in society,-good health, good conscience, and (between myself and my Diary) a tolerably good appearance; yet all this frustrated and embittered by my sad experience of the hollowness of the world? Married at seventeen to the man of my choice, all seemed to smile upon me when I followed Colonel Delaval to Ireland; nor could I forgive my sister Armine, for whispering, on the eve of our union, that an acquaintance of six weeks scarcely justified me in placing my happiness within his keeping. What prescience, alas! rendered her sp wise? How came she to guess that Delaval, in withdrawing · from the army on his marriage, and devoting himself to the pleasures of Irish squirehood, would become-but let the past be forgotten.

Thanks to my experience, I re-enter the world with a heart steeled to insensibility, and a resolution to be indebted to my head alone for future pleasures. Instead of quarrelling with society (the common error of misanthropes, who, like myself, desire only a life of tranquillity), I shall, in my worst of he mours, doff the world aside, and bid it pass; in my best, smile' in its face, and thank it for its smiles;-then retire like an oyster into my shell, as easily forgetting as forgotten!

It is true, Armine and I entertain for each other a more than common sisterly affection. The early loss of our parents, the secluded life we led in Staffordshire, under the care of our good aunt Margaret, now gathered to the vault of all the Montresors, rendered us in youth mutually dependent on each other's friendship. But the experiences of our married life seem to have created estrangements; and we are no longer fitted to understand each other as formerly. I once saw in a pavilion, near the Lake of Windermere, four contiguous windows of variously stained glass, imparting to the same landscape the aspect of the four seasons. Just so it is with us. Armine looks at life through the summer window,—I, through the winter! Our prospects are alike,-" alike—but, oh how different!"

It is, therefore, with my little Diary that I must philosophize;-it is my little Diary I must take into my confidence. Having lived so long alone, or worse than alone, I have acquired a habit of gossipping and arguing with myself; and surely our opinions are never so fairly submitted to our judg ment, as when arrayed in black and white before us. Here, therefore, begins my first chapter of a new existence. A sad one, or a merry? Oh! for a sybil to unfold! On one thing I am determined: I bid defiance to the mere ennuis of life. Never again will I submit to be bored!

My cousin, Lady Cecilia Delaval, writes me word, that the house she has engaged for me, in St. James's Place, is "a perfect bijou," a cant phrase of hers. She wrote me the same thing some years ago, of Azor, her pet lap-dog; and

when she brought the little brute to Delaval Castle, the bijou turned out to be an asthmatic pug! Better, however, trust to her experience, than venture alone into the wide world of London, which I know so little, yet dislike so much. How detestable were those biennial visits to town with my aunt Margaret Montresor, who, every year or two, used to migrate from Staffordshire to a ready-furnished house, where the windows would not open, nor the doors close, to persecute her solicitors with a new plea for her old Chancery suit, and Armine and myself with visits to the dentist, staymaker, shoemaker, the wax-work, and the Eidouranion,-Hatchard's and Rivington's, to torment our souls and bodies into the way they should go! Ten years, however, have since elapsed; my days of dentists and back-boards are over; and, though I may revisit Hatchard's shop, it will not be to procure a series of Pinnock's Catechisms, cased in strong calf, for the use and abuse of the school-room.

St. James's Place, April 9th.—Not a fault to be found with my new residence! A house neither too large nor too small, overlooking the park; fitted up only last spring, by one of the fashionable virtù-mongers, for a newly-married couple, who spent five years' income during their first season in town, and are now doing penance for their folly in some barrack of palace on the Arno. Poor little bride! it must have cost ber many a pang to quit the shrine where she had been worshipped. There are a thousand traces of womanliness in the house, such as were never impressed by the hand of an upholsterer; particularly in my own room and boudoir, the walls of which are hung with light chintz and muslin draperies, with windows opening through a conservatory to the park.

Lady Cecilia was waiting for me on my arrival, as lively and as agreeable as ever. She is enchanted that Armine and her husband will not be in town for some months; and declares that the Herberts are just the sort of humdrum people to spoil me," set me in a wrong pattern."

After all, her notions are rather arbitrary. I used to fancy Lady Cecilia the most independent and easy woman in the world; but her ease turns out to be a laborious affair,-a perpetual warfare with the ceremonial of life. There is such a thing, I suspect, as being the slave of one's liberty.

I believe, however, I cannot put myself under safer tutelage than her's. No one is so much the fashion. She commands the interest and influence of her sister, the Marchioness of Clackmannan (a lady of the bedchamber, and patroness of Almack's, and all that sort of thing), without the bore and trouble of place-holding; while her stupid husband, Sir Jenison Delaval, s'empresse de dire amen à toutes ses messes, fancying her, or at least proclaiming her, the best of wives, because she is wise enough to let him pass his life at his club, well-bred

enough to be civil to him in public, and judicious enough never to see him in private. Lady C. is, in short, a woman of what is called the world. She has prodigious tact; always some lit tle scheme or other, and which invariably succeeds. But, after all, the objects she accomplishes are comparatively trifling; and, to spend one's life in such manœuvres, seems like devot ing a forty-horse-power engine to cutting chaff.

Nothing, for instance, can exceed her delight at having outwitted Lady Wexford, a tortoise of a dowager (whom I used. to know in Dublin), in the choice of a certain opera-box, which · we are to share together. It strikes me that any other would have suited us as well. But Lady Cecilia tells me General Vernon has had a ticket of that identical box for the last thirty years, and will not be at the trouble of changing it; so that she is sure of getting rid of her spare ticket. It is plain that she does not choose to have a place at the disposal of Sir Jenison. The box holds only four; and she advises me to retain both mine. I amused her not a little by inquiring whether General Vernon was a pleasant man, as she seemed so glad to secure him; and she amused me no less by replying, that he was a bore par excellence, but too well taught to dream of setting foot in the box to which he belongs.

10th. Just returned from a long drive with Lady Cecilia. What multitudes of people! Yet they say there will be n one in town till after Easter; and nothing going on till the end of May. The "nothing," so called, consists, however in. nightly parties, twice as numerous and brilliant as any I have. been in the habit of enjoying; and last night I accompanied Lady Cecilia to a card-party, comprehending, she assured me, the élite of the élite. One of the Sicilian mummy-vaults, déscribed by travellers, must certainly present just such a conclave of lean, yellow, shrivelled, inexpressive faces. .In the course of the evening, a few male individuals, half a century younger than the enshrined divinities of the temple, made their appearance, but of these the small-talk was so very small, and the big looks so very big, that I took refuge in my own observations.

"You will like them better when their jargon ceases to be an unknown tongue," said Lady Cecilia, after presenting me to our hostess, a good kind of roundabout woman, turbaned after the most approved fashion of countess-dowagerhood. "This is a house of which it is indispensable to have the entrée,— open first and last in the season, when nothing better is to be had. Besides, the habitués of the set have a way of discussing those who do not belong to them, which makes it prudent to join their forces."

"What unsafe people for friends!"

"You surely mean, 'what unsafe people for enemies?' Yonder crooked little woman, for instance, with the bright

eyes and tiny feet, is, to strangers, as malicious as a monkey; and quite as faithful and amusing, to any one who will be at the trouble of making a pet of her."

"Be more gracious, my dear Lady Cecilia," said I. "Compare her, at least, to a sprig of sweet-briar-fragrant and charming to those who handle it with dexterity."

"She, too, is the centre of a petit comité, to which you will find it worth while to belong, unless you choose to venture on being tomahawked, by declaring war against the tribe. In this house your passport to favour is an easy one. Lose a few guineas now and then at whist, and you will be free of the set. In that something more is wanting; you must manage to make them laugh, either at or with you; be very absurd, or very entertaining. It is a set, in short, where excitement is the order of the day,-full of lions, and other monsters, after their kind. But the succès of a mere lion is the shortest of all possible successes. His popularity wears out before he has time to establish himself."

"And in what style do you intend me faire évènement among these people?" said I, anxious to discover the designs upon me.

"I have scarcely decided! Pretty, well-dressed, lively, rich, disengaged, with nothing to provoke that fretful porcupine, the world, to set its quills at you; I think I shall produce you as an agreeability."

"Pray, dont! I have not a set smile at my disposal; and cannot give myself the trouble of looking and talking delightfully with all my might for the gratification of strangers.'

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My dear, you must give yourself a few months' trouble, if you intend to be popular. Once established as an agreeability, your reputation will carry you on, season after season. But during this, your first spring in town, you must stand, cap in hand, in the market-place, to secure the most sweet voices of the people worth knowing."

"But if I choose to be an independent member, and disdain the courtship of votes?"

"Absurd! No one living in society can be independent. The world is like a watch-dog, which fawns upon you, or tears you to pieces. If you choose to remain in whole skin, take my advice-throw the beast a sop or two out of your abundance, and make it wag its tail in your honour for the remainder of your days."

What a system! What a stifling of honourable sentiment! What a sacrifice of principle! Heaven preserve me from becoming a convert to Lady Cecilia's code of minor morals! I can understand lighting a candle to the devil; for “the prince of darkness is a gentleman." But, to burn farthing rushlights to all the little dirty imps of Pandemonium-to use a favourite proverb of the vulgar, le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle.

12th.-I complained to-day to Lady Cecilia, that her dressmaker had sent me home a frightful gown.

"She was quite right,” replied my friend.

"Madame Biais

saw that you would be a bad customer, and did not put herself out of the way to please you."

"A bad customer?"

"You took the liberty of asking for her bill."

"Which you call being a bad customer?"

"In our class and hers a ready-money customer implies a person who changes or dismisses his tradesmen as the fancy takes him. No fashionable tradesman cares to be employed by those who have a right to examine his goods, and find fault with his prices. These people prefer clients many pages deep in their books, who dare not grumble at being overcharged. Madame Biais, for instance, knows not what to make of a lady who gives her the trouble of writing out an account in the midst of the hurry and bustle of the season. By the way, my dear, do you like Mr. Penrhyn ?"

"The man who sat so long with us last night at the opera ?" "So long, indeed, that I began to apprehend mischief from the double barrels of Mrs. Percy's lorgnette, steadily levelled at you during his visit. Mrs. Percy (let me anticipate the inquiry you are about to make) is a sort of lay impropriator of poor Penrhyn; a very pretty woman, with no further harm in her than an appetite for being talked about with the most fashionable man of the season, be he who he may. Just now, she will not allow Penrhyn to call his soul his own;-writes him sentimental billets, keeps him listening to her guitar, or flageolet, or Jew's-harp, or accordion, or some such trash, merely that his cabriolet may be seen waiting at her door; or stops him at Piccadilly Gate, to be smiled at, and whispered to, through her carriage window, under the observation of fifteen hundred people passing by, and the Achilles standing still. Mrs. Percy would be miserable, unless she knew herself to be the object of scandal."

"And Mr. Penrhyn ?"

"The lady's pretence of a penchant at first amused him, and he bore being whispered to, smiled at, and billet-douxed, with remarkable fortitude. But, the novelty of her enthusiasm over, he grew sick of his Barmecide's feast; and now, I never beheld so bored a man! Yet he seems afraid of declaring off; for there is no sort of esclandre she is not capable of provoking, in order to appear the heroine of a romance. "Why does he not manage to get out of fashion?" "The fates have been against him! Lord Wanderford, arriving, as swarthy as a moor, from his travels in Abyssinia, threatened, a few weeks ago, to dethrone him. But, unluckily, Penrhyn's grandfather, old Lord Penrhyn, is likely to die; when he will become one of the wealthiest individuals in