faces and sweet voices, is enabled to jest upon the folly of their victims. But the danger of the temptation consisted in the glassy waters, which, concealing their deformities, allowed them to be perceived only as the fairest of the fair.

Sometimes when, recalling to mind hints I had heard hazarded concerning Mrs. Brettingham, I prepared myself to accost her with the easy superiority which a man under such circumstances is sometimes ungenerous enough to assume, I used to be startled and shamed by the child-like simplicity of her countenance. To attribute guile to those clear blue eyes, to connect the idea of duplicity with those mantling blushes, seemed profanation. I felt guilty as if fighting with concealed armour or concealed weapons; and shrunk back, as Pan may have done, when he first beheld his unsightly features reflected in some pure and glassy stream. At such moments, there was no sacrifice Mariana might not have demanded of me in atonement of my vile mistrust!-

Still, my doubts recurred. She was young, beautiful, accomplished, sprung from a family attached to the decencies of life,-a wife, a mother, rich, healthy, happy. What could induce her to hazard the esteem of society by adventuring a decided flirtation with a man of my notorious laxity of principle?

My sagacious public,-you have guessed it!"Cæsar was ambitious." Mr. Brettingham was a simple gentleman with his halfdozen thousands a year,-a position conferring all the happiness this world can compass if enjoyed with greatness, that is, contentedness of mind. But Mariana's mind was not contented. She was covetous of the pomps and vanities of life. She loved place and precedence, and could not bear to be confounded in the mob of Thompsons and Johnsons. She wanted to be specific. She knew all the distinctions between the definite and indefinite article prefixed to a name. She was eager to be something-that is, to be somebody; and

since, according to the proverb, "il vaut mieux avoir affaire à Dieu qu'à ses Saints," conceived it pleasanter to be helped up the steps of the Temple of Fashion by the King, than by those jealous priestesses, the Exclusives, who, however indulgent now, were then as exacting concerning the sixteen quarterings of an aspirant, as a Herald of the Empire examining the claims of a pretendant to some German Chapter or the Golden Fleece.

To reach those recondite shades of Windsor was, however, a difficult matter. I was considered a favourite,-nay, I was a favourite; and Mariana rightly conjectured that the Mrs. Brettingham smiled upon by Cecil Danby had only to engage a house on the Steyne the following winter, to be invited to the Pavilion.

So paltry are the objects of coterie ambition! -Alas! the typical apple of the Judaical Paradise was no unseemly emblem of all subsequent motives of female temptation!

CHAPTER II.

Meanwhile opinion gilds with varying rays,
Those painted clouds that beautify our days;
Each want of happiness by Hope supplied,
And each vacuity of sense, by Pride;
Then build as fast as knowledge can destroy;
In Folly's cup still laughs the bubble, Joy.

POPE.

Nugis addere pondus.-HOR. Ep. 19.

I HAVE perhaps observed before (but truisms cannot be too often repeated, or what would become of parliamentary eloquence?)—that we prize the objects of our affections rather according to the value set upon them by others, than according to our own. In love, as in all else, we must spell by the book; and our passions, like our milestones, are measured from the standard on Cornhill.

Mrs. Brettingham was considered just then,

the prettiest woman about town. When her carriage glanced through the park, people stood still to gaze. Her face was limned by Lawrence, and stared at in the Exhibition; and I appeal to Boyle Farm, whether it had any thing half so pretty at its breakfast ?—It was perhaps because conscious the metal was sterling, that she was so eager to have it stamped with the King's countenance.

That she was desirous of royal notice, I knew: for by attaining it, she was secure of double the portion of my society. Such at least was the light in which she represented the matter to me, or in which I represented it to myself,-and for my own share, felt of course that it would be far from unsatisfactory to have my brilliancy thrown out into relief, in those Pavilion soirées, by such a shadow as the beautiful Mrs. Brettingham constantly attached to my precious ⚫ person.

But it is no such easy matter to effect innovations in a royal circle. A new star among