she heard his voice, and she saw his shadow fall by her side. Curious, that of the past our memory retains so little of what is peculiarly its own. The book we have read, the sight we have seen, the speech we have heard, these are the things to which it recurs, and that rise up within it. We remember but what can be put to present use. It is very extraordinary ho little we recollect of hopes, fears, motives, and all the shadowy tribe of feelings; or indeed, how little we think over the past at all. Memory is that mirror wherein a man "beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was." We are reproached with forgetting others we forget ourselves a thousand times more. We remember what we hear, see, and read, often accurately: not so with what we felt that is faint and uncertain in its record. Memory is the least egotistical of all our faculties. CHAPTER XII. << "Tis he! What doth he here ?"- BYRON. "WHAT! loitering still, Emily?" said Lady Mandeville, when, on entering the breakfastroom, she found her and Edward Lorraine employed, apparently, in looking over some scattered drawings-in reality in talking. Emily, happy without thinking it at all necessary to analyse, and so destroy her happiness; and Edward, if not exactly thinking, yet feeling, it a very pleasant thing to have a most absorbed listener, who was not the less agreeable for being young and pretty. He was engaged in turning the leaves, occasionally referring to his companion. Edward possessed one great fascination in discourse. He had the air of truly valuing the opinion he asked. "Nous ne nous aimions pas, mais notre indifférence Avait bien les symptômes de l'amour," thought Lady Mandeville. "I must disturb the study of one branch of the fine arts for the sake of another. You must leave the picture for the mirror-be most devout in the sacrifice you offer to the Graces to-day." "What conquest," replied Emily, smiling, you meditate for me?" "do 66 What conquest? What a young-lady question! None: this is an affair of glory, not of sentiment. Mr. Lara Trevyllian dines here today. You must dress for his suffrage, not his heart. Most persons are born with a genius for some one thing: Mr. Lara Trevyllian is born with a genius for two;-he piques himself on his knowledge of gastronomy, and his knowledge of women." Edward Lorraine.-" I should be more inclined to defer to his knowledge of the science than of the sex." Lady Mandeville.-" Ah, now-to use an expression of his own you men never will allow any merit to each other."" Edward Lorraine.- "It was not with a view to detract from his powers of feminine analysation that I spoke; but because I think that either man's or woman's character stand in a relative position to each other, like the covered statue of Isis, whose veil mortal hand hath not raised. We never see each other but through the false mediums of passion, or affection, or indifference-all three equally bad for observation." Lady Mandeville." I differ from you; but truly, I cannot sacrifice myself to my opinions. It is too late in the day to dispute; for haste and perfection no toilette ever yet united." Edward Lorraine." Unhappy is he who relies on female friendship! You sacrifice my argument to a curl. Well might the old poet say: 'Oh, take, if you would measure forth the worth of woman's mind, A scale made of the spider's web, and weights made of the wind.'" The party was very small, and the fire very large; therefore the half hour before dinner was not so dull as it is generally said to be. By the by, that half hour has always seemed to me to be peculiarly ill treated. Some evil-disposed person has called it stupid. An invidious epithet is always remembered and reapplied; and that one half hour will go to its grave with its appellation of stupid; no exceptions made in its favour-no pleasant reminiscences, not even a single flirtation, brought, like a solitary wit ness, to give it a good character. Alas! a cruel and striking epithet is "One fatal remembrance, one shadow that throws Now, really the half hour to-day was rather agreeable: we should have said “very,” of any other of the forty-eight. Lord Mandeville and Mr. Morland were deciding, to their mutual satisfaction, that a neighbouring gentleman, on whom they had been calling that morning to suggest an improvement in an adjacent road, was certainly the most singular mixture of silliness and stolidity they had ever encountered. Now these qualities do not often go together the frivolity of the one interfering with the heaviness of the other: stupidity is the masculine of silliness. But the Rev. Dr. Clarke had at once vague and stubborn ideas respecting his own dignity and his own interests; the one he supported by disdain, the other by selfishness; and in his own mind identified both with church and state. The little boy, who, in the hurry of a game of marbles, forgot to take off his ragged cap to him, he foresaw would come to the gallows; and the farmer, whom hard necessity forced to delay the payment of his tithes, he |