molestations must be taken tragically, or comically, there is no medium. If free in hand and heart to divert oneself, it is pleasant enough to make dupes by affecting dupehood; and pretending to fall into a trap, so as to bring the Lady Grindleshams to the springe.-But Chipp chose to take matters au tragique.— Chipp, whose wounds were still smarting, was not in the humour to turn the tables. It bored him to death to have fifty notes to answer before he was up, from fifty ladyships having Emilys or Lauras to dispose of,-proposing parties to Richmond, or parties to the play.— Young ladies forced down a man's throat, become as nauseous as any other dose of physic; and like the hunted beaver, the angry boy had ended by offering to bite off his coronet and throw it to the chaperons.— Seriously, I believe he did answer an invitation to Grindlesham Park, by stating not that he was engaged, but that he had no mind to be engaged; "that he was not a marrying man."-Lady Mereworth assured me her son had made enemies without end in London, by his haughty mode of snapping asunder the matrimonial lasso that Almacks had tried to fling around him;—the generous impulses of youth being still too hot in his bosom to be repressed by the Tartufferie of polite life.— Saving for the interval of a few weeks, I had now been more than a year and a half absent from England; and till this reunion with a thorough-going London party, had almost divested myself of my Anglicism. It takes at least a year on the Continent to get the fog thoroughly out of one's skin; till when, we are only partially susceptible of natural enjoyments. The murmurs of Chipp against the shower of arrows directed against him, amused me beyond measure; by recalling the miseries of that factitious order of Life, both above and below being called Human. But what did not amuse me, was to learn that Frank Walsingham continued to frequent Graham's and Crockford's, as much as before his marriage; and though Chippenham did not accuse him of neglecting his wife, as he would certainly have done had there been a pretext for the accusation, it was clear that no man, since the time of Sir Boyle Roche's bird, could be in two places at once.-Woe worth the trebly woe worth the wife, who woman, hath the queen of hearts for her rival !— I ventured to hint in my next letter to Frank that I had heard of his breach of promise both to poor Danby and myself; and to offer him a word or two of advice on the subject of the dice-box. But, alas! Quæ res in se neque consilium, neque modum CHAPTER V. I fear I'm apt to grow too metaphysical, I ne'er decide what I shall say, and this I call Much too fantastical. Men should know why BYRON. Ιδμεν ψεύδεα πολλα λεγειν ετυμοισιν όμοια, HESIOD. THE taste for a continental life is like a taste for olives. One begins with disgust.-The flavour goes against one.-But the zest imparted to the first glass of wine, induces a second trial; and we end by liking olives for themselves, and pretending to like them fifty times more than we do, as evidence of a wellbred predilection. So is it with the English and Italy. I disliked it at first. Its simplicity of habits appeared to me deficiency of refinement.-By degrees, I began to discover a strange luxuriousness of flavour in the enjoyments to which those habits gave rise; and after a time, used to fancy, or at least to swear, that it would be utterly impossible for me ever again to breathe the breath of London.-To be sure I had every excuse for trying to believe myself; for Nunziata was so passionately fond of her country, and the Prince so true a patriot, that my affected Italianism was only a more delicate protestation of gratitude. Just, however, as I was most earnest in my jests against the Mereworths about Britannia being web-footed, and London a smoke-divan, came a letter from Jane that determined me at once to visit England. Walsingham, it seems, had taken offence at my interference; |