a country clergyman-and but for an unfortunate accident, bade fair to become mistress of the parsonage within the month. "On the day that my clerical admirer had formally requested permission to pay me his addresses, the table d'hôte received an addition to the company. The stranger was a young man whose moustache and military carriage proclaimed him a light dragoon. He noticed me particularly from the moment he took his place-made anxious inquiries from his neighbour - obtained an introduction after dinner and learned all further information from myself. I thought that on so slight an acquaintance his manner towards me was rather too easy and unreserved-and as the parson exhibited symptoms of jealousy, I determined to control my fancy for flirtation, repress the freedom of the bold dragoon, and, instead of losing the substance for the shadow, wisely secure the living of Bromley cum Bellington, and the Reverend Joshua Singletonbut fate forbade it. "I had been walking in the garden, and was returning slowly through a shaded alley, when suddenly a man's arm clasped my waist, and when I started and turned round, the intruder snatched a kiss. It was the young dragoon, and however under different circumstances I might have encouraged a flirtation, the easy insolence of his conduct piqued my pride, and elicited an indignant outburst. "What, my dearest aunt!' he exclaimed, ironically, have you for gotten your nephew and heir-at-law? What miraculous changes a southern sky has wrought! You are younger by ten years, and-saints and angels!-you went to Italy with blue eyes and now you come back with black ones.' "In a moment the truth flashed upon me-it was Frederick MelvilleI had often heard of him-a wild, dissipated young man,-and was completely at his mercy. Conditions were entered into-one was my immediate departure from Three days were permitted. It is enough to say that before one elapsed, from the reckless character of the dragoon, the parson saw sufficient reasons for declining the honour I had conceded. Melville, with his own wild military notions of honour, preserved my secret inviolably, and I left the hotel of as I entered itMrs. Melville-at least in name. "I had failed in Wales, but why should I not succeed in England? I took an instant resolution, and boldly headed hither. I found no difficulty in gaining an entré to this establishment. One moiety of the company were Indians-their knowledge of the world must, therefore be postdated thirty years at least; the other portions were cockneys, and they knew nothing whatever of aught that passes beyond the boundaries of Pimlico and Tower-hill. This general ignorance was favourable, but, as it proved, unfortunately, not a man of the gang could be turned to account. "I may here connect my narrative by telling you that on my way to Leamington I encountered Fanny Meadows. It appeared from Fanny's story that I had quitted the stage in proper time. The corps dramatique, after a season's starvation, were scattered. Mr. Percival had been sent to the treadmill for stealing fowls, and Miss Meadows, when I met her, was earning a respectable crust' as she termed it, by fortunetelling.' I wanted a maid-Miss Meadows wanted a mistress, and in such relations we took up our quarters in Mrs. Screwup's boarding es tablishment.' "My money vanished, and I decided, after a consultation with Fanny, to victimise the tradesmen and levant. I did it to trifling account-a mere bagatelle-thirty or forty pounds-silks and shawls—but not a guinea. Landlady looking shy-washerwoman clamorous-when lo! a victim came. I felt that I was about to figure in, and dropped the letter. Hang it! 'twere well to know the worst, and I continued the perusal of Miss Hookem's epistle. "Matters were desperate-a general panic in and out of doorstradesmen called thrice a-day-and Mrs. Screwup politely intimated that payments were expected weekly-Fanny agreed, at a midnight consultation that, in her refined parlance, we should cut our lucky' without delay. "A visiter arrived-his place was opposite to mine at table-I saw the soft spot upon his countenance-played my good luck against his weakness-and, but for a miracle, would have succeeded. "Will you start, Jenny, when I tell you he was your countryman-a regular Irishman-a great O followed by three syllables. Of all the spoons I ever met-of all the muffs I ever dropped upon, I give the palm decidedly to Captain O'Sullivan !" The paper dropped from me-I pleaded guilty-a muff by every thing spooney! I turned a page. No use in following seriatim the pleasing details, but I culled fragments as I skimmed the writing with my eye. "Fanny, capital as the forlorn one, and my empty purse, although stale as ring-dropping, perfectly successful." A few pleasing comments on my character followed, and then came the action of the drama. "All is packed-and Fanny has employed a poacher's tax-cart. It strikes one- Heaven send that she has not taken too much gin! That is a cursed drawback to her utility. How handy it is for midnight flitting to put one's loose things into pillow-slips! Heigh-ho! I'll close this letter-pop it into the next post-office, and prepare you for my re-appearance. I fear that Fanny has got lushy-and, if so, I'm ruined. No! sand against the windows! Herself and the poacher underneathall's right. Pleasant dreams to you, Captain O'Sullivan ! Mrs. Screwup, I owe you three weeks' rent-don't you wish you may get it? Secure my old lodgings-and, when we meet, you shall laugh at a full detail of my Leamington adventures." "And now, Captain O'Sullivan, as you and I are the chief sufferers, what course would you propose should be adopted?" "I am of opinion," said the sugar-boiler, "that a personal description should be forwarded to the head office of police, and the fullest details given through the papers of the transaction." "Excuse me, sir," I replied, 66 SO far as I am concerned, I have no ambition to go the rounds of the press in company with Messrs. Gibbs and Green, Mr. Jones, the jeweller, and Mrs. Melville, or Percival, or Hookhem. Ah! Shawn Cruchadore!" I mentally ejaculated, as I hurried from the room, "your parting admonition was prophetic-if ever there was an ass in human form I admit myself the thing. To be fooled once was bad enough-but still the cook had a two years' character to exhibit—but to be done brown' by Mrs. Melville-a hybrid, between a strolling actress and a lady's-maid, without a rag of character at all. By Saint Patrick! was a shrewd guess at the Welch inn, when they fancied that I would be the better for a keeper." it THE PHILOSOPHY OF WALTZING. OUR age is unquestionably the age of rapid conquest and easy success. By means of clubs, of political unions, and of peaceful agitation, we have accomplished changes, which formerly the activity of a "long parlisment" or the toils of a "hundred battles" would have scarcely achieved. The empire of man over matter has been raised from a slender and precarious tenure to a vast and proud dominion. We approached, and took at one bound the ramparts, behind which nature's most precious secrets lay concealed. The almost stationary circle of human knowledge has begun to vibrate again and to expand with renewed celerity, as if some fresh stimulant were at work in the centre. Gas, steam, electricity, have quickened the pulse of our political, social, and moral life. Every thing par takes of the magnitude and the rapidity of our enterprises. We speak, and the next hour shapes our thoughts into elaborate works, and sends them all over the world. Our streets are no longer lighted at night, they have become channels to a continuous current of blaze, we might almost say, they are set on fire. We travel no more, but we arrive. Force has superseded bulk, speed has destroyed distance, intensity has become the master of extensiveness. Thus a new Pantheism has been created by the intellect of man. At every step we meet some new deity, to which we must yield perfect allegiance. But more skilful, or perhaps more fortunate than the race of old, we have peopled our Olympus with a most harmonious array of gods. We derive all our happiness and well-being, not by taking sides in celes tial quarrels, but by strengthening peace in the great council of gods; not by inviting the exclusive protection of one of them, but by an uniform and equal homage to all. The time has now arrived when to the rank and the honours of successful conquerors we must admit another aspirant to glory. This new favourite of fortune has imperceptibly worked his way to power, until the most independent and refractory part of our community has become his slaves. Though of a very humble extraction, he wields the wand of authority with the grace and the strength of his more ambitious companions. Scouted, dreaded, shunned, like a Pariah during his earlier career, he is now courted by the most fastidious, and worshipped by the fairest part of the community. His first appearance struck terror into the bosom both of weak and powerful, like the approach of the plague or the shock of an earthquake. He was to bring all the calamities of Egypt in his train. No surer sign of the near advent of the Anti-Christ could be found. The first apprehensions of the second Millennium could not be better shadowed forth than in the dread inspired by this forerunner of the final doom of the world. His very name, like that of Timour in the East, or of the Arab Tarik in Spain, served mothers to frighten their naughty children. But, like Timour, from an outlaw he became a mighty monarch. A prototype of Odin, he departed as an exile, and came back with the honours of a god. With the magnanimity of Louis XII., the triumphant monarch forgot the injuries inflicted on the aspiring pretender. And now he exercises a mild sway over all ranks of society, infuses order among the most discordant elements of life, conciliates hatred, reconciles foes, draws closer the ties of affection between friends, and renders even 3 7206 ses love dependent on him for success. He has become one of our household deities. His fame is celebrated in poetry. From the poor organ in the street, to the mightiest band in the music-hall, all take his exploits for the theme of their song. All-low and high, wise and illiterate, gay and melancholy-all, all unite to proclaim the glories of the-WALTZ. "Hail, spirit-stirring Waltz!" Thou hast infused new vitality into our existence, opened fresh channels to our thoughts and imagination, shed a sudden lustre over our darkening age. Indeed, without thee, our century, heralded forth by so many glorious events, was beginning to sink into the dusk of thick-gathering obscurity. The boons conferred on the human race by the great inventions of the age, have not come without a strong alloy of sad drawbacks. Ever-converging and all-absorbing intensity has destroyed the pleasing variety of form and the genial mobility of expansiveness ;-concentrated force has dealt a fatal blow to the freedom and multifarious agency of individual ingenuity,-and the instantaneousness of speed has utterly annihilated the genius-stirring and mind-elevating incertitude between hopes and fears, the pleasurable dilatoriness of leisure, and the adventurous desultoriness supplied by distance. Hence mechanical improvements,-nail and screw inventions are springing up on all sides, whilst the spirit of chivalry and of poetry is fast flickering and wasting away its inspiring flame. The chilling influence of this tendency towards Lilliputian degeneration has already produced most alarming results. It is to be felt everywhere. Have our domestic han habits and wants escaped it? Take one instance. Beehive industry introduced beehive proportions into our abodes. present day no longer measure by yards, but by inches. In those honeyild comb cells there is scarcely elbow-room to move. With an admirable by unity of purpose, we have fortunately suited our straight-laced and close The architects of the bodied dresses to the exigencies of our salons; for one may well imagine ous what would be the fate and the distress of a Lauzun or a Duc de Richelieu, if he had to appear with his ruffles and his cocked hat, his rosettes and his sword, in a modern drawing-room, which, from the crowded state of pretty but pigmy furniture, affords no better comfort than the show-room of a cabinet-maker. How, in these mousetraps, the stately Pompadour, with her swelling hoop, could move, or the lovely De Sénanges, with her towering hair fabric, could stand, imagination is at a loss to conceive. by th Statuettes, apt and worthy discovery of modern times, have superseded the colossal works of art which used to adorn our ancestors' halls. A statue of moderate size would now have to struggle for space with the very chimney-tops. A picture of Guido or of Murillo would cover and envelop in its ample folds the infinitesimal parallelograms of a modern fu mansion, sides, roof, floor and all. After all, Hahnemann and his homœopathic system have had greater influence over our age than we are inclined to admit. No wonder that this has also been the age of the greatest improvements in the intensity of microscopic power. It is only by the agency of the microscope that we can fancy ourselves moving and breathing with the liberty and ease of our forefathers. tisse," says Quinet; "un génie Lilliputien prend la place des conceptions transcendentales; au lieu de l'epopée, l'epigramme; au lieu de l'infini, un atome." And what the French writer says of literature will hold good when applied to our customs, habits, and manners-Fuimus. "Tout se rape And where shall we look for consolation for a redeeming point, for some palpable proof that we are still living in space? where can we descry a corrective, if not to quicken anew the progress towards enlargement and expansion, at least to retard our headlong career to universal condensation and collapsion ?-Where? save to thee, spirit-stirring WALTZ! If in our mansions there be yet a room left larger than a railroad carriage-if, at our crowded assemblies, there remains still a safety-valve, a means of escaping from suffocation,-if, in the perpetual din of shooting stars and whizzing meteors, in which our lot has been cast, we have retained aught partaking of the harmonious rotation of celestial bodies, we owe it all to the "Imperial Waltz" alone. Come, then, Philosophers, and expound the theory of this great liberator. Come, Moralists, and teach his boons to mankind. Come, Politicians, and apply his lessons to the enfeebled frame of the state. Come, Poets, and sing his glory, develop his energies, and perpetuate his benign authority. The philosophy of the Waltz ?-How absurd! And yet look to Hegel; read the 261st article of his Philosophical Encyclopædia; inquire into the mutual relation between space and time, the Vergehen und Sichwiedererzeugen des Raums in Zeit, und der Zeit in Raum, which constitute die Bewegung, or motion, and you will find no better solution, exemplification, and illustration of this problem-no safer escape from being "tossed restlessly about on the great ocean of uncertainty," than in "the Estheticks" of the WALTZ. The morality of the Waltz ?-Still more absurd! Wait a moment. What is the standing complaint against the social relations of our great metropolis? Acquaintanceship is fast displacing Friendship out of the world-sighs out a poetical dreamer. As everybody is now required to know everybody, so the ambition of being supposed to know every thing can only end, under the most favourable circumstances, in the knowing a little of every thing, and a great deal of nothing-exclaims the stern moralist.-Et la raison? La voila! rejoins a staunch partisan of the WALTZ: your minuets and quadrilles have done it all. You danced quadrilles at the last ball with a score of young ladies in succession -did any one of them remember you the next morning?—would you have been excused if you had bowed to your fair partner in the park?Is there any chance of your being recognised at the next ball; or, if you will be happy enough to be so, and will be allowed a repetition of your former felicity, will you be ever able to claim more than an eau-sucré acquaintanceship? But how differently do we fare in the regions of the WALTZ! Of course, as in every thing else, chance presides at the first trial; but at the second, friendship knits the bond. Ay, ay," continues an enthusiast of the same class, "and in nine cases out of every ten, the winged boy with the bow and quiver pops in for the third." Partners in the Waltz during a season become generally man and wife at its end. The reason is obvious: for it is not in the mazes and perpetual changes, in rapid rivettings and equally sudden ruptures of a quadrille, but in the steady adherence, in the "prentice constancy" of the Waltz, that we are taught the blessings and the duties of the partnership for life. In Byron's exclamation— Imperial Waltz! imported from the Rhine, |