different epochs of Italian history; and we are to have all the Italian painters and poets, so that we have been studying Sismondi for the last week; and I think of going as Johanna, Queen of Naples, dressed after the picture of her; and I want Fanny to go as Laura, and Mr. Saville must make the best Petrarch he can." As she finished this rapid recital, she laughed almost hysterically. Mowbray was so lost in thought, that he scarcely heard anything but her last words, and was a minute or two before he could make any reply. Good heavens! thought he, that eternal man! what can her objection be to his name being mentioned at least to her husband! I would give anything on earth to fathom this mystery; and yet what is it to me? This question recalled him to the necessity of making some answer to what Lady de Clifford had been saying, and repeating with a mechanical and abstracted air, "Johanna, Queen of Naples! and is Lord de Clifford going as Prince Andrew ?" and, as he asked this, Mowbray sent his quick penetrating eyes into her very soul. She appeared offended at the question, and colouring slightly, said rather haughtily, "It is not necessary to keep the unities at a fancy ball; and as most women have no characters at all, I do not feel bound faute de mieux,' to take upon me Johanna's, although I am inclined to believe Petrarch and Boccaccio, especially the latter, that it was a very excellent one." How awkward the sense of having wounded the feelings of another makes one! It is the conviction of how contemptible we must appear in their eyes, that prevents us readily placing ourselves in a better light. Mowbray would have given the world to have unsaid what he had said, or to have atoned for it; but he felt both equally impossible. In this embarrassment, some street music began playing the Duke de Reichstadt's waltz. Lady de Clifford, feeling for his confusion, turned to him with one of her most open and sunny smiles, and said, "I am so fond of that waltz! Is it not pretty?" "Pretty!" said Mowbray, thinking of and looking at her; "it is beautiful, perfectly beautiful; it is angelic!" "Come," said she, laughing, "you are determined not to offend me by not agreeing with me, or sufficiently admiring what I admire." Mowbray was now plunged into fresh confusion at the idea of how absurd and exaggerated his answer must have appeared to her, and never felt more grateful in his life than when Monsieur de Rivoli brought the eyes and attention of every one upon him, by exclaiming aloud, "Ah, le pauvre Duc de Reichsdat!" and then launching out into a hyperbolical eulogium on his father. The fact is, the little man could make nothing of her dowagership, and thought himself completely lost in being "accroché" to her, and therefore determined that the rest of the party should no longer be losers by his monopoly of what she did not appear to benefit by, namely, his delightful conversation; and as a Frenchman is never at a loss for a great man to associate himself with, he instantly put himself " en scène" with Napoleon. "Yes," said Lord de Clifford, with as great emphasis as if it had been the first time the discovery and the assertion had been made, "Yes, he certainly was a great, a very great man." "I cannot conceive," said Mrs. Seymour, "how Marie Louise, after having been united to such a man, could have a lover, and that, too, before his death, and while he was in exile." 66 Ah, bah, bah!" exclaimed Monsieur de Rivoli : "Croyez vous madame que parce q'une femme a épousée un grand homme qu'elle doit perdre son temps !" At the conclusion of the universal laugh that followed this noble defence of the ex-empress, Lady de Clifford rose to go into the drawing-room; and as she passed her husband, Mowbray saw his eyes glare sternly and angrily upon his wife; nor was his surprise diminished when he heard him say to her, "I think, madam, it is not very decorous of my wife to laugh at such indeli cate jests." "Good heavens!" thought Mowbray, "how can she keep her temper with such a tyrannical brute?" He looked at her with a feeling of compassion that was quite painful; but the only expression he saw on her countenance was one of mingled wounded pride and endurance; there was no resentment, open or suppressed. When Monsieur de Rivoli had "debarasséed" himself of the dowager, by depositing her in a bergere," 66 and when he had passed half an hour" en faissant l'aimable" to Madame de A., and telling her how she ought to manage her "bal costumé," he began tumbling over all the books on the table, and took up an English edition of the "Sorrows of Werter." "Ah, ha! my old friend Verter," said he; and, slapping his forehead, continued, “je me souviens du temps quand je ne faisait le moindre démarche sans mes pistolets dans une poche et Verter, dans l'autre. Mais ce printemps de la vie cet eté de l'âme est passée la sagesse à mit fin au bonneur comme elle fait toujours !" "It is," said Lord de Clifford, pompously, "a masterpiece, like everything Goëthe ever wrote!" and he looked round for admiration and gratitude for having enlightened his audience; but suppressed laughter was all that greeted him; and Saville, good-naturedly wishing to take the sins of the whole party on his own shoulders, ventured boldly on a hearty laugh, and a stout dissent from his lordship's oracular opinion. 66 Why, as to that," said he, "it certainly has the merit of originality, and the good fortune to be in no danger of ever being copied; it might fairly be entitled 'Goethe's Fornerina.' It is a regular bread and butter epic; the unities are all kept in bread and butter; the weapons of love and destruction are still bread and butter; his friendship, his philanthropy, is all carried on through the medium of these mighty implements. To wit," continued Saville, opening the book: in writing to his friend, he says, 'but not to keep you in suspense, I will detail what happened as I ate my bread and butter!' Again, at page 18, describing the peasant's children, and informing his friend of his overflowing benevolence in giving each of them a 'cruetzer' every Sunday, he gives a still farther instance of his generosity by adding,' and at night they partake of my bread and butter! Now, considering how fondly and faithfully he appears to have been attached to bread and butter, this was indeed true generosity. Again, who is there that does not remember the pathetic and beautiful description of his first interview with Charlotte, at page 21? This contains more and most bread and butter of all. For,' says he, she had a brown loaf in her hand, and was cutting slices of bread and butter, which she distributed in a graceful and affectionate manner to the children, according to their age and appetite.' And finally, in the last fatal scene that closes VOL. I.-E all, after he had kissed the pistols which Charlotte had dusted, we are told that he only drank one glass of wine (though he had ordered a pint) and ate one slice of bread and butter ere he committed the rash act! Is not this, my friends, a true epic? and ought it not to be called the 'Bread and Buttersey?" Every one laughed much at Saville's harangue, except Lord de Clifford, who, drawing himself up pompously, said, "Ridicule is not argument." "Fanny, love," said poor Lady de Clifford, seeing that a storm was brewing upon her sposo's brow, “do sing something.' "I have no voice to-night," said Fanny; "and really cannot." "Do, dearest!" whispered Saville, imploringly. "Ah, mademoiselle, je vous en prie pour me plaire," said Monsieur de Rivoli, with his hands up. "Pour vous plaire," said Fanny, laughing: “je férais des impossibilités-si cetait possible—mais—” 66 'Vraiment," said Madame de A., vous resemblez beaucoup au Comte d'Erfeuil qui disait à Corinne, Belle Corinne parlez Français; vous en êtes vraiment digne." "Eh bien oui," said the Frenchman, not choosing to stand in the ridiculous position Madame de A.'s application had placed him: "Cela veut dire que Mademoiselle Neville resemble à Corinne." "For my part," said the dowager, sotto voce, "I do not think any singing worth so much asking for." "Very just observation, my dear madam," said her son; "I am quite of your opinion;" and then added, "Come, Fanny, cannot you go and sing at once without all this fuss?" ly. "I do not choose to sing to-night," said Fanny, short "Well," said her sister, going good-humouredly to the piano, as she saw something must be done to keep off the impending storm on her husband's brow, "I will be revenged upon you, for I'll sing a song that somebody wrote a short time ago. Mr Saville, have the goodness to reach me that little book of manuscript music." "Julia! Julia! pray!" said Fanny, stretching out her hand for the book: but her sister had played the prelude, and Saville held the book fast, while Lady de Clifford sang the following SONG. As light o'er the waters breaking, So my spirit's gladden'd by thee; What is joy but to be near thee? And grief but to know thee away? For my heart is the lute thou dost play. Like Eol's harp, when forsaken By the breeze to which its soul clings, The sound of its desolate strings: So no other voice, love, but thine From my heart's soft echoes e'er stole; Oh! love, must thy buds ever fade, Alone by thy sighs and thy fears? If so, then in poison still steep Than to be happy without thee! "And did Fanny write that?" said Saville, in a low voice to her sister, when she had ceased singing. Lady de Clifford nodded assent. "Don't believe her," said Fanny, blushing, as she snatched the book away from Saville. "What a divine voice!" thought Mowbray; " and how lovely she looks when she is singing! It gives one the idea of the spirit of music having hid itself in the ambush of a rose, and sending out every note perfumed by its leaves." That night Mowbray resolved he would leave Milan the next day; and well for him would it have been if he had kept to that resolution; but, for a month after, he was a daily visiter at the palazza. It is true, it was at the especial invitation of its master-oh! the sophistry of the human heart, when it tries, but in vain, to deceive itself! Then comes the alchymy of false reasoning, that turns its blackest dross to that seeming gold, which ends in its own destruction, when we find that |