at Lady Sittingbourne's villa, even the trees were decked out "ornate and gay;" so that their dryads and hamadryads could not, be too fine to do them honour. When I give a breakfast, every thing shall be fresh, sweet, and natural. We will feed under a solid roof; but roam about among the flowers and birds, under the canopy of heaven.

I was rather disgusted yesterday by the conduct of Mr. Penrhyn. Shrewd as he is, he must perceive that Herbert uniformly avoids him; yet, though he saw we were together, nothing would prevent his sauntering about after us, and ruffling my brother-in-law's rare good-humour. He has been staying a week in Surrey for the Epsom races, and seems determined to make up for the time lost of my society. A man who has been passing a week in a country-house is sure to be a bore. After August, in the usual routine of things, a popular man goes from house to house, and rubs off the habits of each before he reaches the next. Not so at this season of the year, when change from London is a strange vicissitude, calculated to make an impression. Mr. Penrhyn, accordingly, was full of Stonelands-every thing was compared with Stonelands, Stonelands, of course, obtaining the preference. Lady Sittingbourne's flower-garden, for instance, which, though a villa-Paradise for peris, is not to be named with the shrubberies and wildernesses of a place thirty miles from town. conservatories at Stonelands were so magnificent; thirty different species of the air-plant, and a vanilla plant covering a trellise a hundred feet long; Lady Sittingbourne's greenhouses looked so Covent-Gardenish and vulgar!" Then, at dinner, a fine haunch excited his disgust; "the venison-haricot at Stonelands had put him out of conceit with roasts so early in the season;-at least a fortnight too early for buck venison. A haunch was never eatable till there were French beans to eat with it."

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"The

"But there are French beans in abundance," exclaimed Herbert, pointing them out.

"Ay, ay-forced ones-forced, flavourless things, stewed up like points d'asperges. Nothing so detestable as dressed vegetables with a roti. At Stonelands, the potatoes were served en chemise."

Then, at Stonelands, he had met the Rossanas; and we had the recapitulation of Lady Laura's Illyrian airs, and Lady Sophia's sketches; perhaps there never was a spot abounding like Stonelands in subjects for the pencil; and the Stonelands music room was built after a design from Dr. Burney; nothing like it in England to give effect to Handel's music.

Observing Herbert to be on the fret, I gave my arm to Mr. Penrhyn, and walked away; and, by way of a topic of conversation as remote as possible from Stonelands, selected lord Hartston's two recent speeches.

"Oh! you are turning politician?" cried he with a sneer.

"I have been quite worn down with politics at Stonelands! Lord Hartston's speech on the poor laws? True! I recollect. Lord Rossana observed that Hartston was always building up cast-iron dens to cage canary-birds; or, no! that was not exactly it,—was always making gilt-wire aviaries to encage eagles; or, upon my soul, I forget how it was; but I remember that we all laughed amazingly at the remark. We are discussing, by the way, for breakfast, some rognons à la brochette, that would have put George Hanton into a fever."

"The speech made a great impression in London," said I, disgusted with its frivolity.

"Of course it did, because Hartston himself has made a great impression in London. There was such a fuss, if you remember, about his being lost with his yacht last year in the Egean; and when he turned up, and it turned out (according to the inquiries set on foot by the false reports) that Hartston had a clear forty thousand a-year, every body seemed determined to encumber his estate with a jointure. All the world wanted to marry him. But Hartston is devilish sly. You should have seen how cleverly he made off when the Crowhurst made up to him. Hartston knows what he is about. The marchioness would be glad enough to hook him for Lady Alicia; but, like other prodigious fishes, he will break her line and disappoint her."

Nothing I dislike more than to hear a man of family and fortune, like Mr. Penrhyn, talk of "hooking," and "husbandhunting," and so forth. In describing others as matrimonial prizes, he is far more suspicious of projects entertained against himself. He fancies himself in continual danger of being carried off by some manœuvering mamma. His game with myself I can readily discern. He is deferring his proposals till he can make sure of being accepted; and though, to any man honestly in love, and honestly intentioned towards me, I should not scruple to afford a hint to prevent him from compromising his dignity by a useless pursuit, I shall certainly leave Mr. Penrhyn to his own enlightenment.

Before we left Lady Sittingbourne's, Herbert invited me to dine with them to-morrow, to meet his sallow friend; but, after all I had heard and seen, I judged it more dignified to stay away. Besides, I hate an early obligato dinner on Sundays. I like to go late to the Zoological Gardens, and remain there among the last; that is, among all the pleasant people.

-I have been reading over the last fifty pages of my diary, and am shocked by its egotism. I certainly intended to write of myself-of my feelings and perceptions: yet, though I have written more of others, and less of my own experience than I purposed, I seem to have written more selfishly than I thought was in my nature. I have extenuated nothing of the frailties of my acquaintance, nor set down aught in malice of my own. I had intended to keep my journal for reperusal in old age, in

the hope of diverting myself with the follies of my youth; but I suspect that if this little volume and myself should both survive, I should be shocked, rather than amused, by the picture it presents.

If anger be a brief madness, that which we call the season is, alas! a long one. However sober our views in the commencement, however deliberately we fill the cup, and sip the nectarious contents, yet, at the moment we ought to lay it aside, a wild intoxication comes over us, and we quaff again and again, till all is reeling sensuality! We mean to be frugal,—we become prodigal; we mean to be sage,—we become giddy; we mean to be wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best,― and all ends in a frothy vortex of dissipation. At first, we are inconvenienced by the heated atmosphere of the ball-room; towards the close of the season it becomes habitual. At first, we are shocked by the rumour of a scandal; towards the close of the season, we repeat them ourselves. At first, our better taste revolts against any new and preposterous fashion; towards the close of the season, we have exhausted these old extravagances, and are imagining new. At first, we shrink from the familiarity of the man who leans into our carriage, or enters our opera-box without ceremony; towards the close of the season, every body is familiar with every body; conversation is worn down from small-talk into smaller, as the gravel of the "ring" has been ground into stifling dust. By degrees, people adopt a jargon technical as a telegraphic despatch; and to listen to the dialogue of two persons of fashion, who have been frequenting the same parties and people for the last three. months, would sadly perplex any rational expounder of the king's English. Every phrase is couched in cant terms, conventional allusions, local jests; and the fine, who look upon the cockney dialect of their housemaids as the most vulgar in the language, might themselves be convicted of the utterance of idioms derived from sources far less pure than "the well of English undefiled."

The clubs are, in some measure, the origin of the circulation of fashionable slang. Politics and the turf may, and doubtless do, supply the staple of their talk. But, after beef and mutton, comes the course of trifles and anchovy-toast; and idle people, who meet to gossip with each other, on indifferent subjects, thirty days in the month, insensibly adopt a conventional way of talking, a cant slang of triviality, and a habit of exaggeration and embellishment. Trace some tale of current scandal to its course, and we shall find the tints of the picture heightened as it passes from club to club; beginning with pale pink at mild, indolent, sober-suited Boodle's; and glaring from vermilion to crimson as it blushes through the Traveller's and Crockford's. The anecdote and phrase in which it is couched are circulated at home by the husband or brother; and, at last, the "hyperbolical fiend," called Fashion,

is taught to vent its pribbles and prabbles in a tone as jingling paltry as that of the silver bell hung round the neck of my lady's lap-dog. But again I am inveighing against the errors of others; for I have neither husband nor brother to initiate me into the accidence of fashionable slang; yet the influence of the season has operated as unfavourably on myself as on all the rest.

I wonder whether it would be possible to apply one's lip to this said poisoned chalice, after Lady Grace's fashion"soberly?" Dr. Johnson, and other mouthers of big words, have told us, that "abstinence is easier than temperance:" but is sobriety, in a certain class, and educated as nine-tenths of us are now educated,—is sobriety a possible virtue?

Here are my next-door neighbours, for instance,-no sillier, I imagine, than their neighbours, and belonging to an order of society which the Thurtells of our society are apt to designate respectable; instead of "a gig,” they keep "a family coach."

Jesting apart, they are people who toast church and state, pay their taxes cheerfully, and dole out their Christmas chaldrons and blankets to the poor: righteous people in their generation,-thinking no evil, because thinking is a thing out of their province; a thing for which they pay the king's ministers, the rector of the parish, and their family solicitor.

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Yet, for the last ten years, nothing has Mrs. Gresham Ronsham, of Wrangham Hall, been pouring into the ears of her daughters, but a leperous distilment, flavoured with the joys of a London season. For this, the progress of their education has been hastened; all their knowledge was to be acquired, all their accomplishments rubbed in, with a view to "coming out."-"For heaven's sake! Mary, don't poke so, or I shall never venture to take you up to town to be presented;"—or, "My dear Jane, you have not been in the stocks this morning. Consider how mortified you will be, your first season in town, when you find yourself so much awkwarder than other girls."- -"Harriet! who on earth cut off that lock of hair just in sight?" I did, Mamma, to give to my brother James, before he sailed for India." "How inconsiderate! Have you forgotten that, the season after next, you are going to town to be presented; and that it takes two years for a ringlet to grow properly? I am exceedingly displeased with you. Well, don't cry; that won't remedy the matter; and, perhaps, before you come out, ringlets may be out of fashion." The season and its balls are, in short, the Mahommedan heaven and its houris, promised to incite the virtues of these innocent beings; till, at length, they are snatched from the governess, torn from their village schools and feminine routine of rural benevolence, and thrust into the meretricious world of London; their fair shoulders bared, their fair locks tortured, their fair minds scribbled over by the nonsense of every flirting fool;-and, amid the glare of brilliant

ball-rooms, the voluptuous harmonies of delicious orchestras, the fragrance of exotics, the rattle, the dash, the splendour, the flattery, the whirl of London, the nectar foams brightly at their lips, which is to be tasted "soberly."

And now, having had a peck at the mote in my brother's eye, and moralized my fill, at the expense of the Ronsham Greshams,-away to the Zoological; where, as it is Sunday, man and beast, with a reasonable proportion of the females of both, are waiting the good-fellowship of the public; that is, not the very public public. The public who privilege themselves by a payment of so much per annum, to evade the payment of so much per diem, are alone permitted to enter this Eden of Northern Marylebone on the Sabbath-day. Into sweet, fresh, grassy Kensington Gardens, on the contrary, all the unliveried human species are free to enter; and the beau monde has, accordingly, taken refuge from tigers of the biped, among tigers of the quadruped species. While admiring the antics of the chimpanzee, we are supposed to be secure from contact with apes of an obscure race, or baboons of other that distinguished pedigee.

So!-a vastly agreeable morning I had provided for myself! Lord Clackmannan, who, on all days but Sundays, is busy with the cares of office, undertook to escort me, and Lady Alicia was to be our companion; when, lo! scarcely had we penetrated so far through the gay throng as the bear-pit, when Clarence managed to attach himself to the side of his fair cousin; and thenceforward I might have been at the bottom of the pit, for any thing the anxious, vigilant father cared to the contrary. We were too many to walk together; and as there was no chance that the marquess would relinquish Alicia's arm under such circumstances, I accepted the offered civilities of George Hanton, and left Lord Clackmannan to her guardianship.

Now, as to the arm of Mr. Hanton, I protest I took it with as much indifference as I should have taken that of "Sare Delafals," or any other equally uninteresting individual. I scarcely knew who was beside me, as I amused myself with the passing groups of the highly unselect select, and reflected within myself, that an air endimanché is fifty times more vulgar in a gentlewoman than in the grocer's wife on whom gentlewomen waste their wit; when, lo! no sooner had we passed the tunnel, than, following the motley multitude towards the elephant's enclosure, we lost sight of Lord ClackI noticed the fact to my companion, but as a matter of indifference; for her father was chaperon enough for Lady Alicia; and as to any feeling of consciousness at finding myself alone with George Hanton, I should as soon have shrunk from a tête-à-tête with my grandfather.

mannan.

"How horrible to watch that monster's voracity!" said he, after we had stopped for a minute to contemplate the showers