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the first regiment of foot-guards. I have heard my mother speak of him, as one of the ugliest young men she ever beheld;

the fair Duchess's liveliest sallies, and certainly go to sleep in the finest of her tragic drawls." "Then I cannot leave you, my dear but so polite in his manners, that on the aunt."

second interview he generally so bewitched the senses, as to persuade eyes and ears to believe his person that of Adonis, and his voice the music of Apollo's harp. This inherent good-breeding was as a fortune to the young soldier. He had no family

"But you shall, my dear Hymenæa. I will write a note instantly to Lady Castledowne, to be your chaperone. You will find me better when you return; for, at present, I am under a medicine that will do me good. The Earl has been my phy-interest to push his advancement in the sician; reflection, his prescription, will perhaps performs its functions best in temporary solitude."

I saw that my aunt meant what she said; and retiring to chuse a becoming dress for so elegant an assembly, left her Ladyship || to write and dispatch her billet.

While sitting after dinner tete-a-tete, my imagination being full of the anticipated amusements for the evening, as I banded Lady Lovelace a peach, I asked her how it happened that an English Duchess should bear a foreign title; Sans Souci seems to insinuate that the ancestors of her Duke were rather enobled by a French than a British monarch.

army; he had no money to purchase. But his manners and his military skill supplied. the place of both. Expences incident to a town life, in so extravagnt a regiment, compelled him to sell out; and throwing himself on the world as a soldier of fortune, it being then peace between England and the Continental Powers, he crossed the Channel, and offered his services to the Great Frederick of Prussia. He became the right-hand officer of that consummate General, in all his wars ; and being elevated from rank to rank by the grateful monarch, Captain Charles Gorget at last became Duke of Sans Souci, with a princely fortune to maintain his rank."

"But seems, my dear Hymenæa, is hardly ever to be believed. Seems, is the cloak of hypocrisy, and the Nessusean chemise with which slander envelopes its object! I hate the whole vocabulary of seems, perhaps, buts, and ifs, that ever did away the character or peace of man or "I dare say you have guessed the Great woman. However, to return to your ques-Frederick's reason," replied Lady Lovetion respecting the Duke of Sans Souci's patent of nobility; you must know, to speak in the language of story-tellers, and I have a long one to relate if I were to take up the history of his Grace's achievements from the first charge on his shield. You must know that his patent of nobility was first seen in his arm, and then in his

"Ah! now I understand," exclaimed I, "that warlike and witty king, chose to distinguish his brave and elegant friend with the title of that monarch's favourite || villa."

arms"

"He was a soldier, then?"

"You have hit it, my apt Hymenæa. There is some pleasure in letting our young fledged wits fly before you; there is no chance of your beating them down again, by mistaking the pretty birds for bats, and such like winged earth-worms."

I smiled at my aunt's playfulness, and bowing to her, she resumed.

"This same Duke of Sans Souci, forty years ago, was plain Captain Gorget, of

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lace; " so, pray, congratulate your wit, in thus keeping time with so illustrious en bon esprit. Thus, then, our amiable Gorget becomes a Duke, and five years ago returned to England, with all his fullblown honours thick upon him. My Lady mother was then alive; and I, having recently buried my Lord Lovelace, she thought it would be a charming thing to see her widowed Countess transformed to a bridal Duchess; and with this intent, I believe, perfectly, without participating her wish, did she bring his Anglo-Prussian Grace to pay his respects to me. He was, to be sure, more hideous than I had ever beheld mortal man. My good mamma, in her days of juvenilty, had thought him ugly when possessed of the grace of youth, what then must he have appeared to me, when plucked of this one

tered mandarine on the chimney-piece. It is the nominal value that makes one endure such hideous antiques. Her Duke gives her a splendid title, splendid houseɛ, equipages, and every means of gratifying her expensive wishes, and displaying the varieties of her charms. He who has

solitary feather, and with the grey hairs of sixty years making a perfect snow-ball of a head, whose face was paler than death it- || self. It was furrowed with scars from many a well fought field; he had lost an eye; and his emaciated figure, which looked like the Father, in Schiller's Robbers, just risen from his living tomb, was sup-been the conqueror of whiskered Cossacs, ported by one meagre limb of his own growth, and another supplied from the cork-tree. I started at the spectre, and in spite of all the stars, ribbons, and crosses, that shone on his emblazoned form, should certainly have made my retreat at one door, as he entered at the other, had not my mother seized my hand, and held it fast, till his Grace had paid his first compliments; and, of a truth, he did it so elegantly, expressed himself with such winning courtliness, that my attention was taken ere I was aware, and I listened to him with pleasure for nearly two hours." "Ha, aunt! the triumph of the Graces over youth and beauty?"

and fierce hussars, has at last bowed to the smiles, frowns, and caprices of a flirt of eighteen. You will to-night see how she leads him by a nod; how she even makes him joint bearer in the enormous load of her follies. This theatrical whim which is vaunted off as a little attempt to amuse him during his confinement to the house in a severe cold, is well understood by all who know the Duchess, as a chosen opportunity of exhibiting her fine form to advantage, under the various changes of singing, dancing, and dramatic grace. She is one of the seems of the world; and, as such, I hold her in utter abhorrence."

I observed that a little acrimony embittered the tone of this last subject; and sus

more mortification than she chose to acknowledge, at the heroic Duke omitting to lay his laurels at her feet, I wished to change the hue of her feelings, and turning with some trifling remark, touched the harp with a few notes of Eveleen's Bower.

"He sought it not with me," replied Lady Lovelace, laughing; "though, per-pecting that her Ladyship had felt a little haps, old as he was, he would not have deemed fat, fair, and five-and-thirty youth; my beauty, I hope, will yet wear its title unimpaired for ten years to come. Suffice it to say, the Duke and the Countess highly approved each other as friends; and such we might have remained to this day, had he not fallen in love. The object was the beautiful orphan of a distinguished naval officer; she was under the care of a dowager aunt, who, from an ancient feud against me, conceived in the rivalry of our first presentation at Court, made it a point with the enamoured Duke, that if he hoped to win the fair Louisa for his Duchess, he must cease to consider Lady || Lovelace as a friend.-Here was the triumph of love over friendship. I was resigned, and he married La Belle Louise."

"Hush!" cried my aunt; "why will you bring up the ghost of the impertinent Killaloe before me, by chaunting any of his native strains? Ring for coffee, and by the time it is drank we shall have the Castledownes."

Even while the order passed her lips, the knocker of the door sounded, and a servant announced Lady Casledowne's carriage.

"Don't make her Ladyship wait," cried my aunt; and snatching up my shawl and fan, I hurried down stairs.

On stepping into the carriage, Lord Castledowne introduced me to his wife, who, in the gentlest voice, apologized for

"I have heard," returned I, "that his Duchess is very young, very pretty, and very lively. How much is she then to be esteemed for having sufficient taste to pre-calling so early; "I fear I must have disfer worth before youth and charms."

"That is not the merit of the enchantress of Sans Souci House," returned the Countess; "she cares no more for the trophied Duke than I do for that old shat

turbed you at desert," continued her Ladyship; "but the Duchess's theatre will be so full, it is necessary to be there by eight o'clock to secure seats."

I made her some civil reply, with my

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vain. I am told his person is literally frightful."

"Not frightful," returned the Earl, "though certainly not handsome. But is there nothing else, my young and lovely friend, that can fill the heart with vanity but personal endowment? Recollect yourself. While the fop values himself upon fine lace or figure, there is a coxcomb of another description who makes as vehement demands on your admiration, for his skill in singing, walking, racing, driving; and paradoxical as it may seem, many a man makes himself an arrant fool in his elaborate attempts to shew himself wondrous wise. We have therefore cox

Lord Castledowne, with a grateful smile and a bow, took the satin bill she pre-combs of the toilet, of the turf, of the sented.

college, of the senate, and why not of the

"What!" exclaimed he, "the title-sword?" page of a missal, or the argument of some royal amatory ode in the fifteenth century, that we have it thus, on virgiu silk, with golden letters pressed!"

He then scanned it over with an arch gravity." Humph! the emblazoned arms of Sans Souci, supported by the Eagle of Prussia, and the Cupid of Louisa Ammiral! It was not so very gracious in this fair dame to paint the only victor that ever brought the gallant Duke on his knees, thus amongst the trophies of his achievements!".

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"You mistake, my Lord," rejoined the Countess; they are not her husband's uophies, but her own, that she is now displaying; and therefore Dan Cupid comes in very properly as victor over Dan Mars."

"Alas! my poor friend Gorget!" exclaimed the Earl, with a sigh;" thirty years ago, when you were the bravest soldier in all the Prussian camp, when thy judg ment directed the councils of the Great Frederick, little did I ever expect to see thee made the puppet of a capricious girl; or the screen, behind which she might safely act her follies!"

"My dear Miss Wellwood," continued he, turning to me, "here is a melancholy instance of the power of the most cuntemptible of your sex, over even the most sensible of ours, when that sense is betrayed by vanity."

"How? that cannot be," exclaimed I; "the Duke of Sans Souci cannot be

Lady Castledowne laughed; " do not ask that question of youth and beauty!—which of our sex with a bright eye and a blooming cheek, ever looked from our carriage in St. James's street, without seeing more than half-a-dozen coxcombs of the last mentioned insignia? In short, my moralizing Lord, are not red coats proverbial for that title?"

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Right, my Lady," answered the Earl, "but these novices in the profession of arms, I do not mean; nor is it the profession of arms of which they are vain; it is the sight of a gorget, the waving of a plume, the smiles of such bright eyes as yours and the fair Hymenæa's. My coxcomb of the sword is he that is proud of his achievements; who loves the sound of his fame, and never thinks its speaks so sweetly as in a female voice. There is one kind of hero who weighs the judgment of the acclaimer with the noise of the acclaim. If judg ment kick the beam, my hero turns on his heel, and the high-toned praise passes as the wind that he regards not. But there is another hero, who, like the camelion, feeds on the air of adulation; that man, while respected for his deeds by the estim able part of the world, is usually made the sport of fools, the prey of cunning. Of this latter class is my old acquaintance, poor Gorget; I beg his Grace's pardon, I ought rather to have said, the magnificent Duke of Sans Souci. While performing his duty abroad in the cabinet and camp of the monarch to whom he had given

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your Grace she sees 'Othello's youth and beauty in his mind and should the world persuade you she is too young and pretty to make you happy, she will weep herself till she looks as old and ordinary as her aunt.'

"Suffice it to say, these arguments of the Dowager's, with a few sighs and tears from Louisa, brought the warrior to acknowledge his weakness; and the ensuing month saw the love-sick girl the maguifi. cent Duchess of Sans Souci.

"Since that hour she has been the most devoted of wives, the most expensive of Duchesses, and the most dissipated of fine ladies. The Duke, from his many old wounds, and advanced age, is loaded with infirmities, and therefore seldom stirs abroad. The Duchess is too fond of her dear indulgent Lord, to think of leaving him for a day or night-or rather his

himself, he had no time to attend to privite opinions on his merits. But as soon as he retired with his honours and rewards; as soon as he had laid his coroneted head to repose upon the golden laurels which his own martial hand had planted, then became he infested with a brood of ravenous gnats; and their detestable humming he must needs appreciate as the singing of the nightingale. Sharpers, male and female, thronged around the spoil-encumbered hero, all eager to flatter him, to share his riches with their rapacity. One venal wretch writes a doggrel poem of five hundred verses on the Duke of Sans Souci's unparalleled defence of the right bank of the Rhine,' and the smiling warrior presents him with a purse of gold. School-mistresses work his victories in worsted embroidery, and each cunning beldame is made independent for life, for her pains. But the last conquest to be gain-house, I ought to say, for not, perhaps, ed over his fortune and himself fell to the lot of Louisa Ammiral, and her manœuvr ing aunt. They met the Duke at Chelten ham; and by the young Lady's sonnets to Bravery, to a wounded Hero,' &c. &c. soon brought his Grace to understand that she was enamoured of his fame. She was beautiful, and he became charmed, in-world are present. His dinners must infatuated; in short, violently in love. But when he compared his advanced years and shattered form, with her youth and loveliness, he dreaded the world's censure of so unequal a union. Ile candidly expressed his fears, and his consequent pains to the Dowager? She wept for her enamoured Louisa, who loved him, as Caroline of Litchfield did the wounded Walstein, not for his name or his person, but for the hero that was within; for the battles he had won, for the sieges he had raised, for the castles he had stormed, for the towns he had laid in ashes, the provinces he had depopulated, the kingdoms he had reduced to wastes!

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"The Duke informed the weeping matron, that to the latter part of these exploits he could lay no claim; and he hoped that the art of depopulation was no charm in the eyes of the gentle Louisa."

"Oh, Sir" cried the aunt, "my Louisa, like myself, does not exactly know the particulars that make up the hero, but she adores the result; and in

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then above one hour in the whole twentyfour, does he ever see her but by hasty snatches of a minute at a time. But then she is always employed for his Grace; solitude would kill him. It is the worst possible thing for a nervous invalid; he must have dejeunes, at which half the gay

clude every foreigner of distinction, every title of pre-eminence in the kingdom. His petit-soupers would not be bearable, unless she could introduce to them the choice wits of the age, the gayest men of fashion, the persons of both sexes most interesting to her taste. And then her public assemblies, they come once a month; and there you meet the whole congregated world of quality and gaiety!"

"But does not all this injure and distress the invalided Duke?" inquired I. "No; it delights him," replied the Earl; "she declares it is all done to amuse kim, that she lives in a crowd to cheer him, that she endures being called the most dissi pated woman in England, only that he may know her to be the most devoted wife. He kisses her fair hand, swears himself the happiest husband in the universe; and then hobbling half fainting to his room, leaves her to pass the remainder of the night amidst the revels of his ball, his masquerade, or his private theatre."

I shook my head at this account, and I

suppose looked very grave, and perhaps doubtingly.

Lady Castledowne smiled.-" My dear Lord, Miss Wellwood almost suspects you of a little romancing here. I see she cannot understand how, if the Duchess of Sans Souci loves her husband, she can make such a carnival of his invalid hours; and if she is indifferent to him, how she can address hin in such tender language, and avowedly make herself a prisoner for his sake."

"Has Lady Castledowne translated into proper language the shake of your ambrosial curls, my fair friend?" demanded his Lordship.

"She has," replied I.-" Then," answered the Earl, "the solution of your query is very simple. The Duke's fortune is entirely in his own power; not a rood of his estates is entailed; and when he dies, should he then be in a doting nicod with his adulating wife, he may leave her sole mistress of thirty thousand a-year."

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"Monstrous!" said I.-" And so it would be," rejoined the Countess ; for the Duke has a charming nephew, the only son of a sister of his; the youth is an orphan, and without other prospects in life than from his uncle. But since this young Duchess came into the family, though she worships day and night before the full-grown and withering laurels of her Lord, she has such an antipathy to the springing plant that promises to over-shadow the brave brows of the youthful Charles, that from the day she entered Sans Souci House, he was, tacitly, banished. At present he is in Spain; and has already given proof of a military merit too preeminent to allow of her smiles. A friend

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of mine who has been staying lately with her Grace, told me that she has all the newspapers brought to her boudoir, before they are carried to the Duke; she looks them over, and if there is any paragraph in the news from Spain which makes honourable mention of LieutenantColonel Charles Mowbray, she tears it from the paper, and tells the Duke, if he asks any questions, that it was some horrible story about a murder, &c. with which she did not like to shake his nerves. In short, this once celebrated General of the Great Frederick, neither sees, hears, nor understands, but through the medium, and by the influence of an impertinent, venal, ill-informed girl of twenty. He believes himself idolized, while all the world knows he is despised; and while he thinks she sacrifices all the world to him, she immolates himself, his fame, and his respectability to her selfishness and vanity."

While the Countess yet spoke, the great gates which opened to the avenue of Sans Souci House were thrown back, and our carriage rolled towards the superb mansion. Orange plants and citron trees scented the air on each side of us; and on the steps which led up the magnificent Corinthian portico of the house, stood a range of servants in costly liveries, glittering with lace and gold. Music resounded from the hall as the door opened for our admission.

"Now for The Mourning Bride, anticipating the weeds of The Rejoicing Widow!" whispered Lady Castledowne; and we stepped from the carriage. (To be continued.)

LETTERS ON MYTHOLOGY.

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF C. A. DEMOUSTIER.

LETTER III.

(Continued from Page 8.)

IMMEDIATELY upon his birth, Jupiter was transported into the isle of Crete. The nymphs to whom he was confided, dressed his cradle with flowers; there they gently rocked those delicate limbs and feeble hands which were destined to pull down the power of the Titans and their proud sovereign. The sports, Inno

cence, and Gaiety (sweet companions of infancy!) composed the early court of the baby God. Peace dwelt by his side, and no rude storms ventured to fright her from that safe asylum. Tranquil nights succeeded to tranquil days. The warbling of the birds, the murmur of the waters, the soft calm of the heavens, the just-whispering Zephyr, and the silent

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