(as disappointment increased his propensities to dreaming) of brightening his solitude with the golden palaces and winged shapes that lie glassed within the fancythe soul's fairy-land. But the vision with him was only evoked one hour to be destroyed the next. Happy had it been for Godolphin, and not unfortunate, perhaps, for the world, had he learned at that exact moment the true motive for human action which he afterward, and too late, discovered. Happy had it been for him to have learned that there is an ambition to do good -an ambition to raise the wretched as well as to rise. Alas! either in letters or in politics, how utterly poor, barren, and untempting is every path that points upward to the mockery of public eminence, when looked upon by a soul that has any real elements of wise or noble, unless we have an impulse within which mortification chills not; a reward without, which selfish defeat does not destroy.

But, unblessed by one friend really wise or good, spoiled by the world, soured by disappointment, Godolphin's very faculties made him inert, and his very wisdom taught him to be useless. Again and again—as the spider in some cell where no winged insect ever wanders, builds and rebuilds its mesh-the scheming heart of the Idealist was doomed to weave net after net for those visions of the Lovely and the Perfect which never can descend to the gloomy regions wherein mortality is cast. The most common disease to genius is nympholepsy-the saddening for a spirit that the world knows not. Ah! how those outward disappointments which should cure, only feed the disease!

The dinner at Saville's was gay and lively, as such entertainments with such participators usually are. If nothing in the world is more heavy than your formal banquet, nothing, on the other hand, is more agreeable than those well-chosen laissez aller feasts at which the guests are as happily selected as the wines; where there is no form, no reserve, no effort; and people, having met to sit still for a few hours, are willing to be as pleasant to each other as if they were never to

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meet again. Yet the conversation in all companies not literary turns upon persons rather than things, and your wits learn their art only in the School for Scandal.

"Only think, Fanny," said Saville, "of Clavers turning beau in his old age! He commenced with being a jockey; then he became an electioneerer; then a Methodist parson; then a builder of houses; and now he has dashed suddenly up to London, rushed into the clubs, mounted a wig, studied an ogle, and walks about the Opera House swinging a cane, and, at the age of fifty-six, punching young minors in the side, and saying tremulously, We young fellows!'"

"He hires pages to come to him in the Park with three-cornered notes," said Fanny: "he opens each with affected nonchalance; looks full at the bearer; and cries aloud, Tell your mistress I cannot refuse her' then canters off with the air of a man persecuted à la mort !"

"But did you see what an immense pair of whiskers Chester has mounted?" "Yes," answered a Mr. De Lacy; "A says he has cultivated them in order to 'plant out' his ugliness."

"But vy you no talk, Monsieur de Dauphin?" said the Linettini, gently, turning to Percy; "you ver silent."

Unhappily, I have been so long out of town, that these anecdotes of the day are caviare to me."

"But so," cried Saville, "would a volume of French Memoirs be to any one that took it up for the first time; yet the French Memoirs amuse one exactly as much as if one had lived with the persons written of. Now that ought to be the case with conversations upon persons. I flatter myself, Fanny, that you and I hit off characters so well by a word or two, that no one who hears us wants to know anything more about them."

"I believe you," said Godolphin; "and that is the reason you never talk of yourselves."

"Bah! Apropos of egotists, did you meet Jack Barabel in Rome?"

"Yes, writing his travels. Pray,' said he to me (seizing me by the button), in the Colisseum, ‘what do you think is the highest order of literary composition? Why, an epic, I fancy,' said I; or perhaps a tragedy, or a great history, or a novel like Don Quixote. Pooh!' quoth Barahel, looking important, 'there's nothing so high in literature as a good book of travels;' then sinking his voice into a whisper, and laying his finger wisely on his nose, he hissed out, • I have a quarto, sir, in the

press!"

“Ha! ha!" laughed Stracey, the old wit, picking his teeth, and speaking for the first time; "if you tell Barabel you have seen a handsome woman, he says, mysteriously frowning, Handsome, sir! Has she travelled?-answer me that!""

"But have you seen Paulton's new equipage? Brown carriage, brown liveries, brown harness, brown horses, while Paulton and his wife sit within dressed in brown, cap-à-pié. The best of it is, that Paulton went to his coachmaker to order his carriage, saying, 'Mr. Houlditch, I am growing old-too old to be eccentric any longer; I must have something remarkably plain; and to this hour Paulton goes brown-ing about the town, crying out to every one, 'Nothing like simplicity, believe me.'"

"He discharged his coachman for wearing white gloves instead of brown," said Stracey. "What do you mean, sir,' cried he,' with your d-d showy vulgarities? Don't you see me toiling my soul out to be plain and quiet, and you must spoil all by not being brown enough!'"

“Ah, Godolphin, you seem pensive," whispered Fanny; "yet we are tolerably amusing, too."

"My dear Fanny," answered Godolphin, rousing himself, "the dialogue is gay, the actors know their parts, the lights are brilliant; but the scene-the scene cannot shift for me! Call it what you will, I am not deceived. I see the paint and the canvass, but—and yet, away these thoughts! Shall I fill your glass, Fanny?"

CHAPTER XXI.

AN EVENT OF GREAT IMPORTANCE TO THE PRINCIPAL ACTORS IN THIS HISTORY.-GODOLPHIN A SECOND TIME LEAVES ENGLAND.

GODOLPHIN was welcomed with enthusiasm by the London world. His graces, his manners, his genius, his bon ton, and his bonnes fortunes, were the theme of every society. Verses imputed to him-some erroneously, some truly-were mysteriously circulated from hand to hand; and every one envied the fair inspirers to whom they were supposed to be addressed.

It is not my intention to reiterate the wearisome echo of novelists, who descant on fashion and term it life. No description of rose-coloured curtains and buhl cabinets—no miniature paintings of boudoirs and salons -no recital of conventional insipidities, interlarded with affected criticisms, and honoured by the name of dramatic dialogue, shall lend their fascination to these pages. Far other and far deeper aims are mine in stooping to delineate the customs and springs of polite life. The reader must give himself wholly up to me; he must prepare to go with me through the grave as through the gay, and unresistingly to thread the dark and subtle interest which alone I can impart to these memoirs, or let him close the book at once. I promise him novelty; but it is not, when duly scanned, a novelty of a light and frivolous cast.

But, throughout that routine of dissipation in which he chased the phantom Forgetfulness, Godolphin sighed for the time he had fixed on for leaving the scenes in which it was pursued. Of Constance's present existence he heard nothing; of her former triumphs and conquests he heard everywhere. And when did he ever meet one face, however fair, which could awaken a single thought of admiration, while hers was yet all

faithfully glassed in his remembrance? I know nothing that so utterly converts society into "the gallery of pictures," as the recollection of one loved and lost. That recollection has but two cures-Time and the Hermitage. Foreigners impute to us the turn for sentiment; alas! there are no people who have it less. We seek for ever after amusement; and there is not one popular prose-book in our language in which the more tender and yearning secrets of the heart form the subject matter. The "Corinne" and the "Julie" weary us, or we turn them into sorry jests!

One evening, a little before his departure from England-that a lingering and vague hope, of which Constance was the object, had considerably protracted beyond the allotted time-Godolphin was at a house in which the hostess was a relation to Lord Erpingham. "Have you heard," asked Lady Gthat my cousin Erpingham is to be married?"

"No, indeed: to whom?" said Godolphin, eagerly. "To Miss Vernon."

Sudden as was the shock, Godolphin heard, and changed neither hue nor muscle.

"Are you certain of this?" asked a lady present. "Quite: Lady Erpingham is my authority; I received the news from herself this very day."

"And does she seem pleased with the match ?"

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Why, I can scarcely say, for the letter contradicts itself in every passage. Now she congratulates herself on having so charming a daughter-in-law; now she suddenly stops short to observe what a pity it is that young men should be so precipitate! Now she says what a great match it will be for her dear ward! and now, what a happy one it will be for Erpingham! In short, she does not know whether to be pleased or vexed; and that, pour dire vrai, is my case also."

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Why, indeed," observed the former speaker, " Miss Vernon has played her cards well. Lord Erpingham would have been a great match in himself, with his person and reputation. Ah! she was always an ambitious girl."