the natural truth and love which should illumine him grow dim in the poisoned air, and suffice to light him no more ?

When Pen was gone away, poor Harry Foker got up from the sofa, and taking out from his waistcoat -the splendidly buttoned, the gorgeously embroidered, the work of his mamma a little white rosebud, he drew from his dressing-case, also the maternal present, a pair of scissors, with which he nipped carefully the stalk of the flower, and placing it in a glass of water opposite his bed, he sought refuge there from care and bitter remembrances.

It is to be presumed that Miss Blanche Amory had more than one rose in her bouquet, and why should not the kind young creature give out of her superfluity, and make as many partners as possible happy.

CHAPTER XXI.

MONSEIGNEUR S'AMUSE.

THE exertions of that last night at Gaunt House had proved almost too much for Major Pendennis; and as soon as he could move his weary old body with safety, he transported himself groaning to Buxton, and sought relief in the healing waters of that place. Parliament broke up. Sir Francis Clavering and family left town, and the affairs which we have just mentioned to the reader were not advanced, in the brief interval of a few days or weeks which have occurred between this and the last chapter. town was, however, emptied since then.

The

The season was now come to a conclusion: Pen's neighbors, the lawyers, were gone upon circuit: and his more fashionable friends had taken their passports for the continent, or had fled for health or excitement to the Scotch moors. Scarce a man was to be seen in the bow-windows of the clubs, or on the solitary Pall Mall pavement. The red jackets had disappeared from before the Palace-gate: the tradesmen of St. James's were abroad taking their pleasure: the tailors had grown mustachios and were gone up the Rhine: the bootmakers were at Ems or Baden, blushing when they met their customers at those places of recreation, or punting beside their creditors at the gambling tables the clergymen of St. James's only preached to half a congregation, in which there was not a single sinner of distinction: the band in Kensing

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ton Gardens had shut up their instruments of brass and trumpets of silver: only two or three old flies and chaises crawled by the banks of the Serpentine, and Clarence Bulbul, who was retained in town by his arduous duties as a Treasury clerk, when he took his afternoon ride in Rotten Row, compared its loneliness to the vastness of the Arabian desert, and himself to a Bedouin wending his way through that dusty solitude. Warrington stowed away a quantity of Cavendish tobacco in his carpet-bag, and betook himself, as his custom was in the vacation, to his brother's house in Norfolk. Pen was left alone in chambers for a while, for this man of fashion could not quit the metropolis when he chose always: and was at present detained by the affairs of his newspaper, the "Pall Mall Gazette," of which he acted as the editor and chargé d'affaires during the temporary absence of the chief, Captain Shandon, who was with his family at the salutary watering-place of Boulogne sur Mer.

Although, as we have seen, Mr. Pen had pronounced himself for years past to be a man perfectly blasé and wearied of life, yet the truth is that he was an exceedingly healthy young fellow still; with a fine appetite, which he satisfied with the greatest relish and satisfaction at least once a day; and a constant desire for society, which showed him to be anything but misanthropical. If he could not get a good dinner he sat down to a bad one with entire contentment; if he could not procure the company of witty or great or beautiful persons, he put up with any society that came to hand; and was perfectly satisfied in a tavern parlor or on board a Greenwich steamboat, or in a jaunt to Hampstead with Mr. Finucane, his colleague at the "Pall Mall Gazette;" or in a visit to the summer theatres across the river; or to the Royal Gar

dens of Vauxhall, where he was on terms of friendship with the great Simpson, and where he shook the principal comic singer or the lovely equestrian of the arena by the hand. And while he could watch the grimaces or the graces of these with a satiric humor that was not deprived of sympathy, he could look on with an eye of kindness at the lookers-on too; at the roystering youth bent upon enjoyment, and here taking it: at the honest parents, with their delighted children laughing and clapping their hands at the show: at the poor outcasts, whose laughter was less innocent though perhaps louder, and who brought their shame and their youth here, to dance and be merry till the dawn at least: and to get bread and drown care. Of this sympathy with all conditions of men Arthur often boasted he was pleased to possess it: and said that he hoped thus to the last he should retain it. As another man has an ardor for art or music, or natural science, Mr. Pen said that anthropology was his favorite pursuit; and had his eyes always eagerly open to its infinite varieties and beauties: contemplating with an unfailing delight all specimens of it in all places to which he resorted, whether it was the coquetting of a wrinkled dowager in a ball-room, or a highbred young beauty blushing in her prime there; whether it was a hulking guardsman coaxing a servant-girl in the Park- or innocent little Tommy that was feeding the ducks whilst the nurse listened. And indeed a man, whose heart is pretty clean, can indulge in this pursuit with an enjoyment that never ceases, and is only perhaps the more keen because it is secret and has a touch of sadness in it; because he is of his mood and humor lonely, and apart although not alone.

Yes, Pen used to brag and talk in his impetuous way to Warrington. "I was in love so fiercely in my

youth, that I have burned out that flame forever, I think; and if ever I marry, it will be a marriage of reason that I will make, with a well-bred, good-tempered, good-looking person who has a little money, and so forth, that will cushion our carriage in its course through life. As for romance, it is all done; I have spent that out, and am old before my time— I'm proud of it."

"Stuff!" growled the other, "you fancied you. were getting bald the other day, and bragged about it as you do about everything. But you began to use the bear's-grease pot directly the hairdresser told you; and are scented like a barber ever since."

"You are Diogenes," the other answered, "and you want every man to live in a tub like yourself. Violets smell better than stale tobacco, you grisly old cynic." But Mr. Pen was blushing whilst he made this reply to his unromantical friend, and indeed cared a great deal more about himself still than such a philosopher perhaps should have done. Indeed, considering that he was careless about the world, Mr. Pen ornamented his person with no small pains in order to make himself agreeable to it, and for a weary pilgrim as he was, wore very tight boots and bright varnish.

It was in this dull season of the year then, of a shining Friday night in Autumn, that Mr. Pendennis, having completed at his newspaper office a brilliant leading article-such as Captain Shandon himself might have written, had the Captain been in goodhumor, and inclined to work, which he never would do except under compulsion-that Mr. Arthur Pendennis having written his article, and reviewed it approvingly as it lay before him in its wet proof sheet at the office of the paper, bethought him that he would cross the water, and regale himself with