Antoine, who had retreated behind Rathbone, shrugged his shoulders, and lifted up his hands in affright. The two Africans exchanged glances, and all eyes were directed towards the beau, who with angry looks, and grasping his clouded cane, marched towards the valet. He was followed by Lady Brabazon, Sir Bulkeley Price, and Trussell Beechcroft. Lady Brabazon was attended by her black page, leading her dog by a riband, and this arrival excited the anger of one of the spaniels, whose furious barking set the macaw screaming.

Mr. Cripps presented a very chop-fallen appearance. All his assurance deserted him. His hands dropped to his side, and he scarcely dared to meet his master's angry gaze.

"Rascal!" exclaimed Villiers, "I have at last fairly detected you. I'll teach you to put on my clothes-to assume my name

"What!" screamed Mrs. Nettleship, dropping a bottle of salts, which she had placed to her nose-" isn't it really himself-isn't it Mr. Willars."

"No, madam,” replied the beau-" I am Mr. Villiers; and this rascal is only my valet, Crackenthorpe Cripps."

"Oh, the villain!-the base deceiver!-the impostor!" cried Mrs. Nettleship, clenching her hands, and regarding the valet as if she would annihilate him. "I'll tear his eyes out! To deceive and expose me in this way-to-to-to-oh! I shall never survive it. Support me!" she added, falling into the arms of the fair Thomasine.

"This is really too bad of you, sir," said Mr. Cripps, who began to recover himself a little. "You've deceived me. I thought you were at Newmarket."

"I received information of your practices, rascal," replied the beau," and determined to see to what extent you carried them. And a pretty discovery I've made! My house filled with company-my servants turned into your servants-a dinner, supper, confectionary, wine, fruit, musicians, and the devil knows what, ordered at my expense."

"Well, they're not thrown away, sir," replied Mr. Cripps. "You can marry the lady yourself, if you think proper. I've no doubt she'll consent to the exchange, and she has fifty thousand pounds."

"Oh, the impudence!" exclaimed Mrs. Nettleship, jumping up. "I'll not be taken in a second time. I'll be revenged on all the sex!"

"You're not aware, Mr. Willars, of the extensive frauds this rascal has practised upon you," said Mr. Rathbone. "He has actually signed a bond for five thousand pounds in your name, which I have in my pocket."

"The devil he Eas!" exclaimed Villiers.

"But it is of no effe: since the marriage has not taken place," said Mr. Cripps; "and if Mr. Villiers chooses to take the lady, he will of course pay you himself."

In spite of himself, the beau could not help laughing. "Bad as Mr. Cripps is, he is not worse than the other party," said Trussell, stepping forward; "while he was duping them, they tried to dupe him. I understand from Mr. Jukes, who has it on unquestionable authority, that Mrs. Nettleship, so far from being a wealthy widow, is greatly in debt, while her friend there, Mr. Rathbone, hoped to pocket the five thousand pounds secured by the bond he has mentioned."

"After all, then, it seems I've had an escape!" cried Mr. Cripps.

"You have," replied Trussell; "and your uncle would have told you all this before, if you had not kept him at a distance." I wont stay here to be laughed at !" cried the widow, looking defiance at the jeering countenances around her; "Mr. Rathbone, your arm.

"You had better go away by the back stairs," said Trussell, stopping them; "for there are a couple of bailiffs in the hall, waiting to arrest you!"

"Curse on it! I sent them myself," said Mr. Rathbone, "to compel the rascal I supposed to be Mr. Willars to pay your debts."

And hurrying out of the room, he acted upon Trussell's suggestion.

"And now, rascal," said the beau to the valet, " you are no longer in my service-I discharge you. And you may thank your stars that I let you off so easily."

"I was about to discharge you, sir," rejoined the valet, impertinently. "I don't desire to live with a gentleman who takes his servants by surprise. He's as bad as a jealous husband.”

"Stay!" cried the beau-" you don't leave me in that way. Antoine, stand by him. Now, sir, take off that peruke-take it off carefully-now the sword."

The orders were obeyed, and the wig and sword delivered to the French valet.

66

Anything else?" inquired Mr. Cripps, as he gave up the buckles. "Recollect there are ladies in the room, sir."

"Yes; take yourself off," rejoined the beau.

Even thus shorn of his splendour, Mr. Cripps maintained his customary assurance. He bowed profoundly and gracefully round, and quitted the room, amid the laughter of the com

pany.

MIDNIGHT REFLECTIONS.

BY THE HONOURABLE JULIA AUGUSTA MAYNARD.

HARK! from those solemn bells distinct arise
Th' unheeded chimes! Another hour, then, dies!
A drop, a mark, within th' appointed span
Is lost to earth, to virtue, and to man!
The midnight hour in mystic silence reigns,
And the sad wind in hollow moan complains.
Pale o'er the soul the memories of the past
Live in each beam, and tremble on each blast.
How in such scenes delusive splendours die!
How bared to view each cold reality!
The wealth of nations, and the pomp of pride,
By time's rude hand alike are cast aside.
Lo! Greece so mighty when her sons were free,
Sons! whose blood flow'd upon Thermopyla!
Spirits! that urged their charging valour on
To slay the Persian host at Marathon,

To chain th' insensate boaster to the car,

Where vict'ry shouting placed her radiant star.

Mark fallen Rome, her columns scathed and bent,

Each glory fled that lit her firmament!

E'en as the thunder-cloud expended lies,

Its flame extinct, along the watery skies,

Th' immortal city in her gloom appears—

Her fires extinguish'd in a flood of tears.

Whilst pond'ring o'er such wrecks, such wrecks as these,
How feel we then earth's utter vanities!

How in the urn of memory repose

The cherish'd ashes of each faded rose,

Each flower we cull'd when life was doubly sweet,
When fresh'ning hopes grew blooming at our feet!
The smiling vista to our eyes appear'd

By every thought of tenderness endear'd.
Yet why repine? so brief th' uncertain space
That fate hath doom'd us in th' appointed race-
On joys thus transient why expend our breath?
One gulf we're nearing, and that gulf is—death!

SONG.

BY LOUISA STUART COSTELLO.

Mandeville tells of trees that daily spring from the earth, increase in growth from sunrise to mid-day, and then decrease and re-enter the earth in the evening.

My heart is like those fabled trees

That spring from earth at morning's dawn,

Still higher rising by degrees

Until the sunlight is withdrawn ;

Then, as eve's shades begin to fall
They sink, as fades the dying day;
And when night's veil is over all,

In earth they vanish quite away.

Even so my tender wishes rise

Thus spring my hopes when in thy sight;

But when I look not on those eyes,

I sink at once to gloom and night!

DOCTOR CRISPINUS.

BY CAPTAIN MEDWIN.

I HAVE been present at two jubilees, one in Florence-a religious rite-when I had the misfortune to live in the Piazza Santa Maria Novella, so called from the splendid church of that name, and to which daily, almost hourly, priests, " black, white, and grey," passed in long procession, chanting in their monotonous, melancholy, deep-toned, drawl, suitable passages from the breviary; the bells-how I wished, with Voltaire, the ropes round the necks of the tormentors-jangling, in horrid discord, an accompaniment to the dismal psalmody; and this not for one week, or one month, but several weeks, and several months. It was too much for mortal endurance. Avoid, reader! as you would a pestilence, a square in catholic countries that contains a church. As to jubilees, they only occur once in fifty years, and neither you nor I are likely to require any warning against them.

The second of these well, or ill-entitled festivals, took place not quite two years ago, and was of an entirely different stamp. It was held in honour of Gütenberg. What a godsend was this to printers, and publishers, and booksellers, and "hoc genus omne," but more especially to the editors of newspapers and periodicals! It was worth half-adozen coronations; the fire at Westminster, the burning of the armory in the Tower, was a mere penny line in comparison. Deutchland, from all its great and little states, spawned forth a fry innumerable of "prosers and versers," in all dialects and no dialect. The public was not hypercritical, and gulped good-naturedly down-the Germans have good digestions-Swabian, Doric, Ionic, Hanoverian, and Berlin slang. There was not a petty town-they all have their daily paperswhere pockets were to be picked, that did not send forth programmes and prospectuses, and puffs, out-bentleying Bentley, teeming with anecdotes, stale, flat, and unprofitable, raked out of black-letter books, that passed for jewels, though originally paste, and not the better for new setting, till the very name of Gütenberg became as loathsome as crambe repetita; but a double dose is not necessary. Sour crout, without the second edition, will explain what I mean; so loathsome, as almost to make one lament that printing had been discovered—not that Gütenberg discovered it-that the savants here, the followers of Neichbuhr, and Paulus, and Strauss, and Schlosser, who delight in confounding all established notions of men and things, upsetting all that we were taught to consider of authority, pouncing on all that is venerable, have-now that the bubble is burst-proved to be quite a mistake. Thus we poor, simple, credulous mortals, get nothing but mystification for our pains and trouble, our journeyings by land and by water-shaking, almost to dislocation, in rattletrap caleshes, and stewing, almost to suffocation, in overloaded steamers.

It may be supposed that Mayence-the birth-place of Gütenberg, though, like Homer's, even that is contested-was not behind hand in doing honour to his memory. The bill of fare was a catching one; and among not the least of its attractions, Thorlwaldsen's statue, the funds for which, by the way, were collected in begging boxes throughout Europe, our own countrymen being the principal almsgivers. The man with the nose in Tristram Shandy, never raised so much curiosity,

or collected such crowds, as thronged to the setting-up of the brazen image of the pseudo-founder of the great art; in July or August, the day of the month I forget, in the year 1840, dampschifffahrt after dampschifffahrt arrived with freight after freight, till not a bed was to be obtained in the place for money, at least so I found. Don't suppose I mean to describe the raree-show. Imagine to yourself, reader, the great square, with the newly-erected ideal of the lion, his beard is like a mane, crammed with 15,000 dwellers on the banks of Rhine, and some thousands more posted at the windows of the houses, or perched on platforms to their very tops, and 1500 young men and maidens, tier above tier, bench upon bench, on rows on rows, mingling their voices in praise of that, which their country never has enjoyed, and is never, in our day at least, likely to enjoy, the liberty of the press; and then fancy me, an insignificant unit in this sum. Painters often stick themselves in the corner of their pictures, and you may form some conception of the scene, but cannot guess what my contemplations were. Not to keep you long in suspense, know then, my thoughts were not occupied by Gütenberg, the chorus, or the multitude-they were directed to quite a different channel. I had no ears for the music; I had no eyes for those, black or blue, that shot their glances from all sides; my own were fixed, riveted on a house opposite to which I was immovably jammed, that formed as complete a contrast to those about it, as I did to the living mass about me. It not only possessed no spectators, but the shutters were completely closed. The style of building, too, was totally distinct from that of its neighbours, whose society it seemed to disown-to avoid all intercourse with them, from a conscious pride of birth, a sense of superior genealogical or heraldic distinction. It reminded me of Lord Bridgewater's oldfashioned hotel, peeping forth in defiance from between the finished and unfinished parts of the Rue Rivoli, and was quite as much out of harmony with the general character. The edifice in question was, if not coeval with the cathedral, of very great antiquity. It was low, and thrown back from the rest of the houses, two of which, of great pretension, several stories high, of glaring whiteness, on either side, seemed disposed to thrust themselves into its notice, force themselves into its company, or, having failed, to elbow it out of its place. Yes, there it stood, that dark, frowning, melancholy little Gothic dwelling, of hewn stone, in its mysterious isolation; and never do I remember an inanimate thing producing any effect at all to be compared with what I experienced from this. Was it, I thought to myself, deserted or occupied? -if the latter, did it belong to some miser ?-No; in that case he would not have let slip such an opportunity of profiting by its fortunate locality. To some jealous husband, or crabbed old guardian?-in its distance and retired position there was at least safety;-or was its owner some new Cyprian, a hater, like Calderon's, of galas and jubilees, who had shut himself up in his laboratory to avoid el gran bullicio, the noise and tumult of the day?

Lost in such reveries, I remained gazing on the house after the crowd had separated, with a vague hope of clearing up some of my doubts-seeing some one go in, or come out; and scarcely, indeed, was quiet restored, when I did perceive a bird-like, skinny, wizard hand cautiously remove a shutter, and then an old man hastily put his head out of the window-shake his gray locks with an aspect of unutterable despair at the statue, and as suddenly make his retreat.