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"He is the kindest of the kind;-and yet, Eugenia, I will acknowledge I feel a weariness indescribable; a loss of interest in existence; a heavy depression of heart and senses, which would almost reconcile me to abandoning society, life—possibly, I am dying."

Eugenia, in alarm, approached ner, and taking her hand, asked whether its wild yet fearful throbbings might not be the mere effect of the summer's day? whether she had ever been liable to fluctuations of spirits?

"Never," was the answer. "For six years I led the happiest life that woman could lead. I was the gayest of the gay. I never knew a moment of dreariness while I was upon the stage."

or with old ones, possessing but two othershow to beg, borrow, or steal a match for their sons and daughters; and how to level the reputation of every woman of honor to their own."

"True, desperately true. Yet to know none but actors-a strange race, as I should conceive; and not very captivating to a refined taste," laughed Eugenia.

"You had better not make the experiment, my dear," was the reply, "if you wish to have your 'bosom's lord sit lightly on its throne.' There are varieties of character among them, it is true; and perhaps no one should choose there, who was determinod to be the wife of a prime minister or a lord chancellor. But recollect what they have been, "Your ladyship surprises me :-it may have had and are; almost all urged to the stage by natural its amusements: but the trouble, the actual toil-" | animation, by that turn for wit, that taste for ad"Absolutely nothing," was the reply. "Or if it venture and pleasantry, the true drama of life, were something, habit gives ease. One part is so which makes human beings most amusing and like another, originality is not the crying sin of amused. The stage cultivates all those powers; modern authorship,-that a single play generally fills the story-teller with anecdote, the humorist lets one into the secret of every other during the with jest, and the man of observation with a knowseason. I have known one French melo-drame figure ledge of the most stirring and singular portion of in the fourfold shape of tragedy, comedy, opera, life. Some, too, are beings of real genius; glowing and farce, for a twelvemonth together." with fine thought, touched with the poetry of mind, eloquent and various in conversation, and with manners softened and polished by the graces of the stage. Some of those, too, are handsome; for, such the stage chooses from society; and now, Eugenia, only wonder that I remained long enough uncaptivated to be the wife of Sir Charles."

"But the horror of appearing before an audience -I should absolutely die of the first fright," said Eugenia, with a shudder.

"Women are sometimes very courageous animals," said the mourner, with a rising smile. "Half our present acquaintance exhibit an intrepidity which I never dreamed of equalling. Have you ever observed Lady Maria driving the reluctant duke into the matrimonial net, in the face of the whole laughing universe; or the fortitude of the Baroness Bronze, under the hottest fire of all sorts of scandal? No; the actress is too much absorbed in her part, to think of any thing else after the first five minutes; and after all, what is there to terrify any one in applause ?"

"But failure-the misery of having to bear the sins of some creature of commonplace, and be answerable for the innumerable sottises of the most stupid of this stupid world."

"Quite a bagatelle," said Matilda. "Nothing is more easily disengaged than the actress from the author. The wretch is ruined; the actress rises only the more, a phoenix from the funeral pile. The public hiss the play, and applaud the performer, with the purest impartiality. They pity the charming Miss A- for having had a part so unworthy of her talents;' or give the 'exquisite Miss Bdouble credit for the delightful vivacity with which she bore up against the abominable dulness of the dullest dialogue that ever oozed from human pen.'" A glow of recollected triumph began to tinge the melancholy cheek.

"But, then, to be excluded from the world; if it were by nothing but the perpetual employment of the stage?"

"Excluded from what world ?" pronounced Matilda, with a glance of scorn. "From the tedious, commonplace, and worthless world that we are now condemned to; from the infinite honor of mixing with idiotic young men, who spend life in yawning, and making every one else yawn; or wicked old ones, whose vice is as hideous as its marks upon their countenances; or with vapid young women, whose soul contains but two ideas-a sense of their own perfections, and a longing for the rentroll of some uncouth lord of the adjoining acres ;

"But those were the sunny hours," said Eugenia. "How could one endure the incessant rehearsals, the late hours, or even the wearisome repetition of the same characters?"

"I never knew the misery of late hours," said Matilda, with a sigh, "until I lived in the world of duchesses-how I envy those untirable skeletons the faculty of keeping awake all night. I was generally sung into the soundest of all slumbers, before any woman of rank in town had put on the night's rouge for the first of the half hundred parties that she must terrify with the moral of her physiognomy before morn. My dreams, too, were delight itself;-no horrid round of spectres predicting broken fortune and public disclosure;-no morning levies of duns, nor agonies at the displeasure of my waiting maid; but the sounds of the stage still in my ear, and heightened by the magic of sleep into deliciousness; the figures of the drama living again before me in lovely procession-myself a queen, or a sylph, or in some bower of rocks and all kinds of sweets, receiving the homage of seraskiers, and sovereigns; or ordering my car, and floating like another goddess of the waters; or some other idea, equally strange and charming."

Her fancy kindled her fine face as she said the words, and she looked the handsome creature that she had been.

"I see I must give up the question," said Eugenia; "but if your ladyship looked as dangerous on the stage as you do at this moment, you must have been horribly plagued with the attentions of all kinds of strange men."

"Rather say perplexed, my dear ;" and the cheek wore a still livelier crimson, as Matilda rose, and walked towards the magnificent mirror. "The number of attentions that one receives may be embarrassing, and the admirers may be now and then very odd people; but, entre nous, no woman ever dies of the most overwhelming admiration.

Some

of those attentions were elegant, and from the elegant. The simplest pleasure of knowing that the simplest world thinks well of one's appearance is a pleasure; but the delight of being the object of high-bred animation, or receiving the unequivocal homage, that, paid to an actress, can be paid only to her beauty and her genius; of feeling that she is not pursued by the mercenary for her fortune, nor by the mean for her rank; is absolutely the most intoxicating draught that can steal away the understanding of woman."

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She stood, in the reviving pride of loveliness, arranging her fine hair before the mirror. But, apropos, it grows late, What was the hour for our undergoing the countess's dinner ?"

"I must acknowledge your ladyship's complete victory," said Eugenia; "and shall leave you but for a moment to dress. In the meantime, here is the evening paper, just come, and full of the opera, and the arrival of the French ambassador, covered with ribbons, and leaving all the belles of Paris in despair."

On her return, she found Matilda sitting at the table, with her eyes fixed on the paper, her color gone, her lips quivering, and tears stealing down her cheek. Astonished and alarmed, she glanced over the paper to discover the fatal news; it was neither battle nor shipwreck, but a paragraph in almost invisible print, in an almost invisible corner.

"Last night, the favorite drama from the French, Julia, or the Recovered Daughter,' was performed. The lovely Sophonisba Sweetbriar played the hero ine, with the universal applause of a crowded house. Her disdain of the marquis, the anxiety of her escape, and the agony of meeting her indignant father, were admirable. If nothing can efface our recollection of its former exquisite representative, at least its present one is without a rival."

"There!" exclaimed Matilda, starting from the table; "there! see an example of the basest perfidy. What an abominable creature!-I at last see what was the purpose of her whole conduct-or her cunning, her advice;-insidious wretch!-I was in her way, and she determined to remove me."

She burst into a flood of tears. Eugenia attempted to soothe her: the attempt was in vain.

But the dinner hour was come; and she at length asked the weeping fair one whether she should not order the carriage?

"Yes," said Matilda; "order it, and instantly; for I must see this abominable woman's performance before I sleep-if I am ever to sleep again. Never will I put faith in human protestations while I live."

The carriage was at the door, Matilda arrived at the theatre as the curtain rose. She saw her wily friend, looking pretty enough on the stage to make any woman in the boxes miserable. She heard the plaudits; she heard them reiterated; and the clever actress played better and better; till Matilda could endure the sight no longer, and flew out of the house.

In the carriage she flung herself on Eugenia's neck, and owned that, with every means of happiness, she was the most unhappy being alive. Her habits bad been broken up; the natural pursuit of her mind was taken away; the current of her original delights was turned off; and fashionable life, opulence, and enjoyment, could not refill the deserted course. "Let no actress," sighed she, "ever dream of happiness, but in adhering to the profession of her heart, her habits, and her genius!"

Matilda withered like an autumnal flower. The climate of England threatened her with consumption. Travel was prescribed; and the Swiss and Italian atmosphere kept the flower on its stalk-no

more.

Within six months, letters from home informed her that Sir Charles had died, like a patriotic Englishman, of a victory at a contested election in the height of the dog-days. She gave many a tear to the memory of this honest, loving, and by no means brilliant, husband. She loved him; and, if she could have conceived it possible to make his figure succeed on the stage, she would have certainly not loved him the less; but now the world was before her. Sophonisba was still playing her "Julia;" drawing tears from half the world, and receiving proposals from the other half, which she was too cunning to accept.

Matilda ordered a postchaise and four; drove through Fondi, with a speed that knocked up her escort of chasseurs, and distanced Il Gran Diavolo, who was on the look-out for her equipage; rushed through Lombardy, to the astonishment of even the English; and scarcely slept, ate or existed, till she stopped at the St. James's hotel.

Her family affairs were despatched with the swiftness of a woman determined on any purpose under heaven. Her arrival was incog.; her existence had of course been utterly forgotten by her "dear five hundred friends" within the first week of her absence. She portioned off her three waiting-maids; sold her mansion; and, next morning, sent for the manager of her original theatre, by her original

name.

The manager waited on her with an expedition most incredible to those who know the movements of those weights of the great theatrical pendules; heard her determination with rapture; and announced the reappearance of the public favorite in red letters, of a length that was the wonder of the arts.

Matilda appeared; she delighted the audience. Sophonisba disappeared; she found that she had nothing to do but to marry; and she took pity upon the silliest heir to the bulkiest estate that had been quadrilled for during the season. Matilda enjoyed the double triumph; glowed with new beauty; flashed with renewed brilliancy; was the fortune of the manager; the pride of authorship; the charm of the day; and was supposed to be one of the principal holders of the last three loans of the last war, and to have dug, for the honor of her country, half a tunnel.

A PERTINENT ANSWER TO AN IMPERTINENT QUES-1 TION.-Jonathan and Paddy were riding together, when they came in sight of what is very unusual in any civilized state nowadays, an old gallows or gibbet. This suggested to the American, the idea of

being witty at the expense of his Irish companion. "You see that, I calculate?" said he, pointing to the object first mentioned. "And now, where would you be, if the gallows had its due ?' Riding alone," coolly replied Paddy.

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