superiority of his mind and person, and for the sway which he had long held in the high circles in which he moved; for he had long been the "glass of fashion in which every one dressed himself;" and long given laws to the forms of hats, the cut of pantaloons, and the ties of cravats; a distinction which, to do him justice, he only enjoyed as it enabled him to make fools of the many, while, with his select few, he laughed at their folly. Well would it have been for some of his coterie, had these been the only things in which they had imitated him. Circumstances, however, soon rendered the adoption of this measure of exclusion unnecessary, as he withdrew himself to the continent, till the affair should be blown over; an event which was announced in the Kentish Chronicle, dated Dover: and, till his reappearance upon the tapis of our history, where he is not at present necessary, we must be contented with these slight notices of the movements of our intended hero; for such is Sir R- L

PARAGRAPH VI.

"On Thursday morning last, the gallant Baronet, who has lately made himself so conspicuous in the beau-monde, by his elopement with a certain celebrated Countess, arrived here in company with his frail companion, and the friend who was his second in the field. A private packet was immediately hired, in which the whole party set sail for the continent, where it is rumoured that they intend to travel for some few months, until the legal and other processes consequent on the elopement are arranged."

This was the last paragraph upon an affair which proved one of the nine days' wonders of the fashionable world at that period.

But it was rather a curious sight to see the eight or ten young ladies of Mrs. Dashington's establishment eagerly waiting for the morning papers, and still more eagerly prying into them for all the information which was to be obtained

upon this subject. It was curious too, to hear their disquisitions and opinions upon these paragraphs; and it would have been still more so to have known all their thoughts, and wishes, and feelings, to which their perusal and contemplation of this adventure had given rise.

Such details of such a circumstance were curious subjects for the study and contemplation of young and inexperienced VOL. I.-11

female minds, just entering into life; and yet we are com pelled to admit, that the newspapers which contained them were much more sought after, and reap in the "finishing school," for the first four days after this affair, than any of the books which usually occupied their reading hours.

66

Amelia read it as a matter of course; she uttered the word Shocking," cast up her eyes, and there was an end of the

matter.

Agnes, one year younger in years, but five years older than her sister in feeling, read the accounts, and listened to all the observations to which they had given rise, with a mixed feeling of pity and horror, which she could not however entirely divest of something like admiration at the intrepidity of the hero of the tale; in which a youthful mind is too apt to find excuses for derelictions of this nature.

What a pity is it that the commencement and accomplishment of these offences are the only portions of them that meet the public eye; while the subsequent remorse, the soul-subduing years of solitary shame, the desertion of the man for whose evanescent love

they have lost

State, station, heaven, mankind's-their own esteem,

are all concealed, or known only to some pitying friend, who still by stealth will kindly comfort the fallen fair one with a tear of pity; or to some menial, whose wages keep down her insolence, and purchase her unwilling attention, till death delivers the victim from the scorn of an unpitying world!

The result of these liaisons divested of their romancethe hours of solitude and shame-the tears of bitter repentance as they see the former companions of their youth and innocence rolling along in the full enjoyment of that "caste" of society, out of whose pale one unfortunate dereliction from the path of rectitude has thrown them-ought always to accompany the newspaper histories of these affairs. It would be a charitable and an awful lesson, to the young, romantic, and impassioned, were somebody to collect the subsequent lives of all the divorcées who figure away for a moment or two in the newspaper annals of gallantry. Perhaps, though the perfect annihilation of their names from all acknowledged recollection, except in some few cases, where guilt has "burned brighter than their shame," and enabled them to

stem the torrent, or to bear it with unblushing effrontery, ought to be a lesson awful enough in its consequences, as it

must prove

that all is o'er

For them on earth, except some years to hide

Their shame and sorrow deep in their hearts' core.

FOR Some two or three years the sisters continued at Mrs. Dashington's school, both becoming still more confirmed in all those habits of mind which had characterized their infancy-the one conforming to all the ceremonies of her education, and thus becoming gradually a creature of mere form; the other, drinking with avidity from all the streams of literature and poetry, which the miscellaneous and itinerate library of Mrs. Dashington's drawing-room provided, and by these means feeding rather than restraining and regulating the high and independent passions of her nature; but with all these warm and impetuous feelings of the heart were mingled a nobleness of spirit, and a generosity of mind, which rendered her admired and beloved by every body. Her heart was perpetually in her hand, and on her lips; what the one dictated, was the impulse to the actions and words of the other. Her allowance was entirely expended in indiscriminate charity, so that her wardrobe suffered dreadfully

from this use-or misuse, as Mrs. Dashington called it, of her ample means. In short, all her actions were the result of impulse: the sight of misery was enough to draw a tear from her eye, and relief from her purse. She stopped not to inquire if the misery was real; it was apparent, and that was sufficient.

She drew all her knowledge of life from poetry, and creating an existence of her own, believed it to be the one through which she was to pass; but in spite of all this strong feeling, in spite of all her indiscriminate reading, there was a steady perseverance in right in every thing she did; and though she often acted without judgment, it was never without principle. But here was a being to be turned upon the great theatre of life. Here was a heart to go out among the heartless; and here were feelings and affections to become perhaps the prey of the male coquette, to be blighted by ingratitude, and to be chilled by the deceit which one meets with at every turning in the crooked paths of our existence.

Into this world, however, it was now decreed that she was to enter: due notices were given to Mrs. Dashington of the departures of the Misses Flemings; and Lady Emily Trevor was to quit at the same time.

As nothing could be done without a presentation at court, at least in Lady Pomeroy's ideas, this was the first thing thought of; and to her entire satisfaction, notices were just now issued from the chamberlain's office, of an approaching drawing-room.

Her first presentation is an epoch of great importance in the life of a young lady. It gives her the first privilege of a woman, that of entering into dissipation. It is the signal that she is "out," and therefore ranked among those who are, for the future, open to receive cards for balls, and proposals of marriage. A first drawing-room is looked back to by many through a long life of gayety and splendour, with keen sensations of regret and delight; and many an old dowager have we heard describe her hoop, and her festoons, and her feathers; and the gracious reception she met with in the circle of Queen Charlotte and George the Third, while she casts up her eyes, and shrugs her shoulders, at the change of costume, and at the admission of many who now parade before the King; but who, she avers, with a significant toss of the head, would never have been received at court in the good old days of Queen Charlotte. But this

laxity of morals the ladies of the old school attribute to the abolition of hoops. The buckram of propriety they aver to have been put off with these impregnable whalebone defences; and then they cast their glance towards a portrait of themselves decked out in all their courtly appendages, or upon the window-curtains, three of which had been made out of the damask of one petticoat of the ancient régime; and sigh as they exclaim with all the old people that ever lived, whether they speak of decorum of conduct or of dress "Ah! it was not so in my younger days.'

A drawing-room had, of late years, been scarce; it was no surprise that the present one had been waited for with impatience, and looked forward to with anxiety.

For some weeks all the milliners and dress-makers from Conduit-street to South Audley-street had been in full occupation. The needle of the poor dear little seamstresses, who slave away their youth and beauty in these nunneries of needlework, had been plied early and late, with no other reward than the contemplation of the finery which was grow ing into shape under their ingenious fingers; and strange tosay, this contemplation is a great delight to every female mind, even though she who contemplates is never destined to wear or to enjoy it: and hence the pleasures of shopping with one richer than ourselves: there is a kind of magic to the female heart in the touch of silks, and satins, and sarsnets, in the handling of lace, leno, and embroidery, which it is difficult for the other sex to conceive; excepting those unfortunates who have to pay the bills, which are the scarcely ever-failing sequence of such a temptation, when the fair one has any kind husband with credit enough attached to his name to place on the debtor side of a ledger in any of these emporiums of woman's vanity and ruin.

It used to be said of a certain very beautiful professor of the admirable arts of millinery and mantua-making, that she had been the cause of more matrimonial fracas than had ever occurred through the difference of tempers, irreconcileable dispositions, infidelity and jealousy, or the "thousand-and-one" causes that render the married life, in general, any thing but the Elysium which bachelor poets would make it. Her beauty was of that sort which made any thing become her, or rather she became every thing.

Every day, therefore, her varied genius in the composition of caps and bonnets was exerted to produce something new,