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which his unplastic features seemed capable.

Do I understand you aright, my lord," said the Prince; "that you receive an accession of fortune by this event?"

"I shall; if I survive Glencore," was the brief reply.

"You are related, then?" "Some cousinship--I forget how it is. Do you remember, Baynton ?"

"I'm not quite certain. I think it was a Coventry married one of. Jack Conway's sisters, and she afterwards became the wife of Sir Something Massy. Isn't that it?"

66 Yes, that's it," muttered the other, in the tone of a man who was tired of a knotty problem.

"And, according to your laws, this Lord Glencore may marry again?" cried the Russian.

"I should think so, if he has no wife living," said Selby; "but, I trust, for my sake, he'll not."

"And what if he should, and should be discovered the wedded husband of another?"

"That would be bigamy," said Selby. "Would they hang him, Baynton?"

I think not-scarcely," rejoined the Colonel.

The Prince tried in various ways to obtain some insight into Lord Glencore's habits, his tastes, and mode of life, but all in vain. They knew, indeed, very little, but even that little they were too indolent to repeat. Lord Selby's memory was often at fault, too, and Baynton's had ill supplied the deficiency. Again and again did the Russian mutter curses to himself, over the impassive apathy of these stony islanders. At moments he fancied that they suspected his eagerness, and had assumed their most guarded caution against him; but he soon perceived that this manner was natural to them, not prompted in the slightest degree by any distrust whatever.

After all, thought the Russian, how can I hope to stimulate a man who is not excited by his own increase of fortune? Talk of Turkish fatalism-these fellows would shame the Moslem.

"Do you mean to prolong your stay at Florence, my lord ?" asked the Prince, as they arose from table.

"I scarcely know. What do you say, Baynton ?"

"A week or so, I fancy," muttered the other.

"And then on to Rome, perhaps?"

The two Englishmen looked at each other with an air of as much confusion as if subjected to a searching examination in science.

"Well, I shouldn't wonder," said Selby at last, with a sigh.

"Yes, it may come to that," said Baynton, like a man who had just overcome a difficulty.

"You'll be in time for the Holy week and all the ceremonies," said the Prince.

"Mind that, Baynton," said his lordship, who wasn't going to carry what he felt to be another man's load; and Baynton nodded acquiescence.

"And after that comes the season for Naples-you have a month or six weeks, perhaps, of such weather as nothing in all Europe can vie with."

"You hear, Baynton ?" said Selby.

"I've booked it," muttered the other, and so they took leave of their entertainer, and set out towards Florence. Neither you nor I, dear reader, will gain anything by keeping them company, for they say scarce a word by the way. They stop at intervals, and cast their eyes over the glorious landscape at their feet. Their glances are thrown over the fairest scene of the fairest of all lands; and whether they turn towards the snowcapt Appenines, by Vall'ombrosa, or trace the sunny vineyards along the Val' d'Arno, they behold a picture such as no canvass ever imitated; still they are mute and uncommunicative. Whatever of pleasure their thoughts suggest, each keeps for himself. Objects of wonder, strange sights and new, may present themselves, but they are not to be startled out of national dignity by so ignoble a sentiment as surprize. And so they jog onward-doubtless richer in reflection than eloquent in communion-and so we leave them.

Let us not be deemed unjust or ungenerous, if we assert that we have met many such as these. They are not individuals-they are a classand, strange enough too, a class which almost invariably pertains to a high and distinguished rank in 80ciety. It would be presumptuous to ascribe such demeanour to insensibility. There is enough in their

general conduct to disprove the assumption. As little is it affectation; it is simply an acquired habit of stoical indifference, supposed to bewhy, Heaven knows!-the essential ingredient of the best breeding. If the practice extinguish all emotion and

obliterate all trace of feeling from the heart, we deplore the system. If it only gloss over the working of human sympathy, we pity the men. At all events, they are very uninteresting company, with whom longer dalliance would only be wearisome.

CHAPTER XXI.

SOME TRAITS OF LIFE.

It was the night Lady Glencore received; and, as usual, the street was crowded with equipages, which somehow seemed to have got into inextricable confusion-some endeavouring to turn back, while others pressed forward-and the court of the palace being closely packed with carriages which the thronged street held in fast blockade. As the apartments which faced the street were not ever used for these receptions, the dark unlighted windows suggested no remark; but they who had entered the courtyard were struck by the gloomy aspect of the vast building; not only that the entrance and the stairs were in darkness, but the whole suite of rooms, usually brilliant as the day, were now in deep gloom. From every carriage-window, heads were protruded wondering at this strange spectacle, and eager inquiries pressed on every side for an explanation. The expres sion of sudden illness was rapidly disseminated but as rapidly contradicted, and the reply given by the porter to all demands quickly repeated from mouth to mouth, "Her ladyship will not receive."

"Can no one explain this mystery?" cried the old Princess Borinsky-as, heavy with fat and diamonds, she hung out of her carriage-window— "Oh, there's Major Scaresby; he is certain to know, if it be anything malicious."

Scaresby was, however, too busy in recounting his news to others to perceive the signals the old Princess held out; and it was only as her chasseur, six feet three of green and gold, bent down to give her highness's message, that the Major hurried off, in all the importance of a momentary scandal, to the side of the carriage.

"Here I am, all impatience. What is it, Scaresby ?-tell me, quickly,"

cried she.

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"You can't mean that her fortune is in peril ?"

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I suppose that must suffer also. It is her character-her station as one of us-that's shipwrecked here." "Go on, go on," cried she, impatiently-"I wish to hear it all."

"All is very briefly related, then," said he. "The charming Countess, you remember, ran away with a countryman of mine, young Glencore, of the 8th Hussars; I used to know his father intimately."

"Never mind his father."

"That's exactly what Glencore did. He came over here and fell in love with the girl, and they ran off together, but they forgot to get married, Princess. Ha-ha-ha-" and he laughed with a cackle a demon could not have rivalled.

"I don't believe a word of it-I'll never believe it," cried the Princess.

"That's exactly what I was recommending to the Marquesa Guesteni. I said, you needn't believe it. Why, how do we go anywhere, now-a-days, except by not believing the evil stories that are told of our entertainers."

"Yes, yes; but I repeat that this is an infamous calumny. She, a Countess, of a family second to none in all Italy; her father a Grand d'Espagne. I'll go to her this moment."

"She'll not see you. She has just refused to see La Genosi," said the Major, tartly. "Though, if a cracked reputation might have afforded any sympathy, she might have a 'mitted her."

"What is to be done ?" exclaimed the Princess, sorrowfully.

"Just what you suggested a few moments ago. Don't believe it. Hang me, but good houses and good cooks are growing too scarce to make one credulous of the ills than can be said of the owners."

"I wish I knew what course to take," muttered the Princess.

"I'll tell you then. Get half a dozen of your own set together to-morrow morning, vote the whole story an atrocious falsehood, and go in a body and tell the Countess your mind. You know as well as I, Princess, that social credit is as great a bubble as commercial; we should all of us be bankrupts if our books were seen. Aye, by Jove, and the similitude goes further, too-for when one old established house smashes, there is generally a crash in the whole community; ha, ha, ha!"

While they thus talked, a knot had gathered around the carriage, all eager to hear what opinion the Princess had formed on the catastrophe.

Various were the sentiments expressed by the different speakers some sorrowfully deploring the disaster; others more eagerly inveighing against the infamy of the man who had proclaimed it. Many declared that they had come to the determination to discredit the story. Not one, however, sincerely professed that he disbelieved it.

Can it be, as the French moralist asserts, that we have a latent sense of satisfaction in the misfortunes of even our best friends; or is it, as we rather suspect, that true friendship is a rarer thing than is commonly believed, and has little to do with those conventional intimacies which so often bear its name?

Assuredly, of all this well-bred, well-dressed, and well-born company, now thronging the court-yard of the palace and the street in front of it, the tone was as much sarcasm as sorrow, and many a witty epigram and smart speech were launched over a disaster which might have been spared such levity. At length the space began to thin. Slowly carriage after carriage drove off-the heaviest grief of their occupants often being over a lost soirée an unprofited occasion to display toilette and jewels-while a few, more reflective, discussed what

course was to be followed in future, and what recognition extended to the victim.

The next day Florence sat in committee over the lost Countess. Witnesses were heard and evidence taken as to her case. They all agreed it was a great hardship-a terrible infliction -but still, if true, what could be done?

Never was there a society less ungenerously prudish, and yet there were cases— this, one of them-which transgressed all conventional rule. Like a crime which no statute had ever contemplated, it stood out selfaccused and self-condemned. A few might, perhaps, have been merciful, but they were overborne by numbers. Lady Glencore's beauty and her vast fortune were now counts in the indictment against her, and many a jealous rival was not sorry at this hour of humiliation. The despotism of beauty is not a very mild sway after all, and, perhaps, the Countess had exercised her rule right royally. At all events, it was the young and the good-looking who voted her exclusion, and only those who could not enter into competition with her charms who took the charitable side. They discussed and debated the question all day, but while they hesitated over the reprieve, the prisoner was beyond the law. The gate of the palace, locked and barred all day, refused entrance to every one; at night it opened to admit the exit of a travelling carriage. The next morning large bills of sale, posted over the walls, declared that all the furniture and decorations were to be sold.

The Countess had left Florencenone knew whither.

"I must really have those large Sevres jars," said one; "and I the small park phaton," cried another.

"I hope she has not taken Horace with her; he was the best cook in Italy. Splendid hock she had, and I wonder is there much of it left."

"I wish we were certain of another bad reputation to replace her," grunted out Scaresby; "they are the only kind of people who give good dinners, and never ask for returns."

And thus these dear friendsguests of a hundred brilliant fêtesdiscussed the fall of her they once had worshipped.

It may seem small-minded and

narrow to stigmatize such conduct as this. Some may say that for the ordinary courtesies of society no pledges of friendship are required, no real gratitude incurred. Be it so. Still the revulsion from habits of deference and respect to disparagement, and even sarcasm, is a sorry evidence of human kindness; and the threshold, over which for years we had only passed as guests, might well suggest sadder thoughts as we tread it to behold desolation.

The fair Countess had been the celebrity of that city for many a day. The stranger of distinction sought her as much a matter of course as he sought presentation to the sovereign. Her salons had the double eminence of brilliancy in rank and brilliancy in wit; her entertainments were cited as models of elegance and refinement, and now she was gone! The extreme of regret that followed her was the sorrow of those who were to dine there no more; the grief of him who thought he shall never have a house like it.

The respectable vagabonds of society are a large family, much larger than is usually supposed. They are often well born, almost always well mannered, invariably well dressed. They do not, at first blush, appear to discharge any very great or necessary function in life, but we must by no means from that infer their inutility. Naturalists tell us that several varieties of insect existence we rashly set down as mere annoyances, have their peculiar spheres of usefulness and good; and, doubtless, these same loungers contribute in some mysterious manner to the welfare of that state which they only seem to burden. We are told that but for flies, for instance, we should be infested with myriads of winged tormentors, insinuating themselves into our meat and drink, and rendering life miserable. Is there not something very similar performed by the respectable class I allude you? Are they not invariably devouring and destroying some vermin a little smaller than themselves, and making thus a healthier atmosphere for their betters? If good society only knew the debt it owes to these defenders of its pri

vileges, a Vagabond's Home and Aged Asylum would speedily figure amongst our national charities.

We have been led to these thoughts by observing how distinctly different was Major Scaresby's tone in talking of the Countess, when he addressed his betters or spoke in his own class. To the former he gave vent to all his sarcasm and bitterness; they liked it just because they wouldn't condescend to it themselves. To his own he put on the bullying air of one who said, "How should you possibly know what vices such great people have, any more than you know what they have for dinner? I live amongst them-I understand them-I am aware that what would be very shocking in you is quite permissible to them. They know how to be wicked-you only know how to be gross;" and thus Scaresby talked, and sneered, and scoffed, making such a hash of good and evil, such a Maelstrom of right and wrong, that it were a subtle moralist who could have extracted one solitary scrap of uncontaminated meaning from all his muddy lucubrations.

He, however, effected this much : he kept the memory of her who had gone, alive by daily calumnies. He embalmed her in poisons, each morning appearing with some new trait of her extravagance-her losses in her caprice-'till the world, grown sick of himself and his theme, vowed they would hear no more of either, and so she was forgotten.

Aye, good reader, utterly forgotten! The gay world, for so it likes to be called, has no greater element of enjoyment amongst all its high gifts than its precious power of forgetting. It forgets not only all it owes to others gratitude, honor, and esteem -but even the closer obligations it has contracted with itself. The Palazzo della Torre was for a fortnight the resort of the curious and the idle. At the sale crowds appeared to secure some object of especial value to each; and then the gates were locked, the shutters closed, and a large, ill-written notice on the door announced that any letters for the proprietor were to be addressed to "Pietro Arretini, Via del Sole."

MRS. BEHIN.

FEW Englishwomen, who have devoted themselves to literature as a vocation, have achieved a greater success than did Mrs. Behn in her day. She gained a liberal share of the applause of the wits of her age, and a yet larger share of their attention; she wrote poems that were allowed to be good; she was the authoress of plays which the town flocked to see acted; Charles the Second was fascinated by her powers of conversation and her beauty; Dryden complimented her on her powers of versification; and she wrote novels which every one read, and continued to read for generations after her death, and one (at least) of which was translated into the French language, and published at Amsterdam, when she had been in the grave more than half a century. And yet, we doubt not, many of our readers have never heard her name till now.

Aphra, Aphara, Apharra, or Afra (for the name is to be found spelt in all four ways) Behn was a daughter of a gentleman of good family. Her maiden name was Johnson, and Canterbury has the honor of being her birth-place-but the year of her birth is unknown. The various biographers, who have briefly sketched her life, concur in placing her birth at the close of the reign of Charles the First; it certainly was not earlier.

Her father was a friend of Francis, fourth Lord Willoughby, of Parham, county of Suffolk, to which nobleman, in conjunction with Laurence Hyde, second son of Edward, Earl of Clarendon, Charles the Second

ve

(with the liberality that characterized European monarchs of those days) the colony of Surinam. The interest of Lord Willoughby secured the post of Lieutenant-General of Surinam and thirty-six West Indian isles for his friend Johnson, who immediately quitted England for the new world, taking with him his wife and chil dren. Aphara was then quite a child -too young, her female biographer and friend assures us, to have known the passion of love. But her rare beauty had, even in those tender years, gained her many passionate admirers, and her quickness of intel

lect was the wonder and amusement of all her acquaintance.

The lieutenant-general was fated not to reap any of the advantages of his newly-acquired appointment. He died on board ship, during his pas sage to America. His patron, also,

was doomed to find his death at sea, but in a more calamitous manner. Francis, Lord Willoughby, was lost in a violent hurricane, which destroyed eleven ships, in the year 1666. Pepys mentions this catastrophe, in a letter to Lord Brouncker, with official brevity and coolness. "But perhaps our ill, but confirmed, tidings from the Barbadoes may not have reached you yet, it coming but yesterday; viz., that about eleven ships, whereof two of the king's, the Hope and Coventry, going thence with men to attack St. Christopher's, were seized by a violent hurricane and all sunk-two only of the thirteen escaping, and those with the loss of masts, &c. My Lord Willoughby himself is involved in the disaster, and I think two ships thrown upon an island of the French, and so all the men, to 500, became their prisoners."

When Aphara, with her widowed mother, and her brothers and sisters, gained the terra firma of Surinam, they took possession of a house that appears to have stood somewhere on the Parham estate, and which was placed at their disposal. The scene was novel, and had plenty to interest them. "As soon as I came into the country the best house in it was presented to me, called St. John's Hill." Aphara afterwards wrote in her novel of Oroonoko-" It stood on a vast rock of white marble, at the foot of which the river ran a vast depth down, and not to be descended on that side; the little waves, still dashing and washing the foot of this rock, made the softest murmurs and purlings in the world; and the opposite bank was adorned with such vast quantities of dif ferent flowers eternally blowing, and every day and hour new, fenced be hind 'em with lofty trees of a thousand rare forms and colours, that the pros pect was the most ravishing that sands can create. On the edge of this

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