for love-damages, with their attendant consequences, awards and attorneys' bills, are worth all the duennas and maiden aunts in the world, keeping those few beaux restes of the old school, who find either time or energy to be mischievous, at a respectful distance; and instead of dreading the passions of the other sex, our greatest dangers arise from those who know not what passion is. Against these enemies, selfishness must be opposed by selfishness, and cunning met by finesse; for art, and a regular system of tactics, can alone avail; and after all, though the victory may be brilliant, it is not in one case in a thousand that we can boast of its being profitable.

The truth is, I more than half suspect the self-satisfied gentleman, who is the hero of your article on "Select Society*" and who, by the by, from his own confession, seems totally unqualified for good company in any genre, writes under the influence of personal pique; and being disappointed in some reasonable expectation of winning youth, beauty, and a large fortune, upon the small outlay of his own personal accomplishments, takes this method of venting his spleen, and discharging his anger against the whole sex. I have known many of these difficult gentlemen, who, after thinking nothing too good for them, and passing the summer of life in vain attempts upon handsome heiresses and buxom rich widows, sat down at last, on the turn of their age, with some dowdy, neither remarkable for sense, beauty, nor spirit, and without even the charms of the pocket, to compensate for the total absence of those of the person and the mind. But, be this as it may, the malapert censor might have remembered, that in matrimony, we girls are necessarily influenced by our parents, to whose guidance we are compelled to submit ourselves; and that, if we seem cunning and rapacious, it is most frequently the fault of a too anxious mother. But the men in indulging their selfish views, in sedulously avoiding a poor girl, whatever may be her merit, or in trifling with the feelings and engrossing the time of an unmarried female, without the most distant idea of making her a wife, act for themselves, and have no one upon whom they can shift the blame. Besides, if girls really do look too sharp after a husband, it must not be forgotten, that matrimony, a mere episode in men's fortunes, is every thing to a female. To remain single is, with a woman, inevitably to lose caste; while your old bachelor is only the more courted and feasted for his celibacy. In the order of nature, men are destined to labour for the support of their families, and it is but just that a female, in seeking a partner for life, should look out for protection and support. But your modern Benedicts, your heroes who complain of the artifices of the sex, seek only, in their efforts to marry, the wife whose means must support their idleness and supply their extravagance.

Under all these circumstances the men have little reason to complain; and the less when it is considered that, being confined to defensive operations, we can play off no arts but upon those who wilfully place themselves within the sphere of our fascinations, while the men are at liberty to engage, or not engage, when and where they please. There is however another sort of dangler, whose faults I shall plead in farther

abatement of the "select" gentleman's charge; and this is the man, who, being perhaps under circumstances which render marriage not altogether prudent, cannot decide between love and ambition. Such a man, without scruple, will master a girl's affections, and indeed would be happy to marry the object of his preference; but then he would at the same time retain all the luxuries and superfluities, which, as a single man, he has been used to enjoy. Placed like the metaphysical donkey between two identical bundles of hay, and without strength of mind to form a decided volition and either give up the world or his mistress, he would fain eat his cake and have it too: thus he professes honourable intentions, compromises the character and the repose of the lady by incessant assiduities in public, and by the warmest protestations of endless devotion in private; and by binding her in a pledge to be his, whenever he may find it convenient to demand her hand, he effectually excludes all access of more independent or more marrying lovers. In the mean time, at best, life slips away unenjoyed; nine times out of ten the passion cools; but the gentleman does not break off—he dare not do that. His attentions however slacken, and the wretched woman becomes the victim of the most torturing suspense, of the cruelest heart-burnings, without power to cut the man she begins to despise, or to force his oscillating thoughts to a determination. Oh! Mr. Editor, you know something of the "pleasures of hope," but you know also that hope deferred maketh the heart sick; and you will feel for the fate of a human being whose life and love have been blighted by such a sickly admirer.

"Quante vedove notti,
Quante di solitarj,

Ha consumato indarno."

I must not, however, grow grave, though this is a case which, as my careless brother Tom is wont to say, would indeed make a person swear. All I ask of you is, privately to give me up the name of the flippant youth who has indited the precious farrago of which I complain, and to throw him for a season in my way; and if I do not play the fish up the stream and down the stream, ay, and bring him to the shore, too, with the single hair of his own egregious vanity, never say again that there's faith in a woman's word. Pardon this immeasurable letter, which en revanche, shall, in contradistinction to all feminine epistles, have no postscript; and consider me as

Your humble servant, and constant reader,

DELIA.

LONDON LYRICS.

Five Hundred a Year.

THAT gilt middle-path, which the poet of Rome
Extoll'd as the only safe highway to bliss:
That "haven" which many a poet at home
Assures us all Guinea-bound merchantmen miss:
That bless'd middle line,

Which bard and divine

In sonnet and sermon so sigh for, is mine ;

My uncle, a plain honest fat auctioneer,

Walk'd off, and bequeath'd me Five Hundred a-year.

I ne'er, if I live to the age of Old Parr,

Can fail to remember how stared brother Bill, Jack bullied, and Tom, who is now at the Bar, Drove post to a Proctor to knock up the will. They never could trace

What beauty or grace

Sir Christopher Catalogue saw in my face, To cut off three youths, to his bosom so dear, And deluge a fourth with Five Hundred a-year! The will, though law-beaten, stood firm as a rock, The probate was properly lodged at the Bank; Transferr'd to my name stood the spleen-moving stock, And I, in the West, bearded people of rank. No longer a clerk,

I rode in the Park,

Or lounged in Pall Mall till an hour after dark. I enter'd, what seem'd then, a happy career, Possess'd of a gig and Five Hundred a-year.

Ere long, I began to be bored by a guest,

A strange sort of harpy, who poison'd my feast: He visits, in London, the folks who dwell West, But seldom cohabits with those who live East. Bar, door-chain, or key,

Could not keep me free,

As brisk as a bailiff in bolted Ennui.

"I'm come," he still cried, "to partake of your cheer, I'm partial to folks of Five Hundred a-year."

Meanwhile my three brothers, by prudence and care,
Got onward in life, while I stuck by the wall;
Bill open'd a tea-shop in Bridgewater Square,
And Jack, as a writer, grew rich in Bengal.
Tom made his impressions

Through Newgate transgressions,

And got half the business at Clerkenwell Sessions, They march'd in the van, while I lagg'd in the rear, Condemn'd to Ennui and Five Hundred a-year.

Too little encouraged to feel self-assured,

Too dull for retorts, and too timid for taunts;
By daughters and nieces I'm barely endured,
And mortally hated by mothers and aunts.
If e'er I entangle

A girl in an angle,

Up steps some Duenna, love's serpent to strangle; "Come hither! don't talk to that fellow, my dear, His income is only Five Hundred a-year."

Without tact or talents to get into ton,

No calling to stick to, no trade to pursue:
Thus London, hard stepmother, leaves me alone,
With little to live on and nothing to do.
Could I row a life-boat,

Make a boot, or a coat,

- Or serve in a silversmith's shop, and devote My days to employment, my evenings to cheer, I'd gladly give up my Five Hundred a-year.

WHY DO WE LOVE?

I OFTEN think each tottering form,

That limps along in life's decline,
Once bore a heart as young, as warm,
As full of idle thoughts as mine—
And each has had his dream of joy,
His own unequall'd pure romance;
Commencing, when the blushing boy
First thrills at lovely woman's glance:
And each could tell his tale of youth,
And think its scenes of love evince
More passion, more unearthly truth,
Than any tale before, or since.

Yes they could tell of tender lays,

At midnight penn'd in classic shades; -Of days more bright than modern days; -Of maids more fair than living maids.

Of whispers in a willing ear,

Of kisses on a blushing cheek; (-Each kiss-each whisper far too dear For modern lips to give, or speak.)

Of prospects too, untimely cross'd,

Of passion slighted or betray'd;

Of kindred spirits early lost,

And buds that blossom'd but to fade.

Of beaming eyes, and tresses gay,
-Elastic form, and noble brow;

And charms-that all have pass'd away,
And left them-what we see them now !

And is it so!-Is human love

So very light and frail a thing?

And must youth's brightest visions move,
For ever on Time's restless wing?

Must all the eyes that still are bright,
And all the lips that talk of bliss,
And all the forms so fair to-night,
Hereafter-only come to this?

Then what are Love's best visions worth,
If we at length must lose them thus?

If all we value most on earth,

Ere long must fade away from us?

If that one being whom we take
From all the world, and still recur
To all she said-and for her sake
Feel far from joy, when far from her

If that one form which we adore

From youth to age, in bliss or pain,
Soon withers-and is seen no more,
-Why do we love-if love be vain.

TABLE TALK.-NO. VIII.

On the Old Age of Artists.

MR. NOLLEKENS died the other day at the age of eighty, and left 240,000 pounds behind him, and the name of one of our best English sculptors. There was a great scramble among the legatees, a codicil to a will with large bequests unsigned, and that last triumph of the dead or dying over those who survive hopes raised and defeated without a possibility of retaliation, or the smallest use in complaint. The king was at first said to be left residuary legatee. This would have been a fine instance of romantic and gratuitous homage to Majesty, in a man who all his life-time could never be made to comprehend the abstract idea of the distinction of ranks or even of persons. He would go up to the Duke of York, or Prince of Wales, (in spite of warning), take them familiarly by the button like common acquaintance, ask them how their father did; and express pleasure at hearing he was well, saying, "when he was gone, we should never get such another." He once, when the old king was sitting to him for his bust, fairly stuck a pair of compasses into his nose to measure the distance from the upper lip to the forehead, as if he had been measuring a block of marble. His late Majesty laughed heartily at this, and was amused to find that there was a person in the world, ignorant of that vast interval which separated him from every other man. Nollekens, with all his loyalty, merely liked the man, and cared nothing about the king (which was one of those mixed modes, as Mr. Locke calls them, of which he had no more idea than if he had been one of the cream-coloured horses) -handled him like so much common clay, and had no other notion of the matter, but that it was his business to make the best bust of him he possibly could, and to set about it in the regular way. There was something in this plainness and simplicity that savoured perhaps of the hardness and dryness of his art, and of his own peculiar severity of manner. He conceived that one man's head differed from another's only as it was a better or worse subject for modelling, that a bad bust was not made into a good one by being stuck upon a pedestal, or by any painting or varnishing, and that by whatever name he was called, a man's a man for a' that." A sculptor's ideas must, I should guess, be somewhat rigid and inflexible, like the materials in which he works. Besides, Nollekens's style was comparatively hard and edgy. He had as much truth and character, but none of the polished graces or transparent softness of Chantry. He had more of the rough, plain, downright honesty of his art. It seemed to be his character. Mr. Northcote was once complimenting him on his acknowledged superiority— Ay, you made the best busts of any body !" "I don't know about that," said the other, his eyes (though their orbs were quenched) smiling with a gleam of smothered delight-"I only know I always tried to make them as like as I could!"

I saw this eminent and singular person one morning in Mr. Northcote's painting-room. He had then been for some time blind, and had been obliged to lay aside the exercise of his profession; but he still took a pleasure in designing groups, and in giving directions to others for executing them. He and Northcote made a remarkable pair. He