added," 'twill keep the wind off your stomach, which I shrewdly suspect is the cause of all your complaints."

His refined school-fellow seemed a little hurt, and perceiving that Georgina was rather amused than shocked, began to meditate internally, upon the impossibility, after all, of a country education sufficing to the finishing polish of female manners. "At least you will allow it is sound," said the Doctor.

“It is remarkably good of its kind," answered Tremaine.

"And the palate ?”

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Rougher than claret," said the guest, "but not so unpleasant as might be expected."

"I will hope, then," added his friend, " my unlucky want of French wine may be borne with."

My father," exclaimed Careless, "used to say that he was no honest man that did not like port."

"Your grandfather," replied Tremaine, "would have said the same by ale."

The port, however, was extremely good, and the weak stomach of Tremaine having condescended to a very plain dinner, its master almost wondered at his own feelings of lightness and good humour. Pleased in himself, he was pleased with his companions; the worth which he had heard of in

Careless, always bore him up in his estimation, when his bluntness was ready to sink him down; and the good sense of Evelyn, together with the beauty and intelligence of his daughter, were never more conspicuous.

After coffee, Georgina gave them music; and the evening being delicious, the whole party strolled with Tremaine half the way home,-his horses attending him till they took leave.

The moon shone bright when he mounted, and so unusually pleasing were his meditations, that though he moved at a foot's pace, he wished the way had been longer.

Reader! wast thou ever in love?

CHAP. XXXI.

A YOUNGER BROTHER.

2

Home-keeping youths have ever homely wits."

SHAKSPEARE.

"AN important question that, with which you concluded the last chapter.'

"Tis therefore I concluded, for surely to answer it requires a chapter by itself. And yet, much will depend upon the life, character and education, to

say nothing of the sex of the person, who may be at this moment honouring this essay

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2

Essay? surely, sir, it begins to be a novel !" "By no means !—and I will maintain it before any bishop, professor, or critic in Christendom, that it still is that treatise of moral philosophy I intended when I set out. I am to relate facts, and if love be a subject of moral philosophy, how can I help it?"

I repeat then, (without disrobing myself,) Reader, wast thou ever in love? Because, if thou wast, thou wilt call up many a pleasing recollection when thou figurest to thyself Tremaine, pensieroso, returning home, now plunging into woods

"Of branching elm, star-proof,"

now emerging into clear moon-light, and now stopping his horse on the bank of the river that divided him from Evelyn Hall, and fixing a lingering look upon its distant pediments, for no other reason that this history has ever discovered, than because they contained an amiable young person, and a respectable friend, who had made the last few hours pleasant to him.

Dismounting, he delivered his horse to his groom, and saying he would walk the rest of the way, dismissed him.

"Que diable signifie tout cela?" said Monsieur Dupuis, when he rushed into the hall on the trampling of horses, and heard from the groom that his master was pacing home on foot.

"Que c'est un drôle ce gaillard-là," continued Monsieur Dupuis.

The groom understood, and Monsieur Dupuis meant him to understand, nothing of his exclamation, but betaking himself to the housekeeper's room, "My master no come home, he walk about to watch de moon-light," said the valet.

"Very extraordinary, this," said Mrs. Watson; "what can possibly have happened?"

Except, however, in the pleasure, Tremaine did not think it extraordinary at all. There was a calm in the air agreeable to his senses, and an interest in his thoughts which he had not felt for years; and having spent the best part of an hour on the terrace, he retired to rest, with an equanimity surprising to himself, and particularly surprising to Mr. Dupuis.

What is more, though he rang early the next morning, it was because he had been sufficiently refreshed with sleep; which, without his being able to account for it, had been sweeter than he had for a long time known.

"I suppose I am recovering," said he, as he opened his windows earlier than usual: "this air is delicious, and I have none of that feverishness which used to hang upon me."

As soon as he was drest, it was observed that he went instantly to his library, where he culled out a

volume of Marmontel's Memoirs, and actually, before breakfast, made the following extract with his own hand!

"Jusque là, le plaisir des sens avoit été le seul attrait qui m'eut conduit. Ici je me sentis enlevé hors de moi par de plus invincibles charmes; c'étoient la candeur, l'innocence, la douce sensibilité, la chaste et timide pudeur, une honnêteté dont le voile ornoit la grâce et la beauté; c'étoit la vertu couronnée des fleurs de la jeunesse, qui ravissoit mon âme encore plus que mes yeux; sorte d'enchantement mille fois au-dessus de tous ceux des Armides que j'avois cru voir dans le monde."

The reader knows, or if not I am bound to tell him, that this beautiful description was of a young girl of eighteen, whom Marmontel married with all her bloom upon her, and with whom he was as happy as the day was long.

"And why should he not?" asks some young reader of the gentler sex. Merely, young lady, because the Frenchman was fifty-four years old. "That makes a sad difference," says the young lady! Oh! but he was a Frenchman!

To be sure that alters the case again. At the same time it led Tremaine into a profound calculation, as to the true rule of proportion between the animal spirits, gaiety, and powers of pleasing, of persons born on this, or that side of the channel.