tred in a certain routine of lessons; all their ambition extending only to shine at those parties of Mrs. Dashington, at which they were permitted to be present; parties wherein they first contrive to exert their incipient coquetry, and from which, alas! too many of them learned lessons not to be unlearned by their future career.

And here, by the by, a word or two on the propriety and regulation of establishments of this kind. They are, of course, generally kept by needy persons; and those persons are but too apt to lie under pecuniary and other obligations, which they are willing enough to return by invitations to all the little fêtes which the nature of their occupation enables them, and, in some instances requires, them to give.

By these means, young women are brought in contact with persons of the other sex, whom they never could have met at the houses of their parents; and while the youthful mind is too fresh in life, and too unhacknied in the conventional distinctions of society, to place a proper value upon rank and equality of worldly circumstances, they are but too open to the impression which a pleasing exterior and address, and agreeable conversation, intermixed with a little flattery, is too likely to be made by the first man who has ever talked to her as though she were, and has made her feel that she was, a woman.

There are, in consequence, few of these establishments in which there is not a great danger of a young woman's forming connexions which can never be pleasing to their mor ambitious parents; for while there are idle and briefless barristers, with wit enough to make themselves agreeableyoung officers, with sufficient dash and gallantry to captivate the female heart-and wealthy dandy sons of merchants, with power to command opera boxes for the duenna of the establishment-there will always be a crowd of young men who will flock to a "flirtation general," with young ladies of a rank in life whom they could never meet with by any other means than their acquaintance with the school-mistress. This fault, and a most dangerous one it is, exists in all the gradations of these establishments; and, in many cases, the foundation of those unequal alliances, which embitter so many parents' hearts, and disappoint so many expectations, have had their origin in these schools of embryo coquetry in these scenes of incipient flirtation.

Those who imagine the room appropriated to study in

Mrs. Dashington's establishment to resemble any thing like a common school, would be most egregiously mistaken.

There was no long desk at which the pupils were confined to pursue their studies; no torturing stocks, to twist their toes into north by north-east, and south by south-west; no back boards of bright red morocco, with a steel collar to be passed under their chin, to keep their heads up. No: the young ladies of Mrs. Dashington's establishment could hold up their heads high enough without any such mechanical assistance; they had only to think upon their birth— upon their ancestors-upon their aunt the marchioness-their cousin the countess-or their fortune; and crown the whole by the exclusive reputation of being a pupil of the Square school, to enable them to hold up their heads quite high enough for any purpose in the world.

Indeed, long after they had quitted it, and were " out," as the phrase is, and very well applied in some instances, they were very apt to think very little of all the new presentations, who had not taken their degrees as "Mistresses of Arts" in Mrs. Dashington's university; and some of her very exclusive élèves were once on the point of establishing an annual quadrille of her ex-pupils, after the manner of the dinner of some of our public schools, and admit none but Christchurch men as their visiters, only that the husbands of some of them having had the misfortune to have been matriculated at Magdalen Hall, Wadham, and St. John's, did not like to leave their wives at the mercy of the gentlemen commoners of Christ-church.

In the stead of all the above-enumerated common appendages of a boarding-school, Mrs. Dashington's pupils' room exhibited elegant library tables, covered with all the lighter literary productions of the day, mixed up with a thousand knick-knacks in or-molu, china, bronze, paper and pasteboard.

The principal portion of the literature of the establishment consisted in the novels of the day, the poems of Byron and Moore, and the various effusions of the" Flowers of Poesy," and all the host of little "prettynesses," which daily emanate from the ever-teeming press of modern publications, in magazines, annuals, repertories, &c.

These the young ladies were allowed to read indiscriminately; nor, as long as they paid sufficient attention to the professors of music and dancing-as long as they moved to

of mind and intellectual superiority enough to de where there was passion and feeling, the gush of g the genuine warmth of poetry where there was the overwrought history of hearts and their propens own heart was too apt to mislead her judgment, ar of her own right tendencies, she laid up a store of 1 which, on a mind differently constituted, might ha dered principles and a code morale of a very nature. There was, however, implanted in her b an innate sense of right, that this reading only ma apologies for the failings of others, without exciting tion in a heart so pure as her own; and conscio correct feeling, she would often violently assert he dence, by defending the guilty as well as the injure the vituperations and calumnies of public report.

These points of her character, however, the firm which she had contracted with the Lady Emily some measure counteracted.

Lady Emily united prudence with feeling; a judgment more mature than her years, she atten in some measure succeeded, in a regulation of h more ardent temperament.

Lady Emily was the sister of Charles Trevor danced with Agnes on an evening which still rema vividly impressed upon her remembrance; and h bearing a slight resemblance to her brother's, recal recollections of that evening, with their subseque meetings on the seashore, with sensations a little r to the feelings of the woman, than they were w half-stolen interviews were enjoyed at Brighton.

Lady Emily, too, wished nothing more than

of Charles, whom she loved with all the fondness of a sister's love; and who that has ever had a sister, does not know how strong that love is, and how often a sisterly affection renders a woman blind to a brother's failings?

This circumstance begot a confidence between these two young ladies, which led to a close intimacy. Agnes loved the Lady Emily for her kindness, her goodness of disposition, and perhaps for her likeness to her brother; but she thought her friend's mind a little too common-place-a little too much given to tread in the beaten track which others had trod before, and too apt to regulate her feelings by her head, instead of permitting her actions and emotions to be dictated entirely by her heart.

Lady Emily loved Agnes for the generosity of her disposition. She loved her even for her romance, though she saw its dangerous tendency; and she admired the vigour of her intellect, and the richness of her imagination. But she did the utmost in her power to curb those ebullitions of her feelings, which were ever bursting out into violent emotions of indignation at oppression, or of unqualified admiration at efforts of intellect or generosity.

She saw all the sterling good qualities of her heart, the almost stern uprightness of her mind, in spite of all the softness engendered by her course of reading, and in spite of all the excuses which her generous kindness could find for the dereliction of others.

She felt that such a woman would make an invaluable wife for her darling brother, and trusted that such qualities would fix for ever the wavering mind of Charles Trevor. Agnes' own recollection of her former intercourse, her romantic ideas of first love, and early impressions, rendered her secretly almost as anxious for this event as her friend; and the image of Trevor, thus kept alive in her mind, no wonder that, when time and chance threw him in her way, her heart was just in the state to deceive itself, and to receive the impression which the ardent impetuosity of a young man's passion was calculated to inspire.

During this period Trevor was abroad; and though he was not a very constant correspondent, yet, as the few letters that Lady Emily received from him gave lively descriptions of the places he had passed through, and were plentifully chequered with "blue skies of Italy," the "banks of the Arno," and the "sublime of the Alps and Apennines," they

impressed them both with the idea that he was a man of taste and feeling; and those descriptions were well calculated to keep alive the romance which had been already woven in the imagination of Agnes.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE FAUX PAS.

I want a hero: an uncommon want,

When every year and month sends forth a new one,
Till, after cloying the Gazette with cant,
The age discovers he is not the true one;

Of such as these I should not care to vaunt,
I'll therefore take our ancient friend, Don Juan.

BYRON.

By this time we little doubt but many of our readers are wondering where the hero of the tale is concealed, and are turning over every chapter in "double quick time," as the military say, hoping to find out the Rové. It is, however, the province of the skilful dramatist to keep back its principal character till the second, and sometimes the third act; nay, in some instances, we have known him introduced only just in time for the denouement, and indeed that is the principal part of the work, whether novel or play, in which he is necessary.

The subordinate characters may keep up, prolong, and perhaps attenuate the interest, which the hero arrives in time to complete. Besides, there is, perhaps, some art in thus keeping back the character whose life we profess to write.Mystery, we all know, excites an interest, which its removal frequently destroys. The interest of Mokanna is kept alive only so long as his veil is unlifted: the revelation of his countenance makes him a common hero; and a common hero, at least a modern hero, is a mere nobody-a mere coat and breeches part, as it is phrased in the technicals of the green-room. There is likewise a difficulty in our hero which is uncommon. -the difficulty of creating a Roué bad enough to make him