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settle in the very precincts of my habitation, confiding in the protection which they think they are to meet with. Can I sally out and deprive them of what the mere smoke of my chimnies seemed to promise, when it indicated that it was the dwelling of a human being, and therefore of a friend ?”

"Your ride has done wonders, indeed," said Tremaine. "It must have restored to you all your good humour, when you can afford to bestow so much of it on a set of paltry birds."

"Some one has said," answered Evelyn, "(or if not, I will say it now for the first time), that the nature of good-humour is such as to make it matter little what the subject of it is, for it always brings its reward along with it. But my rooks, Sir, are not to be despised, for they shew more intelligence (I am certain it is above instinct) than most, if not all other animals, except human; and occasionally, I verily believe, more than many of them."

"The human animals are very much obliged to you," said Tremaine.

"But," gravely continued Evelyn, "is there in the whole range of zoology, next to our own great selves, any creatures who seem to possess so much design, such prescience in all they say and do ?"

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Say!" exclaimed Tremaine.

"Yes, say! for we must not suppose that, at this

moment, they are not in the midst of a debate. I

only wish I were an Indian dervise, and could understand it."

Tremaine, notwithstanding Georgina had intimated her opinion, was about to appeal to her, when she stopped him by saying

"You will get nothing out of us on this subject, Mr. Tremaine; I side with papa, as usual, and de bon cœur too, for I have often felt and watched all he is pointing out. I am particularly fond of their noise, which seems to tell so much; more even than the song of other birds, sweet as it is; and though the ramage of a modern shrubbery is certainly delicious, I almost prefer our ancient grove, with these its noisy inhabitants ;-for such I suppose you will insist on calling them."

"But if you do," added Evelyn, "I shall continue, nevertheless, to respect these companions of our solitude, and must not have them insulted."

"You confess, then, you live in solitude," said Tremaine, catching at the word, "yet you had the choice of your life; why, therefore, blame me?"

"I live in the country," replied Evelyn, "but not in solitude."

"Yet you own you are driven to converse with these common creatures of the air, whom every farmer's boy hoots at all day long."

"I converse with Nature," said Evelyn, "whether in man or birds; you, it seems, only with man.”

"I avow it," said Tremaine.

"And yet," replied Evelyn, "it is a comical way to converse with a gentleman, to run away from him."

"I think," said Tremaine, "if Miss Evelyn pleases, I would rather converse only with woman, at least to-day; for your ride has put you in such bantering spirits, there is no getting you to be serious. Miss Evelyn and I agreed much better just now in the house, when we were by ourselves."

"Mr. Tremaine was very agreeable," observed Georgina, "and read Lord Byron charmingly." "I have no doubt of it," said Evelyn, looking at them both.

Strange that a look should throw them both into a sort of consciousness incomprehensible to either.

"I know nothing," continued Evelyn, not perceiving it, "so much mistaken as that whole subject of solitude. Zimmerman ran mad about it

first, and nothing would content him but making all other people as mad as himself.* The Swiss mountebank, Rousseau, too, endeavoured to turn people's heads on it, though he never turned his own; for when the world let him alone, he never

* He, however, corrected himself in a second volume, in which he shews the dangers of solitude sensibly enough.

"I would rather," replied Georgina, "think the world what I am sure heaven designed it to be, and not what you would make it. Should we have this sun," continued she, looking at the open windows, that gilds every thing with cheerfulness, and this concert of birds, which, while it exhilarates the heart, is offered to us all, if we might not be happy if we pleased? I never behold such a day without being grateful, and thinking it a fête. Nay, I am disposed to be a votary to Mademoiselle St. Sillery's philosophy, and to believe that it requires almost an effort to be unhappy when the sun shines.”*

"You prefer, then, the previous lines of this professed lover of solitude," said Tremaine, turning again to the passage.

"I do," said Georgina, "but should like to hear them all again."

Tremaine willingly obeyed her, and with great pathos recited the passage beginning "To sit on rocks, &c."

"My father says," observed Georgina, when Tremaine had ceased reading, "that there is not a word of these lovely lines that does not carry poetry to the heart.".

* Mademoiselle St. Sillery was a gay and pleasing French girl, mentioned in Pinkney's tour through France. Sir William Temple also says (though more in the spirit of a philosopher than a sentimentalist)," The sun, in our climate at least, has something so reviving, that a fair day is a kind of sensual pleasure."

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"I'm glad there is any thing," said Tremaine, "in which your father and I can entirely agree; and is not he at least in rapture with the whole thought?"

""Tis at best a melancholy one," answered Miss Evelyn, with a sort of sigh," and I should pity the author, if I did not feel the force of what my father says (I agree with him there, too), that in one so young it cannot be genuine."

"Not genuine!" exclaimed Tremaine. "I should want no other proof than the glowing nature that breathes through every line of the description."

"And yet poetry is but fiction," said Georgina, smiling; " and if there are fictitious distressess in real life, what may there not be in poetry?"

She said this with an archness which Tremaine did not exactly relish; and apparently with a view to change the subject, he exclaimed, "But where is your father all this time?"

"You will find him, I dare say, among his friends there," replied Miss Evelyn, looking out.

"His friends! I did not know you had visi

tors."

"No! they are our fellow-inhabitants, and daily companions." she added, turning her eyes to the rookery; "they are particularly busy and talkative just now; and though he went to Belford this morning, yet as I know his horses are come back, and

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