tuted a palace; and, lo! there are now squares-full of mansions fit for princes to be ruined in! Not an agent's book but contains a dozen attainable by the week or season, where you may live as Thelusson, or the Duchess of Gordon, sovereignized some forty years ago.

The immediate consequence of this diffusion of brick and mortar seems to be the evacuation of the city. Instead of the wealthy merchants, and great bankers, once resident in the vast, square, roomy mansions of its dark and narrow. lanes, I learn that not a merchant of eminence sleeps within sound of Bow Bell; and hence the difficulty of appropriately filling up those civic offices, formerly so eminent in their illustration. The commodious dwellings of the great capitalists have been converted into warehouses, or are inhabited by clerks! and the thinly populated city is twice as wholesome, and half as dignified. The Regent's Park, meanwhile, extends its stuccoed terraces;-and London seems to stretch its gigantic arms, and gape for air,-like some mighty monster, awaking from a

trance.

It might afford me a useful lesson, that so many of my new visitors were, by the way, friends of my imprudent predecessors here, and fed on their undoing.

"Aha!" drawled little Mrs. Percy, on her first visit,—“ I see you have got the Thistledown's love of a house,--the prettiest little toyshop in London."

"Foolish people!-They would do things to which they had no pretension:-swam out of their depth, and sunk for

"Or rather, like the Flying Fish in the fable," observed Penrhyn (who happens" to drop in wherever her carriage is seen stopping), "they got out of their element, and were pecked to death by the birds, into whose nest they had intruded. People thought them silly and presuming, even when their silliness and presumption were upheld by a charming house, excellent establishment, and select dinner-parties; but when we found, that even these were assumption, no words can describe our indignation at their impertinence!

"Mrs. Thistledown had passed for a pretty woman, we now thought her a fright, and called her that Mrs. Thistledown.' He had been regarded as a frank well-natured man; we now decided him to be a tiger! What became of either we neither knew nor inquired. It was sufficiently horrible that we had been dining and supping with people not fairly entitled to give us dinners or suppers.

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Indeed, I did inquire," said Mrs. Percy, incapable of discerning between her friend's serious and ironical vein, “and I was told they were in prison. Of course, there was an end of the thing."

"And there might as well have been an end of the people,"

said Penrhyn, laughing.
to all intents and purposes.

They are morally dead-defunct,
Let them sleep in peace."

"Particularly as we find dear Mrs. Delaval so satisfactorily established in their place," was Mrs. Percy's well-turned re joinder.

But Mrs. Percy's heartlessness is by no means unique. Most of my new friends (and many among them should know better) have entered with a similar ejaculation.

"An! by the way, this is poor Thistledown's house. Didn't he die, or something of that sort? Ruined-Ah! very true! -I recollect now. He played-both hazard and the fooland was done up before one had made up one's mind whether he was a man to be known. Howard was rash enough to put him up at White's; which was amazingly wrong of Howard, who has himself only one leg to stand upon."

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Now, do just look at those Dresden vases, and those Marqueterie consoles; and think of the absurdity of a fellow like Thistledown venturing on such fancies! A man with barely income enough for mahogany and Wedgwoodware, to presume to have a taste!"

"Well!-he has met with his deserts; and his dinners we all met with!" added a Jekyling.

"Just imagine that I sent cards here to the Thistledowns this season, quite forgetting they were done up!" drawled Lady Grace Gosling. "Had it not been for my good fortune in knowing Mrs. Delaval, and recognizing this little humming bird's nest of theirs, I should never have thought of them again."

Such is the worldliness of the world! Thus easily are broken those brittle ties of spun-glass, which one forms in the chance-medley of a season. People are true to their relations, and faithful to their friends; but how few make it a matter of principle to be true to their acquaintances! Formed by an exchange of courtesies and cards, on some accidental temptation (such as Lady A.'s desire to flirt with Lord B. at Lady C.'s ball, and Lady C.'s desire to have her ball adorned by the presence of Lady A.'s diamond necklace), London acquaintanceships barely survive their ephemeral day, unless revived by some further motive of expediency.

There seems to be a distinct profession sprung up of late years, which, for want of a better designation, I shall call acquaintance-brokerage. Certain dowagers of note undertake to patronise balls for acquaintanceless people; and go about, promising and vowing, in their name, that the music and sup per shall be excellent. Many of these acquaintance-brokers perform their functions in all honesty; and simply give an agreeable fête to their own visiting list, at the house of a Colonel Crab or a Mrs. Brown, with a proviso that visiting cards shall be left for the Crab or the Brown on the following day.

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Others exercise their functions with Judas-like treachery. My dear Lady Laura, you must come on Thursday night to some new people in Hereford Street, whom I have promised to patronise;" or, "My dear duke, I have undertaken this ball in Hereford Street for the-What's their names? I am bored to death with the whole affair, and will positively never trouble myself with such a corvée again. But you will greatly oblige me by looking in for a minute or two." Sometimes they are less deferential towards their protégés; and the more exclusive dandies are persuaded to go and sup at No. 104, Harley Street, without a word of the name or nature of its proprietor. "I always bow to the diamond necklace nearest the door on entering, when I am invited in this way," said Sir Harry Andover to me, in describing the brockerage system,-"and take it for granted that I have made myself free of the house."

"A year or two ago," said Penrhyn, who sometimes plays the moralist, among his other parts of exquisite dissembling, "there came up from Wales some rich mine-people, who had a mind to push forward in society. A ball seemed their readiest mounting-stone, and a ball they determined to give, under the sponsorship of some Lady Ap Shenkin or other, the wife of a Welsh baronet neighbour. The company assembled by the lady of the leek, was of the kind called "highly respectable;"-brother baronets and sister baronetesses,-Portland Place directors and directresses,-admirals, generals, lord and lady chief justices, et hoc genus omne; most of them partygivers, as well as party-goers; and the new people were invited to some two hundred humdrum entertainments in exchange for their one. So far, so fair! But, among the admirals' wives, alas! was a Lady Lavinia Tarpaulin, who had sprit-sailed her way through a fashionable winter at Brighton; and, in the course of the evening, contrived to make it known to the acquaintance seekers, that she would have made their baronets, lords; and their ladies, ladies in waiting. Next year, accordingly, Lady Lavinia undertook their ball, and Lady Ap Shenkin was compelled to own to the hundred applicants for her interest to obtain a ticket, that she herself was omitted from the new list.

"How contemptible!

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Contemptible enough! but to reach half way up the ladder of parvenuism, serves only to dazzle and dizzy the unwary. The wings of our pretenders had now sprouted; the following year, Lady Lavinia heard of them as having been undertaken by a dowager duchess, and saw no more of thein."

"And the dowager duchess?”

"Doubled them up, and laid them on the shelf. Their means had been just equal to the calibre of a Lady Ap Shenkin. To

merit the patronage of a Lady Lavinia, they engaged twice as good a house and establishment; and

Lo! two turtles smok'd upon the board!

But, for the level of her grace, a French cook and St. James's Square seemed indispensable; and that last campaign in London, sent them to Glamorganshire; lionized to utter extinction."

By the way, my friend, Lady Cis, is something of a mistress of the ceremonies. With respect to myself, as Sir Jenison is the head of Colonel Delaval's family, she could do no less than present me to her clique. But she is too apt to traffic in little notes of nothingness, using all the insinuations that satin paper and phrases de caresse can supply, to get Mrs. This invited to the duke's ball, and Lady That noticed by the duchess. On Wednesday mornings she is always in a nervous flutter of spirits, about a voucher for Miss Ellen, or a subscription for Lady Sophia. Mr. Penrhyn, indeed, declares-but I am not sure that his declarations would grace the pages of my journal.

Heigho! what an infinite deal of nothing have I already written down! In malice?-I hope not! It was my desire to comment upon things, rather than upon persons; or, if persons, those whose conversation was improving, and whose example edifying. Living as I have done, in what the Americans would call "the bush," I longed to form for myself a circle of enlightened men and women,-the makers, not the ingredients of society; people who, while they walk with the century, are able to give a guess at the century to come. But one of Lady Cecilia's first and most earnest interdictions was against entangling myself in a bureau d'esprit.

Nothing, she protests, so dangerous! Lady —9 it seems, has brought the thing into disrepute, by fawning on every creature that wears a quill; by which means, individuals have been introduced into society, whom it is as unsafe to know as to decline knowing.

"Pore over their books as much as you please, but do not so much as dip into the authors!" said she, when I proposed an introduction to one of the most popular writers of the day. "These people expend their spirit on their works; the part that walks through society, is a mere lump of clay,-like the refuse of the wine press after the wine has been expressed. In conversing with a clever author, you sometimes see a new idea brighten his eye, or create a smile round his lip; but for worlds he would not give it utterance. It belongs to his next work, -and is instantly booked in the ledger of his daily thoughtsvalue three and sixpence. The man's mind is his mine,—he can't afford to work it gratis, or give away the produce." Armine and her husband are come at last!-The happiest

moment I have experienced in London, was that in which, for the first time these four years, I folded her in my arms.Highly as I regard my brother-in-law, I should have been just as well pleased had Herbert allowed my first interview with my sister to be a tête-à-tête; but we shall meet every day for the next three months, and find plenty of opportunities to talk over things and people whom I could not frankly discuss in his presence; indeed, I was quite sufficiently taken up with examining his wife, and noting the progress of time in her dear familiar face. And how dear,-how very dear,-is a familiar face, beheld after long estrangement. They may talk of returning to the scenes of our youth,-the old mansion, the wellknown orchard, the favourite hawthorn hedge,-but restore to me the sunny smile, the open countenance, the loving eyes of her who made those scenes delightful;-there is a positive happiness, worth worlds of poetry.

But, after all, is this possible?-The spring comes with its blossoms to the old orchard, and the genial month of May brightens up the fragrant hawthorn-hedge, as when first a sheet of snow-white blossoms was flung over its early verdure; while human life boasts but its single spring. After one brief summer, the face and feelings go out of bloom together; and who can bear to see the hollowing eye, the sallowing cheek, the contracting brow, we remember so bright with the impulses of youth?

But I, too, am growing poetical, and this my journal is solemnly pledged to matter of fact. Idylliumism apart I was grieved to perceive that the cares of life had tarnished the beautiful face of my sister. Surely vanity does not mislead me into believing that, although a year younger than myself, she might pass for ten years my senior? Yet I have spent a life of disappointment and repining, while she is unconscious of a single sorrow. Have I less depth of feeling-less force of character, than my sister?-Perhaps so!-Perhaps she has grieved for me. Perhaps her regrets for the weary and unprofitable years I have been passing, have created a care for her?-But I forget!-Armine has four children; and experience has not initiated me into the pains and pleasures produced by the responsibility of motherhood.

The unfavourable change I noticed in Armine's looks, struck me still more forcibly in the manners of her husband. Herbert, although an excellent, is certainly not an ingratiating person. He is fond of naked truths, and I am modest enough to like even the truth a little drapée. Armine admired my house. Herbert was silent till she questioned him. Is it not charming? Is it not a perfect bijou ?”

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"By bijou, I conclude you mean trinket?" he replied; "which perfectly explains my objection to it. Trinkets are not for daily use; and this house seems made for any thing