all of the same set, the effort is required, not to meet, but to avoid meeting. The growth of intimacy is there natural, spontaneous, and unrestrained, like that of the luxuriant vegetation of the happy climate itself. Society does not there require to be forced, as in the hot-houses of London; where, with various devices of pruning and grafting, constant care of nailing down one, and cutting another, acquaintanceship is sometimes. brought to an artificial perfection.

But though the style of society in which they then lived, prevented Matilda from feeling any impropriety in the mere act of daily seeing Lord Ormsby, yet there were some circumstances which gradually opened her eyes, as to the prudence of such habitual indulgence. Involuntarily, she found herself most frequently practising those pieces of music which he had most admired:

till, whilst she herself thought that she sung nothing else so ill, every indifferent individual observed how much the most perfect in them appeared both her taste and execution. Unintentionally too, she found herself copying over and over again, in miniature, a favourite picture of his; still thinking that she had never yet hit the expression, though her table was covered over with accurate fac-similes of it.

I have said, that, in Matilda's education, the influence of fixed principles upon conduct had never been inculcated. She was the creature of impulse, and of feeling, guided only by an innate sense of right, and protected by the most sensitive feminine delicacy. She now felt dissatisfied with herself, though utterly unconscious of any thing incorrect, even in thought.

In the mean time, the intimacy was

constantly encouraged by Sir James, who was flattered by shewing off, as he thought in his train, so distinguished an individual as Lord Ormsby. Besides which, he never lost sight of the solid advantages he thought might be derived in his own county, from maintaining the connexion.

Still Matilda became anxious to move; and as the autumnal stream of babbling English was flowing South, the Baronet willingly consented to proceed to Rome.

Who shall attempt to analyse the sensations excited by Rome-unique and unaccountable as they are- felt even by him most disposed to laugh at the hyperbolical enthusiasm of the classical pedant?-Rome is still Rome. Though Cardinals are not Consuls, and the last dying embers of spiritual despotism are smouldering on those hearths

where were kindled the first sparks of civil liberty,- still is it the Eternal City. And why?-Why should those monuments of the olden time, seen here, cause an impression felt nowhere else? --Local situation situation cannot cause it. Ruins are most impressive when abstracted and isolated; whereas here they are defiled with all the daily filth of incongruous inhabitancy.-It is not mental association;--for what are, or were, in point of fact, the objects of our admiration? The Coliseum, that stupendous undertaking, for the mere gratification of savage cruelty, and brutal barbarism;-Temples, those favoured abodes of ignorance and idolatry;—and Baths, the works of men only known for mental imbecility, or moral depravity, who have thus immortalized themselves by these monuments of their physical indulgences.

But he who should argue by the hour to prove absurd the feeling excited by Rome, would not be able to defend himself from full participation in it, if, in the middle of his argument, he caught the first glimpse of the dome of Saint Peter's.

With so contradictory and inconsistent an animal as man, the very incongruities I have mentioned, do but increase the excitement, and heighten the effect. There is nothing like unto Rome after all. Even to those who have no cherished recollections of its former state-to whom the first page of the Latin Grammar is beyond their ultima Thule of classic lore-to those whose only pursuit is amusement-Rome possesses peculiar attractions. In the morning, it is pleasanter far to feast one's eyes on the choicest collections of the beau idéal, left in the im