language that conveys so little endearment as the word "dear." But though the saying itself, like most truths, be trite and hackneyed, no little novelty remains to the search of the inquirer into the varieties of inimical import comprehended in that malign monosyllable. For instance, I submit to the experienced that the degree of hostility it betrays is in much proportioned to its collocation in the sentence. When, gliding indirectly through the rest of the period, it takes its stand at the close, as in that "Charles dear" of Mrs. Dale it has spilt so much of its natural bitterness by the way that it assumes even a smile, amara lento temperet risu.” Sometimes the smile is plaintive, sometimes arch.

Ex. gr.

(Plaintive.)

66

"I know very well that whatever I do is wrong, Charles dear."

"Nay, I am only glad you amused yourself so much without me, Charles dear.”

"Not quite so loud! If you had but my poor head, Charles dear," &c.

(Arch.)

"If you could spill the ink anywhere but on the best table-cloth, Charles dear!"

"But though you must always have your own way, you are not quite faultless, own, Charles dear," &c. In this collocation occur many dears, parental as well as conjugal; as "Hold up your head, and don't look quite so cross, dear." "Be a good boy for once in your life dear," &c.

that's a

When the enemy stops in the middle of the sentence, its venom is naturally less exhausted. Ex. gr.

"Really I must say, Charles dear, that you are the most fidgetty person," &c.

"And if the house bills were so high last week, Charles dear, I should just like to know whose fault that's all."

it was

"Do you think, Charles dear, that you could put your feet anywhere except upon the chintz sofa?"

"But you know, Charles dear, that you care no more for me and the children than," &c.

But if the fatal word spring up, in its primitive freshness, at the head of the sentence, bow your head to the storm. It then assumes the majesty of "my" before it; is generally more than simple objurgation it prefaces a sermon. My candour obliges me to confess that this is the mode in which the hateful monosyllable is more usually employed by the marital part of the one flesh; and has something about it of the odious assumption of the Petruchian pater-familias -the head of the family boding, not perhaps "peace, and love, and quiet life," but certainly "awful rule and right supremacy." Ex. gr.

"My dear Jane

I wish you would just put by that everlasting tent-stitch, and listen to me for a few moments," &c.

"My dear Jane I wish you would understand me for once don't think I am angry

am hurt. You must consider," &c.

no, but I

"My dear Jane I don't know if it is your intention to ruin me; but I only wish you would do as all other women do who care three straws for their husbands' property," &c.

"My dear Jane

I wish you to understand that

I am the last person in the world to be jealous; but I'll be d-d if that puppy, Captain Prettyman," &c.

Now, if that same "dear" could be thoroughly raked and hoed out of the connubial garden, I don't think that the remaining nettles would signify a button. But even as it was, Parson Dale, good man, would have prized his garden beyond all the bowers which Spenser and Tasso have sung so musically, though there had not been a single specimen of "dear," whether the dear humilis, or the dear superba; the dear pallida, rubra, or nigra; the dear umbrosa, florens, spicata; the dear suavis, or the dear horrida; no, not a single dear in the whole horticulture of matrimony which Mrs. Dale had not brought to perfection. But this, fortunately, was far from being the case the dears of Mrs. Dale were only wild flowers after all!

-

CHAPTER IX.

IN the cool of the evening, Dr. Riccabocca walked home across the fields. Mr. and Mrs. Dale had accom. panied him half way; and as they now turned back to the parsonage, they looked behind, to catch a glimpse of the tall, outlandish figure, winding slowly through the path amidst the waves of the green corn.

"Poor man!" said Mrs. Dale, feelingly; "and the button was off his wristband! What a pity he has nobody to take care of him! He seems very domestic. Don't you think, Charles, it would be a great blessing if we could get him a good wife?"

"Um," said the Parson; "I doubt if he values the married state as he ought."

"What do you mean, Charles? I never saw a man more polite to ladies in my life."

"Yes, but

"But what? You are always so mysterious, Charles dear."

"Mysterious! No, Carry; but if you could hear what the Doctor says of the ladies sometimes."

"Ay, when you men get together, my dear. I know what that means pretty things you say of us. But you are all alike; you know you are, love!" “I am sure,” said the Parson simply, "that I have good cause to speak well of the sex you, and

of

my poor mother."

when I think

Mrs. Dale, who, with all her "tempers," was an excellent woman, and loved her husband with the whole of her quick little heart, was touched. She pressed his hand, and did not call him dear all the way home.

Meanwhile the Italian passed the fields, and came upon the high-road about two miles from Hazeldean. On one side stood an old-fashioned solitary inn, such as English inns used to be before they became railway hotels-square, solid, old-fashioned, looking so hospitable and comfortable, with their great signs swinging from some elm-tree in front, and the long row of stables standing a little back, with a chaise or two in the yard, and the jolly landlord talking of the crops to some stout farmer, who has stopped his rough pony at the well-known door. Opposite this inn, on the other side the road, stood the habitation of Dr. Riccabocca.

A few years before the date of these annals, the stage-coach, on its way to London from a seaport

town, stopped at the inn, as was its wont, for a good hour, that its passengers might dine like Christian Englishmen not gulp down a basin of scalding soup, like everlasting heathen Yankees, with that cursed railway whistle shrieking like a fiend in their ears! It was the best dining-place on the whole road, for the trout in the neighbouring rill were famous, and so was the mutton which came from Hazeldean Park.

From the outside of the coach had descended two passengers, who, alone insensible to the attractions of mutton and trout, refused to dine two melancholylooking foreigners, of whom one was Signor Riccabocca, much the same as we see him now, only that the black suit was less threadbare, the tall form less meagre, and he did not then wear spectacles; and the other was his servant. "They would walk about while the coach stopped." Now the Italian's eye had been caught by a mouldering dismantled house on the other side the road, which nevertheless was well situated; half-way up a green hill, with its aspect due south, a little cascade falling down artificial rock-work, and a terrace with a balustrade, and a few broken urns and statues before its Ionic portico; while on the roadside stood a board, with characters already half effaced, implying that the house was to be "Let unfurnished, with or without land.”

The abode that looked so cheerless, and which had so evidently hung long on hand, was the property of Squire Hazeldean. It had been built by his grandfather on the female side a country gentleman who had actually been in Italy, (a journey rare enough to boast of in those days,) and who, on his return home, had attempted a miniature imitation of an Italian villa,