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vegetables, those lichens encrusting the stately fabric of a court, who, with the gleanings of all the last echoes of all the cities of Europe to feed their hungry ear, still crave for news,news,-news;—and would fain have new wars, fresh earthquakes, and a pestilence or two, invented for the relief of their ennui!-My beloved brethren of the Red Book,

Homunculi quanti sunt, cùm recogito!

CHAPTER IV.

Eventful day! how hast thou changed my state!
Once, on the cold and winter shaded side
Of a bleak hill, mischance had rooted me!
Transplanted now to the gay sunny vale

Like the green thorn of May, my fortune flowers!

HOME.

Respicere exemplar vitæ morumque jubebo
Doctum imitatorem, et verras hinc ducere voces.

HOR.

I HAD not surmised that any earthly thing could keep me awake so nearly all night,except an indigestion after a macédoine containing too much melon,-as my incertitudes concerning Soph. and her sister:-not so much who they were or what they were, as what they thought of me!—

The occasion was excellent as a meritometer. They were unprejudiced judges,-enabled to

decide upon me only as an animal standing betwixt earth and sky,-with whom they had conversed freely for three quarters of an hour: and who had done his very very best to make those three quarters of an hour pass like one!—

I said not a word to any one of my adventure; and my fever of impatience rose all the higher, as a case of suppressed curiosity thrown into the system. But I was resolved to ride over to Sunning Hill the following day, and ascertain all that was to be ascertained, good, bad, or indifferent, respecting my new friends. Any thing but the last!-I could bear to find them right or wrong; but if they proved to be mediocre, commonplace people, I was prepared to turn Saladin's head back to Windsor for good and all, without further care for my heroines.

Homme propose―roi dispose !—

The little Queen of Portugal came to visit us. Her Majesty was just then in abeyance in England; which has always been made a sort of

warehouse for bonded sovereigns. My morrow was right royally monopolized, ay, and even the following day: and thus, I had two more sleepless nights,—the last, positively insupportable; for I was haunted by visions of niggers and plantations,-yams and centipedes,-all the mockeries with which the mystery of somnabulic association invests its visions. Sometimes Soph, sometimes Annie, was Nea; sometimes I was Tommy Moore,-sometimes Clarkson or Wilberforce; and together we wandered among the mangroves, and plucked the breadfruit; which I conclude was the forbidden fruit, for close beside it lay coiled a snake, awful as the great Land Serpent of Paradise, or the Anaconda of Monk Lewis!

-

But enough for the patience of the public if I favour it with my day dreams, leaving out of the question the night-mares of my unrest. On the third day, I was on the way to Sunning Hill at an early hour. My services were sure of not being under requisition at Windsor.

There was a Cabinet Council.

The gravities

of death-warrants and such like cares of state were going on :-no Cis Danby,-no motherof-pearl fishing rods for the present!

Silwood Cottage was just the sort of house where one might venture to make one's appearance at an unseemly hour. Soph and her sister were evidently distinct from the Order with whom, as Hajji Baba informs us, it is an act of criminality to be ignorant whether round spoons or oblong are to be used for such and such purposes of the table. They were thoroughly unconventionized. The Creole blood flowed too vividly in their veins to admit of such icy subjection. However, I had an anterior object to Silwood! - At a certain little village-inn, in the neighbourhood, called the Rising Sun, dwelt an honest man whom I had found occasion to befriend while Danby was the tenant of Forest Lodge, and to whom I determined to apply for information, in order that I might read the riot act

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