came of age, and worth (I like that expression) not a farthing more or less than this often-quoted eight hundred pounds a-year. My rich uncle is married, but has no children. I am therefore the heir-presumptive-but he is a saint, and close, though ostentatious. The quarrel between uncle Templeton and the Saxinghams still continues. Templeton is angry if I see the Saxinghams― and the Saxinghams-my Lord, at least-is by no means so sure that I shall be Templeton's heir as not to feel a doubt lest I should some day or other sponge upon his lordship for a place. Lord Saxingham is in the administration, you know. Somehow or other, I have an equivocal amphibious kind of place in London society, which I don't like: on one side I am a patrician connexion, whom the parvenu branches always incline lovingly to-and on the other side I am a half-dependent cadet, whom the noble relations look civilly shy at. Some day, when I grow tired of travel and idleness, I shall come back and wrestle with these little difficulties, conciliate my methodistical uncle, and grapple with my noble cousin. But now I am fit for something better than getting on in the world. Dry chips, not green wood, are the things for making a blaze! How slow this fellow drives! Holla, you sir! get on! mind, twelve miles to the hour! you shall have sixpence a mile! Give me your purse, Maltravers; I may as well be cashier, being the elder and the wiser man; we can settle accounts at the end of the journey. By Jove, what a pretty girl!" BOOK II. θνητῶν δ ̓ ὄφρα τις ἄνθος ἔχῃ πολυήρατον ἤβης, SIMONIDES, in Vit. Hum. "He, of wide-blooming youth's fair flower possest, Owns the vain thoughts-the heart that cannot rest!" BOOK II. CHAPTER I. 66 "II y eut certainement quelque chose de singulier dans mes sentimens pour cette charmante femme."-ROUSSEAU. In It was a brilliant ball at the Palazzo of the Austrian embassy at Naples: and a crowd of those loungers, whether young or old, who attach themselves to the reigning beauty, was gathered round Madame de Ventadour. Generally speaking, there is more caprice than taste in the election of a beauty to the Idalian throne. Nothing disappoints a stranger more than to see for the first time the woman to whom the world has given the golden apple. Yet he usually falls at last into the popular idolatry, and passes with inconceivable rapidity from indignant scepticism into superstitious veneration. fact, a thousand things besides mere symmetry of feature go to make up the Cytherea of the hour... tact in society -the charm of manner a nameless and piquant brilliancy. Where the world find the Graces they proclaim the Venus. Few persons attain pre-eminent celebrity for anything, without some adventitious and extraneous circumstances which have nothing to do with the thing celebrated. Some qualities or some circumstances throw a mysterious or personal charm about them." Is Mr. So-and-So really such a genius ?"—"Is Mrs. Such-a-One really such a beauty?" you ask incredulously. "Oh, yes," is the answer. "Do you know all about him or her? Such a thing is said, or such a thing has happened." The idol is interesting in itself, and therefore its leading and popular attribute is worshipped. Now Madame de Ventadour was at this time the beauty of Naples; and though fifty women in the room were handsomer, no one would have dared to say so. Even the women confessed her pre-eminence-for she was the most perfect dresser that even France could exhibit. And to no pretensions do ladies ever concede with so little demur, as those which depend upon that feminine art which all study, and in which few excel. Women never allow beauty in a face that has an odd looking bonnet above it, nor will they readily allow any one to be ugly whose caps are unexceptionable. Madame de Ventadour had also the magic that results from intuitive high breeding, polished by habit to the utmost. She looked and moved the grande dame, as if Nature had been employed by Rank to make her so. She was descended from one of the most illustrious houses of France; had married at sixteen a man of equal birth, but old, dull, and pompous-a caricature rather than a portrait of that great French noblesse, now almost if not wholly extinct. But her virtue was without a blemishsome said from pride, some said from coldness. Her wit was keen and court-like-lively, yet subdued; for her French high breeding was very different from the lethargic and taciturn imperturbability of the English. silent people can seem conventionally elegant. A groom married a rich lady; he dreaded the ridicule of the guests whom his new rank assembled at his table-an Oxford clergyman gave him this piece of advice, "Wear a black coat and hold your tongue!" The groom took the hint, and is always considered one of the most gentlemanlike fellows in the county. Conversation is the touchstone of the true delicacy and subtle grace which make the ideal of the moral mannerism of a court. there sate Madame de Ventadour, a little apart from the dancers, with the silent English dandy Lord Taunton, exquisitely dressed and superbly tall, bolt upright behind her chair; and the sentimental German Baron Von All And |