THE ROMANTIC YOUNG LADY. THERE is at present existing in a plain brick house, within twenty miles of our habitation, a young lady whom we have christened “the romantic young lady," ever since she came to an age of discretion. We have known her from her childhood, and can safely affirm that she did not take this turn till her fifteenth year, just after she had read Corinne, which at that time was going the round of the reading society. At that period, she lived with her father in the next village. We well remember calling accidentally, and being informed by her that it was "a most angelic day," a truth which certainly our own experience of the cold and wet in walking across would have inclined us to dispute. These were the first words which gave us a hint as to the real state of the young lady's mind; and we know not but we might have passed them over, had it not been for certain other expressions on her part, which served as a confirmation of our melancholy suspicious. Thus, when our attention was pointed at a small sampler, lying on the table, covered over with three alphabets in red, blue, and black, with a miniature green pyramid at the top, she observed pathetically that " it was done by herself in her infancy;" after which, turning to a daisy in a wine glass, she asked us languishingly if we love flowers, affirming in the same breath that "she quite doated on them, and verily believed that if there were no flowers, she should die outright. These expressions caused us a lengthened meditation on the young lady's case, as we walked home over the fields. Nor, with all allowances made, could we avoid the melancholy conclusion that she was gone romantic. "There is no hope for her," said we to ourselves. "Had she only gone mad, there might have been some chance." As usual, we were correct in our surmises. Within two months after this, our romantic friend ran away with the hair dresser's apprentice, who settled her in the identical plain brick house so honorably mentioned above. From our observations upon this case, and others of a similar kind, we feel no hesitation in laying before our readers the following characteristics, by which they shall know a romantic young lady within the first ten minutes of introduction. In the first place, you will observe that she always drawls more or less, using generally the drawl pathetic, occasionally diversified with the drawls sympathetic, melancholic, and semimelancholic. Then she is always pitying or wonder. ing. Her pity knows no bounds. She pilies "the poor flowers in winter." She pities her friend's shawl if it gets wet. She pities poor Mr. Brown, " he has such a taste! nothing but cabbages and potatoes in his garden." "Tis singular that, with all this fund of compassion, she was never known to pity a deserving object. That would be too much matter of fact. Her compassion is of a more etherial texture. She never gave any thing to a beggar, unless he was "an exceedingly picturesque young man." Next to the pas sion of pity, she is blest with that of love. She loves the moon. She loves each of the stars individually. She loves the sea, and when she is out in a small boat, loves a storm of all things. Her dislikes, it must be confessed, are equally strong and capacious. Thus she hates that dull woman, Mrs. Briggs. She can't bear that dry book, Rollin's history. She detests high roads. Nothing with her is in the mean. She either dotes or abominates. If you dance with her at a ball, she is sure to begin philosophising, in a small way, about the feelings. She is particularly partial to wear ing fresh flowers in her hair at dinner. You would be perfectly thunderstruck to hear, from her own lips, what an immense number of dear friends she has, both young and old, male and female. Her correspondence with young ladies is something quite appal. ling. She was never known, however, in her life to give one actual piece of information, except in a postscript. Her handwriting is excessively lilliputian, yet she always crosses in red ink, and sometimes recrosses again in invisible green. She has read all the love novels in Christendom, and is quite in love with that dear Mr Bulwer. Some prying persons say that she has got the complete works of Lord Byron; but on that point no one is perfectly certain. If she has a younger brother fresh from school, he is always ridiculing her for what she says, trying to put her in a passion, in which, however, he rarely succeeds. There is one thing in which she excels half her sex, for she hates scandal and gossip. To conclude, the naturalist may lay down three principal eras in the romantic young lady's life. The first from fifteen to nineteen, while she is growing romantic; the second, from nineteen to twenty-one, while she keeps romantic; and the third, from twentyone to twenty-nine, during which time she gradually subsides into common sense. THE MATTER OF FACT YOUNG LADY. OPPOSED to the romantic young lady, a class daily ecoming smaller, there is a class very common in these utilitarian times, whom we designate "the mat THE EVANGELICAL YOUNG LADY. ter of fact young ladies," for want of a better name. | how your mother makes it; and, having thus amused These young ladies are always most particularly cau- you as much as she thinks proper for some twenty mitious in every thing connected with them and theirs.nutes, informs you graciously that she must be going They were never known to receive a kiss from their now, since she "is wanted." You make your bow male cousins, are always most punctiliously neat, and and exit together, saying inwardly, "Hang her for a anticipate old maidenism by ten years, being scrupu- matter of fact young lady!" lous beyond measure in wearing dresses as plain and angular as themselves. Their conversation is wholly on actual things, without the slightest intrusion of an idea. They take literally every thing that you say, and are never surprised by any thing. You will not find a book of poetry on their shelves. The first row will, beyond doubt, be nothing but dictionaries : the second, abridgments of histories and recipes. In general they have no ear for music, and never touched a piano in their life. There are a variety of things of which they could never see the use. Thus they could never see the use of drawing, when prints can be had so cheap. They could never see the use of fancy-work. They could never see the use of dancing. FAR be it from us to decry true religion wherever it be found, more especially among the youthful fair, who can wear no ornament more precious or becoming. But of late there has sprung up a strange sort of morbid religion among the young ladies of our neighborhood, which deserves especial notice; we have carefully watched the whole progress of this disease in destroying the innocent mirth of our neighborhood, and can affirm most indubitably on the strictest historical evidence, that it began with Miss Slugs, the attorney's daughter, about a year-and-a-half ago. That distance of time has now elapsed, since upon paying a visit in that quarter, we found the once cheerful and vivacious Miss Slugs, sitting in the We once met one of these matter of fact young ladies in company with the romantic young lady. Nothing could be more amusing than the contrast. Whatever put the romantic young lady into ecstacies, was sure to make the matter of fact young lady look more than usually dull and insipid. When the ro-drawing room in a very plain dress, with an extremely mantic young lady expressed her intense delight at the beauty of the evening, the matter of fact young lady averred that she could see nothing in the night more than common, except that it was very likely to give a cold. But, to proceed with the characteristics which we were giving, it is to be observed that your matter of fact young ladies, if you are admitted suddenly into the sitting-room, will invariably be found engaged in the delightful process of mending a stocking. Your entrance, you would suppose, might interrupt this delicate work By no means. The matter of fact young lady sees nothing in it, as some others of our weaker-minded acquaintance might; but goes on as unconcernedly as ever, till the heel is finished off in regular rows of parallel straight lines, like a miniature ploughed field. Every now and then, without lifting up her eye, she gives you a word which you answer. Her first question is invariably concerning the health of your paternal ancestor, her second ditto about your mother, her third ditto about your sister Mary Anne, and so on through the catalogue. She then hopes that you yourself are in good health, and, having declined the word health from beginning to end, asks confidently who it is that mends your stockings, thus making a gentle reference to her own pleasing occupation. After this, she tells you without asking, to your eternal satisfaction; that her brother John went out shooting yesterday with a gun, and killed two robins; that her father is gone into the town about old Betty's leg, which she broke three weeks ago, in getting over the style near Mrs. Smith's, and that her mother is in the kitchen watching the cook making raspberry jam. This leads her to various acute observations, first on jam in general, and secondly, on raspberry jam in particular. She asks you sulky look, and doing nothing. We began our conversation with her in our usual mirthful style, which she had been accustomed to approve. But to each of our several witticisms she replied with only a cool yes or no. At last, fancying that we had hit on something to please her, we asked whether she was going to the ball on Friday. What was our surprise when, starting back in the utmost horror, Miss Slugs answered in this manner-"I thought," said she, "you were aware that I never go to balls now? 1 consider them to be extremely improper." After this she gratuitously quoted, for our exclusive information, two or three pages of Scripture, to all which we listened reverently, as we always do when Scripture is read, yet not without pain at thinking how greatly she perverted those doctrines, which, however serious in their ultimate objects, are yet, in our humble opinion, by no means opposed to occasional mirth. We did not again visit Miss Slugs for some time; but every now and then reports reached us that she was becoming daily more particular. First we heard that she had prevailed on her mother to dress the two maid-servants in a plain uniform of blue and white. Then came the report that she had set up a private Sunday school in opposition to the minister's academy. By degrees she did not come to church so often as usual, leaving her mother to come alone. This sur prised us particularly. We are curious, if not inquisitive. We called on our neighbors, inquiring the cause of this dereliction on the part of Miss Slugs. It appeared that in her opinion, our minister, who is a very excellent man, and a great friend of the bishop's, did not preach the Gospel. We puzzled oursolves to discover what she could be at during church time, since she did not come to church. But the task was beyond us. A faint rumor, and nothing more, reached us that on such occasions she sat before the kitchen | through the pronunciation of an ordinary monosyllable fire with the cook maid reading tracts. Accounts now in less than thirty seconds. Assuredly she must have spread of various small quarrels between Mrs. Slugs a wonderful taste for the beauties of language-for and Miss Slugs on the subject of religion. It seems from her drawl, it is plain that she is determined on the old lady could not be prevailed on to forswear a enjoying, as long as she can, every word that she utpink ribbon in her cap. Any thing else she was ters, just as a prudent economical child sucks his barwilling to give up to please her daughter, but not the ley sugar, instead of biting it to pieces at once. Then pink ribbon. The pink ribbon, therefore, was a per- observe the lazy young lady's attitude. Such a perpetual source of dispute, which did not end till the fect lounge on the very easiest and lowest chair which daughter herself cut it off one night when her mother she can pick out. We verily believe she knows every was in bed. This news, important as it was, hardly chair in the room by its comparative softness, or posprepared us for the next step of Miss Slugs, which sibly, (as we have sometimes thought,) she may have was no less than a secession from the Episcopalian been born with an intuitive power of knowing the Church. At first we doubted our ears-but the re- easiest chair at first sight. If it is winter, too, her cheeks port gained ground, and there was no course but to are always most particularly red, from her custom of believe it. All doubt was finally removed from our dragging the said chair as near the fire as possible, mind two or three weeks after by the witness of our and sitting there for hours, with her feet on the fenown eyes. For as we were walking one Sunday der, buried in huge worsted shoes, which remind you morning along the banks of a small river, we came of the north pole and Captain Ross. upon a shady place, where about two hundred per- The lazy young lady is sometimes thin, and somesons were collected, all looking very intently upon the times fat, but generally the latter. On any sudden centre of the stream. We ourselves turned our eyes in concussion, her cheeks will shiver like a jelly. If the same direction, and beheld the anabaptist black- you will believe her, she always has a headache-but smith and carpenter in the very act of turning Miss for our own part, we strongly suspect that this headSluggs backwards into the water. She was dressed ache is very often a pure invention to gratify her lazy in flannel for the occasion. The case was plain. Miss propensities. It is quite delightful to hear her colloSlugs had become an anabaptist, and the next day-quies with " mamma My dear, run and tell Betty married the carpenter. Although no other young ladies followed the example of Miss Slugs to the extent which she went, there was scarce one, saving and except the romantic and matter of fact young ladies, who was not touched with a spirit of secession more or less. With some the fit lasted a fortnight. With others, three or four months. With a few half a year. During this time, the balls were attended by old maids only, and in consequence received great detriment, from which they have not yet recovered. At present, the young ladies are pretty nearly come back to their senses. It is only to be hoped that they will not now become as violently fond of amusements, as they have lately been violently opposed to them This sudden change is often the case in republics, and perhaps even the republic of young ladies is not exempt from a liability to such an extravagance. In our humble opinion, to go to a ball three or four times in the year, is both a rational and cheerful amusement for the young of both sexes. But it is better to become an anabaptist at once, like Miss Slugs, than like some ladies whom we know, to waste heart, health and enegy, in a continual pursuit of irreclaimable frivolity. THE LAZY YOUNG LADY. As in the brute creation, nature has created the sloth, the use of which animal our zoologists have never been able to discover,-so in the young lady creation we find an analogous class, whom, from their habits, we denominate the lazy young lady (domina pigra.) The lazy young lady was never known to get that I want her directly." "Hadn't I better ring the bell, mamma?" says the lazy young lady. "No, my dear, you know that your uncle Tom is ill, and the bell might wake him-go yourself." "Yes, mamma," drawls the lazy young lady, and drags herself along to the door, at the rate of the minute-hand of her own watch. At the door, however, her resolution to go all the way to Betty, (who perhaps may be up stairs making the beds,) fails her completely. To mount those pyramidical stairs is too awful a prospect. Accordingly, she stops at the bottom, and bawls out as loud as she can, "Betty, Betty, mamma wants youmake haste." "Tis done; she crawls back, like an old woman of a hundred, to her easy chair, and flings herself down, in a most terrible state of fatigue from her late exertions. 66 "Now, my Presently the clock strikes eleven. dear," says mamma, " go and practice." "The clock on the stairs hasn't struck yet," says the lazy young lady. At last the clock on the stairs strikes. The lazy young lady makes two efforts to rise from her chair without success. One would think that some invisible power held her back. Oh, mamma," she cries out at length, "mayn't I put off practising till twelve? It will do just as well." No, my dear," says mamma, who knows perfectly well, from experience, how cunning the lazy young lady can be when she wants to put off business; "No, my dear, go at once." The lazy young lady waddles off at this authoritative admonition, casting many a wistful glance backwards at the easy chair. You hear her sigh as she opens the door, which she closes with a bang, to save trouble If you listen sharply, you will now hear heavy feet dragging slowly up stairs. Presently a low monotonous sound comes through the ceiling from the study, as of somebody practising on the piano forte. At first, it is tolerably quick. Alle- | am so tired, mamma; I really can't practice any more gro, perhaps, but never presto. From allegro, it sub- now. By this time she has reached the fire. The sides in a few minutes to allegretto, and so to andante. easy chair is too tempting. Down she flops, and reMamma listens with painful attention. What can mains there in the same position till she is forced to be the matter? Now only two or three notes are go and dress for dinner. By the time dinner is half heard at wide intervals. Now the music has stop- over she comes back. Every thing is cold. Papa ped altogether. Up jumps mamma, and is met at scolds, mamma frowns, brothers frown, and call her the door by the lazy young lady returning from her "lag last." Why can't you be quicker?" says practising. "What's this, Amelia ?" says mamma; mamma. Really, mamma," says the lazy young lady, "you havn't been practising ten minutes!" "I I came as quick as I could. I ran all the way down thought it was an hour," says the lazy young lady, "I stairs." QUIZ. 64 ΤΗΕ ΡΑΝ ΤΗΕΟΝ. Juno, Vesta, Minerva, Ceres, Diana, Venus, Mars, Mercurius, Neptunus, Jupiter. Vulcanus, Apollo. -Ennius. GoD of the fearful trident! On thy brow In low obeisance, thy great power to own; Upon the far-resounding whirlpool's verge, nown. These are thy awful works-the cruel sport By mingled love and fear, and pleasing wonder When wind and tide are hushed, and waves all tran bound. Lord of the boundless waves, seapotent dread! Immeasurable, matchless, and alone: When cloud and tempest, and the dark brow'd storm Is seen, convolved in wave and foam, thy car, quil sleep. When not a wave appears at eventide, Save from the pawing of thy courser's feet, On the still waters glides thy chariot fleet; Remote from storms, where adamantine walls Fling their far-flashing radiance on the wave, "MAN," says Sir Thomas Brown, "is a noble ani- | that burial, there resided what might startle the vomal! splendid in ashes, glorious in the grave; solemn-luptuary in the rankness of his lust, and what the izing nativities and funerals with equal lustre, and hermit might ponder in the loneliness of his cell. I not forgetting ceremonies of bravery in the infamy of was at the house of feasting and at the house of his nature!" Thus spake one who mocked, while he mourning. I saw the bride in the spring-blossom of wept, at man's estate, and gracefully tempered the her loveliness, and beheld the narrow coffin that high scoffings of philosophy with the profound com- housed her till eternity, passion of religion. As the sun's proudest moment is his latest, and as the forest puts on its brightest robe to die in, so does man summon ostentation to invest the hour of his weakness, and pride survives when power has departed; and what, we may ask, does this instinctive contempt for the honors of the dead proclaim, except the utter vanity of the glories of the living for mean indeed must be the real state of man, and false as the promises of hell the vast as sumptions of his life, when the poorest pageantry of a decent burial strikes upon the heart as a mockery of helplessness. Certain it is that pomp chiefly waits upon the beginning and the end of life; what lies between, may either raise a sigh or wake a laugh, for it mostly partakes of the bitterness of one and the sadness of the other. Life is like a night-mare dream in the after dinner sleep of a demon, in which an image of heaven is interrupted by a vision of hell; a thought of bliss breaks off to give place to a fancy of horror, and the fragments of happiness and discomfort lie mingled together in a confusion which would be ridiculous if it were not awful. The monuments of man's blessedness and of man's wretchedness lie side by side; we cannot look for one without discovering the other. The echo of joy is the moan of despair, and the cry of anguish is stifled in rejoicing. To make a monarch, there must be slaves, and that one may triumph, many must be weak. "Who is married?" said the gay and thoughtless Emma, as she took up that important chronicle of passing events, the daily paper. Married, on Wed. nesday morning, at the residence of her father, in Wiltshire, the Honorable Lady Charlotte Howard, to Captain Beauclerk, of the Royal Navy" and the reader passed on. Six months afterwards the servant put into the same hands the same gazette. "Who is dead?" said the fair querist, as she opened the expansive pages. "Died, on Wednesday morning, at the residence of her husband, in Wiltshire, the Honorable Lady Charlotte Beauclerk, in the 21st year of her age ;" and the reader passed on. Thus did the world notice and forget the two events: yet in the simple record of that marriage and The painter who searches earth and heaven for shapes of beauty to invest the loved Madonna of his toil, is not visited in his twilight musings by face more exquisite than was hers. An Arab, had he found her by a fountain in the desert, would have bowed in speechless wonder; he would have enshrined her delicately in a crystal niche, and offered his daily worship to the image, and never thought of love-she was so fair. With the fortunes of one who was rich in all that makes life enviable, she was about to mingle the gentle current of her fate, blessing and to be blessed. Around the scene of her bridal, as it now rises before me, there seemed to float, as it were, an atmosphere of delight- a perfume of happiness shed from the bright object who was the marvel of the time. As she stood before the priest, in her father's ancestral hall, in the elegant timidity of patrician refinement, surrounded by the high-born and the illustrious, fancy could not picture a being more favored, or a destiny more brilliant. Her glance was a memory of joys; her smiles a prophecy of bliss. Long and cloudless must be the summer-day that waits on a morning so splendid as this! A few months afterwards I had returned from a short tour to the continent, and without stopping in the metropolis, I went down to fulfil an engagement which I had made to visit the young couple in the country. I left the road a few miles from the house, and walked over the fields, for the day was delightful, and the rural scene showed full of charms. When I reached the park, I met an old servant of the family whom I had long remembered. Well, John," said I, "and how is your young mistress." "I am grieved to say, sir," said the old man, in a husky voice, and a tear gathering in his eye, "I am grieved to say, sir, that she died last night." Died!" cried I, in utter amazement, almost staggering with the shock, and overcome with a sickness of heart which I cannot describe. "Good God! can life never blunder into satisfaction? This incessant tale of disappointment is a story toe commonplaced to be listened-too regular to be believed!" It was a brief and ordinary tale of life and death; but brief and common as it was, it started feelings |