costume. She was now overwhelmed with affliction. Lady Lauriston implored Algernon to watch over the happiness of the dearest of her children. Adelaide was almost borne to the carriage-her mother retired to her own room, overcome with her feelings—and Edward thought it very ungrateful that the audience did not rise and clap the performance.

CHAPTER VIII.

66 Blessings be with them and eternal praise,
Who gave us nobler loves and nobler cares;
The poets, who on earth have made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays."
WORDSWORTH.

EMILY'S time was now passing most pleasantly she had been solitary enough during winter to give society that advantage of contrast which does so much towards teaching the full value of any thing; she had just enough of annoyance from her aunt to make her feel thankful that she was not more exposed to it. She became attached to Lady Mandeville, with all the enjoyment and warmth of youthful affection-that age when we are so happy in loving those around us. Many sources of enjoyment were laid open; and the future seemed as promising as those futures always are which we make for ourselves.

Lady Mandeville was one of those women for the description of whom the word "fascinating" seems expressly made. She had seen a great deal of society, and she talked of it delightfully; she had that keen sense of ridicule so inseparable from perceptions at once acute and refined; and, like most of those accustomed to every species of amusement, she easily wearied of it, and hence novelty became indispensable; and from this arose much of her fondness for society, and quickness in perceiving every variety of character. A new acquaintance was like a new book—and, as in the case of the book, it must be confessed she often arrived very quickly at the end.

Emily's very reserve the necessity there was to divine the feelings she herself rarely expressed-made her, of all others, the most secure in retaining the friendship she had inspired. There was always something to imagine about her—and imagination is as useful in keeping affection alive, as the eastern monarch's fairy ring was in keeping alive his conscience. Moreover, Emily's very friendlessness gave Lady Mandeville a pleasurable feeling of protection like those we can oblige- and she felt as the

we

writer of a fairy tale, while laying down plans for her future destiny.

"Pray, have you agreed to group for a picture?" said Mr. Morland, who, with Lord Mandeville, entered the room just as Emily read the last line of the Lady of the Lake; and it was a question De Hooge might have asked; for one of those breaks of sunshine, so like reality in his pictures, came from the halfopened glass door, and fell full on the large old crimson arm-chair, where Lady Mandeville was seated with a little work-table before her, at which she was threading those brilliant and diminutive beads which would make fitting chain armour for the fairy king and his knights. The rest of the apartment was filled with that soft green light where the noon is excluded by Venetian blinds, or the still softer shadow of creeping plants; and here, on the south side of the house, a vine had been trained, which, luxuriant and unpruned, seemed better calculated for foliage than for fruit: a green basketstand, filled with pots of early roses, stood between the windows-and so near, that their crimson reflected on the face of the young boy who was asleep on the carpet: not so the elder one, who sat at Emily's feet, his cheek

glowing with the excitement of the narrative, and his large blue eyes almost double their usual size with eager attention.

"I have always thought," said Lord Mandeville" and Frank seems to think with me that no poet ever carried you so completely along with him as Sir Walter Scott: he is the poet, of all others, made to be read aloud. What is the reason I like to read Lord Byron to myself, but like Scott to be read to

me?"

"Because," said Mr. Morland, "the one is the poet of reflection, the other of action. Byron's pages are like the glasses which reflect ourselves-Scott's are like those magic mirrors which give forth other and distant scenes, and other and passing shapes: but this is a sweeping remark-and both poets often interchange their characteristics. Scott will excite pensive and lingering thought-and Byron, as in the Corsair and Lara, carry us along by the mere interest of the story."

"I think," observed Emily," in the Lay of the Last Minstrel there is one of the most exquisite touches of natural feeling I ever met with. Sir William Deloraine uncloses the tomb of Michael Scott, while the monk, his early