Emily, I mean? I have just had it from Howell and James: gipure, they call it. Isn't it an odd name for lace? And they charge me, upon my conscience, four guineas a yard!» Third Lady. My mother, when she came to Skinflinter, had lace upon her robe that cost sixty guineas a yard, ma'am! 'Twas sent from Malines direct by our relation, the Count d'Araignay. »

Fourth Lady (aside). I thought she would not let the evening pass without talking of her Malines lace and her Count d'Araignay. Odious people! they don't spare their backs, but they pinch their

Here Tom upsets a coffee-cup over his white jean trousers, and another young gentleman bursts into a laugh, saying, «By Jove, that's a good 'un!»

George, my dear, » says mamma, had not you and your young friend better go into the garden? But mind, no fruit, or Doctor Glauber must be called in again immediately!» and we all go, and in ten minutes I and my brother are fighting in the stables.

If instead of listening to the matrons and their discourse, we had taken the opportunity of attending to the conversation of the misses, we should have heard matter not a whit more interesting.

ball, and I daresay they had them in town. »

Second Miss.

Don't you think Jemima decidedly crook

ed? And those fair complexions they freckle so, that really Miss Blanch ought to be called Miss Brown. »

Third Miss. "He, he, he!»

Fourth Miss.

First Miss.

second name? »

"

Don't you think Blanch is a pretty name? » La! do you think so, dear? Why, it's my

Second Miss. a beautiful name!. Third Miss

་་

"

Then I'm sure Captain Travers thinks it

He he, he!»

Fourth Miss.

ENGLISH REVIEW.

"What was he telling you at dinner that

seemed to interest you so?»

First Miss. "O law, nothing!-that is, yes! Charlesthat is, Captain Travers, is a sweet poet, and was reciting to me some lines that he had composed upon a faded violet :The odour from the flower is gone, That like thy▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

like thy something, I forget what it was; but his lines are so sweet, and so original too! I wish that horrid Sir John Todcaster had not begun his story of the exciseman, for Lady Fitz-Boodle always quits the table when he begins. "

Third Miss.

་་

Do you like those tufts that gentlemen wear sometimes on their chins ? »

Second Miss. «Nonsense, Mary!»

"

Third Miss. Well, I only asked Jane. Frank thinks, you know, that he shall very soon have one, and puts bear'sgrease on his chin every night. »

Well, only ask him.

Second Miss. Mary, nonsense! » Third Miss. You know he came to our dressing-room last night and took the pomatum away; and he says that when boys go to Oxford they always-

First Miss. Oh, heavens! have you heard the news about the Lancers? Charles-that is, Captain Travers, told it me! »

Second Miss. Law! they won't go away before the ball, I hope!»

First Miss. No, but on the 15th they are to shave their mustachios! He says that Lord Tufto is in a perfect fury about it!»

Second Miss.

"

And poor George Beardmore, too! &c. Here Tom upsets the coffee over his trousers, and the conversation ends. I can recollect a dozen such, and ask any man of sense whether such talk amuses him?

Try again to speak to a young lady while you are dancing -what we call in this country-quadrille. What nonsense do you invariably give and receive in return! No, I am a woman-scorner, and don't care to own it, I hate young ladies! Have I not been in love with several, and has any one

of them ever treated me decently? I hate married women ! Do they not hate me? and simply because I smoke, try to draw their husbands away from my society? I hate dowagers! Have I not cause? Does not every dowager in London point to George Fitz-Boodle as to a dissolute wretch whom young and old should avoid?

And yet do not imagine that I have not loved. I have, and madly, many, many times! I am but eight-and-thirty,(') not past the age of passion, and may very likely end by running off with an heiress-or cookmaid (for who knows what strange freaks Love may choose to play in his own particular person? and I hold a man to be a mean creature who calculates about checking any such sacred impulse as lawful love)-I say, though despising the sex in general for their conduct to me, I know of particular persons belonging to it who are worthy of all respect and esteem, and as such I beg leave to point out the particular young lady who is perusing these lines. Do not, dear madam, then imagine that if I knew you, I should be disposed to sneer at you. Ah, no! Fitz-Boodle's bosom has tenderer sentiments than from his way of life you would fancy, and, stern by rule, is only too soft by practice. Shall I whisper to you the story of one or two of my attachments? All terminating fatally (not in death, but in disappointment, which, as it occurred, I usedto imagine a thousand times more bitter than death, but from which one recovers somehow more readily than from the other-named complaint)-all, I say, terminating wretchedly to myself, as if some fatality pursued my desire to become a domestic character.

My first love-no, let us pass that over. Sweet one! thy name shall profane no hireling page. Sweet, sweet memory! Ah, ladies; those delicate hearts of yours have too felt the throb;-and between that last ob in the word throb and the words now written, I have passed a delicious period of perhaps a minute, I know not how long, thinking of that holy first love and of her who inspired it. How clearly every single incident of the passion is remembered by me and yet (') He is five-and-forty, if he is a day old.-O. Y.,

'twas long, long since; I was but a child then-a child at school-and, if the truth must be told, L-ra R-ggl-s (I would not write her whole name to be made one of the Marquess of Hertford's executors) was a woman full thirteen years older than myself; at the period of which I write, she must have been at least five-and-twenty. She and her mother used to sell tarts, hard-bake, lollipops, and other such simple comestibles, on Wednesdays and Saturdays (half-holydays) at a private school where I received the first rudiments of a classical education. I used to go and sit before her tray for hours, but I do not think the poor girl ever supposed any motive led me so constantly to her little stall beyond a vulgar longing for her tarts and her gingerbeer. Yes, even at that early period my actions were misrepresented, and the fatality which has oppressed my whole life began to shew itself, the purest passion was misinterpreted by her and my school-fellows, and they thought I was actuated by simple gluttony. They nicknamed me Alicompayne.

Well, be it so. Laugh at early passion ye who will; a high-born boy madly in love with a lowly ginger-beer girl! She married afterwards, took the name of Latter, and now keeps with her old husband a turnpike, through which I often ride; but I can recollect her, bright and rosy of a sunny summer afternoon, her red cheeks shaded by a battered straw bonnet, her tarts and ginger-beer upon a neat white cloth before her, mending blue worsted stockings until the young gentlemen should interrupt her by coming to buy.

Many persons will call this description low; I do not envy them their gentility, and have always observed through life (as, to be sure, every other gentleman has observed as well as myself) that it is your parvenu who stickles most for what he calls the genteel, and has the most squeamish abhorrence for what is frank and natural. Let us pass at once, however," as all the world must be pleased, to a recital of an affair which occurred in the very best circles of society, as they are called, viz. my next unfortunate attachment.

It did not occur for several years after that simple and platonic passion just described, for though they may talk of

youth as the season of romance, it has always appeared to me that there are no beings in the world, so entirely unromantic and selfish, as certain young English gentlemen from the age of fifteen to twenty. The oldest Lovelace about town is scarcely more hard-hearted and scornful than they; they ape all sorts of selfishness and rouerie; they aim at excelling at cricket, at billiards, at rowing, and drinking, and set more store by a red coat and a neat pair of top-boots than by any other glory. A young fellow staggers into collegechapel of a morning, and communicates to all his friends that he was so cut last night with the greatest possible pride. He makes a joke of having sisters and a kind mother at home who loves him; and if he speaks of his father, it is with a knowing sneer to say that he has a tailor's and a horse-dealer's bill that will surprise the old governor. He would be ashamed of being in love. I, in common with my kind, had these affectations; and my perpetual custom of smoking added not a little to my reputation as an accomplished roué. What came of this custom in the army and at college, the reader has already heard. Alas! in life it went no better with me, and many pretty chances I had, went off in that accursed smoke.

After quitting the army in the abrupt manner stated, I . passed some short time at home, and was tolerated by my mother-in-law because I had formed an attachment to a young lady of good connexions and with a considerable fortune, which was really very nearly becoming mine. Mary M'Alister was the only daughter of Colonel M Alister, late of the Blues, and Lady Susan his wife. Her ladyship was no more; and, indeed, of no family compared to ours (which has refused a peerage any time these two hundred years), but being an earl's daughter and a Scotch woman, Lady Emily Fitz-Boodle did not fail to consider her highly. Lady Susan was daughter of the late Admiral Earl of Marlingspike and Baron Plumduff. The colonel, Miss M'Alister's father, had a good estate, of which his daughter was the heiress, and as I fished her out of the water upon a pleasure-party, and swam with her to shore, we became naturally intimate, and Colonel M'Alister

i

VOL. III.

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