allowable and indispensable; to affect what we have not, is contemptible and absurd. A man who excels in many things, is conscious that his just pretensions to fame are sufficient to obtain it, without the humility of simulation. To simulate, is always to humble ourselves: it implies a conviction, that we want something essentially necessary to reputation; and since we cannot attain it openly and honourably, we must adopt subterfuge and hypocrisy.

Lord Montague spoke on those subjects which might naturally be supposed most agreeable to Miss Argyle. He did not, with ob trusive and oppressive pedantry, compel into his service learned dogmas, and suffer them to burst on her, in one vast eruption. He threw out an idea in a manner simple and unpretending. If her mind seized it, and pursued it yet farther, he entered on it diffusely, and always dismissed it exactly at the proper moment. Learning is certainly admirable, but it is most charming in the drapery of taste. A painter admires the muscles of the human body, but he never, for a moment, wishes that the absence of the "fleshly veil" would render them more perceptible.

"War is a subject ill adapted to this scene,' resumed Lord Montague. "We should speak rather of the delights of Eden."

"Of the melody of the angel Israfil, and of the divine harmony proceeding from the clashing of the golden-bodied trees of the Mussulman's heaven!" added Miss Argyle. "I would not introduce such a subject in the

most delicious scene in the universe, if I wished to receive pleasure from the prospect itself. Visions so splendid give a vapid appearance to the most pleasing realities; the languid eye rejects the beauties of the real world, for the splendour of the ideal. They are like the white almond blossoming on naked branches, -rendering deficiency more perceptible, by placing before our imagination what is possible."

"There are some scenes, however, which cannot lose, and may gain, by the most splendid contrast; such, perhaps, as those shared by two that love equally and eternally. Solitude is generally, I think, unfavourable to external impressions. Is it not true, that

4

4

If solitude succeed to grief,

'Release from pain is slight relief;
• The vacant bosom's wilderness

Might thank the pang that made it less.
We loathe what none are left to share-
Even bliss-'twere wo alone to bear;
The heart once left thus desolate,
Must fly at last for ease-to hate.
It is as if the dead could feel
The icy worm around them steal,'
And shudder, as the reptiles creep,

To revel o'er their rotting sleep,
Without the power to scare away,
The cold consumers of their clay !
"It is as if the desart bird,

• Whose beak unlocks her bosom stream,
To still her famish'd nestlings' scream;
Nor mourns a life to them transferr'd;
'Should rend her rash devoted breast,
And find them flown her empty nest.
The keenest pangs the wretched find
Are rapture to the dreary void-
The leafless desart of the mind-
The waste of feelings unemployed.→
Who would be doom'd to gaze upon
A sky without a cloud or sun?
Less hideous far the trumpet's roar,
Than ne'er to brave the billows more
Thrown when the war of winds is o'er,
A lonely wreck on fortune's shore,

"It is not probable, Miss Argyle," continued Lord Montague, with melancholy earnestness, "that you should ever feel how deeply these surpassing lines speak to the heart: he only who has felt this desolateness, whose energies have been benumbed by it, can appreciate their full force. God grant, madam, that the sky which canopies your head, may never be that without a cloud or sun,'-that you may never have cause to thank that pang' which only proves to the wretch on whom it is inflicted, that he can feel, and be wounded by it !” They reached the house: Lord Montague sighed profoundly, and Isadora, melancholy and unhappy, sought her apartment.

CHAP. XIII.

"But inborn worth that fortune can't control,
New-strung and stiffer bent her softer soul.
The heroine assumed the woman's place,
Confirmed her mind, and fortified her face."

DRYDEN.

DAYS passed on, Lord Montague had resumed his usual manner, and his habitual attention to Miss Argyle. Yet every hour strengthened the impression each had received of the other.

"Lord Montague," said Lady Anne de Burgh to Miss Argyle, "is the only man I ever knew

who towers in such evident and almost incredible superiority over others, without being generally disliked."

"He is, indeed, an extraordinary being," said Miss Argyle, sighing; "every one who knows him must be aware of the impossibility of doing justice by description to the rapidity of his thoughts, which glance, like lightning, from object to object, remote as the sun from the earth to the quickness of his conceptions, the justness and accuracy of his remarks, the elegance, the facility, and the perspicuity of his eloquence; and the patient, but never oppressive dignity of his silence. These are qualities which distinguish him so remarkably from all others, and which elevate him so high above their level. In all he says, either the grandeur of his soul, or the brilliancy of his genius, is displayed. He converses on the most important subjects, with the ease of a man to whom nothing appears difficult. And he discusses trifles with a playful dignity, which seems to elevate the subject to his level, and to give it an impressiveness of which it was never before imagined capable."

"You panegyrize con amore," said Lady Anne, half smiling, half astonished.

"Simply with justice, my dear Lady Anne," returned Miss Argyle; "it is impossible to speak of a character like Lord Montague's with indifference. It would be as impracticable for a woman to converse on such a subject with coldness, as for an Englishman to mention Magna Charta or the Bill of Rights with

out enthusiasm. We must admire Lord Montague; admiration is a tribute due to him. In the unhappy affair of Mr. Grosvenor, his character has been displayed in action. Every thing he undertakes, appears effected by magic. Impossibilities vanish at his voice; difficulties, at his touch, crumble into dust and facility seems to have personified itself, and to hover continually over him."

Miss Argyle coloured deeply; she had inadvertently betrayed more minute observance of Lord Montague, then was consistent with the indifference with which her pride demanded that the world should suppose she regarded him. And the idea that she would become an object of pity-of pity to the world--was attended by a pang scarcely less acute than that which the conviction of his indifference continually inflicted on her:

For every hour she passed in the society of Lord Montague contributed to confirm and to strengthen her preference; and with her love -as his perfections became more perceptible to her, as his high talents were more admired by her, as the pre-eminence of his mind was more completely displayed-increased her persuasion of the impossibility of her ever attaching him exclusively. But Lord Montague knew not the sleepless agony of her nights, the bitter tears she shed in solitude, that recklessness of all that had used to interest her, which can spring from no source but the misery of the heart; the darkness of the future that appeared to her, the gloom of the grave, the prison of