such a prize to any man in the three kingdoms." Seeing I was mistaken in treating with gravity a mere compliment, I smiled in my turn; and adding, that I was too ambitious of instruction not to be willing to profit by the poetry of the collegian and the prose of the Baronet, asked the latter what was meant to be represented on the curtain? by the superb Augusta de Sans Souci, that they may think themselves sufficiently honoured in being permitted to scramble for seats in the lower regions of her theatre." I was so surprized at this account that I could not help exclaiming "Surely such arrogance can only arise from a sort of madness!" "You remember the old adage, I suppose," returned the Baronet; "Set a beg gar on horseback, &c. I would not offend a lady's ear with saying where he would ride to; but we see enough to know that the pretty enchant: ess of these revels has taken a gallop that way." "A nuptial solemnity," replied Sir Bingham, "not to be found in any one of my brother's classics. It is a long time since I was whipped at school for mis-translation and want of memory, but I do not recollect any account, from Homer to Ovid, of a marriage between Hebe and Apollo. You will observe, there stands the God of Wit, giving his hand to the Goddess of Youth, and all the nine Muses are endow ing the bride; but Melpomene and Tha-vated to stations beyond their birth, arise lia stand forth most prominent; both ladies crown Hebe with their mask,-and certainly the beauteous bride of Sans Souci is grateful for the donation!" "I do not like your insinuations, Sir Bingham," interrupted Lord Castledowne; on your premises we should infer that the follies of certain persons suddenly ele of you my younger contemporaries, you, my lively Baronet, must bear a little with my flagellant in the present instance." from the circumstance of their being what is called lowly born. This conclusion is one of the common-places which the unreflecting eagerly adopt, as it saves them I then looked down upon the pit and the trouble of thinking, and yet gives the lower boxes, crowded with the gay audi- power of making a broad assertion posence, and towards the private boxes, whose || sessed of the effect without the constituent fronts were ornamented in the style of qualities of a sound argument. Drawing theatres of old, with embroidered velvet, general conclusions from particular cirenriched with the gayest flowers, and deep cumstances, is the usual refuge of a pregold fringes. judiced or a careless mind; and as I am "The centre box," continued Sir Bing-old enough to whip the offending Adam out ham," in the fashion of the theatres abroad, is appropriated to the sovereign of the place. And as the Duke of Sans Souci is certainly sovereign in his own theatre, it is fitted up for himself and Duchess with appropriate honours, as you see, splendid canopy, coronets, &c. &c. On the right hand of the Duke's box, you perceive, is the one we now occupy; and this is digmified with the name of the Heir Apparent of England. On the left range are seats for the Princes of Bourbon, and for whatever other foreign princes or princesses may chance to visit this country. Opposite are the boxes for British Dukes, Duchesses, and Ambassadors. All personages beneath these illustrious degrees of nobility are considered as such canaille "Let it be inflicted by the fair hand of your Lady, or of Miss Wellwood," returned Sir Bingham; “and I will kiss the rod!" "That would be to reward and not to punish," answered the Earl. "Then instruct as well as condemn," cried the Baronet; "and if you do not like my premises, give me some of your own. If the beggar will not ride to the certain black gentleman with horns and tail, where does your Lordship say he will go-te heaven?" (To be continued.) ROMANCES IN REAL LIFE.-HISTORY OF ALBERTO AND ANGELICA. (Concluded from Page 64.) "Yes, Signor," replied the fellow; 66. we did overtake Signora Angelica, and in the disguise of a page; and we were just upon the point of seizing this very forest. We were at the top of a hill, and she was in the road at the bottom of it.. Upon seeing us she spurred her horse, and entered into one of the cross roads which leads from the heath into the wood. We lost her when we had arrived at the point of the cross-ways. She took one road, and I suppose we took another. We do not therefore know what has become of her. She may have fallen a prey to the wolves with which the forest abounds; or she may have fallen May the Virgin protect her!" exclaimed Alberto. ALBERTO was now in the hands of the soldiers of the Roman Governor; and as the merchant Stephano had offered a liberal reward for his apprehension, upon the suspicion we have related, there apher, when she escaped us by entering into peared no hopes of bribing the soldiers by higher offers to permit his escape. It was true, indeed, that Alberto was innocent of the fact with which he was charged, but he knew enough of the Roman police to put no confidence in this innocence. It would be difficult to persuade the merchant Stephano, that his suspicion was false; Angelica, it appeared, had really eloped from her father's house, and had been traced and pursued in the same road with himself. These circumstances were sufficient before a tribunal, where pre-into the hands of the banditti." sumption was evidence, and probability was certainty. There appeared, therefore, no hope for Alberto, yet did the benificent genius of love lend its ready hand, and with what effect will now appear.-The fellow who had arrested Alberto, and who appeared the chief of his companions, replied to his demands of the fate of Angelica, and his reproaches to them as her murderers, that he had invented the false-self, for I fear it will go hard with you.. hoed merely to play upon the credulity of the old man. "We remarked his eager ness, Signor, and began to suspect that it was not without cause, and that he knew something either of Signora Angelica or yourself. We said this, therefore, that we might try him still farther. It had its effect, you find, Siguor. We must be sharp to succeed in our trade. A man may be a prince or a governor without any brains at all, or with as little as a muledriver; but he must have some, aye, and a tolerable portion too, to be a good thieftaker. Yes, yes, Signor, I warrant you we know our trade." "In that," replied the fellow, "the Virgin may do as she pleases; to be sure it is not so lawful to protect fugitives; but the holy Virgin, I suppose, is as absolved from all law as the holy Father himself. As to yourself, Signor, you had better make a friend of this same Virgin for your My Lord Colonna, the Lieutenant of the province, lives within three leagues of this house; it is too late to carry you before his. Lordship to-night, but you must attend us in the morning. You have heard my Lord's character, I suppose. His severity is known almost as far as his name, and as that is one of the noblest in Italy, it is known far enough. My Lord Colonna, however, is so severe that he is the dread of all the banditti In the province. He is not like the other Roman Barons who will spare a bandit through terror of the revenge of his companions. No, no, Signor, you have nothing to hope from my Lord of Colonna but law and instant execution. They say, indeed, my Lord's se "Then you did not see Angelica," resumed Alberto, somewhat relieved by this reply, and losing all remembrance of him-verity is owing to a misfortune which has self in the sudden transport he received from this assurance of the safety of Angelica. No. XVII. Vol. III.-N.S. imbittered his life. He was always desirous of an heir; Heaven, about fiveand-twenty years ago, gave him one; but Q the child was stolen from him whilst yet | coquetry and idle vanity of manifesting in his infancy. My Lord has never recovered his loss even to the present day." her power to distress her lover, though she might suffer herself as much in the effort. O vanity, how dost thou govern the weaker sex! At how great an ex tions, and to thee what sacrifice will ap- Whilst the fellow related these circumstances of the Lord Colonna, there was something in the manner of the old pea-pence will they purchase thy gratificasant which attracted the attention and excited the wonder of Alberto. He knew not to what to attribute the emotions which varied his countenance; it could not be any terror of any thing which threatened himself from the severity of this magistrate. The old man, indeed, had showed a partial kindness to him throughout the whole adventure; but it was not natural to believe he could feel this violent apprehension at the fate of one who was thus an entire stranger. These thoughts, together with the flight and fate of Angelica, occupied the mind of Alberto. The soldiers drawing round the fire, and calling for every thing the house could furnish, with the insolence of petty power, declared their in- [ tention of remaining there during the night, and conducting their prisoner upon the following morning to the Castle of the Lord Colonna.-We will leave them here then, and seek Anglica, whom we appear to have almost forgotten. Angelica then, as the fellows had related, had really arrived at her father's house almost in the same moment in which Alberto, disgusted at her cruelty, had left it, and her emotions had been nearly the same as the officer had mentioned. The cause indeed was somewhat different to what he had imagined, for instead of being assumed to conceal a concerted plot of escape be-forest, and in which same forest Alberto tween herself and Alberto, her grief was sincere, and proceeded from no other source than the loss of her lover. The love she entertained for him was nothing inferior to the passion with which she had inspired him, we might say, perhaps, that it exceeded it; for the passion of a prude is stronger in the proportion as it is more endeavoured to be concealed. Nature never fails to vindicate her injured laws, and punish those who endeavour to controvert her dictates. Angelica had already felt this. Her visit to her relation, upon the first declaration which Alberto bad so imprudently made of bis passion, had proeceded from no other source than the had already entered by another way. Here, as already related by the soldiers, she was seen and followed, a circumstance she no sooner perceived, than she spurred her horse, and entering one of the cross roads, escaped from their sight into the thickest part of the wood. The fellows taking another of the cross ways, arrived at the peasant's dwelling, and surprised, as we have related, Alberto." In the mean time Angelica had escaped from one danger but to run into another, of a nature still more menacing. It was now night, and such a night as we have before mentioned, when we related Alberto's situation as he entered upon the night, nor the horrors of the darkness, which by its common effect upon a timid imagination, excited forms still more appalling to the fancy; not the redoubled fury of the tempest, and the awakened rage of the wild beasts, could so far daunt the soul of Angelica as to inspire her with any regret for the measures she had taken, and had it been to be again re horrors would not have withheld her from the same resolution. Let the historian, partial to his own sex, applaud, in all the pomp of language, the courage to which the proud sense of honour inspires his worthies, a woman, impelled by her own inclinations, has inore resolution than their most gloried warrior. If Greece, for the repossession of the ravished Helen, dared the sword of Hector, and the rage of the combined gods, did not Helen, in her elopement with her lover, dare all the danger of dividing seas, and in the arms of her Paris, forget all the prophetic menaces of Nereus? plain which lay on the other side of the forest. The wind howled, and the forest crackled, and winter appeared to hover in person over the wood. Angelica, in the first moments of her terror, believing her pursuers at her heels, still continued to urge her horse. The beast for some time continued to proceed with full speed; at length, however, wearied with the length of his day's journey, and Ange-newed, even this foretaste of the attendant lica, without thought, still continuing to urge him forwards, he fell to the ground, throwing his rider some paces before him. All efforts to raise him were vain. Angelica therefore found herself on foot, in the middle of a forest, and in the mid-hour of a night thus unseasonable. Nor was the fury of the weather the only circumstance she had most reason to dread; she was exposed to a danger which, by presenting her with something of greater horror, caused her even to forget that she was exposed to any inferior inconvenience. The forest was infested by wolves in a greater multitude than any other in Italy, being situated in a country where habitation was less frequent, the peasantry having either perished or emigrated in the Italian wars. The season, and the late hour of the night, had now summoned those from their dens and recesses in which they had remained concealed during the day, and impelled by the rage of hunger they were now wandering in troops through the forest, which re-echoed to their dismal howlings. What a night was this for Angelica! For one whom opu-mounted, the love of life which still relence had effeminated even beyond the mains even in unhappy love, infusing a natural softness of her sex! and who, per-strength of which her slight frame aphaps, before this adventure, had never wandered a league from the shelter of her paternal roof! The reader will think, perhaps, that such accumulated horrors led her to repent her hasty flight, and occasioned her to form a wish that she had not thus rashly deserted the security of her home to follow a flying lover. If such, however, are his sentiments, he is deceived. Angelica was a woman, and possessed that resolution with which love always inspires them; and of which those who assume to themselves the praise of superior heroism, as if attached by nature to their stronger sex, are but little apable. Not all the real dangers of the Angelica remained thus resolute amid such increassng forms of terror; the howl, however, of the wolves, which now appeared to be approaching to the place where she stood, led her to consider of some means of escape. She was beneath a tree, whose branches continuing almost to the root of its trunk, allowed her a facility of climbing, whilst its thick foliage promised her some shelter from the tempest. Into this therefore she now peared incapable. Nor was this means of safety too suddenly adopted; for she had hardly gained the refuge of the tree, when she saw a whole troop of them approach. The forest resounded with their united howl, a cry rendered more terrible by a rage of prey which excited it. Angelica herself trembled, and such was the pressure of her apprehensions, that she was compelled to redouble her efforts to maintain her seat. The horse, terrified at their approach, had risen from the ground; he attempted flight, but the wolves surrounded him, and thus intercepted a!! escape. The tree in which Angelica was now in refuge, was in the centre of this neral carrol of the forest. The image of love again arose in her fancy, and her rising hopes promised her that Alberto was not lost for ever. "And thus," said she, "shall I think all my wandering more than repaid. My fatigue, my dangers, my terrors, will all be forgotten, or recalled only as I relate the story of my love, and only remembered with pleasure as the means of restoring me to my Alberto, and with him the happiness which without him I must never hope to taste. Oh, my Alberto! why hast thou thus deserted me! Or rather, Oh, Angelica! why has thy ill-fated hypocrisy, why has thy useless prudery compelled him thus to fly! Yet I will follow thee, and my vanity thus humbled, shall give thee the revenge my folly has so well merited!" Thus, like the love-lorn Philomel, amid the surrounding shades of the conflict; the horse, impelled by natural instinct to seek the trunk of the tree as defending him from behind, whilst he made his resistance before. The wolves therefore surrounding the tree, included in one circle both tree and horse, and thus rendered Angelica a spectator of the unequal combat. The horse, however, by his teeth and heels for some time kept his enemies at bay, this fortune, however, was not long; the wolves, spurred on by hunger, and the sight of a prey which promised to gratify it, continued the assault. The horse, therefore, was at length pulled to the earth; the whole troop rushed upon him, and his limbs, thus torn from his carcase, were seen in the same instant quivering in the mouths of the wolves. Is it necessary to attempt to describe the terror of Angelica, as well through the whole of this terrible conflict || as at the bloody termination? The confi-wood, did Angelica lament and repent her dence which the poor animal seemed to cruelty. The powers of Love listened to have shewed in seeking refuge from the the soft complaint, accepted the sincere tree in which she herself was seated, and penitence, and hastened the final accomthus, as it were, imploring it at her very feet, plishment of her wishes. The pressure excited in her a lively emotion of regret, of hunger made Angelica now eager to that the weakness of her sex rendered it find some house or hut where she might impossible for her to obey this seeming ap- relieve that want. Her wish was soon peal. Her horror, however, upon the con- gratified; for she had wandered but a clussion surpassed every description. It short distance from the tree, when the inis needless therefore to add, that in such a crease of light penetrating through the situation, and thus circled with circum-wood, discovered to her that she was now stances, each more appalling than the upon some outlet of the forest. A few other, she neither enjoyed nor atempted minutes verified her conjecture, and conany sleep. In this manner, in this sleepless ducted her to an open field, which borterror, did she pass the remaining part of dered the wood. For some time she conthe night. The morning at length dawned, tinued to proceed through an open counand she descended from the tree. The try, and no sign of habitation as yet aptempest had now either exhausted itself, peared; at length, however, she arrived or passed over to vent its remaining rage at the extremity of a park, and the ascendin some other clime. The morning was ing smoke of the neighbouring castle unusually fine, the wind having dissipated directed her footsteps to its gates. She every vapour, which on the preceding here blew the horn, which hung susday had clouded the horizon. The sun,pended for this purpose; the gate was rising with a lustre unusual to the season,|| opened, and her dress as a page obtained had now diffused a cheerfulness over the her immediate admittance. She demanded face of nature; the forest appeared to of the porter to whom the castle belonged? smile with its kindling light, and creation And was answered," to Lord Colonna, itself seemed to revive in the renewal of Signor."-" Lead me then to his lady," the suspended melody of the birds. An added Angelica; "I am a stranger, it is gelica, as she walked forwards, felt this true, but I need her protection, and her influence of nature, and in despite of her knowledge of my family will not admit late horror, and her present want of re- her to refuse it." Saying this, she followed freshment, her heart revived at the ge- an attendant, who came forth at the per |