bowed, kissed my glove gallantly, and vowed that my rejection was sweeter than any other woman's acceptance.

"Will you not except the acceptance of that charming widow who has just flown from us?" asked Lady Castledowne with an arch smile; “she fied from your compliments as from Cupid's arrows."

"Rather as from the voice of a certain

memento mori of her charms. My compliments seemed like the pinions of time, reminding her of the years flown by; and not for forty more of them would she have listened to another hint of the same nature."

"But how does it happen, Sir Bingham, that so gay a bon vivant as you should thus become the monitor of waning coquetry?" "Ever since I founded my esteem on youthful loveliness and candour," replied the Baronet, glancing at me.

"No lover-like speeches, Sir Bingham," interrupted the Countess laughing; "else here the acquaintance-contract must drop." "Shame! Lady Castledowne," answered he; "are we to think nothing lovely and candid but what we are dying for? If you answer in the negative, then I fear I must prepare for a ball through my head from your Lord; for I must boldly confess that the loveliness and candour of Lady Castledowne are hardly less objects of my veneration than the like virtues in Miss Wellwood."

"A truce, Bingham," cried Lady Castledowne; "I shall suspect you mean to charm the dragon for the sake of the guarded fruit."

We perceived Lord Castledowne and Lady Lovelace pressing to us through the groupe; they were both laughing immoderately.

"What has been done? what has been said?" demanded the Baronet eagerly.

"Much of both," replied the Earl, try ing to compose his voice to answer: Lady Newfangle has just turned his Excellency's eyes on the charming object she promised him."

"And what was it?" exclaimed the Countess.

"Himself!" replied the Earl.

Sir Bingham burst into so boisterous a peal of laughter at this, that I really became alarmed the Persian would observe it, suspect the cause, and feel hurt. If we are indiscreet enough to put strangers in ridiculous points of view, we ought not to add to our folly the injustice of making them suffer the sting of the jest.

"Charming!" cried the Baronet, amidst the bursts of his laughter: "Lady Newfangle must sce something prodigiously lovely in the tint of that tawny skin; and then those half-closed lack-lustre eyes, how well they are adapted to express la belle passion!"

"At least they may be the more likely to express it to her," whispered Lady Lovelace, "as they cannot descry above half her wrinkles, and the patching up of the frail tenement of declining beauty."

it is ever the sure witness of excellence to put a strange face on its own perfection !"

The gallant Baronet was here interrupted by a loud laugh from the quarter where the Persian sat. We looked towards it, and saw him almost overpowered by the press of ladies, who now thronged upon him to his no small danger of suffocation. These gay dames were some laughing, others tittering, and the rest vociferating a thousand expressions of admiration, in words which I thought would have better suited the lips of Sir Bingham than of modest British matrons."

her better than her Ladyship's present carroty caxon!"

"O pudor!" cried the Earl, "how can you so misuame Golden tresses, torn from the brows of Love himself."

Why really, good people," exelaimed the Countess, "excepting my dear silent and amazed Hymenæa, you are one and all very shocking! And as for you, my | Lord, I am quite ashamed to hear your wit degrade itself to ridicule age and weakness."

"And what have I done to be excluded from so pretty an address?" said Lady Lovelace. "I hope you do not mean to leave me amongst the scape-goats of fa

shion."

"No," answered the gay Baronet; "I would rather take you into my own fold, and with your fair niece for a sister shepherdess, tend you through green pastures and flowery meads all my life long."

A general rising of the illustrious Persian and his little court, made us all quit the pavilion, and proceeding towards the house, entered the breakfast room, which

was laid out with all the luxuries of the

season.

While I was eating an ice, which Sir Bingham had just handed to me, I observed a very elegant young man pass me, along with the lady of the feast. She led him to a raised platform, on which stood a splendid harp and a Grecian chair. He sat down in the one, and began to tune the other. The groupe thus formed seemed perfectly attic; had the harp been changed to a lyre, I might have supposed that I saw the graceful Alcibiades about to strike its string "to Peleus' son."

I fixed my eyes on the spot. Lord Castledowne smiled. I observed a number of young women hastening towards the platform as the handsome minstrel struck the prelude of his air. I was all ear, for the sounds he drew forth were of the softest and most delicious tone. He began to sing, and his voice was the echo of his instrument.

"Divine!" cried I.

“Hush!" whispered the Earl," and I will whisper a response to your ejaculation when the song is ended.”

I listened; but, alas! the song which began in the sweetest language of poetry, ended, like the seductive persuasions of illicit pleasure, in images my soul blushes

sentiments which I should have thought could only have been tolerated in a place worse than a Turkish haram.

"Shall I whisper my response?" said the Earl in a low voice to me.

"I will," replied I with a warmth which indignation fired; " and call it diabolical." Something that Sir Bingham said was drowned in the loud applauses that rewarded the songster for his song; and the young man, whose fine person and beautiful voice I could no longer regard without disgust, throwing himself back in his chair with affected indolence, rolled his eyes languishingly on the Duchess of Chertsey, and taking a bottle of otto from her hand, murmured something in her ear. I was so shocked at this second proof of laxity of fashionable manners, that I whispered Lady Castledowne my desire to withdraw. She consented; and in our drive home the Earl informed me that the male syren I had seen, was a young man of family, who, intoxicated with his handsome person, talent for poetry and music, and fine voice, had assumed the character of a British Ovid or Tibullus; and thus passed his days in composing songs, and his nights in singing them, to the no small loss of his reputation and gain of his notoriety. The world believed him as libertine as his muse; but the fact was, few young men were more correct in the moral part of their lives. No one ever heard of an amour in which it could be proved he had been actually engaged; but he sung of thousands, and persons who knew him only by his songs, believed him as dissipated as his words bore witness.

"It is to be lamented," said Lady Castledowne," "that a man of such talents and real morality should so misuse the one and scandalize the other."

"He is young," replied the Earl; "and time will shew him the madness, the crime of his present folly."

"I wish," cried I, "that the frowns of his acquaintance, and the remonstrances of

his friends, would not leave so desirable a reformation to the slow progress of time." "I sympathize with you, Miss Wellwood," replied the Earl;" "but his acquaintance being a class of people who seldom think or weigh consequences, are not likely to deem that to be injurious from which they derive amusement. These gay people of the ton, from ignorance of the structure of the human mind, and the nature and intention of its passions, believe that his songs describe love; and they see no harm in listening to his descriptions and dying away at his ecstacies. Children of whim and vanity, they know not the difference between the selfish lawless passion he paints in all the witcheries of Armida's charms; and the true affection of love, which, sent to us from above to beguile earth of its sorrows, leads us to heaven's eternal joys. The love of a virtuous mind

) is seated in the soul, and angels might sing its praise, its pleasures, and its pains. The love of a voluptuous fancy rests upon the person, and none ought to Isten to its rhapsodies but the nymphis and swains of Comus's court."

"But surely," replied I, "all those lovely young women who listened so foolishly with such eagerness to Lord Charles Syberite, could not be of Comus's court?"

"No," answered his Lordship; "I grant they are yet women of what the world calls virtue; but like the honest Mameluke, I prefer the virtue which is of too pure a brightness to come within even the vapourous breath of impurity."

At this moment the carriage stopped at my aunt's door, and we alighted. (To be continued.)

LETTER XII.

You are well acquainted, my Emilia, with the numerous race of our modern Midas, who boast themselves to be in possession of learning and talents, which unhappily no other person can discover. These gentlemen may, with greater propriety, boast of the nobleness and antiquity of their origin; since their first father was assuredly Midas, king of Lydia, a contemporary of Bacchus. It is a pity, for the sake of our musical age, that this illustrious amateur should have been born some thousand years too soon; in the nineteenth ceutury he would have done wonders; he would have been the oracle of our Opera-goers, the chief of our musical critics, to whom now he has only transmitted his name and his ears.

This Prince having heard much of Apollo's sublime talent, exclaimed one day (resting bis band on his hip):—" Marvellous! I am curious to judge of this fellow's merit; let him be brought to me."

Apollo presents himself; and Midas stutter

ing and lisping alternately, from the altitudes of his folly, pronounces these words:

"You profess the chromatic art; let us have a taste of it: I shall judge then. Not that I am an educated musician; Jupiter preserve me from it! But I know every thing, without having learned any thing. Yet more, I pique myself, when I pronounce an opinion, upon employing the most strictly technical terms. Since, thanks to the dictionary, I am learned by aphabetical order; and now, my dear Sir, I must warn you, that in our lyric committee, you will either be lauded like a God, or hissed like a fool. With us there is no medium; you are either divine, or detestable."

While Midas uttered these preliminary follies, his favourite Pau, came to assist at his rising.

Pan was a neighbouring lord, renowned for his drinking songs. The King seeing him enter, ran to meet him, and taking Apollo by the hand:-"You see," said he, "a rival in this