although I certainly had not any superfluous reliance on Mr. Lyndham's constancy. But Viola, in the very spirit of her sex, auguring of his attachment from her own devoted love, gave but little heed to these reports. Alas! for the 'unities of time and place;' I am 'quite sure they are very good things in their way, but I never could understand them, so I shall now revert to Mrs. Sidney, and speak of her views with regard to Margaret. For once, there was something respectable in her maternal solicitude to see her daughter happily settled in life, for Margaret's vagaries might have disquieted a far more reasonable woman than Mrs. Sidney usually proved herself to be, although I did not think her choice the most felicitous imaginable, when I heard her fix on Mr. Middleton, as one to whom she would most gladly entrust her daughter's future destiny.

Mr. Middleton, was, when I first knew him, a solemn, and rather forlorn looking individual of fifty, or perhaps "inclining to three-score;" but he was, at the same time, a most absolute gentleman, irreproachable in his demeanour, unexceptionable in his connexions, and, for the most part, considered an undeniable acquaintance. His conversation was ponderous and uninviting, being at once exhaustless and exhausting. His commonest expressions took the form of apothegms, his most original observa

tions were postulates. In the East, where wisdom is said to consist less in originality of ideas, than in a happy application of the thoughts of others, Mr. Middleton would have ranked as a man of first-rate abilities, for he was well primed with quotations, both in prose and verse; and was in the habit of lavishly, and as I thought, unseasonably, decorating his discourse with them. To be sure, poor man, he had rather an overweening sense of his own importance, being most comfortably oblivious that the world had gone on in pretty much the same style before he made good his entry into it, and would, in all probability, remain in 'statu quo' long after his bones were mouldering in the dust:

"Like Dobbin, who around the globe would look,
And his horizon for the earth's mistook."

Then too he was a sort of Mecenas in his way,

"Had seen Sir Walter's head, Lord Byron's hat,
And once with Southey's wife's third cousin sat."

And was himself literary after a formidable manner, having written a topographical essay on the site of some 'lost land,' and a philological treatise entitled 'an humble attempt to prove what were the first English words ever spoken'. His

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private fortune was considerable, and he held a lucrative situation in a public office, added to all which, civic dignities had been literally showered on him, and Mr. Sidney venerated him accordingly. This partiality was fully reciprocated by Mr. Middleton he liberally bestowed on us all his leisure hours, devoting to our service every public as well as private holyday, dining with us whenever he was invited, volunteering his company in the evenings, and never failing to besiege our door as often as he happened to be passing our way. He was precisely what the Romans would have designated by the emphatic term, Musca.*

Mrs. Sidney was certainly quite right in imagining that Margaret was the attraction which drew Mr. Middleton thus frequently to our house. He was evidently much dazzled (as your solemn wiseacre is wont to be) by that half playful, half wayward vivacity, which formed so striking a

It is consolatory to find, that 'Bores' are not of very recent date, for we learn that even the Romans had a nick-name for those who were guilty of inflicting on others, the annoyance of undesired companionship: they called them Muscæ. It is to this, we presume, cousin Dorothy alludes in the text, although we cannot help observing, that we much fear the good lady is getting pedantic; surely she has not so soon forgotten her own vehement philippic, against the sprinklers of science, and smatterers in learning with which she favoured us at the commencement of this story.-ED,

feature in her character. Still whether dumbfounded by her raillery, or unwilling to resign the privileges and irresponsibilities of bachelorship, he came, and went, and came again, seeming each day ready primed for the critical interrogatory, and each day retiring without having had courage to pass the Rubicon; and Margaret amused herself with making faces at him whenever his back was turned, and yawning profoundly as often as he addressed her; but wrapped in the callous hide of self-conceit, Mr. Middleton was impervious to, or rather unconscious of these pantomimic gestures. Even I, although quite certain of being haunted by compunctious visitings of conscience, after his departure, was yet so much ruffled by his presence as to testify no small impatience when compelled to listen to his "serpentine and inveterately convolved" anecdotes: he was a kind-hearted man too. What a pity that he should have been so afflictingly prosy! Moreover Mrs. Sidney began to be weary of his interminable visits as years rolled on, and still Mr. Middleton did not propose.

CHAPTER V.

"The merchant scant digested this,
That he so much must pay."

RITSON'S BALLADS.

"Boast not to me the charms that grace
The finest form, or fairest face;
Shape, bloom, and feature I despise;
Wealth, wealth is beauty-to the wise.

Come then, Oh! come, and with thee bring
The thousand joys from wealth that spring;
Oh! bring the deeds of thy estate,

Thy quit-rents, mortgages, and plate."

HENRY CARter.

I AM now about to speak of an event distressing in itself, but far more calamitous in its results. The head clerk of the establishment died. He was a man of an unassailable integrity, and selfforgetting probity. Upwards of thirty years had he toiled indefatigably for the benefit of the firm; ever the first at the desk in the morning, and the last to leave it at night. It was but seldom that