happiness that the young lady may consider not altogether uncatchable. Duty then steps in. The loved one writes a perfect model of a letterso touching, so tender, so natural, only mamma has a finger in it. The pang is a dreadful one-deep and lasting regret-duty to parents, such parents, too, &c. His letters having been duly copied for future winter evenings' recreations, are returned with an intimation, perhaps, that her ardent affection prevents her parting with the presents.

And oh! how sweet and typical of future bending to the conjugal will is that heart-breaking submission to the paternal one!

Sweet young creatures! We wonder how many men have been humbugged that way.

If, however, the lady-killer has a profession, even though at present it may be a losing one, such as the law-one half of the bar being notoriously out of pocket-still, we say, if the lady-killer has a profession, and the lady sees no better prospect in the distance, she may stand out; and if she and her swain do eventually become one, then the profession acts as a sort of lever for the whole family connexion to apply their strength to, and hoist the owner into the chancellorship, a bishopric, or any stray trifle that may happen to be going.

Men never

Charles Summerley was a nice-looking young fellow. allow each other to be good-looking; indeed, women very seldom do, unless they have "hooked them," and then they are perfect Adonis'ssuch eyes, such a nose, such a lofty commanding forehead, such an intelligent countenance, above all, such prepossessing manners.

A very moderate article is then worked up into a perfect beauty, especially if he's rich.

Charles, however, was a nice-looking young fellow, and, in order that our readers may not be compelled to take him on our word alone, we will tell them somebody he was like. In a not very old number of our amusing friend, "Punch," is a portrait of a young fellow at whom a piece of antiquity is making a dead set at the conclusion of a quadrille, that he has been victimised into dancing with her. He is a nice, tall, slight, darkhaired, dark-eyed youth, apparently about that ridiculously-named period of life, called years of discretion, though, in this instance, he certainly does not show any want of discretion. The wrinkled veteran is leering in his youthful face, with,

"I dare say you think me a giddy thoughtless creature-indeed, mamma often tells me that I am so," &c.

While the youth in consternation replies, "Oh, indeed, I think I see a vacant seat over there;" or words to that effect, as the lawyers say, for we have not the number to refer to.

The sketch, however, is so life-like and truthful, so much what most men's experience will help them to, that we doubt not we have sufficiently described it to recall it to our reader's recollection, and so give them an idea of what Charles Summerley was like.

His history is not quite so easily given. There are youths constantly appearing on the great stage of London life of whom nothing is known or heard until they proclaim their own existence-youths, who not only appear prosperous at the present time, but whose past lives have been lives of comfort and enjoyment.

Charles Summerley was one of these. He had been educated at an expensive private tutor's in Devonshire, where his bills were most punctually paid by a solicitor, had had a year at a German university, and been finished

off with a tour through Italy, and back by way of Switzerland and France. On his return to London, he was established in lodgings in Jermyn Street, and furnished with a credit for three hundred a year on Drummond and Co. He was, also, furnished with the name of a gentleman who he was henceforth to call "Uncle,” the same solicitor (Sharpset, of Thavies Inn), who had managed his early bills, making the subsequent arrangements, and intimating that it would be well "to cultivate the uncle."

The uncle's name was Brown-John, of course-John Brown, he lived in a second floor in Craven Street, Strand, and was the most niggardly of the penurious. No one to look at him would suppose he was worth fifty pounds, for he was old and lean, and looked most miserably poor. He wore a little old, shrunk, sun-burnt scratch-wig, that might keep his head warm, but no more concealed his gray locks than does the forensic one of that eminent counsel, Mr. Mn, Q. C., who generally sports a large amount of hair on his forehead.

Brown's coarse, yellow-coloured linen showed the absence of country washing, while his rusty, scanty threadbare suit of black was in keeping with the poverty of his wig and the lack lustre meanness of his patched shoes. A greater contrast could not be imagined than between the frousy poverty-stricken looking uncle and the young, fresh, healthy, wholesome-looking, elegantly-dressed nephew.

The people of the house in Craven Street knew nothing of the uncle; they had bought him with the lease some twenty years before, and though he paid his rent punctually to the day, he was a most unprofitable lodger in the way of perquisites, for what he took in the house was got in such small quantities, and so carefully patent-locked, as to afford no scope for the exercise of their peculiar talent. Indeed, they looked upon him rather as an object of charity than otherwise, therefore the reader may suppose that any inquiries made of them on the subject of the uncle's means would not meet with very satisfactory answers. Of his out-of-doors habits or acquaintance they knew nothing, simply because they had not thought it worth their while dodging such a seedy old codger.

Your real rustic, who fancies there is no society in London but what he reads of in the Morning Post, or your out-and-out swell, who looks with disdain on all beyond the pale of his exclusive "set," will be surprised to learn that there are parties in London, and pleasant parties, balls in London-and pleasant balls, where neither crowned heads, court company, dukes, duchesses, diamonds, marchionesses,-not even a "my lady," grace the scene, but where beauty, elegance, good manners, gaiety, and good cheer reign triumphant without the poor benighted people ever missing absent greatness, or ever wishing for any thing better than what they are in the enjoyment of. That there are sensible people, in short, who are content to amuse themselves without feeling it necessary to parade their happiness or their hospitality, and it was at a house of this sort, at Mrs. James Dumps's, of Mecklenburgh Square, (a locality which may perhaps be best described as in the regions of the Euston Station), the lady of Mr. James Dumps, the great backmaker, that Maria Dooey first encountered Charles Summerley.

Lest the reader should be ignorant of the existence of such a calling as "back-making," or fancy that we are coining a trade-indulging in a little romance, like Mr. James, or some of those writers who are not altogether to be believed, we may state that back-making has something

to do with brewing, with which help the pleasant light-mouthed reader will readily connect Dooey's hops, and see why Dooey and Dumps should be on the best of terms.

young

Well, it was at Mrs. Dumps', as we will call her for shortness, though she always puts "James" on her cards, that Maria fell in with Summerley. He was there, as many young gentlemen are at London balls, brought by somebody who knew somebody who knew Mrs. Dumps. He was introduced to Maria in much the same sort of way-presented by some one, to whom he had just been presented a little before.

There isn't time at balls for people to ring partners as suspicious tradesmen do shillings, moreover (and we say this without intending the slightest disparagement to the selectness of the assembly) moreover, as it did not include even the questionable fashion of a pair of moustaches, a welllooking, well got up youth, with the true German whirl, in his waltz, was sure to be in request and appropriated to the best girls, foremost among whom we need hardly say were the Miss Dooey's, as well on account of their looks and their dress, as of their western extraction and consequent elegance. Say what people will there is an interest attaches even to the male possessor of wealth, let him be old and ugly in the extreme, how much more so then must be the excitement when the parties are in the first blow of womanly beauty, with the spring tide of life set off by the adornments of the best London milliners, aided by all the little airs and graces that practised womanhood know so well how to use.

Some men take fright at money. To tell them that such a girl has fifty or a hundred thousand pounds is enough to deter them from making her acquaintance, while others only require to be shown where she is to make them run open-mouthed, as though they would eat her. Charles Summerley's acquaintance commenced in a happy medium between these two extremes. He liked Maria's looks at first sight, and his early impressions improved upon acquaintance. It is wonderful how all early objections gradually disappear as a man glides imperceptibly into love, and again how striking they become when an engagement is ratified between the parties. But we are getting in advance of our subject. Charles was of the dancing, not of the mercenary, age. His thoughts ran on kid gloves, pumps, and polkas. So long as he got pretty girls to dance with him he was quite content, and it is but justice to him to say, that he had known Maria for a week, met her on two band days at Kensington Gardens before he was aware of what every body knew. Meanwhile, the Dooey affection for the Dumps's had increased so amazingly, that the quarterly calls were converted into weekly ones, when of course the little delicate soundings that ladies think they make so dexterously as never to have it suspected what they are driving at, took place, and equally of course, Mrs. Dumps promoted the thing and made the best she could of the anonymous young gentleman whom Miss Dooey had picked up at her house.

To give the ladies their dues, we don't think there is any thing in the shape of a man that they won't give a help to-they go upon the principle that admiration is good, and there is no harm in an offer; but having now worked our Richest Commoner up to a certain point, and introduced this mysterious, dangerous, dancing, three hundred a-year youth, we call upon the whole body of our readers to grant Mrs. Dooey a rule nisi to show cause why she should not supplant one with the other.

NATURE'S MYSTERIOUS SYMPATHIES.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in our philosophy.

Hamlet.

DISMISS your apprehensions-close not the volume, gentle reader!-we purpose not to be scientific; we swear by our ignorance, a comprehensive oath! that we had no such stuff in our thoughts. Thou shalt read us and be none the wiser, so far as material knowledge is concerned. Into nature's physical secrets we are not qualified to pry. Unquestioned by us shall be the secret correspondence between the magnet and the steel the needle and the pole-the moon and the tides. Neither will we be altogether metaphysical. Our intermediate course seeks to draw attention towards some of their mutual relationships-some of the singular accordances between sensation and thought, mind and matter.

That these have not been altogether unnoticed by the million, some of our homeliest adages attest. "Handsome is as handsome does," is literally and physiologically true, for the face reflects the mind, and to do well is to look well. Virtue, indeed, has been defined as interior beauty, and beauty as exterior virtue; a definition which may be thought to push somewhat too far the theory of the constant approximation between the two. Similar relationships and dependencies exist in the moral world, apart from material associations; a fact well understood by the ancient philosopher when he maintained happiness to be the chief good, and virtue the chief happiness. In fact, they produce each other, for we are never so happy as when we are virtuous; seldom so virtuous as when we are happy. In our twofold nature a double action is ever at work. The mere contemplation of charming objects, by awakening a pleasant sensation, stimulates our amiable propensities, and this feeling imparts a pleasing expression to the face. Ay, and something more than pleasing. A delighted admiration, in reflective minds, will be hallowed into an embellishing reverence; for if art be man's nature, nature is God's art; and whether we be enraptured by the sight of a landscape or a statue, we look through both up to the Divine Author of both, and our piety manifests itself in the uplifted and irradiated countenance.

Yes. To be easily pleased is an easy way to be good-looking, a precept which may be as easily illustrated by example. Have I any fair readers whose features have not been cast in the mould of Venus? O my plain ones! read trustingly on, be well satisfied as ye proceed, place yourselves in magnetic sympathy with the writer, and anon two auctorial eyes will seem to be gazing into yours with love and admiration, for pleasure, nature's rouge, will have embellished your features; and from amid the book leaves, even as if he breathed through his own laurels, ye shall hear the voice of the author gently whispering-O my beauties! suffer yourselves to be thus easily attracted, and ye cannot fail to look attractive! A smile, the sunshine of the heart, will give a grace to the plainest: a frown will take it from the handsomest lineaments.

There is more mind in matter, more life and soul in the inanimate, than the unimaginative and the unreflecting may readily believe, or even

be qualified to comprehend. When Phidias had conceived the idea of his awe-inspiring statue of Theseus, the block of marble had already received a sort of earthly apotheosis. Spiritualised by the soul of the sculptor, the life of beauty and divine majesty was already enshrined in it, awaiting vivification from the artist's hand, even as the finished statue of Pygmalion panted into life when touched by the finger of Venus. Battered and mutilated as the Theseus now is, never do I approach that master-piece of Grecian art without a thrill of devout homage. Well may it excite a feeling of religion, for by such only could it have been produced. What but a soul-felt enthusiasm could have prompted the sculptor to lavish all the resources of his art upon the back of the figure, which, from its position in the pediment of the Parthenon, was never meant to be seen by man? Enough that it was imagined to be visible to the gods.

These are the upliftings that sublimise and deify art. Tell not me that reverent admiration of a Pagan statue savours of idolatry. A man may be pantheistic in his worship of art, and yet be only the more confirmed in the monotheism of religious faith, for he will trace all heavenly aspirations and inspirations, and all the divinities they have evoked, to one heavenly source. The statue itself is but a second-hand product; to find its original we must ascend to the divine Artist who fashioned the sculptor, inspired him with a conception of majesty and grace, and enabled his hand to eternise it in marble. The gravitation of high art is always upwards.

In the sympathy that pervades all our feelings, moral and material harmony become always associated. Madame de Staël calls beautiful architecture frozen music; Goethe adopts the phrase, and Coleridge improves upon both by pronouncing a Gothic church to be a petrified religion. As combinations of brick and stone are but materialised ideas, it would seem natural that sacred edifices should be typical of the religion to which they are consecrated; that the handwritings on their walls should be doxologies composed by the mason and carpenter; articles of faith penned by trowel, chisel, and hammer. Their respective characters may seem hieroglyphics to the million, but they are not undecipherable to a thoughtful mind. Take the Egyptian temples for instance. Is it not manifest from the time and treasure lavished upon their construction, that the government was a priesthood, commanding all the resources of the country? Mark how the pyramidal form prevails, how the structure grows less as it ascends, even as the religion itself was gradually brought into a narrower and meaner compass, until the broad and grand conception upon which it was based dwindled to a paltry type; and beasts, birds, and reptiles, originally the mere emblems of nature's various attributes, came to be worshipped as indisputable and puissant deities. Making a menagerie of their heaven, the temple and the mythology, in the sympathy between the material and the spiritual, contracted as they drew nearer to the sky.

Durability, no doubt, was one great object of the pyramidal architecture, the pious builders seeming to think that the faith would be perpetuated by the time-defying structure, a mistake which the world has been making ever since its birth. The granite fanes remain, but Isis, Apis, and Osiris -where are they? Gone to the lumber-room Olympus, whose unsphered deities, when not altogether forgotten, have become a scorn, a mockery,