would be so valuable to Mr. or Sir in the alterations he was projecting;" and which they hoped, though they did not say so, Sir Herbert would pay for, one way or another. A few dry lines of thanks, and a decided negative, crushed the hopes his long silence had excited. He retired to the seat of his ancestors: there, after an interval of some years, he adopted the orphan daughter of a widowed sister who died of consumption; and as if fate, while robbing his existence of every charm, was resolved not to annul the power of being useful, Henry Fitzherbert, by the loss of his father, (Sir Herbert's younger brother,) who was drowned on his passage from India, and that of his mother, who died within a year of a broken heart, was thrown, at about three years of age, upon his uncle's mercy, and by him adopted and educated as his heir,-adopted at least so far as the placing him first with "a lady of the very highest respectability, most winning and accomplished manners, solid and enlightened mind," (as she modestly announced herself in an advertisement,) and "who, having an establishment uniting all the regularity and wholesome restraint of a first-rate scholastic retreat, with the luxuries and comforts of the costliest home, and the pure air and healthpromoting exercise which lent the peasant's child so ruddy a glow, had a vacancy in her house" (and purse), " and received a few young gentlemen, whom she reared with more than maternal care, whose manners and morals she herself formed on the model of her own (!) who were taught everything by unrivalled professors, lodged splendidly, boarded sumptuously, and clothed in a style of oriental splendor for 150l. a year," or 50 guineas, if she could not get more, (but that is entre nous, dear reader). This advertisement dazzled the eyes and bewildered the brain' of the housekeeper, who had been told to look out for a home for the child. In this self-styled Eden he passed his infancy, petted for his beauty, loved for his sweet temper, feared by his little mates for his strength and spirit, and courted for his uncle's ready pay,-extras and all. He was removed in due time to Eton; and as his vacations were always spent at a private tutor's, it was only during Sir Herbert's short visits to him that he had seen his little cousin and gloomy uncle. In the unbroken solitude of his vast estate Sir Herbert lived for many years, brooding over his fatal love for Camilla, nourishing a frantic jealousy for the object of her choice, dwelling with maddening constancy on the murder (as he called it) of his friend, and fostering in silence and solitude that species of melancholy which prostrates every energy, enslaves every power of the mind, saps the very foundation of life, and makes man useless to his fellow-men, odious to himself, and a rebel to his Maker. CHAPTER III. "Oh! what a pure and sacred thing One only mansion with her light!" LALLA ROOKH. Ir was with mingled feelings, but feelings in which satisfaction predominated, that Henry Fitzherbert reflected on the change which had taken place in his situation, when he found himself alone in the spacious apartments allotted to him. They consisted of a sitting-room furnished with taste and magnificence, and which opened into a study, (or rather library,) filled with all the best ancient and modern authors, richly bound, and hung with maps of countries, of which in his limited Eton education he had heard but little. Here too were beautiful globes, a luxurious reading-chair, desks of every kind, cases of instruments, everything in short that could tend to make the path of science a royal one, and that is not much, as all who have tried can tell. An injudicious pier-glass fronted the study table, and to this the young Etonian paid his first devoirs; then glancing hastily at many an old foe with a new face among the classics on the shelves, he passed into his spacious sleeping-room, and thence into a dressing-room, which seemed as if some fair had superintended its arrangement. There is a general opinion that the young do not regard these things. Surely it is a mistaken one; the minds of the youthful, influenced as they are by outward objects, are elated by scenes of splendour and depressed by those of poverty: and as Henry contrasted the grandeur of every thing around him with the scanty, almost squalid accommodations of his small room at his niggardly dame's, he felt his spirits rise at this indirect acknowledgement of his import ance. The little spice of dandyism in his character was gratified by the varieties of exquisite scents and soaps and oils, and the choice as |