ture of the room (at which, that she seemed so much at home with it, I was booby enough to be surprised), its ornaments, gilding, musical instruments, and family pictures, seemed to bespeak a greatness, and consequence, such as I had no business with. There was palpably a distance between us, which, come what might, I felt could never be surmounted.

But if these were the feelings occasioned by the comparison of myself with the daughter of an untitled though rich and high-born English gentleman, how were they heightened, when I accidentally discovered that Bertha's maternal descent was still more illustrious than her paternal. I say accidentally, because it arose from a few words casually dropt by her maid, Mrs. Margaret, who thought fit to tell me sometimes I was a nice gentleman, and to do the honours of particular parts of the place, which she might find me admiring alone. A summer-house in the garden was one of these, over the portico of which I was struck with two coats of arms in marble, on two shields joined together, seemingly of fifty quarterings each; but, surmounting one of them, my attention was most arrested by a crown—a foreign one indeed, but still a crown.

"Ah!" said Mrs. Margaret, "I see you don't know what that is; but these are the family arms; that on the left is master's, and they say he comes from the old kings of England; but that on the right, with a crown upon it, was my lady's, because in Germany the princesses wear crowns."

"Was your late lady then a princess?" asked I, in astonishment.

"What, did you not know that ?" asked Mrs. Margaret. "I thought Mr. Charles must have told you all about that."

"And pray, of what family?"

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'Why I can hardly tell it, the word is so hard, but it is something about sacks and ice, as they tell me, and they say the princess, my lady, was a relation of a great many kings and queens."

Shall I own, this surprising intelligence gave me no pleasure, for it only increased the awe I already felt, in too great a degree for my comfort, for Bertha and her relations. I wished to ask Foljambe to explain it to me, but as he had never mentioned the subject, I did not dare, till a second visit to the summer-house, and the sight of the arms in his company brought it out. Being herald enough, from only old Doughty's instructions, to make the observation, I said to him, without alluding to Margaret's information,

"I see that, great as your family is, you have had alliances with still greater rank, for the arms and the crown in that second shield denote something, if not royal, at least very near it."

"Did you not know," said he, "that my mother claimed to be a princess of the empire, from being one of the Ducal House of Saxe Eisenach?

This at once solved Mrs. Margaret's difficulty about sacks and ice, but I still held my peace as to her information, and Foljambe went on;

"To be sure she was a confounded poor one; her grandfather, though a sovereign, being only a general officer, receiving pay in the service of Prussia. My father met her at Berlin, when on his travels: they fell in love with each other, and he offered. But though she had not a stiver, and he was rich and in full possession, her father the prince, as he was called, would not listen to it, till mine proved that he came from the

There is no world without Verona's walls.

SHAKSPEARE.-Rom. & Juliet.

LET better casuists explain, if they can, how all I I have related could spring up in the mind of a lad so young, wholly new to life, and whose companions had been comparatively clowns.

But so it was; though dazzled and delighted with the lovely vision of Bertha, my feeling was that of distress, to think how out of my place I was in suffering myself to contemplate it. I thought I could have died for her; and if she would command me tasks, could have gone to the world's end to execute them. In short, I felt like Miranda,

"To be your fellow

You may deny me; but I'll be your servant
Whether you will or no."

The event was, as I dare say the reader has anticipated; I discovered that I had a heart, and lost it in the moment of the discovery. It, however, had an effect upon me afterwards, which I ought to record.

Far from wearing out, these first impressions only gained strength, as I grew more acquainted with Ber

tha, and the surprise at my new situation diminished. The grave deportment of her father, indeed, did not much relax, and at first I thought he had put some constraint upon himself, in giving such opportunity for an increase of intimacy between his son and a person so much below him; and yet the respect he always expressed, at least for my name, consoled me.

The history of our broken family was the better known to Mr. Hastings, from the circumstance of his own having been long the possessors of this ancient castle and demesne, which made him study their former lives. He knew more about them than even old Doughty, and once told me, with great complacency, that my ancestor John, third Lord Bardolfe, had been a most distinguished soldier, and even knight banneret under the chivalrous Edward III. I observed, or thought I did, that upon these occasions his daughter seemed not without a participation of the interest which her father took in the subject.

These little incidents sometimes re-assured me in respect to Mr. Hastings, whom I began to like as well as to fear; but my natural jealousy was not without alarm in regard to his son. Not that he was so much the enthusiast of pedigree as of more modern feelings, in his impressions regarding high stations, fashion, and title, in which he did not resemble his father, whose pride seemed confined to the pride of birth.

It is certain that the great burst of feeling while at Sedbergh, which I have recorded, relative to the equality of mankind, and the perfect indifference as to situation which ought to prevail between friends, seemed somewhat to have evaporated in the atmosphere of Eton; and, though I observed no change in his treatment, yet it was evident that he had not