Theatre.' 'And you?' asked I with anxiety, am an actor,' answered he. And your name ? Is Abraham Grundy,' Then Mr. Abraham Grundy,' said I, allow me to have the satisfaction of wishing you a very good evening.' Stay!' cried he, detaining me, and you shall know the whole truth. My birth is illustrious, and my real name Lord Altamont Mortimer Montmorenci. But like you, I am enveloped in a cloud of mysteries, and compelled to the temporary resource of acting. Hereafter, I will acquaint you with the most secret particulars of my life; but at present, you must trust to my good faith, and accept of my protection.' 'Generous Montmorenci,' exclaimed I, giving him my hand, which he pressed upon his heart. Now,' said he, you must pass at these lodgings as my near relation, or they will not admit you.' At first I hesitated at deviating from veracity; but soon consented, on recollecting, that though heroines begin with praising truth, necessity makes them end with being the greatest story-tellers in the worid. Nay, Clarissa Harlow, when she had a choice, often preferred falsehood to fact. ***

«*** Thus, my friend, the plot of my history begins to take a more interesting shape, and a fairer order of misfortune smiles upon me. Trust me, there is a taste in distress, as well as in millinery. Far be from me the loss of eyes or limbs, such publicity as the pillory affords, or the grossness of a gaol fever. I would be sacrificed to the lawless, not to the laws; dungeoned in the holy inquisition, not clapped into Bridewell; recorded in a novel, not in the Newgate calendar. Were I inelegantly unhappy, I should be wretched indeed. Yes, my Biddy, sensations hitherto unknown now heave my white bosom, vary the carnation of my cheeks, and irradiate my azure eyes. I sigh, gaze on vacancy, start from a reverie; now bite, now moisten my coral lips, and pace my chamber with unequal steps. For sure I am deeply, distractedly in love, and Altamont Mortimer Montmorenci is the first of men."

Altamont Mortimer Montmorenci, alias Abraham Grundy, is a most entertaining and brilliant personage and makes no slight impression on the heart, or rather the imagination, of the Lady Cherubina de Willoughby.

"This young nobleman," she exclaims in one of her letters to her friend and ex-governess, "increases my estimation every moment; never can you catch him out of a picturesque position. He would exhaust in one hour all the attitudes of all the statues; when he talks tenderness his eyes glow with a moist fire, and he always brings in his heart with peculiar happiness. Then, too, his oaths are at once well conceived, and elegantly expressed. Thunderbolts and the fixed stars are ever at his elbow, and no man can sink himself to perdition with so fine a grace."

This fine picturesque fellow, finding that plain Cherry Wilkinson, the only child of a very rich farmer, will, independently of her father, have ten thousand pounds, humours the extravagant

whims of the romantic dame, and makes fierce love to her in the character of Lord Altamont. This occasions a rich tissue of very absurd and laughable scenes.

Mr. Wilkinson follows his daughter to London; and an interview takes place, in which he implores her to return home to a safe shelter under his paternal roof; but our heroine astonishes and alarms her poor father by the following positive refusal :

"Wilkinson," said I, "this interview must be short, pointed, and decisive. As to calling yourself my father, that is a stale trick, and will not pass; and as to personating (what I perceive you aspire to) the grand villain of my plot, your corpulency, pardon me, puts that out of the question forever. I should be just as happy to employ you as any other man I know; but excuse me, if I say that you overrate your talents and qualifications. Have you the gaunt ferocity of famine in your countenance? Can you darken the midnight of a scowl? Have you the quivering lip and the Schedoniac contour? And while the lower part of your face is hidden in black drapery, can your eyes glare from under the edge of a cow!? In a word, are you a picturesque villain, full of plot, and horror, and maguificent wickedness? Ah, no, sir, you are only a sleek, good-humoured, chuckle-headed gentleman. Continue, then, what nature made you; return to your plough, mow, reap, fatten your pigs, and the parson; but never again attempt to get yourself thrust into the pages of a romance."

Notwithstanding this romantic mania of the Lady Cherubina, she is a girl of much good sense and great propriety of conduct and decorum of manners; for, when any thing occurs, which strikes her as improper, she is Cherry Wilkinson directly. In one of her love interviews with Lord Altamont Mortimer Montmorenci, his lordship forgets his proper distance; and assuming more of the character of Abraham Grundy than became him, he catches the lady under the chin, and gives her a kiss on the lips. As Cherry Wilkinson, she feels her modesty wounded, and herself insulted: and, as the Lady Cherubina, she sets the gentleman right, and convinces him that she is not to be so vulgarly treated. She says,

"I have no notion of submitting to any freedom that is not sanctioned by the precedent of those exalted models whom I have the honour to imitate. I fancy, my lord, you will find, that as far as a kiss on the hand, or an arm round the waist, they have no particular objection. But a salute on the lip is considered inaccurate."

His lordship is open to reproof, and has little else to say for himself, but that it was a practice in his country. Cherry, however, congratulates herself on having repulsed his lordship in the following manner:

"I think I was right about the kiss. I confess I am not one of those girls who try to attract men through the medium of the touch; and

who thus excite passion at the expense of respect. Lips are better employed in sentiment than in kissing. Indeed, had I not been fortified by the precedent of other heroines, I should have felt, and I fear, did actually feel, even the classical embrace of Montmorenci too great a freedom. But remember, I am still in my noviciate. After a little practice, I shall probably think it rather a pleasure to be strained, and pressed, and folded to the heart. Yet, of this I am certain, that I shall never attain sufficient hardihood to ravish a kiss from a man's mouth, as the divine Heloise did, who once ran at St. Preux, and astonished him with the most balmy and remarkable kiss upon record. Poor fellow! he was never the same after it."

We cannot trace our heroine through all the numerous adventures and laughable incidents to which her delusion gives rise. She is, however, brought to her senses, by discovering the various tricks which are played upon her; and, through the care and interference of a friend, she escapes the snare which is laid to entrap her into a marriage with the Lord Altamont, alias Grundy. She descends from her stilts, and recovers her sanity towards the close of the third volume. On the whole, we have been very much entertained with this ingenious performance, and think that Mr. Barrett deserves well of the public, for thus endeavouring, through the medium of good humoured ridicule, to expose the bombastic nonsense, in the noxious farrago of modern novels, by which the judgment of our young women is perverted, and their taste for solid and instructive reading is depraved. Many judicious remarks are dispersed through these volumes; and the simple story of William and Mary is moreover very creditable to Mr. Barrett's talents for the pathetic.