from loving each other as themselves, put patent locks upon their street doors; and in whose suburbs every rus in urbe is mouldy with an overgrowth of sallows and poplars to secure itself from observation ;-and I maintain therefore that the dignified self-seclusion of George IV. was the first of kingly virtues in a man who writes himself upon his penny pieces "D. G. BRIT. REX."

But the caprices of the English public are the most capricious in the world. When once it is pleased to get up a storm, it blows like a Typhoon from every quarter at once;—and bitter were its gusts and disgusts against its anointed sovereign. The public, and the press which is its organ, a barrel organ, wherewith it grinds reasonable people out of patience, chose to declaim against the luxurious indolence of a prince, who was nevertheless undergoing the hard labour of trying to appear young at threescore; and though it was evidently in deference to the whims of the populace who at twenty

had adored him as a beau, that forty years long he grieved himself with the vocation, they were strangely out of conceit with the firmness of his Majesty's principles.

But this was no affair of mine. It was not I who fixed the Court at Windsor. I was not accountable for the good taste which caused the mountain to come to Mahomet instead of letting Mahomet toil to the mountain and if a con

:

siderable waste of ministerial post horses and privy counciliatory patent axles attested that the sign manual was oftener times affixed in the county of Berks than the county of Middlesex, so much the worse for the Cabinet,-so much the better for the Household.

Since I had ceased to be a denizen of St. James's Street, familiar to its view and disregarded as the old fashioned face of the palace clock, I had begun to think better of myself. Now and then, I glanced meteor-wise across the surface of London society; and as the brilliancy of a shooting star attracts fifty

million of times more attention than your matter of fact planet, whose phenomena are duly set down in the ephemeris, I gained much by the rapidity of my transit.

When I did appear, it was to some purpose; and I must confess that Mrs. Brettingham had been often in company with Cecil the Coxcomb without dreaming of soliciting the introduction that marked her deference towards the inscription of his name in the ennobling pages of the Red Book.

So conscious was I of this, that I had half a mind to refuse. Kindness, however, is often only refined cruelty; and I resolved to punish her by compliance. Like Tarpeia, she did not know what she had asked for, till she felt the fatal influence of the golden buckler cast at her head.

I approached my victim, however, with a smiling countenance. As the claw of the cat is concealed under the softest fur, I recommend all heroes of romance intent upon lording it over

ladies, to remember that Sultanas are strangled with a silken bowstring. I accosted Mrs. Brettingham as Richard the Third the Princess Anne,-all Chesterfield concentrated in my bow,-all Hybla distilling from my lips. She had taken me for a man of straw,-she found me a man of eider-down. My countenance was sunshiny as a Midsummer day, - or a Cuyp,--or a solar lamp.

Sans armes, comme l'innocence, sans ailes comme la
constance,

I submitted to be tied to her side like a King Charles's spaniel to the girdle of a court beauty, or a bunch of keys to that of a parsonic housewife.

The consequence was that, vain of her ascendancy, Mariana was thoroughly off her guard. Secure from offence, defence was superfluous. A shield was useless against "l'innocence sans armes;" a cage unnecessary for "la constance sans ailes."-There are more ways in heaven and earth of establishing an absolute monarchy

than are dreamt of by any one but Cecil Danby or Louis Philippe.

I should have given myself less trouble had I been quite certain of the nature and intentions of pretty Mrs. Brettingham. It is easy to describe a woman in an off-hand way, as marked for conquest, like a tree for the axe by a white cross on the bark. But the policy of female nature envelopes itself in ever-fluctuating robes of gauze, which render it impossible to define the exact outline, or

Catch'ere she glance the Cynthia of the minute.

The retrospective eye, unpuzzled by such nebulous delusions, sees accurately, and determines safely whether the angel have cloven feet, or the demon silver wings. But so long as the spell be upon one, perpetual misgivings, perpetual recantation of our mistrusts, serve alternately to fan the flickering flame of inclination. Every school-boy, pre-admonished that the Syrens were scaly monsters with soft