perience these said persons do not improve upon acquaintance, I am afraid I shall never cure myself of the prejudice. Now I must own, that from the first moment I saw her, Miss Sharpe sadly disquieted me. She was what is usually called a strong-minded, sensible, shrewd woman, (how I do dislike sensible, shrewd women!) she spoke in recitative, uttered thread-bare puerilities, and faded second-hand sentimentalities in an oracular, sententious tone of voice. Then too, she had a host of theories, countless as the stars, which theories always reminded me of the famous mansion built. by the amateur architect, who, having called his friends around him to admire the spacious hall, the lofty apartments, the well planned dormitories, heard it observed, to his utter dismay, that all would have been very perfect, had he not unfortunately forgotten the stair-case. Now it always seemed to me that Miss Sharpe's theories sadly wanted the practical stair-case; this I know, they were far above my comprehension, only perhaps, as Mrs. Sidney once observed, "how was it possible that a person with my limited education, could be any judge of these matters," and I suppose she was right. On the score of beauty, Miss Sharpe had nothing to reproach herself with. For certain it is that face and form were guiltless of ever having caused a sleepless night, or uneasy moment to

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any sighing Strephon. When first I knew her, she had arrived at that debatable point, that borderland age, that neutral ground, when youth is fled and eld not yet arrived; however, she preserved a prison-house secrecy on this point, which might have served for as perplexing a study to the antiquary as the precise date of the pyramids. Added to all this, Miss Sharpe possessed one of those long Flamingo-like necks, which look as though the owner thereof had, at some period of her life, undergone the penal process of suspension in mid air, commonly called hanging, and been subsequently resuscitated. In fine, she had a pervading, indescribable, noli me tangere, chevaux de frise appearance, which is sufficiently alarming. I wish I could have conquered my dislike to her; I am sure I would have done her a good turn if I could (once in a way), but those every day civilities were very troublesome.

It was not long before I perceived how very little Viola and Miss Sharpe assimilated; and soon, every hour and half hour that Miss Sidney could escape from that lady's jurisdiction and the technicalities of schooldom, were passed by her in my apartment: here together, we ranged through the garden of literature, culling the fairest and sweetest flowers of prose, or rarer blossoms of poetry; only those sickly, faded exotics of foreign

growth, which seem as though they will not flourish in an English soil, but languish and die of the transplantation, we avoided by mutual consent: here, whilst I worked, would she read aloud, and her voice fall on my ear with a sweet lulling tone that reminded me of the flowing cadence of the "Paradise Lost:" here too did we delight our fancy with bright and glowing visions, and store our memory with images of loveliness: here likewise, as we read of holy deeds, of lofty aspirations and immortal enterprises, our eyes would fill with tears, our hearts expand with sympathy, and we would ardently desire to go forth and emulate those high and heroic achievements. Very pleasant were those morning lectures.

CHAPTER IV.

The child is father of the man.-WORDSWORTH.

Even so this happy creature of herself

Is all-sufficient; solitude to her

Is blithe society, who fills the air

With gladness and involuntary songs;

Light are her sallies, as the tripping fawn;

Forth startled from the fern where she lay couched,
Unthought of, unexpected, as the stir

Of the soft breeze ruffling the meadow-flowers.

WORDSWORTH.

Cenerentola vien quà, Cenerentola và là ;
Cenerentola vien sù, Cenerentola vien qiù.
LA CENERENTOLA.

VIOLA SIDNEY was fifteen when I first came to reside with my cousins. The next in age to her was James, a systematic, plodding youth-Mr. Sydney in miniature, only without that gentleman's really kind heart; his impassive wooden face looked as though it had been cut out of one of the desks in his father's counting-house. Then there

came Margaret, who should have been a boy, only that I have rarely seen even a boy so wild, so fearless, so heedless of monitions and injunctions. Nothing could daunt her, nothing could tame her. Miss Sharpe and she passed their time in perpetual contests, "never ending, still beginning" squabbles: as Margaret herself observed, they had their pitched battles, their skirmishes, their "Parthian flights;" and in this last species of warfare, Margaret had greatly the advantage, her light, springy, active form told exceedingly, as after launching forth some poignant repartee that pierced through and through Miss Sharpe's thin-skinned self-love, the young rebel would stay not for answer, but take to her heels and join her brother Richard; no where could she have found a more fitting compeer. Mischievous as a monkey, noisy as a cockatoo, restless as an armadillo. Robin Goodfellow was a staid and sober young gentleman, when compared with Dick Sidney: to be sure they were both very troublesome, but it did my heart good to see young creatures so full of life and spirit, so gleesome, so buoyant, so merry. time would come soon enough, when the world and its blighting cares, its withering disappointments, its iron truths, and stern realities would chasten their exuberant mirth, tone down their wild spirits, and dim their sunny hours. I could not find it in

I thought that the