even while we recollect the simpler greatness on the page of Moses, and on its sublime paraphrase in the Paradise Lost.' The creation in this

And listen to this commentary

26

The word of the Creator setting into instant and universal blaze the ignited particles of Chaos till they burst into countless suns, is an idea sublime in the first degree."

Belton. Sublime indeed! It is more like the fireworks and the girandola of Castel St. Angelo than anything I ever.read. What would Dr. Darwin of to-day say to all this? Here is "evolution" with a vengeance! I think it almost unhandsome, after the first Dr. Darwin had so satisfactorily arranged creation in a moment, and astonished Chaos, that his descendant should undertake to "evolve" nature by such tedious processes.

Mallett. Miss Seward continues "The subsequent comments of the goddess on the powers of the nymphs of fire, introduce pictures of the lightning and the rainbow, the exterior sky, the twilight, the meteor, the aurora borealis-of the planets, the comet, and all the ethereal blaze of the universe."

Belton. Comprehensive. Anything else?

Now mark what Miss Seward says of this. "Surely there cannot be a more beautiful description of a vernal twilight. The phosphorescent quality of the Bolognian stone, Beccari's prismatic shells, and the harp of Memnon, which is recorded to have breathed spontaneous chords when shone upon by the rising sun, are all compared to the glimmerings of the horizon. So, also, the luminous insects, the glowworm, the fire-flies of the tropics, the fabulous ignis fatuus, and the Gymnotus electricus, brought to England from Surinam in South America about the year 1783-a fish whose electric power is a provocation mortal to his enemy. He is compared to the Olympian eagle that bears the lightning in his talons." There! what do you think of that?

Belton. Give me the book. You have invented, at least, a part of

it, as you are accustomed to do.. I am up to your tricks.

Mallett. No; on my word, I have not interpolated a word. See for yourself.

own eyes.

Belton. I can scarely believe my How prettily that bit of information is introduced about the Gymnotus electricus brought from Surinam in South America

about the year 1783!

bore you?

Belton. Pray go on. Mallett. "The Fourth Canto opens with a sunrise and a rainbow, each of Homeric excellency. The Muse of Botany gazes enchanted on the scene, and swells the song of Paphos" (whatever that may happen to be) to softer chords. Her poet adds

"Long aisles of oaks returned the silver sound,

And amorous echoes talked along the ground.''

Belton. Beautiful! beautiful!!!

beautiful!!

"And amorous echoes talked along the ground."

"Amorous echoes"! That is the finest thing I have heard yet.

asm.

Mallett. Restrain your enthusiAfter a short digression, Miss Seward continues: "But to resume, the botanic goddess and her enumeration of the interesting employ ments of the third class of nymphs, their disposal of those bright waters which make Britain irriguous, verdant, and fertile."

Belton. Irriguous? Mallett. Yes, irriguous; and I will, as Bardolph says, "maintain the word with my sword to be a good soldier-like word, and a word of exceeding good command, by heaven!" Irriguous, "that is when a country is, as they say, irriguous, or when a country is being whereby a' may be thought to be irriguous, which is an excellent thing." But

exquisite picture!" I shall now only cite one other passage, and then I will lend you the book to read for yourself. And this shall be the description of a simoom-or rather of Simoom-for of course he is personified:

"Arrest Simoom amid his waste of sand, The poisoned javelin balanced in his hand;

Fierce on blue streams he rides the tainted. air,

Points his keen eye and waves his whistling

hair;

While, as he turns, the undulating soil Rolls in red waves and billowy deserts boil."

This," says Miss Seward, "is a fine picture of the Demon of Pestilence. The speed of his approach is marked by the strong current of air in which he passed, and by the term whistling as applied to his hair." There, I have done. Belton. 66

Points his keen eye and waves his whistling hair." Magnificent! It's all very well to talk about arresting Simoom-with his keen eye pointed and his whistling hair, while billowy deserts are boiling round you; but I distinctly decline to make the attempt. What a subject for a picture. In fact, what a series of pictures could be made from this work.

Mallett. There is one couplet of Paine's I am sorry that it is the only one I can bring into definite form out of vague mists of my memory--which is worthy of a place with some of these. Such as it is I