(whom the absence of coat-tails here render easily distinctive), and laquais de ville (individuals who exhibit the curiosities of foreign cities, and prey on the unwitting foreigner)—with her arms round a male neck: sobbing in the extremest hysterical commotion! The other party seemed little less overcome-both unintelligible, from their intense excitement, and Mr. Pecker's and my unacquaintance with German. In vain did I attempt to arrest the scene by summoning Sophie to quit the individual's embrace for less obtrusive duties: in vain did Mr. Pecker's stern voice recal her with a grave reproof for the unseemliness of such transports. "Let him alone this one time," said a reprobate German who stood by, pretending tears (which, no less than the employment of tobacco, is a constant German habit), "he has found his brideygroom! Too little skill has your friend, dearest Mrs. Rustler, in weaving the romantic thread, and too little interest in the reserves of hardhearted Socinianism, to expatiate on the story at length :-Nor is she without suspicions that our usual transparency has invited the trickery of imposture. "Too smooth-sounding tales," as the Irish melodist sings, "Like delicate bubbles arise and betray The canker that crumbles on darkly below." And while we feel that there is no stab which the foes of would not triumphantly aim at us; we are aware that the days of sentiment are no more, and that Brave Couriers do not remain faithful to nursery governesses, (when in the East especially.) for six years the objects of their affection the while, owing to the miscarriage of correspondence believing their decease. We are told that in his attendance on Lord and Lady, the person around whose neck Sophie was so frantically clinging, has amassed enough, by the aid of a further loan, immediately to commence settled life. But we know that, if money was wanted, the Nibletts would not be backward in coming forward to our discomfiture. Doubtless, too, they suggested the strange insolence which made this hero dropped from the clouds assail Mr. Pecker with injurious epithetical ejaculations, on hearing of our delicacy with regard to Sophie's gratuitous attendance. Sweetly did that excellent man retort by a meek silence. Not one is he to justify himself in the sight of casual persons; 66 * but The Fiery Furnace," he has assured me, shall hear of the adventure. Fatigued as our attendant professed herself, she was able this morning to don the hymeneal chains! Lady having absolutely degraded herself by sanctioning such indelicate precipitancy with her presence. Mrs. Pecker, mostly so gentle ! declares that indignation has deprived her of words on the juncture. Her heart's desire is to return to Tinglebury, which remaining unlet, (for in Britain's present ruined condition, can any one expect tenants will spring out of the ashes ?) the plan rises on the horizon. Her true English simplicity untempted by the Rhine, undazzled by the gewgaw splendours of Frankfort's Fair, ought to be more than doubly ever precious to the home circle. "It is not merely," she says, "the people not understanding her English-but since she has been in Prussia, she has not set foot in a bed so large as her own salting-tub." Vainly has Mr. Pecker tried to pacify her by recalling Captain S. C. Hall's plan, of diffusing instruction to hotel-keepers, and insuring comforts to travellers, by sewing two beds together! "Stitch her fingers and Diana's to the bone they might, now Sophie was gone," was her remark this morning; "two could never be joined together without puckering, and that would be as uneasy to lie on as what we had already. So that wonder not if you hear of the Podds' little day of absolute power being over, in the Peckers' return. If they return alone, will your Diana be missed? To her foreign parts are still a mine unsprung-and other companions already rise in Possibility's horizon! Unequal is she-her shaken heart requiring rest-to cope with sweet Mrs. Pecker's phantom terrors unaided. Her sphere, too, must henceforth be a wider one. And though incapable of a birch canoe among Canadian navigators, like Mrs. Jameson, authoress of " Conversations with Shakspeare "or of the Amazonian equestrianisms of the Lady who rode from Paris to kiss the Papal foot-she feels that procedure is become a duty with her: nor will the blandishments of fraternity avert her gaze from ulterior roamings in Germany-and Alpine prospects conducting southwards. A day or two, however, will extricate from all doubt,-till when I am always your faithful, however mysterious, DIANA RILL. LETTER VI.-MRS. NIBLETT TO MRS. Drangton. Frankfort, th, 1846. I HOPE, dear Mrs. Drangton, you received my last, with the specifications of my possessions left at Tinglebury-for Mr. Screw ley's guidance. Loth as Mr. Niblett and myself are to take extreme measures, Mr. Pecker's obstinate silence, and resolution to evade every just claim, leave us no alternative. Used as they have been for so many years to consider myself and my fortune a possession for life-and disordered as are his circumstances by speculations of which a child would be ashamed-we do not wonder at his tenacity; however we may regret the course of conduct to which it drives us. Mr. Niblett says he has never seen so persevering a case of absorption. You and I know a stronger one. To such a height, it seems, has Mrs. Pecker's nervousness risen under the stimulus of cheap Rhine wines-that some unfortunate creature they brought abroad with them, was compelled to sit up all night with her and their last creditable adventure, I hear, was their utterly denying, at Cologne, to pay any wages to the poor girl, when she was rescued from them by her relations. They have gone back to England, as I presume Mr. Screwley is aware, to contest our claims to the last farthing. You will wonder how we continue so minutely informed of the movements of such worthless persons; and will be surprised (we were only diverted) at the source whence we derive our particulars. Their friend and partner-Diana-has, as every one might have foreseen, forsaken them: set up on her own account, and followed us hither, with apologies and explanations there was no refusing to receive. It appears, that just at the moment when her difference with the Peckers became desperate, a foolish elderly person from her old neighbourhood turned up: our sister having ingeniously tempted him abroad by a list of cures of inveterate gout, rheumatism, and dim-sightedness, wrought by the Homburg waters. No sharpener of the wits, as you know, like a resolute determination to settle! and it had long been one of my few amusements, during my imprisonment at Tinglebury, to watch the stratagems by which the artless Diana was anxious to impress Mr. Blackadder that he was still marriageable, and she always ready! But that any flattery could drag him from his own fireside, still more, beguile him into quitting a single blessedness so long and honourably maintained, gives me a new idea, I must say, of the vanity of an old beau and I pity rather than wonder at the disdain and distress of his sisters, who returned with the Peckers. Where the deed was done and the knot tied, neither bridegroom nor bride will explain. But we have no doubt the speculation will answer. Mrs. Blackadder has already persuaded her husband that she is the only woman who ever understood him; and bewildered him by her grand words into a prodigious opinion of her capacity. You would laugh, too, to see how Puritanism and prudery have "waned on the horizon," as she would say herself, in the preparations she is making for dashing to the utmost extent of their seven hundred a year. After all, she is a good-natured creature, and diverts Mr. Niblett and myself exceedingly. Her tales of the Peckers' meanness, and her triumph in the manner in which she mystified her so-called serious friends, are as good as a comedy. We think that she bridles and rolls her eyes more than ever. They join us at Rome for the winter. With my husband's regards, faithfully yours, PENELOPE NIBLETT. AWAY WITH THE SWORD! AWAY with the sword! it is red to the hilt With the blood of the free, which its bright steel hath dyed; And whenever the tyrant hath felt its keen blow, The hand that had raised it was stain'd with his gore; Away with the sword! it is clotted with gore: And although we may blame not the swords of the free, GEORGE BARMBY. COLUMBINE AT COURT. A CHRISTMAS FANCY. BY PAUL BELL. TIME was, sir,-and that not so many years ago, when, comfortably hating the French, (which was every free-born Briton's duty) we got on very well in Halcyon Row, without any very choice or correct knowledge of foreign affairs. There was little intercourse: there was less sympathy. Some idea that "Werter" was a vicious book, excused worthy Heads of Families from considering the state and prospects of Germany. We knew that there was an individual called The Pope in Italy, and Signor and Signora Squallinis (so ran the liberal nickname of the time) by the dozen :-and that was enough, and too much for some of us. The Peninsula had not been brought home to our wives and families by fighting Parsons' journals, or novels made up of a sabre-tash, a lance, a droll Irishman for camp-follower, and an explosion at the end of each volume. It was merely (so far as our precise notion of its works and wants was concerned) a sort of huge Astley's, where the "Combat of Two," betwixt Wellington (not then The Duke ") and "Boney." was being perpetually played out. In short, when my Mrs. Bell and I came together, "least said and soonest mended" was the motto with regard to the Continent, in many a respectable provincial English house; which would have "lifted its eyebrows" till the roof came off, had it been told that this silence and averseness-not to say aversion-only meant so much ignorance and ill-feeling which we were better rid of as citizens and Christians. Gone and over are those days! "Darkness," as it has been pleasantly said by one of the sanguine men of science who hang iron tunnels over seas, and thunder and lighten messages from Pole to Pole, in the twinkling of an eye,-" will soon be as great a curiosity as high-heeled shoes, or sedan chairs." Ignorance of the Stranger will no longer be patted on the back, nor Misapprehension fed with the tit-bits of self-love. Your celebrated London Wit, Sir, of whom I was hearing the other day, at our Athenæum party, who, for some fifty years entirely managed to conceal his want of |