saw, he had almost arrived at his journey's end, when he was suddenly stopped by Sir James Dornton, who was sallying forth thus early on business.

"Delighted to see you, my dear Lord,” he began ; 66 very good of you to do me the honour of a call last night-very sorry that I happened to have gone to the opera with Baron Joulterdolt the Hanoverian. I have several things I wished to talk to your Lordship about. Perhaps you would have no objection just to step this way. I was going to the gunsmith's close by for a minute." Lord Ormsby hesitated for a moment. This was not at all the sort of expedition which had induced him to come out so early; and he began an excuse, "Why, I was just intending"-when a certain inward consciousness prevented his owning to Sir James that he had been meditating a visit to Matilda. He therefore turned to accompany the Baronet.

Upon what trivial, and apparently inconsequent circumstances do the most important events sometimes seem to have depended! The heedless choice between two indifferent alternations, seems afterwards to have determined the fate of Ormsby and Matilda.

Sir James was one of those, who, upon setting out on a tour of Italy, had thought it necessary to provide himself with a pair of Manton's hair-trigger pistols, calculated to take the most infallible aim at the most minute mark, as an appropriate defence

against a whole population of brigands, who, if they attack at all, always pop at you on all sides from behind stone walls, without ever showing themselves. However, Sir James felt quite safe with his pocket protectors; and, one being a little out of order, he had been very uneasy till it should be mended. He had therefore himself taken them to a neighbouring gunsmith and sword maker, who had the reputation of also furnishing arms to his enemies, the brigands, upon a much more wholesale scale; though this of course was unknown to the Baronet.

Sir James was pretty well versed in that patois of good society in England, which is called French; but of Italian he knew not one syllable, and seemed perfectly satisfied with his ignorance. It is not therefore to be wondered at that this circumstance, joined to a natural confusion in the mode of expressing himself, rendered the directions with which he had left his pistols perfectly unintelligible to the Roman shopkeeper. But as there is nothing to which an Italian will not assent for the sake of a job, he had received all Sir James's incomprehensible orders with an "Ah! capisco bene, eccellenza-non pensesì Signore—non c'è dubbio," &c. Accordingly, the pistols had been left there in perfect security that all that was wanted would be done; and to reclaim them was the object of the present visit. At the commencement of the scene which ensued, Lord Ormsby remained at the outer door, with his back to the shop,

his eyes unconsciously fixed on the only corner of the palazzo which was visible from thence; his thoughts wandering still further from what was passing around him. He was therefore no witness to Sir James's indignation, when the shopkeeper, with a self-satisfied "Eccole," presented him with what had been his pistols, now hardly to be recognized; the unrivalled beauties of Manton's best workmanship having been contaminated by a forced mésalliance with the Roman's own clumsy handicraft.

After Sir James had vented his complaints in mingled French and English execrations, all of which the Italian bore with imperturbable complacency, (a calmness probably induced by the certain expectation of the concluding question of his customer,) in despair he was at length obliged to inquire "Combien?" This was probably the only word of French of which the shopkeeper had an intuitive knowledge; and he immediately replied with characteristic impudence, "Ah, come vuole-niente-solamente dieci scudi."

"What the Devil!" said Sir James, in irrestrainable English.

"Dieci," repeated the Italian, holding up all the fingers of both hands in pantomimic explanation.

Sir James, who, from the increasing difficulty of communication, began to think "action much better than speech," now seized hold of one of the pistols,

diseased," or his natural strength of bodily constitution, the surgeon, before he left him, made an unexpectedly favourable report; upon receiving which, all Matilda's sense of propriety returned; she consigned the care of him to a more appropriate nurse; and had retired from the room before her husband came home from his long and unsatisfactory search after justice.

CHAPTER XX.

WE have of late, gentle reader, rather dropped the acquaintance of the Hobson family. But though it would be hard to expect, now that you are better acquainted with their characters, that you should submit to continuing on an intimate footing with them, yet they are too nearly connected with one, in whose fate I am particularly anxious that you should be interested, for me to allow you altogether to cut them.

On the morning in which you were first made acquainted with their arrival in Rome, by the interference of their courier Pierre, in the gunsmith's shop, the female members of the Hobson family were, as usual, assembled in rather a dark, dingy-looking

salone of an old-fashioned palazzo-armed with netting-needles, paper, cutting scissors, tambour-frames, and sundry other ancient and primitive weapons, generally employed in all amazonian attempts to kill time. But old Father Time made a very good fight of it with them; and they had already shown, by sundry yawns, how much, in spite of all their efforts, they felt his power, when they were relieved by the arrival of two auxiliaries, who had of late frequently been very useful in enabling them to get the better of a troublesome half hour or two. These were our Milan acquaintances, the Rev. Mr. Simperton, and his pupil, young Squire Woodhead. Mr. Simperton, as has been hinted before, was very anxious to cultivate the intimacy of the Hobson family; which fact must now be explained to have arisen from its having occurred to him that a wife with twenty thousand pounds, would be a very pretty addition to his present income, arising from a small college living, the tithes of which he considered as quite inadequate, even to wash his surplice and buy his ser

mon.

This gilding of the matrimonial pill, reconciled him to swallowing even such a bouncing bolus as Miss Betty Hobson.

But could he also persuade his pupil to pay due homage to the charms of the younger sister, Miss Anne, what prospects might then be open to him!— In meditating on this, indistinct visions floated before his eyes, in which were traced the festive board at