University of Virginia Library

1. CHRONICLES
OF
THE CITY OF GOTHAM,
FROM THE PAPERS OF
A RETIRED COMMON COUNCILMAN.
CONTAINING
THE AZURE HOSE.
THE POLITICIAN.
THE DUMB GIRL.

THE AZURE HOSE.

Beaumont and Fletcher.

1. THE PROLOGUE.

It was one of those charming spring mornings, so
peculiar to our western clime, when the light, cheering
sunshine invites abroad to taste the balmy air,
but when, if you chance to accept the invitation, you
will be saluted by a killing, piercing, sea monster
of a breeze, which chills the genial current of the
soul, and drives you shivering to the fire-side to
warm your fingers, and complain for the hundredth
time of the backwardness of the season. In short,
it was a non-descript day, too hot for a great coat,
and too cool to go without one; when one side of
the street was broiling in the sun, the other freezing
in the shade.

Mr. Lightfoot Lee was seated at the breakfast
table, with his only daughter, Miss Lucia Lightfoot
Lee, one of the prettiest alliterations ever seen.
She was making up her opinions for the day, from
the latest number of the London Literary Gazette,
and marking with a gold self-sharpening pencil a list
of books approved by that infallible oracle, for
the circulating library. Mr. Lee was occupied with
matters of more importance. He held his watch in
one hand, a newspaper in the other. By the way,
if I wished to identify a North American beyond all
question, I would exhibit him reading a newspaper.
But at present Mr. Lee seemed employed in studying
his watch, rather than the paper. He had good
reasons for it.

Mr. Lightfoot Lee was exceedingly particular in
boiling his eggs, which he was accustomed to say
required more discretion than any other branch of
the great art of cookery. The preparations for
this critical affair were always made with due solemnity.
First, Mr. Lee sat with his watch in his
hand, and the parlour door, as well as all the other
doors down to the kitchen, wide open. At the parlour
door stood Juba, his oldest, most confidential
servant. At the end of the hall leading to the
kitchen, stood Pomp, the coachman; at the foot of
the kitchen stairs stood Benjamin, the footman;
and Dolly, the cook, was watching the skillet. “It
boils,” cried Dolly: “It boils,” said Benjamin:
“It boils,” said Pompey the great: and “It boils,”

echoed Juba, Prince of Numidia. “Put them in,”
said Mr. Lee: “Put them in,” said Juba: “Put
them in,” said Pomp; and “Put them in,” cries
Dolly, as she dropt the eggs into the skillet. Exactly
a minute and a half afterwards, by his stop
watch, Mr. Lee called out “Done;” and done was
repeated from mouth to mouth as before. The perfection
of the whole process consisted in Dolly's
whipping out the eggs in half a second, from the
last echo of the critical “done.”

The eggs were boiled to his satisfaction, and Mr.
Lee ate and pondered over the newspaper by turns.
At length, all at once he started up in a violent commotion,
and stumped about the room, exclaiming in
an under tone to himself, “Too bad; too bad.”

“What is the matter, father?” said Lucia; “is
your egg overdone, or are you suffering the excruciating
pangs of the gout, or enduring the deadly
infliction of a hepatic paroxysm?”

“Hepatic fiddlestick! I wish to heaven you
would talk English, Lucia.”

“My dear sir, you know English now is very
different from what it it was when you learned it.”

“I know it, I know it,” said he; “it is as different
as a quaker bonnet and a French hat. I see I mus
go to school again. You and Mr. Goshawk talk
Greek to me.”

“Mr. Goshawk is a poet, sir.”

“Well, there is no particular reason why a poet

should not talk like other people, at least on common
subjects.”

“Ah! sir, the poet's eye is always in a fine frenzy
rolling. He sees differently from other people—to
him the sky is peopled with airy beings.”

“Ay; gnats, flies, and devil's darning-needles,”
said Mr. Lee, pettishly. Lucia was half angry, and
put up a lip as red as a cherry.

“Ah! too bad, too bad,” continued Mr. Lee,
stumping about again with his hands behind him.

“What is too bad, sir?” said Lucia, anxiously.

“What is too bad?” cried he, furiously advancing
towards her with his fist doubled; “that puppy, Highfield,
has not got the first honour after all, I see by
the paper. The blockhead! I had set my heart
upon it, and see here! he is at the tail of his class.”

“Is that all? why father I am glad to hear it,
Mr. Goshawk assures me that genius despises the
trammels of scholastic rust, and soars on wings of
polish'd”—

“Wings of a goose,” cried the old gentleman.
He had a provoking way of interrupting Lucia in
her flights; and, had she not been one of the best
natured of the azure tribe, she would have sometimes
lost her temper.

“He'll be home to-morrow—I've a great mind to
kick him out of doors.”

“Who, dear father?”

“Why, Highfield, to be sure.”

“For what, sir?”

“For not getting the first honour; the puppy, I
wouldn't care a stiver, if I hadn't set my heart upon
it? And away the good man stumped, again ejaculating,
“Too bad, too bad, I shall certainly turn
him out of doors.”

“Ah! but if you do, sir, I shall certainly let him
in again. I shall be glad to see my dear, good natured
cousin Charles once more, though he has not
got the first honour,” said Lucia, smiling.

What more might have been said on this subject
was cut short, by the entrance, without ceremony,
of Mr. Diodorus Fairweather, a neighbour, and
most particular friend and associate of Mr. Lee.
These two gentlemen had a sincere regard for each
other, kept up in all its pristine vigour, by the force
of contrast. One took every thing seriously; the
other considered the world, and all things in it a
jest. One worshipped the ancients; the other maintained
they were not worthy of tying the shoe-strings
of the moderns. One insisted that the world was going
backwards; the other, that it was rolling onwards
in the path of improvement, beyond all former example.
One was a violent federalist; the other a
raging democrat. They never opened their mouths
without disagreeing, and this was the cement of
their friendship. The mind of Mr. Lee was not
fruitful, and that of Mr. Fairweather was somewhat
sluggish in suggesting topics of conversation.
Had they agreed in every thing they must have required

a succession of subjects; but uniformly differing,
as they did on all occasions, it was only necesary
to say a single word, whether it conveyed a proposition
or not, and there was matter at once, for the
day.

“A glorious morning,” said Mr. Fairweather,
rubbing his hands.

“I differ with you,” said Mr. Lee.

“It is a beautiful sunshine.”

“But, my good sir, if you observe, there is a
cold, wet, damp, hazy, opake sky, through which
the sun cannot penetrate; 'tis as cold as December.”

“'Tis as warm as June,” said Mr. Fairweather,
laughing.

“Pish!” said Mr. Lee, taking up his hat mechanically,
and following his friend to the door. They
sallied forth without saying a word. At every
corner, however, they halted, to renew the discussion;
they disputed their way through a dozen different
streets, and finally returned home, the best
friends in the world, for they had assisted each other
in getting through the morning. Mr. Lee invited
Mr. Fairweather to return to dinner, and he accepted.

“Well, it does not signify,” said Mr. Lee, bobbing
his chin up and down, as was his custom when
uttering what he considered an infallible dictum. “It
does not signify, that Fairweather is enough to provoke
a saint. I never saw such an absurd, obstinate,
illnatured, passionate”—

“O father” said Lucia, “every body says Mr.
Fairweather was never in a passion in his life.”

“Well, but he is the cause of passion in others,
and that is the worst kind of illnature.”

2. CHAPTER II.
Necessary to understanding the first.

Lightfoot Lee, Esq. was a gentleman of an honourable
family; honourable, not only from its antiquity,
but from the talents, worth, and services of
its deceased members, and its present representative.
He possessed a large estate in one of the southern
states, but preferred living in the city during the
period in which his daughter Lucia, who was his
only child, was acquiring the accomplishments of a
fashionable education. He was a good scholar, and
had seen enough of the frippery of life to relish the
beauties of an unaffected simplicity in speech and
action. He could not endure to hear a person talking
for effect, or disturbing the pleasant, unstudied
chit-chat of a social party, by full mouthed declamations,
and inflated nothings, delivered with all
the pomp of an oracle. Grimace and affectation of
all kind, he despised; and among all the affectations
of the day, that which is vulgarly called a blue

stocking made him the most impatient. Among the
admirers, which the beauty and fortune of Lucia attracted
around her, his most favourite aversion was
a Mr. Fitzgiles Goshawk, who wrote doggrel rhymes
almost equal to Lord Byron; and whose conversation
perpetually reminded him, as he said, of a falling
meteor, which, when handled, proves nothing
but a jelly—a cold, dull mass, that glitters only while
it is shooting.

Lucia, on the contrary, though naturally a fine,
sensible girl, full of artless simplicity, and free from
all pretence or affectation, admired Mr. Goshawk
excessively. He had written much, thought little,
and spoken a great deal. He had been admired by
unquestionable judges, as the best imitator extant;
and had passed the ordeal of the London Literary
Gazette. He was the greatest prodigal on earth—in
words; and it was impossible for him to say the
simplest thing without rising into a certain lofty enthusiasm,
flinging his metaphors about like sky rockets,
and serpentining around and around his subject,
like an enamoured cock pigeon.

Our heroine—for such is Lucia, was, we grieve
to say it, a little of the azure tint. She was not
exactly blue, but she certainly inhabited that circle
of the rainbow; and, when reflected on by the bright
rays of Mr. Fitzgiles Goshawk, was sometimes of
the deepest shade of indigo. Then her words were
mighty; her criticisms positive; her tones decisive;
and her enthusiasm, though it might not be without

effect, was certainly without cause. At times, however,
when not excited by the immediate contact of
a congenial spirit, she would become simple, natural,
touching, affecting, and lovely. Instead of standing
on stilts, striving at wit, and challenging admiration,
she would remind one of Allworthy's description
of Sophia Western. “I never,” says that good
man, “heard any thing of pertness, or what is called
repartee, out of her mouth; no pretence to wit,
much less to that kind of wisdom which is the result
of great learning and experience, the affectation
of which, in a young woman, is as absurd as
any of the affectations of an ape.” Truth obliges us
to say, that Lucia only realized this fine sketch of a
young woman, when acting from the unstudied impulses
of nature, among her familiar domestic associates,
where she did not think it worth her while to
glitter. Among the azure hose of the fashionable
world, she strove to shine, the sun of the magic circle,
until, like the sun, the eye turned away, not in
admiration of its blurting mid-day splendours, but
to seek relief in the more inviting twilight of an ordinary
intellect. In short, our heroine was an
heiress, a belle, a beauty; and, would it were not so,
a blue stocking—or in the exalted phraseology of
the day, an azure hose.

The morning after the conversation recorded in
our first chapter, Highfield arrived. The old gentleman
did not kick him out of doors as he threatened;
and Lucia, though she did not therefore signalize

herself by letting him in, received him with a
smile and a hand of gentle welcome—one as bright
as the sunbeam, the other as soft as a ray of the
moon. The old gentleman was stiff—very stiff;
Charles was his favourite nephew; he had brought
him up, and intended, as he said, to make a man
of him.

“Well, uncle,” said Charles, “I hope I did not
disappoint you. I promise you I studied night and
day.”

“Mischief, I suppose,” said the other, gruffly.

“A little sometimes, uncle; but I minded the
main chance. I hope you are satisfied.”

“No, sir—I'm not satisfied, sir—dammee, sir, if I
will be satisfied, and dammee if I ever forgive you!”
and the good gentleman stumped about according
to custom.

Charles looked at Lucia, as if to inquire the meaning
of this explosion; and Lucia looked most mischievously
mysterious, but said nothing.

“Pray, sir,” said Highfield, who on some occasions
was as proud as Lucifer, “pray, sir, how
have I merited this reception from my benefactor?”

“I've a great mind to turn you out of my
doors.”

“I can go without turning, sir.” And he took
up his hat.

“Answer me, sir—are you not a great blockhead?”

“If I am, uncle, nature made me so.”

“I've a great mind to send you back to college,
and make you go all over your studies again.”

“What! the Greek alphabet—the Pons Asinorum—the
plus and the minus—the labour of all labours,
a composition upon nothing—and the worry
of all worries, the examination? Spare me, uncle,
this time.”

“You deserve it, you blockhead.”

“My excellent friend and benefactor,” said
Charles, approaching and taking his uncle's hand,
“if I have offended you, I most solemnly declare it
was without intention. If I have done any thing
unworthy of myself, or displeasing to you; or if I
have omitted any act of duty, gratitude, or affection,
tell me of it frankly, and frankly will I offer excuse
and make atonement. What have I done, or left undone?”

I declare, thought Lucia, that puts me in mind of
Mr. Goshawk—how eloquent!

The tears came into the old gentleman's eyes at
this appeal of his nephew.

“You've missed the first honour,” exclaimed he,
with a burst of indignation, mingled with affection;
“O Charles! Charles!”

“Indeed, uncle, I have not. I gained it honestly
and fairly, against one of the finest fellows in the
world, though I say it.”

“What! you did gain it?”

“Ay, uncle.”

“And you spoke the valedictory!”

“I did, sir. The newspapers, I perceive, made
a mistake, owing to a similarity between my name
and that of the head dunce of the class. I should
have written to let you know, but I wanted to have
the pleasure of telling it myself.”

“My dear Charles!” cried the old gentleman,
“give me your hand; I ought to have known you
inherited the first honour from your mother. There
never was a Lee that did not carry away the first honour
every where. But these blundering newspapers.
The other day they put my name to an advertisement
of a three-story horse, with folding doors and marble
mantel-pieces. Lucia, come here, you baggage,
and wish me joy.”

“I can't, father, I'm jealous.”

“Pooh! you shall love him as well as I do, before
you are as old as I am.”

Hum, thought Lucia, that is more than you
know, father. When Lucia retired, she could not
help thinking of this prophecy of the old gentleman.
“He is certainly handsome; but then what is beauty
in a man? It is intellect, genius, enthusiasm—
mind, mind alone—bear witness earth and heaven!
that constitutes the divinity of man. Certainly his
eyes are as bright as—and his person tall, straight,
and elegant. But then what are these to the lofty
aspirations of Genius? I wonder if he can waltz.
He must be clever, for he gained the first honour.
But then Mr. Goshawk says that none but dull boys
make a figure at college. And then he talks just

like a common person. I wonder if he can write
poetry; for I am determined never to marry a man
that is not inspired. He is certainly much handsomer
than Mr. Goshawk; but then Mr. Goshawk
uses such beautiful language! I declare I sometimes
hardly know what he is saying. My cousin
is certainly handsome, but his coat don't fit him half
so well as Mr. Goshawk's.”

How much longer this cogitation might have continued,
is a mystery, had not the young lady at this
moment been called away to accompany her relative,
Mrs. Coates, one of the smallest of small ladies, and
for that reason sometimes called by her mischievous
particular friends, in her absence, Mrs. Petticoats.
Mrs. Coates was educated in England, as was the
fashion of the better sort of colonists before the Revolution,
and is so still among ignorant upstart people,
who have not got over the colonial feeling. She
had in early life married an English officer, connected
with the skirts of one or two titled families, with whose
names the good lady was perfectly familiar. Her
conversation, when not literary, or liquorary as she
termed it, was all restrospective, and she talked wonderfully
of Sir Cloudesley Shovel, and Sir Richard
Gammon, together with divers lords and ladies of
the court calendar. Her toryism was invincible, and
if there was any body in the world she hated past
all human understanding, it was `that Bonaparte,'
as she called him. Her favourite topics were the
development, which she was pleased to call devil-opement—of

the infant mind; the progress of the
age; the march of intellect, and the wonderful properties
of the steam engine, which she considered
altogether superior to any man machine of her acquaintance,
except Mr. Fitzgiles Goshawk. Though
in the main a well principled woman, there was a
cold, English selfishness in her character, and a minute
attention to her own comfort and accommodation,
to the neglect of other people, that effectually
prevented her ever being admired or beloved. It
was a favourite boast with her, that no nation understood
the meaning of the word comfort but the
English; to which her cousin, Mr. Lee, would
sometimes retort, by affirming “it was no wonder,
since no people were ever more remarkable for attending
to their own wants, at the expense of
others.”

Mrs. Coates sent to invite Lucia to go out with
her, to assist in the selection of a riband, which was
always a matter of great delicacy and circumspection
with Mrs. Petticoats. She admired Mr. Goshawk
beyond all other human beings, because he
wrote so like Lord Byron, and spoke like a whirlwind.
“Ah, Lucy,” would she say, “he will make
an extinguished man, will that Mr. Goosehawk.”

3. CHAPTER III.
An Azure Morning.

After visiting three hundred and sixty-five
stores, Mrs. Coates at length selected a riband of
sixteen colours, and, finding the morning was not yet
altogether wasted, proposed a visit to Miss Appleby,
at whose house one was always sure of hearing all
the news of the literary world. They found that
lady surrounded by Mr. Goshawk and two or three
azures, all talking high matters. Mr. Goshawk was
not only a very `extinguished' but a very extraordinary
man: he was always either trotting up and
down the streets, or visiting ladies and talking at
corners. He never seemed to study, nor did it
appear how he got his knowledge; but certain it is,
he knew almost every thing. He could tell how
many rings Miss Edgeworth wore on the forefinger
of her left hand, and how many panes of glass there
were in the great Gothic window of Sir Walter's
study. He knew the name of the author of Pelham
—the writer of every article in the Edinburgh and
Quarterly—and the editor of the London Literary
Gazette was not a more infallible judge of the merit
of books. Indeed, as Mrs. Coates used to say,

“His knowledge seemed absolutely inchewative, and
I wonder how he finds time to digest it.” Besides
Mr. Goshawk, there was Mr. Puddingham, a solid
gentleman, who had so overcultivated a thin-soiled
intellect, that he prematurely turned it into a pine-barren,
Mr. Paddleford, Mr. Prosser, Mr. Roth, a
grumbling sententiarian critic, and Miss Overend,
secretary to a charitable fund, and member of an
executive committee of Greek ladies.

I wish my dearly beloved readers could have
been present at this congeries of stars; for it is
impossible to do justice to the flights of fancy, the
vast, incomprehensible nothings, the arrogant common-places,
and the hard words, sported by our
azure coterie. Here was a dwarfish thought dressed
in vast, gigantic words, and there a little toad of an
idea swelled to the size of an ox, and ready to burst
with its own importance; here a deplorable mixture
of false metaphor and true nonsense, and there a
little embryo of meaning, gasping for life and groaning
under a heap of rubbish. No little sparks of
innocent, unstudied vivacity; no easy chit-chat,
such as relaxes and unbends the bow; no rambling
interchange of mind or meaning; no gentle whispers,
or musical, good humoured responses. All were
talking for effect, all striving for the palm of eloquent
declamation, and bending their little, stubborn
bows, as if, like Sagittarius, they were going to
bring down a constellation at the first shot.

But though I feel the impossibility of doing justice
to this superfine palaver, yet will I attempt a sketch,
a shadow, a mere outline, of some portion, if it be
only for the benefit of the unlettered spinsters who
as yet, perchance, may not know what is meant by
`powerful talking.' I confess the task is appalling
as it is unpleasant; for I do honestly and openly
profess myself to have a holy horror of loud, contentious
discussions, affected enthusiasm, and ostentatious
display either of wealth or talents. It is
offensive in man; but in woman, dear woman, whose
office is to soothe, not irritate—whose voice should
be soft as an echo of the mountain vales—whose wit
should be accidental—whose enthusiasm, silent
expression, and whose empire, resides in her graces,
her smiles, her tears, her gentleness, and her virtues,
it makes me mad. It is laying down the cestus of
Venus, to brandish the club of Hercules.

“I insist upon it, Pelham is an immoral book,”
said Miss Appleby: “No man that cherishes the
sacred principle, the vestal fire on which depended
the existence of the Roman state, and all the social
affinities that bind man and man together, could
speak as the author does of his mother.”

“But my dear Miss Appleby,” said Mr. Goshawk,
“the author is not accountable for every
thing in his book, any more than a father can be
made to answer for the crimes of his children. The
argument I would superinduce upon this predication
is this,”—

“But sir-r-r,” said the Johnsonian Puddingham,
cutting in—“sir, the author of a bad book is guilty
of a crime against society. Society, sir, is a congeries
of certain people, whose various inflections, deflections,
and”—

“My dear Puddingham,” roared Mr. Roth, “the
book is immoral in the perception, conception, execution,
and catastrophe; sir”—

“Sir Cloudesley Shovel,” said Mrs. Coates, but
what more she would have said is in the womb of
fate. Mr. Goshawk again took flight, and overshot
her.

“Sir Francis Bacon”—said he—

“Sir Richard Gammon” said Mrs. Coates—

“Dr. Johnson affirms”—

“The Edinburgh Review says”—

“The London Quarterly lays it down”—

“The London Literary Gazette”—screamed Lucia—

“Blackwood's Bombazine”—cried Mrs. Coates,
yet louder. Here Highfield happened to be passing
by, and Lucia called him in by tapping at the
window; for she was anxious to have a little display
before him. Highfield had known them all, having
visited with Lucia, during his vacations. He held
them, however, in so little respect, that he did not
mind quizzing them now and then. His entrance
put an end to the literary disscussion about Pelham,
and the torrent took another course.

“What do you think of Goldsmith?” asked Miss
Appleby, after the compliments.

“Goldsmid?” said he, “why really I think he
was a great fool to shoot himself.”

“Shoot himself!” screamed Mrs. Coates, “what,
is he dead?”

“Yes, madam—his affairs fell into confusion, and
he shot himself; I thought you had seen it in the papers,
by your asking my opinion.”

It is my opinion Highfield did not think any such
thing; but of that no more.

“Lord!” said Miss Appleby, “I don't mean
Goldsmid, the broker, but Goldsmith, the poet and
novelist; what is your opinion of him?”

“Why really, the question comes upon me by surprise;
but I think him, upon the whole, one of the
most agreeable, tender, and sprightly writers in the
language.”

“He wants power, sir,” said Puddingham; “there
is not a powerful passage in all his writings.”

“He wants force, sir,” thundered Mr. Goshawk;
“there is nothing forcible in his works; no effort;
no struggle; no swelling of the tempest; no pelting
of the pitiless storm against the indurated feelings
of the heart; no fighting with the angry elements
of those deep buried passions, which, wakened
at the magic touch of the Byrons, and the great
unknowns of this precocious age; for my part, I
would not give a pinch of snuff for writings that did
not awaken the passions; Lord Byron is all passion.”

“Lord Byron was a distant connexion of a relation
of my husband,” said Mrs. Coates.

“Oh all passion,” cried Miss Appleby.

“All passion,” cried Mrs. Overend.

“All passion,” cried Paddleford.

And “all passion,” echoed Lucia, Mr. Prosser,
and the rest of the party.

“Well, but,” said Highfield, “I don't see why a
writer should be always in a passion, any more than
another man. I, for my part, should not like to be
always in company with a fellow who was for ever
cursing his stars, beating his breast, and talking of
shooting himself; nor do I much relish books that
address themselves to nothing but our most turbulent
feelings. It is the best and purest office of
works of imagination, to soothe and mitigate those
malignant passions which the collisions of the world
blow into a flame;” and, added he with, a smile,
“it is the business of a young man, like me, to listen
rather than preach. I beg pardon for my long
speech.”

Goshawk shrugged his shoulders, and looked at
Lucia, as if to say, her cousin Charles was an every
day sort of person. Lucia thought his sentiments
tolerable enough; but what superior man ever talked
such plain, English? Goshawk was determined
to put down this new pretender at once.

“Sir,” said he, pompously, “do you mean to
deny that passion is the soul of eloquence; the marrow
of poetry; the rainbow which connects the

overarching skies of fancy, feeling, and imagination;
the star that flashes conviction; sprinkles the
dews of heaven on the head of the thirsty traveller;
refines, delights, invigorates, and entrances; gives
to the scimitar of the poet its brightness; the dagger
of the orator its point; the ardour of love its purple
blossoms; and the fire of revenge its blushing
fruits?”

“Beautiful! beautiful!” sighed Lucia, what a
flow of language! What a torrent of redundant
ideas! what a congeries of metaphors!” and she
sighed again. The fact is, that Goshawk rolled out
these incomprehensible nothings with such an imposing
enthusiasm, such a rapidity of utterance, that
it is hardly a reflection on Lucia's good sense that
she admired them. It is only on paper that nonsense
never escapes detection.

“Goshawk,” said Highfield, “I hate argument;
It is as bad as fighting before ladies.”

“Hate argument!” cried they all together, and
little Lucia among the loudest—“hate argument!”

“I confess it; I'd rather talk nonsense by the
month, than argue by the hour.”

“Hate argument!” cried Mr. Goshawk, “why it
is the hone on which the imagination is brought to
its brightest edge.”

“What a beautiful figure,” said Lucia; “he
talks like a rainbow.”

“Hate argument!” cried the illustrious Puddingham;
“let me tell you, sir, the great Johnson considered

argument as a cudgel, with which every man
should be furnished, to defend himself and knock
down his adversaries.”

“What a charming metaphor!” said Lucia, with
enthusiam.

“Metaphor!” said Mrs. Coates, “can you see
it in the daytime? Do show me where it is, I should
like to see its tail in the daytime.”

“My dear aunt,” said Lucia, excessively mortified,
“my dear aunt you mean the meteor.”

“Child,” said the other, “don't irrigate me. I
know the difference between a metaphor and a meteor,
as well as you do, `the Liquorary Gazette' could
tell me that.”

“Pray, sir,” said Goshawk to Highfield, pompously,
“what do they learn at college?”

“Why, a little logic, and”—

“And what is logic but argument?” said the
other.

“My good sir, no two things can be more distinct;
I have heard thousands of arguments in
which there was no more logic than in the couplet
of the primer—

“And do you mean to deny the conclusion,” said
the other, with his usual enthusiasm.

“Not I,” said Highfield, carelessly; “I have not
the least doubt of it. I only deny that you and I
shall die because Xerxes the great `did die.”'

To an enthusiastic, declamatory person by profession,
there is nothing so difficult to parry, as a
little plain, direct common sense, conveyed in simple
and brief words. Mr. Goshawk was actually puzzled;
so he contented himsslf with asking, rather
contemptuously,

“And is this all they teach at college?”

“By no means; I learnt exactly how many nuts
and apples Tityrus had for his supper.”

Mr. Goshawk, it is believed, never heard of but
four poets—the Great Unknown, Lord Byron,
Mr. Moore, and himself. He neither understood
who Tityrus was, nor comprehended the sly rebuke
of the reply. The indispensable armour of affectation
is an absolute insensibility to ridicule.

“Oh! what a beautiful alliteration,” exclaimed
Lucia, who was dipping into Mr. Thomas Moore.

“Charming! charming!” added she, repeating
it to Highfield, who insisted that he could make a
finer alliteration extempore.

“If you do, I'll net you a silk purse;” said Lucia.

“Done,” said Highfield:

“Only make a rhyme to it, and I will add a watch
chain,” said the young lady.

“Nonsense!” said Lucia, blushing a little.

“You asked for rhyme, not reason. I insist upon
it I've won.” The company was called upon to decide.

“There's no sublimity,” said Goshawk.

“No powerful pathos,” said Miss Overend.

“No exquisite tenderness,” said Paddleford.

“No romantic feeling,” said Miss Appleby.

“No meaning,” said Mr. Roth, pompously.

“No connexion of sense,” said Puddingham.

“It finds no He Cow[1] in my feelings,” said Mrs.
Coates.

Highfield was proceeding to prove that his two
lines contained all the essentials of first rate
poetry, when, luckily for his fame, a young lady
came in with a new hat, of the latest Paris fashion.
The force of nature overcame the force of affectation;
and the ladies all flocked round the new bonnet;
leaving the reputation of our hero, as a bard
to its fate.

After this the conversation turned on more sublunary
things.

“Do you know,” said Miss Traddle, the young
lady in the fashionable bonnet, “Do you know that
the Briars have hired a splendid hotel, in Paris?”

“What!” said little Mrs. Coates, “do they keep
tavern? Well, for my part, I never thought them as
rich as some people did. I'm sorry for poor, dear
Mrs. Briar.”

“They have been presented at court!” said Miss
Traddle. “What, tavern keepers presented at
court! O, but its only a French court,” quoth Mrs.
Coates, quite satisfied.

The information, however, stirred up, amongst
the azures, a violent degree of envy, at the good
fortune of the happy Briars.

“For my part,” said Miss Appleby, who had
been abroad, but was never presented; “for my
part, I always declined going to court. Every body
told me it was a stupid business;” and she sighed at
the good fortune of the Briars.

“What a delightful thing it must be to get into
the first society, abroad,” said Miss Traddle.

“Why so?” asked Highfield.

“Why, why because it is of such high rank—so
refined—so literary—so genteel—so much superior
to the society here.”

“Who told you so, Miss Traddle?”

“Why, Mrs. Vincent; you know she was at
court.”

“What, hin Hingland?” said Mrs. Coates, in astonishment.

“Yes indeed; and at the sheepshearing, at Holkham;
and the lord mayor's ball; and Almacks.”

“What, Almacks!” cried Miss Appleby, and
fainted.

“At Almanack's,” exclaimed Mrs. Coates; “I
dont believe a word of it. Why I could never get
there myself, though Sir Cloudesley Shovel, and Sir

Richard Gammon both made interest for me. Mrs.
Vincent, indeed! the daughter of a shaver, and wife
of a—I don't believe a word on't.”

Poor Mrs. Vincent! how they all hated her for
being at Almacks.

“And why not?” said Highfield.

“Because,” said Mrs. Coates, “they would'nt
admit the goddess Dinah, if she was to rise from the
dead. Were you ever abroad, Mr. Highfield?”

“No, but I intend it one of these days. I wish
to go there to undeceive myself; and get rid of
those ignoble ideas of the superiority of every thing
abroad inculcated by books, and by every thing we
see and hear, from our youth upwards. 'Tis worth
while to go, if for no other purpose than getting rid
of this monstrous bugbear.”

“What,” said they all, with one voice, “you
don't believe in the superiority of foreign literature?”

“Not of the present day.”

“Nor foreign manners?”

“No, nor morals either.”

“Nor of French cookery?” quoth Puddingham.

“Nor of English poetry?” quoth Goshawk.

“Nor of Italian skies?” quoth Miss Overend,
enthusiastically.

“Nor of London Porter?” exclaimed Mrs.
Coates.

“No, no, no, no,” replied Highfield, good humouredly,
yet earnestly; “as to your Italian skies,
a friend of mine assured me he was three months in

Italy, and never saw a clear sky. The truth is, we
take our ideas of Italian skies from English poets,
who, not having an opportunity of seeing the sun
at home, above once or twice a year, vault into raptures,
with the delight of sunshine on the continent.
Those of our countrymen, who judge for themselves,
have assured me, that in no part of Europe, have
they ever seen such beautiful blue skies, such starry
fiamaments, and such a pure transparent air, as our
summer and autumns present almost every day, and
every night. And as to their Venus de Medicis, I
need not go out of the room, to satisfy myself that
there is no necessity for a voyage to Europe, to
meet goddesses that shame all the beauties of antiquity;”
and he bowed all round, to the ladies, who
each took the compliment herself, and pardoned his
numerous heresies, on the score of his orthodoxy in
one particular.

“I am exactly the height of the Venus de Medicine,”
said little Mrs. Coates; and forgot the slander
on the English skies. “You mean to go to
Europe, and visit Almanacks.”

“For what, madam—to see a company of well
dressed men and women, who look exactly like ourselves;
only the ladies are not half so handsome;
nor do they dance half so well? No, if I go abroad
at all, it will be to learn properly to estimate the
happiness of my own country.”

The ladies, though they could not get over
the silly, and vulgar notion of the superiority of

society abroad, all thought Highfield a very polite,
agreeable young fellow; and Lucia found herself
on the very threshold of relishing a little common
sense. The party soon after separated; having
spent a most improving morning.

4. CHAPTER IV.
Showing the great benefits arising from having a discreet friend.

Though years bring with them wisdom, yet there
is one lesson the aged seldom learn, namely, the
management of youthful feelings. Age is all head,
youth all heart; age reasons, youth feels; age acts
under the influence of disappointment, youth under
the dominion of hope. What wonder, then, that
they so seldom should agree? Mr. Lee had, for
more than half a score of years, been pondering on
the beautiful congruity of a match between his
daughter and his nephew. He had enough for both;
they were of a corresponding age; both handsome,
amiable, and intelligent; and they had been brought
up together, until within the last few years that
Highfield remained at college. It was the most
reasonable, the most likely, and the most natural,
that they should fall in love, marry, and be happy.

Therefore, he had long since determined in his own
mind, that they should fall in love, marry, and be
happy. Alas! poor gentleman; even experience
had failed in teaching him, that the most likely
things in the world are the least likely to come to
pass! He communicated his plans to his friend, Mr.
Fairweather:

“I intend Highfield shall live with us,” said he,
“and thus he will have every opportunity to make
himself agreeable.”

“You had better forbid him the house,” said the
other.

“Forbid him the—I shall do no such thing,”
said Mr. Lee, somewhat nettled; “but you are not
serious?”

“Faith am I.”

“How so?”

Mr. Fairweather was of the Socratic school,
without knowing much of Socrates; for he held the
ancients in little respect.

“Have you not observed, my good friend,” said
he, “that matrimony does not in general answer the
great end of human happiness?”

“Now I tell you what, Mr. Fairweather, I know
what you are after; you want to catch me in your
confounded, crooked interrogatives; but it wont do,
I tell you it wont do, sir,” said Mr. Lee, chafing.

“No, no, upon honour, I have no such intention;
only answer me frankly. Have you not made the
observation?”

“Well, then, I have,” answered Mr. Lee, with
some hesitation, and feeling exactly like a fly in the
anticipation of being caught in a cobweb.

“Very well: don't you think this arises from
their seeing too much of each other—becoming too
intimate—and thus losing the guard which the little,
salutary restraints of the constitution of society
interpose before marriage, giving way, in consequence,
to a display of temper and habits, that
weakens if not destroys affection?”

“Certainly—certainly—I do,” quoth the other.

“Very well: do not two young people, living
together in the same house, associating on terms of
the most perfect intimacy, also see a great deal of
each other, calculated to unveil the mysteries in
which love delights to shroud his glorious deceptions?
The young lady comes down to
breakfast, with her hair in papers—an old, faded,
black silk or calico frock—a shoe out at the sides,
and a hole in her stocking—she scolds the servant,
and gets into a passion; for it is impossible to be
always a hypocrite—and ten to one they become so
easy together, that they will not scruple at last to
contradict, quarrel, and at length care no more for
each other, than people generally do who have had
a free opportunity of seeing all their faults at full
length.

“All this is very true; but then—but go on, sir.”

“Very well—the case stands thus: Marriages
are seldom very happy—why? because the parties

are too much together—why? because they live in
the same house, and see all each other's faults.
Ergo, if you want two young persons to become
attached, and marry, you should take a course directly
opposite to that of matrimony. Instead of
shutting your daughter and nephew up together,
your best way will be, as I said before, to turn him
out of doors.”

“There! there! I knew you'd have me at last;
I felt you were all the time drawing your infernal
cobwebs round me. Sir, you're enough to provoke
a saint, with your Socratics.”

“I never meddle with Socrates, or Socratics, my
good friend; but Socrates, notwithstanding his
ignorance of steamboats, spinning jennies, railroads,
and chemistry, is upon the whole good authority in
cases of the kind we are discussing. He certainly
saw too much of his lady.”

“Then you seriously advise me to turn my nephew
out of doors, to bring about a union? Why
I did threaten it the other day, and Lucia told me
if I did, she would certainly let him in again.”

“Why, my dear friend, here you have the whole
secret of the matter. Only persuade the young lady
that you don't approve of the young gentleman for a
son-in-law, and the business is done.”

“Confound it; be serious, can't you? I want
your advice as a friend.”

“Well, I have given it, and you don't like it. I
think it best then that you try the other extreme,

and shut them up together all day in the same room.
Don't you think, my good friend, that upon the
whole much of the misery of married life arises
from young people not being sufficiently acquainted
with the habits and tempers of each other beforehand?”

“Certainly, certainly.”

“Very well: and don't you think the best way of
obviating that evil, is to let them see as much of one
another as possible?”

Here Mr. Lee made his friend a most profound
and reverential bow. “I remember,” said he,
“having read, in Monsieur Rabelais, that the great
Panurge, being inclined to marry, consulted divers
philosophers without success, when the thought
came across him to ask the opinion of a fool, who
soon satisfied his doubts on the subject:—I shall
follow his example.” Whereupon he seized his hat
and stumped out of the room, followed by his friend.
But they did not separate; they stuck together like
a pair of wool-cards with the teeth standing opposite
ways, and finished the morning, the best friends in
the world.

5. CHAPTER V.
Pure Azure.

Mr. Lee, after troubling himself exceedingly in
concocting and maturing a plan to bring about a
speedy union between his daughter and nephew, at
length in despair hit upon the best in the world,
which was to let matters take their own course, and
leave the event to Providence. Had he persevered
in this, it had been all the better; but I profess to
have heard a vast many people talk of trusting to
Providence, who still would be meddling and putting
in their oar, and spoiling every thing. However,
it is necessary to the happiness of mankind, that they
should fancy themselves the spiders that weave the
web, instead of the flies that are caught in it.

In the meantime, Lucia and Highfield were much
together. Lucia liked him extremely; she liked
his good humour, his vivacity, his spirit, and his
generous forgetfulness of himself; she even thought
him rather handsome, and quite a sensible young
man. But her ideas of men had been formed from
the declamations of the azure club, with which she
had been intimately associated for the last few years.
It was here that she learned to consider words of

much more consequence than actions, talents than
temper, enthusiasm than common sense, and an utter
incapacity for usefulness as the best test of genius.
She was often struck with the manly sense and
unpretending beauty of Highfield's sentiments; but
then they were expressed with such a nakedness,
such a poverty of words, such a natural simplicity,
that all the azures pronounced him a very common-place
sort of a person, that would never set the
world crying about nothing, or be himself miserable
without cause.

“For my part,” said Goshawk, “I like sublimity,
obscurity, grandeur, mistiness—I hate a
speech, or a passage, that I can comprehend at the
first glance. Give me, to grope in the whirlwind;
mount into the depths of the multitudinous ocean—
dive into the evanescent fleecy clouds, that gallop
on the midnight sunbeams, that sparkle in yon star-spangled
attic story—and grapple with the chaos of
the mind.” And he sank on the sofa, overpowered
with his emotions.

“And I,” exclaimed Miss Appleby, holding a
smelling bottle to his inspired nose, “I delight to
fling—” here she flourished a pinch of snuff she
held between her thumb and finger right into the
expanded nostrils of the great Puddingham, who
began to sneeze like ten tom-cats; “I delight to
toss back the curtains of night and darkness—to
climb those unfathomable abysses where lurk the treasures
of inspired thought, glittering like the eternal

snows of the inaccessible Andes. I love to rise on
the wings of the moonbeam—sink under the weight
of the zephyr—and lose myself in the impenetrable
brightness of transcendant genius, giving to the
winds their whistle, the waves their roar, the stars
their brightness, and the sun its fires.”

“And I,” cried little Mrs. Coates, “as Sir Richard
Gammon used to say, prefer those soul-infusing
alligators, that stir the mountain spirit up to
the dromedary of fever heat—”

“The dromedary of fever heat!” said Roth,—
“what sort of a dromedary is that?”

Lucia whispered Mrs. Coates, who replied in some
agitation,

“I mean allegory and thermometer. How could
I make such a mistake? But I was carried away
by the intensity of my feelings. I like—”

Each one of the party was now so anxious to tell
what they liked, that there was no one but Highfield
to listen. Even Lucia mingled her tuneful
nonsense with the incomprehensible olio. There was
not one of these good people that would not have made
a decent figure in life, in their proper sphere, as indeed
all persons do, had they only been content
to keep within it, and talk common sense on ordinary
occasions, refraining from affecting enthusiasm
when there was nothing to excite it. A pause
at length ensuing, Miss Appleby turned suddenly
to Highfield, and asked him,

“O Mr. Highfield, I hope you admire those
beautiful historical romances, and romantic histories,
that come out every day now-a-days? What
a charming thing it is to read novels, and study
history at the same time!”

“Why in truth, madam,” said Highfield, “I don't
pretend to criticism, and hardly ever read reviews,
when I can find any thing else to read.”

“Not read reviews!”

“Not read the Edinburgh!” cried Mr. Roth,
who never uttered an opinion that he did not get
from that renowned Scottish oracle.

“Not read the Quarterly!” exclaimed Puddingham,
who was a believer in the infalliability of the
English oracle.

“Not read the Westminster!” screamed Miss
Overend, who worshipped at that shrine.

“Nor the Liquorary Gazette!” quoth little Mrs.
Coates.

“Well then, let us hear your opinion, sir,” at
length said Puddingham, with a supercilious air,
implying that it was not worth hearing.

“Such as it is, you are welcome to it. I confess
I do not agree with those who believe that a knowledge
of history may be obtained by studying romances.
The very name of romance presupposes
fiction; and how is the reader, unless already critically
versed in history, to distinguish between what
is fact and what is fiction? The probability is, that
he will jumble them together, and thus lose all perception

of what is history, and what romance. He
may come in time to mistake one for the other, and
confound a Waverly novel with Hume, or the Tales
of my Landlord with Plutarch's Lives.”

“Ah! that Plutarch's Lives is a delightful romance,”
exclaimed Mrs. Coates.

“Romance!” said Highfield; “my dear madam,
I am afraid you are already in the state of
doubt I hinted at. Plutarch's Lives compose one
of the best authenticated memorials of history—
every word is true.”

“Well,” cried Mrs. Coates, “did ever any
body hear of such an imposition! Every thing
is so perfectly natural, I took it for a historical
romance. I am resolved never to read another word
of it.”

“Many besides yourself, madam,” said Highfield,
smiling, “have lost their relish for truth, by a habit
of reading little else than the daily succession of
half-truth, half-fiction productions, perpetually issuing
from the press. I think I could give a receipt,
which would enable any person of ordinary intellect
to concoct one of these at least twice a year, without
any extraordinary exertion.”

“Oh let us hear it by all means,” said Puddingham,
superciliously.

“Allons,” said the other. “Take a smattering
of history; a little knowledge of old costumes and
phraseology; a little superstition, consisting of a

belief in clouds, dreams, and omens; a very little
invention, just enough to disguise the truth of history;
a very little vein of a story, with very little
connection; a mighty hero, and a very little heroine.
With these, compound a couple of volumes of actions
without motive, and motives with or without action;
adventures that have no agency in producing the
catastrophe, and a catastrophe without any connection
with the adventures. Put all these in a book,
cement them together, with plenty of high-sounding
declamations, and get a certificate from an English
review, or newspaper, and you have a romance, of
which more copies will be sold in a fortnight, than
of the best history in the world in a year.”

“By the by,” said Miss Appleby, “have you
read Moore's Life of Byron, and heard that Murray,
the great London bookseller, has purchased
the copy-right of his minor poems, for three thousand
seven hundred guineas?”

“What a proof of the prodigious superiority of
his genius!” cried Miss Overend. “I have read
that Milton sold his Paradise Lost for twelve
pounds.”

“What a noble testimony to the wonderful developement
of mind!” cried Puddingham. “But I
believe, Mr. Highfield, you don't believe in the vast
improvement of the age?” added he, in his usual
pompous vein.

“Not much,” replied the other; “I think the
age of Milton was quite as learned and wise as the

present. If Milton were now living, an obscure
author, or obnoxious politician, I doubt whether
Murray would give him twelve pounds for his Paradise
Lost, at a venture, unless indeed he could
secure a favourable review.”

“What a divine misanthrope was Lord Byron?”
exclaimed Miss Appleby; “how I should glory in
being loved by a man that hated all the rest of the
world!”

“My dear madam,” said Highfield, “wouldn't
you be afraid he might kill you with kindness?”

“I wouldn't care to die such a glorious death.”

“And so uncommon too. You would be immortalized,
if only on account of its rarity.”

“Oh, he was a jewel of a man! Such an inspired
contempt for his fellow-creatures! Don't you think
this a certain sign of his superiority over the rest
of the world?”

“And don't you think his utter disregard of the
customs and prejudices of society a proof of his lofty
genius?” added Miss Overend.

“Why no, I can't say I do. But I have no disposition
to find fault with the dead—it is against an
old maxim I learned at college.”

“It is much easier to give an opinion than to support
it,” said the sententious Puddingham. “Pray
give us your reasons, Mr. Highfield.”

“I had rather not,” said he; “I am somewhat tired
of his Lordship, and heartily wish his cruel biographers

would let his memory rest in peace.” But
they all insisted.

“Well then, since I can't get off with honour, I
must not disgrace myself before this good company.
In the first place, I don't believe his Lordship despised
the world, whose applause and admiration
he was continually seeking. His contempt was sheer
affectation. But if he had really despised it, I
should have a worse opinion of him.”

“As how, my good sir?” said Puddingham.

“Because I consider misanthropy a proof of either
weakness or wickedness. One may become justly
indifferent to this world, but to hate it seems to me
only a proof that a man is bad himself, and wants an
excuse for indulging his wicked propensities, by
robbing his fellow-creatures of all claim to the exercise
of justice and benevolence. He is like the pirate,
who throws away his allegiance, only that he
may make war on all the world. To divest mankind
of all the virtues, as does the misanthrope, is to
free ourselves virtually from all moral obligations
towards them.”

Here the great Puddingham took an emphatic
pinch of snuff; and after sneezing violently, said,
“Go on, sir; go on.”

“Neither do I believe that a disregard to the
common maxims of life, is proof of a superior
mind. Men of great genius, indeed, very often pay
little attention to mere fashions, and fashionable opinions,
because these have nothing to do with the settled

principles of religion or morality. But so far
as respects my own reading, or experience, I never
met with a man of very extraordinary powers of
mind, who despised or disregarded those ordinary
maxims of life, which are essential to the very existence
of society; much less have I met one of this
class who prostituted his genius to the injury of morals
and religion, or devoted himself exclusively to
low, grovelling, mischievous attempts to weaken
their influence on mankind. I have never found such
men, for ever wallowing in the mire of sensuality, or
indulging a malicious misanthropy, by sarcasms and
reasonings against social ties and duties. Shall I
go on?” said Highfield, after a pause.

“Oh, by all means,” said Puddingham, condescendingly.

“The world of fashion has been pleased to place
Lord Byron by the side, if not on a level, with the great
names of ancient and modern literature; and whatever
may be my own opinion, I am to estimate him
by that standard—if I please. But I don't please
to do so. He will not bear a comparison with any
of these. A great genius always devotes himself to
great subjects; or if he sometimes condescends to
trifle, it is only by way of a little relaxation. We
do not find Homer, Virgil, Dante, Tasso, Milton,
and others of the great `heirs of immortality,' attempting
to reach the highest summit of fame
through the dirty, winding paths of ribaldry and
sensuality—converting their muse into a pander to

vice, or tilting against society and morals, and,
both by example and precept, inciting to the
violation of the highest duties of man to man, and
man to woman. Their genius was nobly exercised
in celebrating the glories of their country—the triumphs
of their religion—the renown of virtuous heroes—and
the beauties of fortitude, disinterestedness,
magnanimity, justice, and patriotism. We never find
the highest gift of Heaven, coupled with the lowest
propensities to profligacy and vice. It is only your
second or third rate men, who are found pleading
an exemption from the duties and obligations of morality,
on the score of their superior genius. To
my taste, Lord Byron is, besides all this, infinitely
below the first rank of poets, in sublimity, invention,
pathos, and especially in the power of expressing
his ideas and feelings with that happy force and
richness, combined with that clearness and simplicity,
for which they are so pre-eminently distinguished.
There is, to my mind, more genius in Milton's
Comus, than in all his Lordship's poetry put together.
As a dramatic writer, he cannot compare
with—I put Shakspeare, Otway, Corneille, Racine,
and Voltaire, out of the question—but with Beaumont
and Fletcher, Southern, Dryden, and a dozen
others. Childe Harold, though containing many
passages of great beauty, is without plot or invention—the
mere unpurposed wanderings of a splenetic
misanthrope, kindled into occasional wrath, or enthusiasm,
by the sight of things at the road side,
and apparently incapable of any other inspiration
but what is derived from sensible objects. The
Corsair, The Giaour, and Don Juan, are nothing
more than the abstracted, contemplative Childe Harold,
carrying his feelings and principles into practical
application. The Childe merely thinks as a
profligate—the others act the character; the two
first in heroics, the latter in doggrel and buffoonery.
They are the same person, in a different mask—and
that person seems to be Lord Byron himself. As a
satirist, he is far behind Dryden, Pope, and even
Churchill; and as a writer of quaint doggrel, he
is inferior to Peter Pindar, in humour, waggishness,
and satirical drollery. And now, after uttering
this shocking blasphemy, I humbly take my
leave.” So saying, he seized his hat, and retreated
with great precipitation.

This was the longest speech our hero ever uttered;
and if he should take it into his head to make
such another in the course of this history, he must
get one of the reporters to congress to record it, for
I demur to undertake the task in future. Never
man met with so little applause for attempting to enlighten
people against their will, as did our friend
Highfield on this occasion. The whole coterie, Lucia
among the rest, was scandalized at this atrocious
criticism, and separated in confusion. Mr. Fitzgiles
Goshawk escorted Lucia home, and discoursed
as seldom man in his senses, talking to a woman in
hers, ever discoursed before.

He spoke of being sick of the world; disgusted
with the heartlessness of mankind; depressed and
worn out with the intensity of his feelings, and devoured
by a secret grief, which must never be known
until he had gained a refuge from care and sorrow,
in the quiet grave. All this he uttered in language
I confess myself inadequate to record; and with an
affectation that must have been apparent to any one
but an inexperienced girl. On going away he gave
into Lucia's hand a paper, accompanied by a look
that went straight to her heart. She retired to her
chamber, and unfolding it with trembling hands,
found the following exquisite effusion:

How delightful, thought Lucia, wiping her eyes;
how delightful it must be to be unhappy, without
knowing exactly why! To be able to gather the
honey of sweet melancholy, from the flowers, the
fruits, the smiles, and the beauties of nature! To
weep, where vulgar souls would sport and laugh!
To complain without reason; and to banquet on the
lonely musings of a heart overfraught with the exquisite
sensibilities of genius! And she sighed over
the fate of this interesting man, who was thus pining
away, under some secret grief. She put the inspired
morceau into her bosom; and that day, at least,
the genius of Goshawk triumphed over the good
sense, the manliness, and the wholesome, healthful
vivacity of Highfield.

I feel I ought, in justice, to apologize for my heroine,
who had sense enough from nature to have
detected the mawkish folly, incomprehensible nonsense,
and silly affectation of this poetical grief of
Mr. Fitzgiles Goshawk. All I can say in her defence
is, that she had been brought up in the midst
of the azure coterie, all the members of which, were
considerably older than herself; had been every day
accustomed to hear them praise Mr. Goshawk, and
to hear Mr. Goshawk's poetry. She had grown up

in habitual veneration for them all; and even the notorious
blunders of her aunt, were hallowed, by
coming from the sister of her mother. Those who
know the spell, which wrong precepts and early bad
examples wind about the finest understanding, and
how slowly and with what labour it emancipates itself,
will, I hope, excuse my heroine. Such as she is, I
shall endeavour to exhibit her, hoping, that time and
experience will yet make her what she was intended
to be by nature.

6. CHAPTER VI.
The story hastens slowly.

The father of Lucia, though he had not become
quite a sage had yet derived considerable benefit
from experience. Time is as much the friend, as the
enemy of man; and while he plants the wrinkles on
our foreheads, makes some amends, by sowing the
seeds of wisdom in the mind. Mr. Lee had come
to the conclusion, that the best way of bringing
about a union of hearts, was to keep the secret of
his wishes to himself; and let Lucia and Highfield
follow the guidance of dame nature. There is
something in the stubborn heart of man, and woman,

that revolts at becoming the dupe of a plan, even if
it be one for bringing about exactly what it wishes
above all things. I have seen an over anxious mother
drive a young man from her house, only by discovering
a vehement desire to forward a match between
him, and the very daughter he would have selected,
if left to himself. In truth, we overdo things
in this world, quite as often as we neglect what is
necessary to be done. The parent, who is perpetually
watching the little child, and cautioning it
against harm, for the most part, only excites a curious
longing, to try the experiment, and judge for itself;
and so it is with grown-up children, who, like
infants, are only to be warned by their own experience;
and whom perpetual cautions, recommendations,
and supervision, too often only incite to mischiefs,
of which they might otherwise never have
dreamed. If there ever was a period of the world,
in which these maxims were exemplified, it is doubtless
the present; when, if the truth must be told, so
much pains have been taken, by well meaning people,
with better hearts than heads, to improve mankind,
that they have at length, become, as it were,
little better than good for nothing. But let us return
to our story.

Both Highfield and Lucia, it is believed, remained
quite unconscious of the intentions of the
old gentleman towards them. The former, was every
day hinting, in the most delicate manner, his wish
to enter upon some honourable pursuit, by which he

might attain to independence, if not distinction.
But the old gentleman always put him off, with
“Time enough, Charles—time enough; look round
a little, and consider a good deal, before you make
your choice.” Highfield was in a situation of peculiar
delicacy, for a high spirited, honourable man; and he
refrained from further importunity. Yet still he did
not feel satisfied; he was dependent; and if I
were to mark out the dividing line, that separates
man from other men, it should be here. On one
side I would place those, whose manhood rises above
the degradation of a dependence on any thing but
their own heads, hands, and hearts; and on the
other, those inferior beings, who are content to be
a burthen upon their fathers, or their friends, rather
than launch into the ocean of life, and buffet the
billows.

Highfield belonged to the former class. He
longed to make himself a useful and honourable
citizen, by the exercise of his talents and industry.
He had also another motive. It is quite
impossible for two persons, especially of different
sexes, to live together, in the same house, and preserve
a perfect indifference towards each other.
They will either take a liking, or a decided dislike.
If they are very young, this will probably
ripen into love, or antipathy. Lucia was a little too
much of the azure; but I have seen the time, not
quite half a century ago, when such a woman, would
have wakened, in my heart a hundred sleeping cupids.

There was that about her, which, for want of
some other phrase, we call attractive—a charm,
which, so far as I have ever analyzed it, consists in a
well made figure not tall; a face of mild gentleness
mingled with vivacity; not always laughing,
nor ever gloomy; always neat, yet never over-dressed,
for no woman can ever touch the heart, though
she may overpower the senses by her splendours; a
graceful quiet motion; a soft, melting, mellow
voice; and a heart, and an understanding, the one,
all nature, the other nature embellished not spoiled,
by culture and accomplishments. Such a woman,
though she may not dazzle or mislead the
imagination, carries with her, the true, moral, magnetic
influence, which lurks as it were unseen;
emits no gaudy splendours, but with a mysterious
inscrutable power attracts, and fixes every kindred
sympathy with which it comes in contact. Such, in
her natural state, was Lucia Lightfoot Lee, a lovely
maiden, but alas! a little too much of the azure.
Highfield had not been long an inmate of his uncle's
house, before he began to feel the force of that
magnetic influence I have just described; and, the
moment he became conscious of it, his anxiety to
leave his uncle, and pursue some mode of independent
existence, became stronger.

His sense of honour was not only nice, but punctilious.
He was poor and dependent; Lucia was
an heiress. Had he believed it in his power to gain
the affections of his cousin, he would have despised

himself for the attempt. But he saw that her imagination,
if not her heart, was captivated by the
empty but showy accomplishments of Mr. Goshawk;
and the hope of success was not strong enough to
blind him to the meanness of the attempt. He
began to be much from home; and when at home,
absent and inattentive; though his natural spirits
kept him from being gloomy or unsocial. Lucia
was too much occupied with Mr. Fitzgiles Goshawk
and his mysterious sorrows, to notice this; but the
old gentleman began to be fidgety and impatient
at the unpromising prospect of his favourite plan.

“What is the matter with you and Lucia?” said
he one day.

“Nothing, sir,” replied Highfield, “we are very
good friends.”

“Friends! hum—ha—but you don't seem to like
each other as well as you did—hey?

“Like, sir—uncle—I am sure I have a great
friendship for Miss Lee.”

“Ah! hum—ha—friendship—but don't you think
her a d—d fine girl—hey, boy?”

“I do, indeed, sir. I think her a sensible, discreet,
well behaved, promising young lady as you
will see.”

“Ah! yes—sixteen hands high—star in the forehead—trots
well—canters easy—full blooded—and
three years old last grass—hey?—one would think
you were praising a horse, instead of my daughter,”
said the old gentleman, getting into a passion apace.

“My dear uncle, excuse me. It does not become
me to speak of my cousin in such terms of admiration
as I would do under different circumstances.”

“Circumstances! sir—is there any circumstance
that ought to prevent your seeing like other young
men, and feeling and expressing yourself as they
do?”

“Pardon me, sir; but I am just now thinking of
quite a different matter.”

“You don't say so, sir! upon my word, my
daughter is very much obliged to you. But what
is the mighty affair?”

“My excellent friend, don't be angry. If you
knew all, perhaps you would pity me. But I must
leave you, and seek my fortune—indeed, I must. I
am wasting the best portion of my life in idleness.”

“And suppose you are, what is that to you, sir, if
it is my pleasure?”

“You have been a father to me, sir, and I owe
you both gratitude and obedience. But there are
duties to ourselves, which ought to be attended to.
I am but a dependent on your bounty, after all—a
beggar”—

“A beggar!—'tis false, sir, you're not a beggar.
But I see how it is; you want to be made independent;
you want me to make a settlement on
you; you are not content to wait till an old man
closes his eyes—you”—

“Uncle,” said Highfield, with his cheek burning

and his eye glistening, “do you really believe me
such a despicable scoundrel?”

“Why—no—I believe you are only a fool, that
is all. But I'll never forgive you; you have deranged
all my plans; you have rejected the happiness
I had in store for you; you will bring my gray
hairs with sorrow to the grave. Yes, yes, yes, I
see it, I see it—I am doomed to be a miserable,
disappointed, heart-broken old man.”

“For Heaven's sake, uncle, what is the matter?”

“Matter! why the matter is, you are a blockhead;
you are dumb, deaf, blind; you haven't one
of the five senses in perfection, or you might have
known.”

“Known what, sir?”

“Why,” roared the old gentleman, in a transport
of rage, “you might have seen that I intended you
for my son-in-law—you blockhead; that I meant to
leave you and Lucia all my estate—you fool; that
I had set my heart on it—you—you ungrateful
villain. But I'll be even with—I'll disinherit you
—I'll disown you—I'll send you to the d—l,
sir, for your bare ingratitude—I will.”

Highfield stood a moment or two overpowered by
this unexpected disclosure of his uncle. He actually
trembled at the prospect it opened before him. At
length he exclaimed:

“My best of friends, I never dreamed that such
was your intention.”

“Why, sir, I have cherished it, lived upon it,

ever since Lucia was born. Not know it? why
what a blind fool you must be!”

“But you never communicated it, sir, and how
could I know it?”

“Why, ay, that is true indeed. When I think of
it, there is some excuse for you, as I never hinted my
intention. But it is all over now; you want to
leave us; and you think Lucia `a sensible, discreet,
well behaved, promising young woman,'—sixteen
hands high;” mimicking poor Highfield, as he
repeated these panegyrics.

“I think her,” said Highfield, “for now I dare
speak what I think—I think her all that a father
could wish; all that a lover could desire, in his
moments of most glowing anticipation. I think her
the loveliest, the best, the most accomplished, the
most angelic, the most divine!”

“Ah! that will do, that will do, boy; you talk
like a hero—tol-de-rol-lol!” and the old gentleman
cut a most unprecedented caper. “Give me your
hand boy; it's a bargain—we'll have the wedding
next week.”

“Ah, sir!” said the young man, with a sigh, “I
doubt—you know there is another person to be consulted.”

“Another person! who do you mean, sir?”

“Your daughter, sir.”

“Bless me! that is true, indeed. I had forgot
that. But I'll soon bring the matter about. I'll
tell her it is the first wish of my heart: if she reuses,

I'll talk reason to her. If she wont listen to
reason, I will talk to her like a father—I'll let her
know who is master in this house, I warrant you.
I'll go this instant, and settle the matter.” And the
old gentleman was proceeding to make good his
words.

“For Heaven's sake, sir, don't be in such a
hurry,” cried Highfield eagerly; “you will ruin me
and my hopes, if you proceed in such a hurry.
Alas! sir, I fear it is too late now.”

“What does the puppy mean?”

“I fear my cousin's affections are already engaged.”

“To whom, sir? tell me quick, quick, sir; to
whom? I'll engage her, the baggage; I'll let her
know who is who; I'll teach her to throw away her
affections without consulting me—I'll shut the door
in the scoundrel's face, and shut my daughter up in
her chamber—I'll—why the d—l, sir, don't you
answer me; what do you stand there for, playing
dummy? Tell me, sir, who is the villain that has
stolen my daughter's affections.?”

“I do not say positively, sir, and I have no right
to betray the young lady's secrets; but I fear Mr.
Goshawk has made a deep impression on her heart.”

Mr. Lee was never in so great a passion before:
not even with his man, Juba, of whom I could never
make up my mind to my satisfaction, whether he
was his master's master, or which was the better
man of the two. Juba was of the blood royal of
Monomotapa, a mighty African kingdom. He had

been in the family long enough to outlive three
generations, and thus fairly acquired a right to be
as crusty as his master, who, if the truth must be
told, was terribly henpecked by the royal exile. The
old gentleman once had a dispute at his own table
with one of his neighbours at the south, and some
words passed between them.

“Massa,” said Juba, when the company had
retired, “massa, we can't put up wid dat—must call
um out.”

The good gentleman quietly submitted, and
called out his neighbour, who fortunately apologized.

“Icod, massa,” said Juba, “we brought um to
de bull-ring, didn't we?”

But to return from this commemoration of our old
friend, Juba.

Mr. Lee was in a towering passion. Of all the
men he had ever seen, known, or read of, Mr.
Goshawk was the one for whom he cherished the
most special and particular antipathy. He considered
him an empty, idle, shallow, affected coxcomb,
without heart or intellect; a pretender to literary
taste and acquirements; a contemner of useful
knowledge and pursuits, whose sole business was to
exhibit feelings to which he was a stranger; to excite
sympathy for affected sorrows; and to impose
upon the susceptible follies of ancient spinsters or
inexperienced girls. “The fellow carries a drum
in his head,” would he say, “and is for ever sounding

false alarms. You think he is going to play a
grand march, but it is nothing but rub-a-dub rub-a-dub,
over and over again.”

“Goshawk!” at length he cried, “I'll disinherit
her, as sure as I am alive. What! that starved
epitome of a wind-dried rhymester; that shadow of
a shadow of a shadow of a stringer of doggrel;
that imitator of an imitator in the sixteenth degree
of consanguinity to an original; that blower of the
bellows to the last spark of an expiring fancy! Confound
me, if I had not rather have heard she had
fallen in love with the trumpeter to a puppet show.”

“My dear uncle, I don't say my cousin is actually
in love with Mr. Goshawk; but I think she has a
preference; a—a—at least, I am pretty sure, her
imagination is full of his genius, eloquence, and
beautiful poetry.”

“Genius, eloquence, poetry—pish! I could make
a better poem out of a confectioner's mottos, than
he will ever write. But she shall either renounce
him this minute, or I will renounce her.”

Highfield begged his uncle to pause, before he
proceeded to such extremities. He reasoned with
him on the bad policy of rousing into opposition, a
feeling, which was perhaps only latent, and giving
it the stimulus of anger, by assailing it too roughly.
He cautioned him against the common error of supposing,
that to forbid a thing, was the best possible
way of preventing its coming to pass; or that love
was to be quelled by a puff of opposition. He conjured

him to say nothing on the subject; to look on
without interfering; to appear as if he neither saw,
or participated in any thing going forward.

“If,” said he, “I am not deceived in my lovely
and sensible cousin, it is only necessary to leave
her good sense and growing experience to operate,
and before long they will, of themselves, indicate
to her the error of her taste and imagination. But
if I should be deceived in this rational anticipation,”
added he, proudly and firmly; “if I find that her
heart is seriously and permanently attached, I give
you my honour, I pledge my unalterable determination,
that I will not permit myself to be either the
motive or the instrument, for forcing her inclinations.
If I cannot win her fairly, and against the
field, so help me Heaven, I will never wear her.”

“You talk like a professor, and a blockhead to
boot,” said Mr. Lee, half pleased and half offended—“But
hark ye, Mr. Highfield, if I take your advice,
and it turns out badly, I'll disinherit you both.”

“With all my heart, uncle, so far as respects myself.
Only say nothing; do nothing; and let matters
take their course. We often make things crooked
by taking too much pains to straighten them. `Let
us alone,' as the anti-tariff folks say.”

“Your most humble servant, sir,” quoth Mr.
Lee, with a profound bow—“I am to play Mr. Nobody
then, in this trifling affair of the disposal of
my only child?”

“Only for a little while sir, when you shall resume
the sceptre again.”

“And with which, I shall certainly break thy
head, if thy wise plan should happen to fail.”

“Agreed, uncle. I shall then be broken headed,
as well as broken hearted. For, by heaven, I love
my cousin, well enough to”—

“To resign her to an empty, heartless, brainless
coxcomb. But come, I give up the reins to my wise
Phæton, who, if he don't burn up the world, I dare
swear will set the North river on fire. Here comes
Fairweather, I will consult him, though I know the
old blockhead will be of a contrary opinion, as he
always is. Go, and make a bow to Lucia; play
Mr. Goshawk, and talk as much like a madman as
possible.”

7. CHAPTER VII.
More pure azure.

Highfield sought Lucia, and found her sitting at
a window, which looked out upon the beautiful bay,
where the fair and noble Hudson basks its beauties
for awhile in the sun, before it loses itself for ever
in the vast solitudes of the pathless sea. It was an

April morning, such as sometimes appears in the disguise
of sunshine and zephyrs, to cheat us into a belief,
that laughing jolly spring is come again. The
bay was one wide waveless mirror, along whose
surface lay here and there a little lazy mist lolling
in the warm sunbeams, or sometimes scudding along
before a frolic breeeze that rose in playful vigour,
and then died away in a moment. In some places,
the vessels appeared as if becalmed among the
clouds, their proportions looming in imposing
magnitude through the deceptive mists; and in
others, you might see them exhaling the damps and
fogs condensed on their sails and decks, in clouds of
snow-white vapour. Here and there, you could
trace the course of a steamboat to the Kills, or the
Quarantine, by a long pennon of dark smoke, slowly
expanding in the dampness of the circumambient
air, and anon see her shoot, as if by magic from
the distant obscurity. The grass had just begun to
put forth its spires of tender green; the trees to assume
an almost imperceptible purple tint, from the
expansion of the buds; the noisy city lads were
spinning tops, flying kites, or shooting marbles, in
the walks; and now and then, a little feathered
stranger, cheated by the genial hour into a belief
that spring was come, chirped merrily among the
leafless branches.

Lucia was at the open window—her rosy cheek
leaning pensively on her snowy hand. She had just
finished reading, for the twentieth time, the pathetic

and interesting effusion of Mr. Goshawk. All that
she could understand from it was, that he was very,
very miserable, about something, she knew not what;
and the very mystery of his sorrows invested them
with an indescribable indefinable interest. Not but
what our heroine had her suspicions, and those very
suspicions increased her sympathy a hundred fold.
“Unfortunate man!” would she say to herself, “he
is consuming in the secret fires kindled in his bosom
by the intense ardour of his genius, the acute sensibilities
of his heart!”

Highfield was one of the most amiable of lovers,
who I must be allowed to say, nine out of ten deserve
to be turned out of doors by the fair objects
of their persecutions, once a day at least. If they
are in doubt, they are either stupidly silent or perversely
disagreeable; if they are jealous, they look
and act just like fools; and if successful, there is
an insulting security, a triumphant self-conceit, that,
to a woman gifted with the becoming pride of the
sex is altogether insufferable. I can tell a successful
wooer as far off as I can see him. He does nothing
but admire his leg, as he trips along; and you would
fancy he saw his mistress in every looking-glass.
But Highfield was gay, good humoured, and sensible.
He did not think it worth while to make
himself hated because he was in love; nor to increase
the preference of his mistress for another, by
treating her with neglect or ill manners. True,
these things are considered the best evidence of sincere

passion; but I would advise young women to
beware of a man whom love makes unamiable; as
I myself would beware of one, whom the intoxication
of wine made turbulent and quarrelsome. Both
love and wine draw forth the inmost nature of man.

“Well, Lucia,” said Highfield, with a familiar
frankness, which his intimacy and near relationship
warranted—“Well, Lucia, have you begun my
watch chain yet?”

“No,” said she, sighing.

“Well, my coz, when do you mean to begin it?”

“I don't know,” replied she languidly—“one of
these days I believe.”

“What ails you, Lucia—are you not well?”

“Not, not very—I have got a sort of oppression,
a heaviness, a disposition to sigh; something
here,” pressing her hand on her bosom, from whence
peeped forth a little corner of Goshawk's effusion.
Highfield saw it, and the blood rushed into his
cheeks; but he quelled the rising fiend of jealousy,
and asked, in a tone of deep interest, if she would
not take a walk with him on the Battery. She declined,
in a tone of a quiet indifference.

“Shall we go, and call on Miss Appleby?” Lucia
was all life and animation. She put on her hat,
her shawl, and the thousand et-ceteras, that go to
the constitution of a fashionable lady; and tripped
away like a little fairy. She expects to meet Goshawk
there, thought Highfield; but he neither pouted,
or was rude to his cousin on the way. Nay, he

exerted all his wit and pleasantry, and before they
arrived, Lucia thought to herself she would begin
to net the watch chain that very evening. They
found all the azures, except Mr. Goshawk, assembled
at one of the drawing room windows, Mrs. Petticoats
and all, clamourously reading, and clamourously
applauding, some verses, written on a pane of
glass, with a diamond pencil. The reader shall not
miss them. They ran as follows:

Here, it would seem, the bard stopped to take
breath; overcome, either by his own exertions, or
finding there was nothing left for him to curse.

“I never heard such delightful swearing,” cried
Miss Appleby.

“What charming curses!” cried Miss Overend.

“What touching misanthropy!” cried Mr. Paddleford.

“What powerful writing!” cried Puddingham.

“What glowing meteors!” cried Mrs. Coates,
determined not mistake meteors for metaphors, this
time.

Lucia said nothing; but the tumults of her bosom
told her nobody could write such heart-rending lines
but Mr. Goshawk.

“Don't you think them equal to Lord Byron?”
said Miss Appleby, to Highfield.

“Very likely, madam, Lord Byron wrote a vast
deal of heartless fustian.”

“Heartless fustian!” screamed Miss Appleby,
and “heartless fustian!” echoed the rest of the
azures, with the exception of Lucia, who determined
not to commence the watch-chain that evening, if
ever.

“Fustian! do you call such poetry fustian; so
full of powerful writing, and affording such delicious
excitement? For my part, I can't live without
excitement of some kind or other,” said Miss
Overend.

“What kind of excitement do you mean, madam,”
said Highfield, mischievously, “the Morgan
excitement or the Stephenson excitement?”

“Phsaw, Mr. Highfield, you are always ridiculing

sentiment. I mean the excitement of powerful
writing, powerful feeling, powerful passion,
grief, joy, rage, despair, madness, misanthropy,
pain, pleasure, anticipation, retrospection, disappointment,
hope, and—and—every thing that creates
excitement. By the by, they say the author of
Redwood is coming out with a new novel. I wonder
what it is about.”

“I don't know,” answered Highfield; “but I
will venture to predict it will be all that is becoming
in a sensible, well bred, well educated, delicate
woman, neither misled by a false taste nor affected
sentiment.”

“Pooh!” said the great Puddingham, “there is
no fire in her works.”

“Nor brimstone either,” said Highfield.

“Nor murder,” said Miss Appleby.

“Nor powerful writing,” said Miss Overend.

“Nothing to make the heart burst like a barrel
of gunpowder,” said little Mrs. Petticoats.

“Perhaps so,” replied Highfield, “but a book
may be worth something, without either fire, murder,
or gunpowder in it.”

Here the discussion was cut short by the entrance
of Mr. Goshawk, who bowed languidly to the company,
walked languidly to a sofa, and, flinging
himself listlessly down, leaned pensively upon his
head, and sighed most piteously. Mr. Goshawk
was one of the most extraordinary men living. He
hated the world, yet could not live a day without

attracting its notice in some way or other; he sighed
for solitude, yet took every opportunity of being in
a crowd; and though confessedly the most miserable
of mortals, was never so happy as when every body
was admiring his secret sorrows. He had thrown
himself accidentally by the side of Lucia.

“Ah! Mr. Goshawk,” said she, “we've found
you out!”

Goshawk knew as well what she meant as she did
herself; but he looked at her with the most absent,
vacant, ignorant wonder it was possible for any man
to assume, as he answered.

“Found me out, Miss Lee?”

“Yes, yes; the verses—the beautiful verses, written
with a diamond pencil, on the pane of glass:
you need not deny it; nobody but yourself could
have written such powerful poetry.”

“No, no; you can't deny it, Mr. Goshawk;
the foot of Hercules is in it,” cried Miss Appleby;
and the opinion was echoed by all present. Whereupon
Mr. Goshawk acknowledged that, being that
morning depressed by a dead weight of insupportable
melancholy, he had walked forth into Miss
Appleby's drawing room, and, finding no one there,
had relieved his overfraught heart, in those unpremeditated
strains. The azures applied their cambric
handkerchiefs to their eyes, and pitied poor Mr.
Goshawk, for labouring under such a troublesome
excess of sentimental sadness.

The conversation then took a different turn; interrupted

occasionally by the assurances of Mr.
Goshawk, that his verses were all written on the
spur, and under the impress, of the moment; though
we, as authors knowing the secrets of all our brethren,
are ready to make affidavit, that he never wrote
a line, without cudgelling his poor brains into
mummy, and spurring his Pegasus till his sides ran
blood.

“So there is a new Waverly coming out,”
quoth Puddingham, who was deep in booksellers'
secrets, “I am told, one of the principal characters
is Charles the fifth.”

“What he that was beheaded at Whitehall slip?”
asked Mrs. Coates.

“No, my dear madam,” said Highfield, “he that
resigned his crown before he lost his head.”

“How I delight to read novels in which there is
plenty of kings and queens; 'tis so refined and
genteel, to be in such good society,” said Miss
Overend.

“I never get tired of kings and queens, let them
be ever so stupid,” said Miss Appleby; “every
thing they say is so clever, and every thing they do,
so dignified.”

“Well, for my part,” said Highfield, “to me
nothing is so vulgar an expedient of authorship, as
that of introducing the reader into the society of
great names, and making them talk, not like themselves,
but like the author. In this manner, Rochester
becomes a dull debauchee; Bolingbroke, a prosing

blockhead; and the greatest wits of the age, as
stupid as the writer. For my part, I am tired of
seeing this vulgar parade of regal and titled realities
introduced as shadows to our acquaintance; and
have it in serious contemplation, unless I should
happen to fall into a cureless, causeless melancholy,
to write a novel, in which the principal actors shall
be gods, and the common people, kings and queens:
Queen Elizabeth shall lace Juno's corsets; Alexander
the great trim Jupiter's whiskers; Mary queen
of Scots enact a beautiful bar-maid; and Charlemagne,
a crier of Carolina potatoes.”

“Then you don't mean to recognise any distinctions
in mere mortal society?” asked Lucia, amused
in spite of herself with this banter.

“Why, I don't know. I have some thoughts of
a sort of geological, instead of genealogical arrangement,
to consist of the primitive, the secondary, and
the alluvial. The fashionable primitives shall be
those who carry their pedigrees back into oblivion;
whose origin is entirely unknown; the secondary
will consist of such as have not had time to forget
their honoured ancestors; and the alluvial, composed
of the rich washings of the other two, which
have so lately made their appearance above water,
that there has been no time for them to become barren
and good for nothing.” Highfield was now
called off by Miss Appleby.

Lucia appeared so much amused with this whimsical
arrangement, that Goshawk, who, though the

most abstracted of human beings, never for a
moment forgot himself or his vanity, thought it high
time to interfere.

“A clever young man that—a very clever young
man,” drawled he, “quite pleasant, but superficial;
no energy, no pathos, no powerful passion, no
enthusiasm, without which there can be no such
thing as genius. Give me the man,” cried he, with
a fat and greasy flow of sonorous words, “give me
the man to whom the croaking of a cricket is the
signal for lofty meditation, and the fall of a leaf, a
text for lone and melancholy abstraction; one who
is alone in the midst of a crowd, and surrounded
when alone by myriads of sparkling imps of thought,
millions of beings without being, and thoughts
without outline or dimensions; one to whom shadows
are substances, and substances, shadows—
to whom the present is always absent, the future
always past—who lives, and moves, and has his
being, in an airy creation of his own, and circulates
in his own peculiar orb—who rejoices without joy,
and is wretched without wretchedness; one, in
short, who never laughs but in misery, or weeps
except for very excess of joy—who lives in the
world, a miserable yet splendid example of the
sufferings endured by a superior being, when condemned
to associate with an inferior race, and to
derive his enjoyments from the same, mean, miserable,
five senses.” Here he sunk back on the sofa,
overpowered by his emotions.

“What a being!” thought Lucia, and fell into
a painful doubt, whether such a being would ever
condescend to think of her a moment, present or
absent. “He is above this world!” said she, and
sighed a hundred times, to think of a man being so
much superior to his fellow-creatures.

8. CHAPTER VIII.
A great falling off.

Returning home, our heroine threw herself on
a sofa—be pleased to take notice she did not sit
down, for that would have been unworthy a heroine
—she threw herself on a sofa, and passed some time
in sympathizing with the sufferings of Mr. Goshawk.
She sighed for an opportunity of communing with
him on the fathomless abyss of his mysterious miseries,
and wished—Oh! how devoulty wished herself
the privileged being, destined at last to be the
soother of his sorrows, the sharer of his thoughts,
the companion of his reveries, and the better half
of his abstract, inexplicable mystifications. “Would
that I knew, that I could comprehend, what it is
that makes him so wretched,” thought Lucia, little
suspecting that the poor gentleman would have been
puzzled himself to tell her.

She was roused from this painfully pleasing reverie,
by something which attracted her attention on
the sofa. She looked at it and rubbed her eyes—
and rubbed her eyes and looked at it again. The
thing was too plain, she could not possibly be deceived.
She started up and rang the bell furiously,
and the servant not coming sooner than it was possible
for him to come, she rang it again still more
emphatically. At length Juba made his appearance,
with his usual deliberation. An African gentleman
of colour seldom indulges himself by being in a
hurry.

“Who did that?” asked Lucia, pointing to the
sofa.

Juba advanced, looked at the spot, and began to
grin with that mortal display of ivory peculiar to his
race.

“Ah! Massa Fairwedder, Massa Fairwedder, he
droll man, he.”

“What! had Mr. Fairweather the impudence”—

“Ees, ees, he here dis morning,” replied Juba,
grinning more than ever.

Lucia immediately summoned the whole household,
consisting of a troop of coloured ladies and
gentlemen, whose principal business was to make
work for each other. Ever since Lucia became
azure, they had been pretty much suffered to do as
they pleased, and it was their pleasure to do nothing
but copy their young mistress in dress and behaviour
as much as possible. They had a dancing master

in the kitchen, to teach them waltzing, and talked
seriously of a masquerade, or a fancy ball at least.
The black cook was something of an azure herself,
read all those useful little tracts which teach servants
the duties of masters and mistresses, wore prunelle
shoes, and cooked dinner in an undress of black silk;
the coachman, almost as sentimentally miserable as
Mr. Goshawk; and Lucia's maid, a great admirer
of Miss Wright. The kitchen, as Dolly cook said,
was quite a literary emporium, and there was always
a greasy Waverly lying on the mantel-piece, with
which Dolly occasionally regaled herself, while
boning a turkey. The consequence of all this was,
that Mr. Lee's house was at sixes and sevens.
There was neither master nor mistress; the ceilings
of the parlour and drawing room were festooned
with cobwebs; the curtains got the jaundice; the
rats overrun the kitchen, and performed feats worthy
of rational beings, if you could believe Dolly; and
it was impossible to sit down on a chair or sofa,
without leaving the print of the body in the dust
which covered them. Poor Mr. Fairweather, who
knew the value of neatness, and prided himself on
his unspotted, unsullied black coat, had often carried
off a tribute from the parlour, and that morning
determined to give Lucia a broad hint. Accordingly
he took his forefinger in his hand, and wrote in the
dust that embellished the sofa, four large letters,
almost six inches long, that being put together constitute
an abominable word, than which there is none
more horrible and unseemly to the ear and eye of
womanhood. It was the sight of this that interrupted
the deliciously perplexing reverie of our fair
heroine; that caused her to ring the bell with such
emphasis; to call up the men-servants and maidservants;
to set the brooms, brushes, mops, and
pope's heads going; and finally to declare war
against rats, spiders, dust, and cobwebs, and to turn
the whole house upside down. The servants wished
Mr. Fairweather in Guinea, as soon as they traced
the origin of this tremendous reform; the cook
talked about the black skin and white skin being
equal in the eyes of the blind; the coachman sighed
forth the unutterable agonies of a life of dependence;
and the little jet black waiting maid talked elegantly
about the rights of women. Old Juba insisted on
his massa calling out Mr. Fairweather; but on this
occasion, the old gentleman demurred.

“Mr. Fairweather is my best friend, you blockhead.”

“Guy, massa! dat any reason why you should'nt
blow he brain out?”

From that time forward, Mr. Lee's house became
exemplary for its neatness, such is the magic influence
of a word to the wise! There was such a reform
in the whole establishment, as hath never yet
been brought about in the state, by any change of
administration, since the establishment of the republic.

And here, I feel it incumbent on me to offer to
my azure and fashionable readers, something like an

apology, for the falling off, in the high tone of my
narrative, they will not fail to observe in this chapter.
I feel I ought to solicit their pardon, for having
thus descended abruptly to such low and vulgar
matters as housekeeping; which ought to be
for ever beneath the attention of all true lovers of
literature and intellectual development. It is true,
the goddess of wisdom once disputed with Arachne
the management of the needle; but this was in
times long past, and never to return, before the preternatural
development of the mind, the invention
of flounces, or the supremacy of dancing-masters.
I am aware, also, of the happy influence of a neat,
well arranged, and well conducted household, in
rendering home agreeable, and luring us from a too
zealous pursuit of the pleasures of the world; and I
am not ignorant how important it is for the mistress
of a family to know when things are well done,
though it may not be necessary or becoming, to do
them herself. But I know, what is of far more consequence
than all this, that if I prose any longer,
on such low subjects, the young gentlemen professors
of nothing will inquire into my pedigree; and the
azure angels, who preside over the decisions of all
the gallant, fashionable critics, will pronounce me a
horrid bore—a bore! better were it to be convicted
of robbing a church, or swindling to the amount of
a few millions. I should then create a great public
excitement; and rally round me, not only all the anti-masons,
but an army of sympathetic pettifoggers
besides.

9. CHAPTER IX.
An adventure, being the only one in all our history.

As the spring advanced, and the flowers, zephyrs,
and warbling birds, invited out into the country for
air and exercise, our heroine was accustomed to ride
on horseback, than which there is nothing more
healthful, graceful, and becoming in a woman, provided
always she will only ride like a gentlewoman;
that is moderately. On the contrary, there is nothing
which gives me more heartfelt discomposure,
as a gallant bachelor, than to see a woman galloping
through the streets, like a trooper—her feathers
flying, her ribands streaming to the wind, her riding
habit disordered, and herself bouncing up and down,
as if she had a cork saddle under her. It is not
only unseemly and unfeminine, but dangerous, in our
crowded streets; and nothing has preserved them
from the most fatal accidents, but the sagacity of
their horses, which doubtless, knowing the precious
burthens they carry, are particularly careful neither
to be frightened, or to make a false step. Were I to
assume the office of mentor to the young fellows of
the day, I would strenuously advise them to beware
of a woman that always rides on a full gallop.
Depend upon it, she will have her way in every

thing; and that though she may not actually lose
the bit, she will be apt to take it between her teeth;
which is almost as bad.

On these occasions Lucia was generally accompanied
by Miss Appleby, Miss Overend, or some
one of her female friends, and escorted by Highfield
and Goshawk, with the latter of whom our heroine
generally fell into a tete-a-tete in the course of
the ride. It was the third of May—I recollect it
perfectly—when the little party of equestrians set
forth on a morning ride, all gay and hopeful except
Mr. Goshawk, to whom the smiles of nature
were a disquiet, and the music of spring a discord.
He was more than commonly miserable that day,
having observed that Lucia began to sympathize
deeply in his sorrows.

They navigated their course safely through the
various perils of Broadway for some distance. They
met a company of militia with more drums than
privates, and commanded by three brigadier generals;
they encountered the great ox Columbus
dressed in ribbons; they stood the brunt of kites,
earts, bakers' wagons, Broadway accommodations,
charcoal merchants, orange-men and ash-men, and
beggar-women. In short, they escaped unhurt amid
the war of sights, the eternal clatter and confusion of
sounds, the unexampled concatenation of things, animate
and inanimate, natural and unnatural. The
horses, indeed, sometimes pricked up their ears, and
wondered, but displayed no decided symptoms of

affright, until, as ill luck would have it, just as they
came to the corner of Chamber street, a little woman
about four feet high issued suddenly forth from a
shop, with a bonnet, of such alarming dimensions,
and singular incongruity of shape and decoration,
that Lucia's horse, who had never been at a fancy
ball, could stand it no longer. He wheeled suddenly
round, against Mr. Goshawk's steed, and reared.
Mr. Goshawk was partly in a brown study, and partly
so miserable that he did not, as he afterwards affirmed,
exactly recollect where he was, or what was
the matter. At length, he cried out, “Whoa!”
with such a lofty and poetical fervour that he frightened
the horse still more. He now reared worse than
ever, and Lucia, must have lost her seat in a few
moments, when Highfield who was a little in advance
with the other ladies, being roused by Goshawk's
exclamation, looked round, and was at the
horse's head, on foot, in an instant. “Keep your
seat if you can,” said he as he seized the bridle.
A desperate contest now commenced between him
and the horse, who continued rearing and plunging,
now galling Highfield's body and limbs with his
sharp hoofs, and wrenching him violently about from
side to side. Lucia still kept her seat though almost
insensible to where she was, or what was going
forward. It was a struggle between an enraged unruly
beast, and a cool determined man. Highfield
still clung to the bridle, close to the horse's head,
until watching his opportunity, he seized the animal
by the nostrils, with so firm a gripe, as to arrest his
rearings for a moment, during which he seemed
tremblingly to own a master. At the same instant
a gentleman assisted Lucia to dismount, which she
had scarcely done, when the animal, as if recovered
from his astonishment made one plunge, struck his
hoofs into Highfield's breast, threw him on his back
insensible, and dashed away full speed. At the
same moment Mr. Goshawk, who had been exceedingly
active in protesting against the inhumanity of
the crowd, which stood looking on without being
able to render any assistance, was likewise so overcome
by his exertions that he lost his memory, for a
little while, after which he poured forth so eloquent
a felicitation on Lucia's escape from a danger, which,
however slight, had harrowed up his very soul, that
she remembered it long after, when she ought to
have been remembering something else.

Highfield was brought to himself, after some considerable
delay, and, with the young lady, conveyed
home, in a hackney coach. Goshawk did not accompany
them; his senses were so shattered, and his
feelings had so completely overpowered him, that he
was incapable of any thing, but the indulgence of
high wrought sentiment.

10. CHAPTER X.
The two Cupids.

The warm hearted Mr. Lee, when he came to
learn the particulars of the transaction recorded in
our last chapter, hugged Highfield in his arms, called
him his son; and came very near letting out the
secret of his long cherished intentions to his daughter.
He then fell upon the corporation, that unfortunate
pack-horse, on whose back is saddled all the
abominations which petulance conjures into existence,
or the itch for scribbling, lays before the
public.

“Confound the stupid blockheads!” exclaimed
he. “They make laws against flying kites, exploding
crackers, sticking up elephants over people's-heads
for signs, and cumbering the streets with empty
boxes and barrels; and yet, they allow the women
to wear bonnets that frighten horses out of their discretion!
For my part, I don't see the distinction,
not I.”

“But my good friend,” said Mr. Fairweather,
who had called in to make his friendly inquiries—
“I differ with you—I think there is a marked distinction
between a fine lady, and an empty barrel.”

“Oh well, if we differ, there is an end of the argument,”
quoth the other.

“An end of the argument! why it is generally
the beginning.”

“Very well—very well—I have no time to argue
the question now.”

Mr. Fairweather took up his hat, and went away
by himself, pondering in his mind, what could have
come over his old friend. It was the first time, since
he knew him, that he had declined an argument.

Lucia and Highfield met the next morning; the
former languid with her fright, the latter pale, and
stiff with his bruises. Lucia was netting a purse.
She thanked him, in simple, unaffected, heartfelt
terms; for it is only affectation that deals in pompous
phrases. The tears came into her eyes, as she
noticed his wounded hands, and perceived, by the
slight variations that passed over his countenance,
that every motion was acccompanied with acute
pain.

“I shall never forget,” said she, “that you saved
my life.”

“Nor I,” said Highfield, and these two simple
words were all he uttered on the subject.

Lucia was mortified that he should have missed so
good an opportunity of being eloquent. She had
been brought up with people who considered words of
more consequence than actions; and a fine speech,
in celebration of an exploit of heroism far superior
to the act itself. Lucia threw the purse carelessly

into her work basket; and just then, Mr. Goshawk
entered, to inquire how she did, after the accident.
Then it was, that our heroine, was lifted off her feet,
by a flow of inspired eloquence, which cast into the
shade, the manly simplicity of poor Highfield's courage
and self-possession. He spoke of his horror
at her danger—the overpowering feelings that absolutely
bewildered his mind, and prevented his thinking
of any thing but himself, and his intense sufferings.
He detailed his waking thoughts on coming
home; and his terrible dreams, in which he saw her
struggle with indiscribable dangers, and performed
acts in her behalf, that no waking man ever dreamed
of. In short, he made himself out the hero of the
affair, and before he had finished, actually persuaded
Lucia, that honest Highfield was but a secondary
person in the business.

“Behold,” said he, “how I employed the melancholy,
soul subduing hours of the last night; for
you may suppose, I did not close my eyes.”

“Oh, then I suppose you dreamed with your eyes
open,” said Highfield, smiling.

“A man need not shut his eyes to dream, Mr.
Highfield,” quoth Goshawk, pompously. At the
same time presenting Lucia with a perfumed sheet
of paper. She opened it, and read, with sparkling
eyes—

hummed Highfield, as he sauntered out of the
room.

“He has no more sentiment, nor feeling, enthusiasm,
or genius, than—than”—Lucia could not hit
upon a comparison expressive of her indignation.

“Alas! the more happy he!” sighed Fitzgiles
Goshawk. “He knows not what it is to eat the bitter
aloes of disappointed hopes, to dream of impossible
attainments, to stand on tiptoe, catching at incomprehensible
chimeras; to place his heart on
what it dares not contemplate, except at an unapproachable
distance that mocks even the imagination
to despair; to die of disappointments, in what,
from first to last, he knew was out of his reach; to
pass from the sight of men, the light of the sun, and
the perplexities of the world, and leave nothing behind
him but an empty name. Oh! Lucia, pity
me,” cried he, taking her hand.

“I do, indeed I do,” cried Lucia, overpowered
by this picture of mysterious griefs. “I pity, and
would relieve you if I knew how. Only tell me
what is the matter?

“I love, and I despair!”

“Whom?” said Lucia, with a palpitating heart.

“One throned in yon galaxy of stars, brighter
than Venus, and purer than the milky way—one, of
whom I wake only to dream, and dream only to
awake in astonishment at my presumptuous visions.
One so far above the sphere of my aspiring hopes,
that like the glorious sun, I only live in the consuming

rays of her beauty, without daring to look in
the full face of her brightness, lest I should be struck
blind.”

“Why this must be a queen at least,” said Lucia,
blushing with a whispering consciousness.

“The queen of love and beauty,” replied Goshawk,
delighted at his happy rejoinder. They
remained silent a few moments, it being impossible
to descend from the heights of sentimental twaddle
to the level of ordinary matters, without stopping to
take breath by the way.

“Tell me, Miss Lee, tell me what is love,” said
Goshawk at length, with a languishing air.

“I don't know,” replied Lucia, blushing.

“Shall I answer for you?” said Highfield, who
entered at that moment. Lucia started a little, and
Goshawk looked rather foolish.

“Love is a fantastic assemblage of the follies of
childhood and the passions of age. A little, scoundrel
hypocrite, who, while rolling his hoop or chasing
a butterfly, disguises under the innocent sports of a
boy, the most selfish and dishonourable intentions.
He is the deity of professions, disguises, affectation,
and selfishness; is never satisfied unless acting in
opposition to reason, propriety, and duty; and is
pictured a child, because he studies only his own
gratification, and never keeps his promises.”

Goshawk seemed not to admire this sketch, but
for some reason or other, he was not so ready with
a flight as usual. Lucia took up the defence of the
little godhead.

“Oh, what a monster you have made of him!”
said she.

“But there is another and a nobler love,” resumed
Highfield, with more enthusiasm than he had
ever before displayed in the presence of his cousin,
“there is another and a nobler love, the divinity of
rational and virtuous man. A grown up, finished
being, that knows no other wish than the happiness
of its object; that neither lies, nor feigns, nor flatters,
nor deceives; that is neither degraded by
disappointment, nor presumptuous with success;
that, while it respects itself, still pays a willing homage,
and offers at the feet of its mistress what it
never sacrificed to fear or favour, to the claims of
man, the temptations of interest, or the tyranny of
the passions; its own free will and its power of
independent action.”

The tones of Highfield's voice were such as I
have sometimes, but rarely heard, in my pilgrimage
through this world of jarring discords; they were
those that give to nonsense the charm of music, and
to precept the magic of persuasion. He spoke with
a manly simplicity, a chastened feeling, a firm and
settled earnestness, which hypocrisy always overleaps,
and affectation only caricatures. Even childhood
comprehends it, and the votaries of bad taste
at once recognise it for truth. The exertion of
speaking, or it may be the glow of his smothered
feelings, had banished for a moment his ashy paleness,
and brought a fire into his cheek that added to

his natural attractions. He stood with one arm in
a sling, partly leaning against the mantel-piece, and
there was in his whole appearance an evident struggle
between the weakness of his body and the
strength of his feelings.

Neither Mr. Goshawk nor Lucia made any reply.
The former was cowed by the majesty of honest,
unaffected manhood, giving utterance to its feelings
with the simple energy of deep conviction; the latter
felt as she had never felt while Mr. Goshawk was
pouring out his sentimental flummery. She knew
she was listening to one in earnest, who was either
describing what he felt at the moment or was capable
of feeling. “He certainly must be in love with
somebody. Some little red-cheeked, scrub-nosed,
country damsel, I dare say;” and she turned up her
pretty Grecian nose at the poor girl. The perplexity
of guessing who this somebody was, occupied her
some time, insomuch that she entirely forgot Mr.
Goshawk's piece of poetry and his beautiful language.

“I beg your pardon,” said Highfield, “for
coming here to interrupt you and make speeches.
Your father requested me to say he wishes to speak
with you, cousin.”

Goshawk took his leave; Lucia sought her
father, and Highfield his bed; for he was really
much indisposed with his bruises.

11. CHAPTER XI.
Sounding without bottom.

Mr. Lee was a man of great courage and little
patience. He considered the heart of a woman like
one of his eggs, that could be boiled in a minute
and a half; and took it for granted, Lucia must be
deeply in love with Highfield since the adventure of
the fashionable bonnet. Accordingly he determined
to sound her forthwith, that no time might be lost.
He might as well have sounded the bottomless
abysses of lake Superior; for the heart of a city
belle in love is as unfathomable, if not as pure, as
they.

“Well, Lucia,” said he, as she entered his library,
“how do you feel after your fright?”

“Oh, quite well, sir.”

“Hem—I wish I could say as much for Highfield.
The doctor says he has some fever, and talks
of bleeding—the blockhead—why didn't he do it
before?”

“Bleeding!” cried Lucia, and her heart beat a
little, “I hope it will not be necessary.”

“Hem—yes. Ah! girl, you owe much to that
excellent young man—hey?”

“I am sensible of it, sir, and feel it at the bottom
of my heart.”

“Do you?—do you? my dearest girl, at the
bottom of your heart?”

“Indeed I do, sir; I shall never cease to be
grateful, as long as I live.”

“Grateful!—pish—pooh—gratitude!”

“My father has often told me, gratitude was the
rarest of our feelings, and the most short-lived; but
I shall carry mine to my grave.”

“Ay—yes—yes; gratitude is a very good thing
in its way; but—but there are so many ways of
showing it. Now how will you show yours—hey?”

“Why, I haven't studied my part yet,” said she,
smiling; “I must trust to the honest dictates of my
heart, to time, and circumstance, to show me the
way.”

“Pshaw! time and circumstance! I believe the
d—l is in you this morning, Lucia.”

“I believe the deuce is in you this morning,
father,” said Lucia, smiling; “for I can't understand
you.”

“Very well, very well; but I want to know how
you will go about showing your gratitude—hey?”

“Why, father,” said Lucia, “if he is sad, I will
play him merry tunes; if he is cheerful, I will laugh
with him; if he is cross, I will bear with him. I
will sympathize in his misfortunes, rejoice in his
happiness, nurse him if he should be sick; if you
turn him out of doors, as you once threatened, I will

certainly let him in again; and if he should ever
chance to want (what I trust in God he never will)
your favour and protection, I will try and be to him
your humble representative.” If Lucia meant to
say more, she was stopped by an unaccountable
huskiness in her throat, that took away her breath.

“Ah! that will do—that will do!” cried the old
gentleman, highly delighted, “and so you will love
him—hey, girl? none of your wishy-washy gratitude—love
him with all your heart—hey?”

“With all my heart, and as an only and beloved
brother.”

“Brother! did you say?—a fiddlestick; I—I
don't want you to love him as a brother, I tell you.”

“As a cousin then, sir.”

“No; nor as a cousin, nor a second cousin,
nor an uncle, nor grandfather, nor grandmother
either,” cried Mr. Lee, in wrath, and gradually
raising his voice till he came to the climax of a roar.

“Ah! is it so?” thought our heroine, as at length
she began to comprehend the drift of the impatient
old gentleman; and she drew the impenetrable
cloak of hypocrisy closely around her, at the same
time conjuring up to her aid the guardian pride of
female delicacy, which shrinks from the first avowal
of love, and more than shrinks from owning it without
the surety of answering love.

“May I go, sir?” said she, after a pause, “I
promised to walk out this morning, with my aunt
and Mr. Goshawk.”

“Confound Mr. Goshawk! may ten thousand of
his bad verses fly away with him to chaos and old
night, where they came from!”

“Well, father, then I will make an apology and
stay at home.”

“No; go where you please, and do what you
please; I shall never be able to make any thing of
you.”

“Nothing, dear sir, but what I am—your dutiful
and affectionate daughter;” and she bowed, and left
Mr. Lee to congratulate himself on the progress he
had made.

The reader will doubtless have observed, that
during the whole of the foregoing dialogue, Lucia
spoke in simple, natural language, without a single
touch of azure. The reason is at hand. She felt
what she was saying; and true feeling never declaims.
What it has to say, it says with a simple,
brief directness; as a man who is earnest in the race
never stops to gather flowers by the way.

Our heroine retired to her chamber, to think. A
new futurity was opened before her; for until this
interview with her father, she never dreamed of his
wishes or intentions in favour of her cousin. The
truth is, her imagination was occupied with Goshawk.
But now it was necessary to determine on
some line of conduct, in her future intercourse with
Highfield. A very convenient, proper, family match!
thought she; I am rich, and he poor. I have no

doubt he is very much in love with me; for I never
heard of a young gentleman that was deficient in
duty and affection on such occasions! And then
her heart smote her with a pang, for such a thought.
No, no; I will say that for my cousin, I do believe
he would not marry, if he did not love me, to gain
my fortune or please my father. But then every
body will say he only married me for my money;
and the mortification of such a suspicion would be
intolerable. I dare say this plan has been in agitation
ever since I was born; and what a business
kind of business! he is to open his mouth, and I
am to fall plump into it, like a great overripe apple,
without even being shaken a little. No, no, my
dainty cousin, that wont do. And besides, what
will Miss Appleby and all the rest say, if I throw
myself away on a man of no literary reputation;
who never figured in albums, or wrote verses on
Passaic falls; who does nothing common like an
uncommon man; and who, I confess, though he acts
sometimes like a hero, talks just like every body.
Ah! said she, sighing, I wish my money bags were
in the Red sea, and then I could tell whether I was
beloved for myself or them. This was a very foolish
wish of our heroine; for notwithstanding her beauty,
her charming temper, and her natural good sense,
if her money bags had been in the Red sea, ten to
one her admirers would have gone there to fish for
them, instead of adoring her beauty and good qualities.
After a vast many pros and cons, Lucia
determined, in the true spirit of a woman with more
than one admirer, to play them off against each
other; to put to the test the ardour and stability of
their passion, by trying what the patience of mortal
man is capable of enduring. Mr. Goshawk was still
paramount in her imagination; though since the
adventure of the ride, her feelings were somewhat
enlisted on the side of Highfield. She was satisfied
in her own mind, that the former was deeply enamoured
of her, else, why should he be so eloquent
on all occasions, on the subject of hopeless affection?
With regard to the other, she was somewhat,
or rather indeed altogether, uncertain; for Highfield
had too much pride, as well as delicacy, to thrust his
feelings in the face of the world on all occasions.
I will try him, thought she. If he is only seeking
me for my fortune, there will be no harm in making
him a little miserable; and if he really loves me for
myself alone, I can always make him amends for his
sufferings. She had an appointment with Mr. Goshawk
for a walk, and was expecting him every
moment, when the servant came in with an apology,
that he was so indisposed as not to be able to wait
on her.

“Poor man,” thought Lucia, “his mind is preying
on his delicate frame! the light is too intense
for the lamp that contains it. What a misfortune it
is to be born with too much sensibility!

12. CHAPTER XII.
In which the history is perfectly becalmed.

Our heroine remained in a state of mind requiring
motion. She felt a sort of fidgeting impatience of
repose which almost always accompanies the little
perplexities and uncertainties of life. She took out
the silk purse to net; but the thought struck her that
Highfield might be too much elated if he saw her
thus employed. She took up a book, and though
it was one of the very latest fashionable works, she
actually yawned over the first chapter. She then
as a last resort took up a new garment, that had
just been sent home by the mantua maker; which
fortunately gave a new turn to her ideas. The
sleeves were exactly the thing. She retired to her
mysterious boudoir, and arrayed herself like King
Solomon in all his glory. She put on a pink hat
with a black velvet lining, and a feather that swept
the ground; she put on her white satin cloak that
hid her pretty figure as effectually as a sack; and she
adorned her pretty ancles with spatterdashes. She
arrayed herself with the Foulard silk; the Foulard
damasce; the gros des Indes; the embroidered collar,
cape, Fichu, Alavielle and Fiorelle; the Blonde

gauze, and the Decoupe gauze, the fancy ribands,
trimmings, &c. &c. &c.; in short she made herself
one of the most beautiful fancy articles ever imported,
before she had done. She then looked into a
full lengh mirror and saw that all was good; for
her hat was mighty to behold; her shoulders broader
than those of Sampson with the gates of Gaza on
his back; and not the African Venus herself—but
hush my muse nor meddle too deeply with mysteries
unknown to the sacred nine!

Highfield met her just as she was going forth into
the Aceldama, the field of blood, the Flanders of the
new world—Broadway—where more whiskered
dandies have been slain outright by stout broad
shouldered ladies, and the empire of more hearts
contested than in all the universe besides. He stood
in speechless admiration, for his cousin was really
so beautiful, that it was out of the power of milliner
or mantua maker to make her look ugly.

“Will you take me with you?” said he.

Lucia felt like the ox-eyed Juno, in her glorious
paraphernalia.

The most unpropitious moment for approaching
a belle is doubtless when she is full dressed for
Broadway. She treads on air; she sees herself reflected
in the mirror of her imagination at full
length; the rustling of silks whispers an alarum to
her vanity; and the waving of feathers is the signal
for conquering the world.

“Will you take me with you?” repeated Highfield.

How handsome and interesting he is, thought our
heroine as she looked at herself in the glass. If he
only had whiskers he would be irresistible.

“I am afraid,” said she, “the weather is too keen
for you this morning; you look pale, and don't
seem well;” and nature forced her voice into a tuneful
sympathy.

“Oh, I never was better in my life.”

“Well, it is not my business,” said she, again assuming
the woman—“If you choose to risk it, 'tis
nothing to me.” And the father of hypocrisy himself
could not have put on a more freezing indifference.
“I am going to call on Miss Appleby; my
aunt promised to meet me there.”

“I'd rather go any where else with you.”

“Oh, yes, I know you don't like literary people.”

“I don't like pretenders to literature.”

“Then let me go by myself,” said she abruptly.

“No—I'll go, and take the mighty Goshawk by
the beard, e'en though he were a metaphor, as saith
our azure aunt.”

This sally made Lucia smile, and restored her
good humour, which indeed was never long away.
Her anger was never chronic, and so much the better.
An unforgiving woman is worse than a man
that forgives every body. Lucia put her arm within
Highfield's, and they went away as gay as boblincons
in a clover meadow. Lucia forgot for a

moment her plan of making him jealous; but there
was a little imp of mischief at her elbow that soon
put her in mind of it again.

The gentle reader need not expect to find our little
history a Newgate chronicle of bloody, remorseless
crimes; or a chaotic congeries—as an azure
would call it—of accidents and incidents, piled one
upon the other with a profusion and confusion, mocking
both art and nature to arrange into order, propriety,
or probability. He will we hope take our
word, when we assure him upon our honour, that nothing
in the whole art and mystery of works of imagination,
is more vulgarly easy than to weave adventures
without probability; to paint characters without
nature or consistency; to elevate into astonishment
by incidents entirely unexpected because there
is nothing to render them credible; to delineate the
excesses of unbridled and ferocious depravity; the
crimes of unqualified wickedness; and the daring
pranks of lawless savages, as little restrained by the
behests of the law, as is the author by the canons of
taste and criticism. Such indeed is the utter recklessness
with which the truly fashionable and intellectual
writers and readers in this age of developement,
plunge into seas of blood, and revel in sights
and scenes that even the case hardened sympathies of
vulgar ignorance, would shrink from contemplating
in real life; such, in short, the rage for mere excitement
in the prevailing taste for literature, that it

would give us little surprise to see a writer administering
to this ravenous appetite, by introducing a
sentimental Caliban, or a Sycorax dying for the love
of a well dressed dandy. Adventures and incidents,
unconnected and without motive, have taken place
of delineations of the windings of the human heart,
the intricacies and vagaries of passion, and the
nice and wary caution, with which the authors of a
better period, traced every effect to its cause, every
cause to its effects. They introduced no incident to
excite a mere vulgar surprise, nor any adventure,
but what was a spoke in the wheel of the story, accelerating
its progress, and rendering the denouement
more probable. They delighted not in the naked,
unadorned, unmitigated personification of crimes.
They found human nature a mixture of good and
evil; human actions springing from the like mixture
of motives, and so they endeavoured to delineate
them. Their design was to paint men, not monsters;
and such we confess at humble distance is
ours. The enlightened reader must therefore, not
expect to find in our story, either the excitement of
blood, murder, adultery, and crime, nor to detect us
wallowing in the very mire of sentimental sensuality.
Such feasts as these are not we confess to our taste,
and what we do not relish ourselves we disdain to
palm upon others, even though it might peradveture
be for our temporary advantage. We close these
remarks, by cautioning the reader against believing
for a single instant that they have the most remote
reference to the excellent Sir Walter, whose genius
is almost sufficient to atone for the crying offences
of a thousand bad imitators.

13. CHAPTER XIII.
More Azure.

Highfield and our heroine dropped in upon the
whole azure coterie, at Miss Appleby's, with the exception
of Mr. Fitzgiles Goshawk, whose absence
afforded an excellent subject for declamation; especially
when Lucia informed the company he was indisposed.

“Poor fellow, his sensibilities will be the death of
him at last,” cried Miss Appleby.

“Unfortunate youth,” said Miss Overend, “his
wretchedness is mysteriously affecting; by the by,
can any body tell what makes him so unhappy?”

“I dare say he is suffering the pangs of disappointment,”
said Puddingham.

“Disappointment in what?” said she briskly.

“Oh, why you know genius is always hoping impossible
things, and chasing the rainbows of imagination—ever
anticipating unreal joys, and reaping

real sorrows. I knew a man of genius, once, a
great poet, who pined himself into a decline, because
he could not get his whiskers to grow.”

“La!” said Miss Overend, “I dare say that is
the cause of Mr. Goshawk's interesting melancholy,
you know he has no whiskers.”

“I dare say,” quoth Paddleford, a sighing, whining,
cork-hearted pretender to sentimental rouéism;
“I dare say the poor fellow is in love with a married
woman.”

“Has he been to Italy?” said Miss Overend,
“if he has, I could almost swear he had fallen in
love with a beautiful nun he saw through the grates
of a convent.”

“I shouldn't be surprised,” said Mrs. Coates, “If
he had committed murder.”

“Murder!” screamed the other ladies.

“I mean an innocent, disinterested, sentimental
murder, committed in a moment of irrigation, without
any intention—what do you think, nephew?”

“I rather think it must be the whiskers, as my
friend Puddingham suggested. I feel myself in the
same predicament, and am sentimentally dead, for
want of a muzzle a la mode de bison.”

Lucia privately resolved that Master Highfield
should pay for making sport of the hallowed and
mysterious sorrows of Mr. Goshawk. She knew
or thought she knew their origin; and to have the
perplexities of pining, speechless, inexpressible passion
associated with a bison's whiskers! It was too

bad; and her cousin should pay for it dearly, if he
possessed the least spark of feeling. Highfield took
his leave soon after, excusing himself on the score of
some business. But the truth was, he felt himself
somewhat indisposed.

“Well, Lucia,” said Miss Appleby, “I suppose
you had a delightfully affecting interview with your
cousin, after the affair. What did he say?”

“Nothing,” said Lucia.

“Nothing; what a stupid man! Why Mr.
Goshawk talked of his excruciating feelings on the
occasion a whole hour, till he brought tears into my
eyes. Oh, such a beautiful flow of language, such
powerful delineations of passion! I wish you had
heard him.”

“Mr. Highfield is a very common-place man,”
said Puddingham, pompously. “You might stand
under a gateway a whole day in a shower, without
hearing him say any thing remarkable.”

“What is a chance act of gallantry and presence
of mind, compared with the genius that immortalizes
it in words that burn and thoughts that freeze? For
my part, give me the man that talks eloquently,”
said Mr. Paddleford.

“Yes,” said Miss Overend; “mere physical
courage and animal strength may do great things;
but to say great things, requires the aid of a lofty,
inaccessible genius, which nine times in ten is so
immersed in its own sublime chrysalis, that it can't
get out in time to do any thing in a case of emergency.”

“To be sure,” said Mrs. Coates; “a great
action is often frustificated by a splendid chaotic
congeries of intellectual vapours, that produce a
deflection of the mind from the object before it.”

Lucia, though a little affronted with Highfield,
was too generous to suffer him to be undervalued in
this manner, especially in his absence.

“And so, my good friends,” said she, “you
would persuade me that I am more indebted to Mr.
Goshawk, for his elegant description of my danger,
than to my cousin, who rescued me from it. I
might have been in my grave by this time, but for
my cousin.”

“But then what a beautiful elegy Mr. Goshawk
would have written, my dear. You would have
been immortalized. Only think of that!” said Miss
Appleby.

“Yes,” replied Mrs. Coates; “what is the trumpery
pain of anneeheelation to the eternal immortality
of living in immortal verse—of floating down
upon the stream of oblivion, into the regions of
never dying brightness!” Mrs. Coates waxed
more azure every day.

“My dear aunt,” cried Lucia, interrupting the
good lady, who was losing herself in a Dismal
Swamp of meteors, as she called them; “my dear
aunt, I am aware of the superiority of words over
deeds, in an age of development like the present,
and that he who performs a great action is but an
instrument in the hands of the man of genius who

celebrates it in never dying verse. I know too that
it is mere selfishness on our part, to feel grateful for
an action done in our own behalf, instinctively perhaps,
and without one single good feeling on the
part of him who performs it; but still there is something
in the gift of life that seems to deserve at
least our gratitude.” This was the most azure
speech our heroine had made since her accident.

“The gift of life!” cried Paddleford; “what is
life, that we should be grateful for it? A scene of
disappointment without hope, and hope without
disappointment; a chapter whose beginning is tears,
whose last verse is written in blood; a mirror, which
presents to us every day a new wretch in the same
person; a spectral shadow, ever changing, yet still
the same; a long lane, whose windings end where
they began, and begin where they end; a rope
twisted with our heart-strings, embalmed in our tears,
and having at one end a slipping noose, with which
all mankind are at last tucked up!”

“Oh!” groaned the whole azure coterie, horror-stricken
at this soul-harrowing picture.

“What language!”

“What sentiment!”

“What feeling!”

“What soul-subjewing retrospections!” exclaimed
Mrs. Coates. “What a happy devil-opement
of mind!”

Lucia was overawed and silenced by the eloquence
of Paddleford, and the suffrages of all the

company. She became doubtful, to say the least,
as to the propriety of feeling gratitude for such a
worthless gift as that of life, and relapsed into a
decided preference of the gift of speech over the
capacity for action. She looked on the great Paddleford
as a most sublime mortal; for such indeed
is the intrinsic dignity of that courage which defies
death in a good cause, that even the affectation of
contempt of life imposes a feeling of respect upon
the inexperienced. Lucia never dreamed that Paddleford
came near breaking his neck a few nights
before, by jumping out of a second story window on
a false alarm of fire; or that while he affected a
contempt for life, he never met a funeral or heard a
bell tolling, without a fit of the blue devils.

“What a beautiful dress you've got!” said Miss
Overend to Lucia.

The sublime contempt of this life now suddenly
gave place to an admiration of the things of this
life. The whole party gathered round our heroine;
and “where did you get this?” and “la! how
cheap!” and dissertations on the relative excellence
of gros de Naples, gros des Indes, cotepaly, foulard
Damasce, and Palmerienne, gradually restored them
to a proper feeling of resignation to the evils of this
world.

14. CHAPTER XIV.
A visit and its consequences.

When Lucia came home, she found Highfield
had been obliged to lie down; and learned from Mr.
Lee, that the doctor was under great apprehension
that he had received some serious injury internally,
from the violence of his exertions or the kicks of
the horse, in the adventure of the ride.

“I am sorry to hear it,” said our heroine, and
her heart echoed the sentiment.

The old gentleman was of that order of human
beings whom sorrow always makes angry and fretful,
instead of gentle and submissive. He had a
most confirmed and obstinate impatience of grief.
He was angry with Highfield for being sick; he
was angry with the doctor for not having foreseen
he would be sick; and he was enraged with Mr.
Fairweather, first because he made light of the matter,
and then, to please his friend, hinted about a
rapid decline. Now, he could not scold Highfield
for being sick; nor the doctor, for he was absent;
nor Mr. Fairweather, because he was not present:
so he set to work, and scolded Lucia. Nine times
out of ten we are not angry at the thing we pretend

to be; we attack the substance under covert of the
shadow.

“Oh yes!” said he in reply to Lucia's gentle yet
sincere expression of sorrow, “Oh yes! you are
very sorry, I dare say. You take him into a cold
northeast wind; you drag him about to milliners'
shops, from one end of the town to the other; and
then you are very sorry he is sick, when you yourself
have made him so.”

“Dear father, how cross you are to day! I am
sure I did not take him out. I wanted him to stay
at home; but he said he was perfectly well, and
would go with me. I am sure I couldn't help his
going.”

“Not help his going!”

“No, sir; how could I?”

“Why you might have knocked the puppy down.”

Lucia made it a point never to laugh at her father;
but it must be owned he sometimes put her to hard
trials.

“If my father had taught me to box, instead of
play the piano, I might have made the attempt,”
said she, smiling.

“Very well, very well; you have made him sick,
now try if you can't cure him. Go and make him
some barley-broth.”

“I? why, my dear father, I don't know how to
make barley-broth.”

“Well then, go and make him some caudle.”

Lucia had never heard of caudle, except in association
with certain matters, and blushed like a rose.

“But I don't know how to make caudle, any
more than barley-broth.”

“Ay, yes; women know nothing worth knowing,
now-a-days. They can dance, and play the harp,
and criticise books, and talk about what they don't
understand; but if you want them to do a little
thing for the comfort of a man's life, or the assuaging
of his pains, oh! then it is, my dear sir, I don't know
how to do it. I wish I had sent you to a pastry
cook's, instead of a boarding school. I dare say, if
it was Mr. Goshawk, you could talk him well
directly. Go in then and talk to your cousin a
little.”

“My dear sir, you know”—and she stopped
short, in a flutter.

“What, you wont go and see the youth who is
lying perhaps on his death-bed, of wounds received
in your service?”

“The customs of society, sir,”—

“Ah! the customs of society—there is another
wooden god to bow down to! You can twine
your arms in a waltz with some bewhiskered foreign
puppy; you can go to a masquerade, or mix in
midnight revels, with a thousand promiscuous
sweepings of the universe, and yet—oh, the customs
of the world! they make it a crime to visit the sick
in their melancholy chambers, and pronounce it

ungenteel to know how to administer relief to their
sufferings!”

“Dear father, I would do any thing for the relief
of my cousin; but”—

“Oh, ay—any thing. You can't do what the
customs of society permit, and you wont do what
they do not sanction. And yet it is but the other
day you made such a fine speech: `If he is sad, I
will play him merry tunes; I will sympathize in his
sorrows, and rejoice in his happiness; I will nurse
him when he is sick; and if, as you once threatened,
you should turn him out of doors, I will certainly
let him in again.”' And the old gentleman caricatured
her tone and manner most unmercifully.
“You know every thing but what you ought to
know,” said he, reproachingly.

“There is at least one thing I do know,” replied
the daughter; “that it is my duty to obey the wishes
of my father, when no positive duty forbids it. I
will go with you, sir.” And together they went
into the sick man's room.

My friend, Mr. Lee—for there once lived such
a man, and he was my friend—my friend, Mr. Lee,
knew no more how to manage a love affair than his
daughter did of the manufacturing of caudle. Had
the romance of Highfield and Lucia been in the
best possible progress, he would have gone nigh to
throw it back a hundred years. The old gentleman
had yet to learn, that to make a woman do a thing
against her will, is like shoving a boat against a

strong current; she will move a foot or two slowly
while the impulse lasts, and come back like a racehorse,
a hundred yards beyond the starting pole.
And yet he ought to have known it; for his wife had
verified its truth often enough to impress it on his
memory.

Lucia entered the chamber of the invalid, somewhat
against her will, and consequently but little disposed
to sympathize with him. Indeed she felt extremely
awkward; and this was another reason why
she was not in the best possible humour. Not that
she wanted a proper feeling of the benefit conferred
by her cousin, but the truth is, the indiscreet disclosure
the old gentleman had made of his intentions,
caused her to shrink from an act, which might be
considered as amounting to a sanction of his wishes
on her part. Add to this, I believe if the truth
were known, she felt some little apprehension that
Mr. Goshawk might not approve of the procedure.

The conduct of Highfield contributed to render
her still more ungracious. He was no knight errant,
yet the sight of our heroine on this occasion
threw him into something of a paroxysm, not unworthy
of Amadis de Gaul. He ascribed the visit
in the first place to her own free will, and augured
the most favourable results, from the sympathy which
a sight of his weakness, would create. He was
wrong in both cases; for in love matters the imagination
is every thing; and seeing is not believing.
But his great error was in discovering so much gratitude

for the visit, that Lucia became alarmed at her
own condescension, and determined to retrieve her
error by behaving as ungraciously as her conscience
would permit. In pursuance of this truly womanly
resolution, she conducted herself with a most admirable
indifference, inasmuch that the good gentleman
her father, who had hardly patience to wait the
boiling of an egg, became exceedingly restive. He
gave his daughter divers significant looks; favoured
her with abundance of frowns; and held up his finger
from time to time so emphatically, that Highfield
soon comprehended the whole affair. He perceived
that Lucia had come unwillingly, and from that moment
felt nothing but mortification at her having
come at all. The whole affair ended in making Lucia
dissatisfied with herself; Highfield worse than
before; and Mr. Lightfoot Lee most intolerably
angry. So much for obliging a young lady to do
what she has no inclination for. Our heroine, having
paid a short visit, retired, leaving the uncle and
nephew together.

The old gentleman sat with his nether lip petulantly
protruded over the upper one; his eyebrows
raised, and his forehead wrinkled. The young man
reclining on his bed supported by pillows.

“My dear uncle,” said he, “why did you bring
my cousin here against her will?”

“'Sblood sir,” cried the other in a fury—“I suppose
you mean to cut my throat for trying to do you
a favour.”

“I am sensible of your kindness, but, my dear sir,
you don't go the right way to work to serve me.”

“O no, not I truly; I am an old blockhead; I am
always in the wrong; I do nothing but mischief,
and merit nothing but reproaches and ingratitude!”

“Ah! sir, if you only knew my heart!”

“Plague on your heart, I don't believe you have
any, with your infernal coolness and patience.
When I fell in love, I mounted my horse, rode one
night forty miles to visit your aunt; came to an understanding
the very first visit; and went home irrevocably
engaged. I hate suspense; I always did
hate it and always shall. But you, sir—damme, you
sir! you and Lucia will make a hard frost between
you. She is all affectation, and you all patience. A
patient lover—pooh!”

“But, my dear sir, why don't you let matters take
their course, as you promised?”

“O certainly, sir, certainly—wait patiently, until
I see my daughter run away with Mr. Fitzgiles Goshawk,
because he has such a flow of words, and uses
such beautiful language; or 'till I die of old age,
and Lucia becomes a pedantic old maid. I dare
say if I only have patience and live till I am fourscore
and upwards, I may have the particular satisfaction
of seeing either the world or your love affair
come to an end.”

“But my dear uncle—”

“Yes, yes—I am an old blockhead, that's certain.
'Tis true I was educated at the university; I travelled

over half Europe; I have been a justice of the
peace; a common councilman; secretary to a literary
society; judge of a race-course; and chairman
of a committee in congress. I am not quite threescore,
to be sure; but I have had some little experience;
know a B from a bull's foot, and a hawk
from a handsaw. But I am an old blockhead for all
that, and must go to school to a conceited graduate
from a country college, and a sage young lady just
from the boarding school; yes, yes, yes—” and the
good gentleman walked about the room with his
head down and hands behind him.

“Oh, sir, I entreat you to spare me.”

“I wonder,” continued Mr. Lee communing with
himself, “I wonder how people managed to live sixty
years ago. No steamboats, nor spinning jennies,
nor railroads, nor canals, nor anthracite coal, nor
houses of refuge, nor societies for making the world
perfect in every thing, nor silver forks, nor self-sharpening
pencils, nor metallic corn cutters, nor
japan blacking, nor gros de Naples, nor gros des
Indes, nor Cotepaly, nor any of the indispensable
requisites to a comfortable existence. What a set of
miserable sinners they must have been! I don't wonder
for my part that children govern their parents;
the young the old; seeing the world is so much
wiser, better and happier than it was sixty years
ago.” Thus the good gentleman ran on, as was his
custom, until he finally lost sight of his subject and
cooled in the pursuit.

“Well my dear uncle, if you wont listen to me—”

“But I will listen, who told you sir I would'nt
listen—I suppose you want me to do nothing else—
hey!”

“I wanted to tell you, sir, that I see plainly, myself
and my concerns are destined to give you great
and I fear unavailing trouble, and have come to a
resolution—”

“Well, sir, and what is it?”

“I intend as soon as I am well enough, to leave
you, my dear uncle.”

“Well, sir—”

“I have been too long a dependent on your kindness,
and I cannot but perceive my remaining here
will be a source of contention between you and my
cousin. I fear I shall never be able to touch her
heart, and without the free, uninfluenced gift of her
affections, I would not receive her as my wife,
were she descended from heaven and with an angel's
dower.”

“Well, sir,” said Mr. Lee, in breathless impatience
and anger.

“I have little more to say, uncle. When I am
well enough, I will endeavour to do justice to my
feelings of gratitude for all that I owe you.”

“And so—and so, sir, you mean to leave me, now
that you have got out of the egg-shell, and can walk
alone. If you do, by all that is sacred, I'll disinherit
you.”

“I have no claim to your inheritance, sir. I would

consent to share it with my cousin, did her heart go
with your bounty; but I will starve sooner than rob
her of a shilling.”

“Will nothing move you to stay with me till I am
dead?” said Mr. Lee, overpowered by his feelings.

“One thing, and one only, sir—I will remain with
you and be to you as a son, if you will promise on
your honour, that my cousin shall neither be worried
or urged, or entreated in any way against her inclinations;
and that I myself may be left to the direction
of my own sense of honour and propriety in this
business. To make my cousin uneasy, is not the
way to win her heart, and even if it were, it is not
the mode to which I would descend.”

“Well then I do promise—I pledge my word,
that you shall do as you please in this affair, and
that Lucia shall have her own way in every thing but
in marrying that puppy sentimental, master Fitzgiles
Goshawk.”

“And I pledge myself, that living or dying, so far
as my actions are concerned, you shall never have
reason to repent your kindness to me.”

Here the conversation ended. Mr. Lee retired,
and Highfield stretched himself on his bed, overcome
with a weakness, and perplexity of heart.

15. CHAPTER XV.
Mutual mistakes and deceptions. Mr. Lee meditates a most daring
exploit.

The exertions and emotions of Highfield, encountering
with his pains and weakness of body, in the
preceding conversation, brought on a dangerous
fever, which confined him several weeks. During
this period Lucia entirely intermitted her intercourse
with the azure coterie, and saw Mr. Goshawk but
once, when he came in a long beard, dishevelled locks,
neglected costume, and various other insignia of a
despairing lover. He talked of himself, his depression
of mind, his distress at the danger in which he
saw her at the time her horse was rearing and plunging.
But Lucia just now was deeply touched with
the danger of Highfield, and remembered while
Goshawk had only felt, the other was suffering for
his exertions to preserve her life. True feeling, and
real sorrows, open our eyes to the full detection of
those that are the spurious product of ennui or affectation,
and enable us to see distinctly into the hypocrisy
of others' hearts, by putting them to the test
of a comparison with our own. What Lucia felt
now, satisfied her that her former feelings were rather

reflected from the society to which she was accustomed,
and the false colouring in which their false
sentiment was enveloped, than from her own heart.
The subjection of her excellent understanding to a
long habit of associating with caricatures of literary
taste, and mawkish imitations of genius and sensibility,
was gradually undermined, by an estrangement
of some weeks, and a communion with those
who felt as nature dictated, and expressed their feelings
in the language of truth.

In addition to this, we hold it to be utterly impossible
for any woman, that ever claimed descent from
simple, tender hearted mother Eve, to behold a man
suffering pain and sickness, without feeling that sympathy
which renders woman, savage and civilized,
wherever and in whatever circumstances she may be
found, the assuager of sorrows; the nurse of calamity;
the angel spirit that watches over the dying
and the dead. If perchance it happens that this
heaven descended sympathy with suffering, is coupled
with a feeling of gratitude for some great benefit,
and a consciousness that their suffering is in consequence
of exertions made in her behalf, we confess
we can hardly believe it possible that this natural
tenderness of heart, and this feeling of gratitude,
should not in the end combine to produce a still
stronger sentiment, more especially in favour of a
young, handsome, and amiable man. We should
for these reasons, be inclined to discard our heroine
entirely and for ever from our good graces, had not

the present crisis of affairs, awakened her better self,
and recalled her in some degree back to the destiny
for which nature had intended her.

It was more than four weeks before Highfield
was decidedly convalescent. During this period
he had endured much, and nature occasionally took
refuge in that blessed delirium which, however painful
to the observer, is a heaven of oblivion to the
weary sufferer. It was at these times, when he
knew nobody, and could interpret nothing which
he saw or heard, that the pride and delicacy of
Lucia would yield to the impulses of her heart, and
she would watch for hours at his bedside, moisten
his parched lips, smooth his pillow, dispose his aching
head in easy postures, and once, only once, she
kissed his damp cold forehead. There was nothing
violent in his delirium; his wanderings were low
and disjoined murmurs, connected as far as they
could be understood, with the recollections of his
cousin. Sometimes he would pause and fix his unsteady
wandering eyes upon her, as if some remote
consciousness crossed his mind; but it was only a
momentary effort of memory, and died away in the
wild wanderings of a diseased imagination.

The crisis of the fever passed over, leaving Highfield
a wreck, just without the gates of death. But
youth and a good constitution at length triumphed,
and he became convalescent. As he recovered possession
of his reason, Lucia discontinued her watchings
and confined herself within the limits of ordinary

attentions. Highfield sometimes thought of a
confused dream, a vision of a distempered mind, representing
an angel hanging over his couch and
administering to his wants; but the impression gradually
passed away, and he remained ignorant of
the truth until long afterwards. Mr. Lee had been
in a passion during the whole period of Highfield's
danger, and the doctor had no peace day or night.
If he talked about bleeding or a warm bath, Mr.
Lee called him a Sangrado; if he suggested any of
the ordinary remedies, he was an empiric, and if he
thought of any experiment, he was a quack. In
short, the poor man led a terrible life, until his patient
got better, when the old gentleman grew into
vast good humour, and nothing could equal his conviction
of the Doctor's skill. Juba indeed insisted,
that he himself had a principal hand in the cure, by
concocting an African Obi of the most sovereign
virtue; but his master only called him an old block
head, and sent him about his business; whereupon
old Ebony went his way, muttering something that
sounded something like `calling massa out.'

It was now the beginning of June, when the
infamous easterly winds, that spoil the genial breath
of spring with chilling vapours, generally give place
to the southern airs of summer. Lucia and Highfield
had resumed their intercourse, but with no
great appearance of cordiality. Highfield remained
ignorant of the cares she had lavished and the tears
she had shed while he was unconscious of every

thing, and Lucia, fearful that he might possibly
know it, shrunk with a timid consciousness from
all appearance or indication of that deep feeling
which late events had wakened in her bosom. He
resolved, in the recesses of his mind, to refrain in
future from every attention to his cousin, but such
as their relationship demanded; and she secretly
determined to hide the strong preference she now
felt, under the impenetrable mask of cool indifference.
I will not, said Highfield mentally, I will
not appeal to her gratitude or pity, for what her
love denies; and I, thought Lucia, scorn to repay
with love a debt of gratitude to one who seems to
think that alone sufficient. Neither of them suspected
the other's feelings, and pride stepped in to complete
their blindness.

The consequence was, that, finding each other's
society mutually irksome and unsatisfactory, they
avoided all intercourse but such as was indispensable.
Highfield sought every opportunity of being from
home; and Lucia was more than ever in the company
of Mr. Goshawk, who became every day more
miserable and incomprehensible. He talked of
smothered feelings in a voice of thunder, and sighed
with such emphasis, that he on one occasion dislodged
a geranium pot from a front window, and
came very near breaking the head of a little chimney-sweep
who was sunning himself below. But
Lucia, though she encouraged his affectations, from
a mysterious, indefinite desire to be revenged on

Highfield for she knew not what, began to sicken a
little at his superlative azure. Of late she had
become too well acquainted with the substance of
feeling and passion to be deluded by the shadow,
and sometimes, amid the depression of her mind,
felt a great inclination to laugh at the mighty Goshawk
and his mighty verbosity. This heartless
intimacy contributed still more to estrange Highfield
from home and her society; for, unacquainted as
he was with her real feelings, he believed in his
heart that his cousin had a decided prepossession
for the empty sentimentalist. He had never altogether
recovered his strength or his colour; there
was a paleness in his face, a lassitude about his frame,
and a slow languor of motion, which gave to his
appearance a touching interest; and Lucia, as she
sometimes watched him without being seen, felt the
tears on her eyelashes, as she noticed the wreck of
his youth, and recalled to mind to what it was owing.
Thus matters remained; Highfield was only waiting
the return of his strength, to make a final effort to
disengage himself from the family and pursue his
fortune; Goshawk was daily meditating whether he
should sell the old gentleman's lands and buy stock
when he married Lucia and succeeded to the estate;
and Lucia was daily losing her vivacity in the desperate
attempt to be gay.

But what became of Mr. Lightfoot Lee all this
while? The old gentleman was in the finest quandary
imaginable. He grew so impatient there was

no living with him, and quarrelled with Juba forty
times a day. There was nobody else he could quarrel
with. Mrs. Coates had gone to pay a visit to
Hold Hingland, and renew her acquaintance with
Sir Richard Gammon and Sir Cloudesley Shovel;
Mr. Fairweather had gone to see the Grand Canal;
and to Highfield, he was bound by a solemn promise
not to say any thing on the subject nearest his
heart. Never was man so encumbered to the very
throat with vexations, that almost choaked him for
want of a vent; notwithstanding he had a most ingenius
way of letting off a little high steam now and
then. If he happened to encounter a beggar woman
at the door, he sent her about her business, with
a most edifying lecture on idleness, unthrift and intemperance;
if a dog came in his way he was pretty
sure of a kick; if a door interposed it might fairly
calculate upon a slam; and if the weather was any
way deserving of reproof, it might not hope to
escape a phillippic. Unfortunately for Mr. Lee he
had no wife, to become the residuary legatee of his
splenetic humours; but then he made himself amends
by falling upon the corporation for suffering the
swine to follow their instinct of wallowing in the
mud, and for furnishing mud for them to wallow in;
for not taking up the beggars, and for taking up so
much time in passing laws instead of seeing to the
execution of those already passed; for allowing the
little boys to fly kites in the street; for spending
money in monuments and canal celebrations, and
for every thing that ever occurred to the imagination
of a worthy old gentleman, who made amends
for his mouth being shut on one subject, by declaiming
upon a thousand others, about which he did not
care a fig.

He could not help seeing that his favourite project
was in a most backsliding condition, and that
every day Lucia was less with Highfield and more
with Goshawk. Whereupon he gathered himself together,
and uttered a tremendous libel upon literary
pretenders, rhyming fops, empty declaimers, and sentimental
puppies. Nay he spared not the azures themselves,
but pronounced their condemnation in words
of such horrible atrocity, that I will not dare the responsibility
even of putting them on record. I will
not deny, however, that in the midst of his blasphemies
he said some things carrying with them a remote
affinity with common sense. He affirmed that there
was among the women of the present fashionable
world, a hollow affectation of literature; an admiration
of affected sentiment and overstrained hyperbole;
that they placed too little value on morals,
and too much on manners; that an amiable disposition,
together with all the qualities essential to
honourable action, were held in little consideration,
while they paid their court to the most diminutive
dwarf of a genius, and listened with exclusive delight
to frothy declamations, the product of empty
heads and hollow hearts, alike devoid of manly
firmness or the capacity to be uselful in any honourable

rank or situation. He reproached them in his
heart, with being the dupes of false sentiment and
affected sorrow; and finally concluded his blasphemies
by giving it as his settled opinion, that the present
system of female education was admirably calculated
to make daughters extravagant, wives ridiculous,
and mothers incapable of fulfilling their duties.
But I entreat my beloved female readers to recollect,
that all this was soliloquized in a passion by an elderly
gentleman, born long before the invention of
steam engines and spinning jennies, and that I only
place it on record for the purpose of showing what
a prodigious “developement of mind,” has taken
place in the world, since Mr. Lee received his early
impressions.

The good gentleman sat himself down in his library,
and fell into a deep contemplation on the
course proper to be pursued in this perplexing state
of his domestic affairs; which lasted at least half an
hour. At length he started up with almost youthful
alacrity and rung the bell. In due time, that is, in
no very great haste, king Juba made his appearance.

“Juba,” said Mr. Lee, “bring out my best blue
coat, buff waistcoat, and snuff coloured breeches. I
am going to dress.”

“No time yet, massa, to dress for dinner—” said
Juba.

“I tell you bring out my best suit, you obstinate
old snowball—I am going to pay a visit to a lady.”

“A lady sir, massa!”

“Ay, a lady—is there any thing to grin at, in
my visiting a lady, you blockhead?”

“Juba,” quoth Mr. Lee while dressing himself,
“Juba, how old am I?”

“Massa, fifty-eight, last grass.”

“No such thing, sir, I'm just fifty-five, not a day
older. How should you know any thing about it?”

“Why I only saw massa, de berry day he born—
dat was—ay let me see, was twenty-second day
of—”

“Hold your peace, sir—you've lost your memory,
as well as all the five senses, I believe.”

“Well, well, no great matter if massa, two, tree
year older or younger—all de same a hundred years
hence.”

“But it is matter I tell you, sir—I'm going to be
married.”

“Married!” echoed Juba, his white eyes almost
starting out of his ebony head—“married!” He
saw at a glance such a resolution would be fatal to
his supremacy.

“Ay, married; is there any thing so extraordinary
in that?”

“But what Miss Lucy say to dat, massa?”

“I mean to disinherit her.”

Juba's eyes opened wider than ever, and he
thought to himself the debil was in his massa.

“What young massa Highfield say to dat?”

“I don't care what he says; I mean to disinherit
him too.”

“Whew—whew!” was the reply of old ebony.
“Massa tell me what lady he hab in he eye?”

“Miss Appleby.”

“Miss Applepie too young for old massa.”

Juba had been long accustomed to call Mr. Lee
“old massa,” without giving offence, but now the
phrase was taken in high dudgeon.

“Old master—you blockhead, who gave you the
liberty of calling me old? I'm only fifty-five, and
Miss Appleby is twenty-two; the difference is not
great.”

“Yes, but when Miss Applepie fifty-five, where
old massa be den?” quoth Juba.

This was a home question. Mr. Lee dismissed
Juba, and sat down to calculate where he should be
when Miss Appleby attained to the age of fifty-five.
The result was altogether unsatisfactory. He again
rung for Juba, and directed him to put up his best
suit again.

“I have put off my visit till to-morrow.”

“Massa better put him off till doomday.” quoth
Juba to himself; and so massa did.

16. CHAPTER XVI.
Our hero determines on a voyage.

There never was a man, or woman either, that
found such difficulty in keeping silence on what was
uppermost in their hearts, as Mr. Lee, or who had
more ingenious ways of giving side hits, and uttering
wicked inuendos. He never on any occasion
missed an opportunity of launching out against addle
pated rhymesters; boys that thought themselves
wiser than their betters; and girls who talked sentiment
and forgot their duty. If Goshawk uttered a
word of azure, he cried “Pish!” if Lucia talked
sentiment, he ejaculated some other epithet of mortal
contempt; and if Highfield said any thing about
honour or independence, he called him a puppy.

In the mean time matters were growing worse and
worse every day. Goshawk ventured to hint pretty
distinctly the nature and object of his mysterious
sorrows; Lucia treated her cousin with increasing
coolness and Highfield looked paler and paler.
Unable to bear his situation any longer, he one
morning—it was the day after Lucia had given the
watch chain, she had promised him, to Goshawk,
before his very eyes—he one morning took the opportunity

of being left alone with his uncle, to announce
to him, that being now sufficiently recovered
from his indisposition, it was his intention to visit his
relatives in the south, and spend some time with them.
“Perhaps indeed I may not return at all,” said he.

Mr. Lee was struck dumb for a moment; but
whenever this happens to people, it is pretty certain
they will make themselves ample amends for their
silence, as soon after as possible.

“Not come back at all!” at length roared the
old gentleman; “did you say that, boy?”

“I did, sir,” said Highfield, firmly; “my situation
here is becoming intolerable. I am harassed
with anxieties; depressed by a sense of degrading
dependence; and cut to the soul by perceiving
every day new reasons to believe my cousin knows
and despises my presumption.”

“May I speak?” cried Mr. Lee, gasping for
breath.

“Hear me out first, my dear and honoured sir,”
said the other. “When you first proposed this
union to me, I considered the subject deeply. I
reflected that though poor and dependent on your
bounty, still, next to your daughter, I was your
nearest relative; my cousin was rich enough to
make it immaterial that I was poor; she was lovely,
amiable, and intelligent, such a being as, when held
up to the hopes and wishes of youth, could not but
prove irresistible. I therefore consented to try my
chance for this glorious prize by every means becoming

a man of spirit and honour placed in such a
delicate situation. You see the result, sir. Lucia
not only feels indifferent to me, but there is every
appearance that she prefers another. I am too poor
and too proud to persecute or see her persecuted;
and, let me add, too much attached to my cousin to
remain and see her united to another man. It is
therefore my settled determination, to leave you the
day after to-morrow. My passage is taken.”

Mr. Lee was struck dumb again; but the fit did
not last long.

“May I speak now—do you release me from my
promise?” cried he, his eyes starting almost out of
his head.

As respects myself, sir, say what you will; but
for my cousin, I claim your promise that she shall
suffer no persecution on my account.”

“And so, sir, I must not speak to my own child?”

“I claim your promise, sir. Let her remain for
ever ignorant of my motives for leaving you.”

“Charles,” said the old man, taking his hand
with tears in his eyes, “are you determined to abandon
me in my old age?”

“My dear uncle, my benefactor, any thing but
this! I cannot stay to be murdered by inches, and
stand in the way of my cousin's happiness. I must
go. But wherever I do go, whatever my lot may
be, my last breath of life will be all gratitude for
your past kindness. I wish it were otherwise; but,
for some time at least, we must part.”

“Charles! Charles! my boy!” cried the warm
hearted old man, as he put his arms about his neck
and wept on his shoulder. At this moment Lucia
entered, and inquired anxiously what was the matter?

“The matter! you, you are the matter,” exclaimed
Mr. Lee in a fury.

“Recollect your word of honour, sir,” whispered
Highfield to his uncle, as he left the room. The old
gentleman cast a most terrible look at his daughter,
and followed. Lucia remained pondering for some
time on the scene that had just passed; and it was
not till she learned that Highfield was on the point
of leaving home for a long while, that her perplexity
became absorbed in another and more powerful
feeling.

17. CHAPTER XVII.
Highfield enters on a voyage.

Juba was assisting his young master, or rather
delaying him, in packing up his things, for the old
man made a sad business of it; Lucia was in her
chamber, netting a purse as fast as her eyes would
let her; and Mr. Lee was in his library, writing
with all his might.

“Ah, Massa Highfield!” said Juba at length,
“what Miss Lucia say when you go away?”

“Miss Lucia say!” quoth the other, somewhat
surprised, “why nothing.”

“Ah, Massa Highfield! if you only know what I
know, icod! massa wouldn't stir a peg, I reckon.”

“What are you talking about, Juba, and what
are you doing? You've put my old boots up with
my clean cravats.”

“Ah, massa! I know what I say, but I don't
know what I do now, much; but if Massa Highfield
only know what I do—dat's all.”

“Well what do you know, Juba?” said Highfield,
hardly knowing what he was saying at the moment.

“I know Miss Lucia break her heart when you
gone.”

“Pooh! Miss Lucia don't care whether I go or
stay.”

“Ah, Massa Highfield! if you only see her set
by your bed-side when you light-headed, and cry
so, and say prayers, and wipe your forehead, and
kiss it”—

“What—what are you talking about, you old
fool?” cried Highfield, almost gasping for breath.
“If you say another word, I'll turn you out of the
room.”

“Ah, Juba always old fool—no young fools now--a-days;
all true dough, by jingo, I swear. I seed
her wid my own eyes—dat's all.” And he went on
with his packing slower than ever, while Highfield

sunk into a deep reverie, the subject of which the
reader must know little of his own heart if he requires
me to unfold.

The next morning was the last they were to spend
together, and the little party met at breakfast.
Lucia at first had determined to have a headach,
and stay in her room; but her conscious heart whispered
her this might excite a suspicion that she
could not bear the parting with her cousin. Accordingly
she summoned all the allies of woman to
her assistance. She called up maidenly pride, and
womanly deceit, and love's hypocrisy, to her aid, and
they obeyed the summons. She entered the breakfast
room with a pale face, but with a self-possession
which I have never since reflected upon without
wonder. Little was said and less eaten by the party.
A summons arrived for Highfield's baggage, and a
message for him to be on board in half an hour. Mr.
Lee rose, and taking from his pocket a paper, gave
it to Highfield with a request not to look at it till he
was outside the hook. Highfield suspected its purport,
and replied:

“Excuse me, dear uncle, this once;” and he
opened the paper, which was nothing less than the
deed of a fine estate Mr. Lee held in one of the
southern states.

“I cannot accept this, sir,” said the young man.
“I cannot consent to rob my cousin of what is hers
by nature and the laws.” And his voice became
choked with emotion.

“I insist,” said the old man; “it is all I can give
you now. Once I thought to give you all.”

“And I too,” said Lucia, but she could get no
farther.

“I declare, on my soul,” said Highfield, “I will
not, I cannot accept it, uncle. You at least know
my feelings and can comprehend my reasons, though
others may not. I had rather starve than rob my
cousin, and her—I have nothing to give either of
you in return.” He pulled out his watch; “I must
go now,” said he; and his voice sunk into nothing.
Lucia had been fumbling, with a trembling hand, in
her work-bag.

“My cousin is determined, I see,” said she, rallying
herself, “not to accept any favours from us;
but—but I hope he will not refuse this purse, empty
as it is. I have been a long while in keeping my
promise; but better late, they say, than never.”
And she burst into a torrent of uncontrollable emotion.
Highfield took it and put it in his bosom.

“And now, my dear uncle, farewell! may God
bless you.”

“Stop! one moment,” cried Mr. Lee earnestly,
and looking at Lucia, who was weeping in her
chair.

“Lucia,” said he solemnly, “my nephew loves
you, and is going from us that he may not see you
throw yourself away on a puppy with a heart as
hollow as his head.”

“Uncle!” said Highfield.

“Nay, sir, I will speak; the truth shall out,
though I travel barefoot to Rome for absolution.
Yes, daughter, my nephew loves you, and with my
entire and perfect approbation. And now, madam,
I am going to ask you some questions, which I trust
at this parting hour you will answer, not as a foolish,
frivolous girl who thinks it proper to play the hypocrite
with her father, but as a reasonable woman
and an obedient child. Will you promise? The
happiness of more than one depends on your reply.”

Lucia uncovered her face, and, having mastered
her emotions, firmly replied,

“I will, father.”

“Have you given your affections to Mr. Goshawk?”

“I have not, sir.”

“Do you mean to bestow them on him?”

“Never, sir.”

“Are your affections engaged elsewhere?”

Lucia answered not; she could not speak for her
life.

“Yes, yes, I see how it is,” said Mr. Lee; “you
are deceiving your father again. You have given
away you heart to some whiskered puppy you
waltzed with at a fancy ball, who can write a string
of disjointed nonsense about nothing in jingling
rhyme, or criticise a book according to the latest
Edinburgh or Quarterly; and yet—look at me,
Lucia, and answer me too—did you not while your
cousin was delirious visit his bed-side?”

“I did, sir.”

“And weep and wring your hands; and watch
his slumbers; and minister to his comforts; and
did I not once when I came into the room suddenly,
detect you hovering over him and kissing his forehead?
Answer me, as you hope for mine and Heaven's
forgiveness for playing the hypocrite at the price
of others health and hopes; is it not so?”

“It is, sir,” said the daughter faintly; and sinking
back on her chair she again covered her face
with her hands.

“What am I to understand from all that I saw?”

“For Heaven's sake sir; for my sake; for the
sake of your daughter, stop—” cried Highfield,
whose feelings on this occasion we will not attempt
to describe.

“Silence!” cried the old man; “too much has
been risked, too much is at stake, and too much may
be sacrificed by stopping short at this moment.
Answer me, daughter of my soul,” added he kindly
yet solemnly.

“You are to understand, sir, from all this, that—
that, though I would not shut my heart to—to gratitude,
I was too proud to force it on one who did not
value it when himself. He could not insult me with
indifference when unconscious of my presence.

“Oh Lucia, how unjust you have been to me!
You knew not my feelings, when I seemed most indifferent.”

“There were two of us in the like error,” replied
she, with a heavy sigh.

“The pride of conscious dependence,” said Highfield.

“The pride of woman,” said Lucia.

“I loved you from the moment I felt the first impulses
of manhood. Oh Lucia, my dear cousin,
daughter of my benefactor, companion of my childhood,
will you, can you fulfil his wishes and my
hopes without forfeiting your own happiness? Do
you not despise my poverty and presumption? Do
you not hate me for being a party, at least in appearance,
in thus severely probing your feelings? Ah!
had I known of your kindness and attentions when
I was not myself, I should not when myself have forgot
the deep heart piercing obligation; I should
have been grateful—” Mr. Lee could not bear the
word—

“Grateful, pooh, nonsense—The lady is grateful
for past favours; and the gentleman is grateful
for past sympathy. Look ye, most grateful lady,
and most grateful gentleman, I have not quite so
many years to live and make a fool of myself as you
have, perhaps; now, Lucia, will you take your old
father's word when he tells you solemnly that Charles
has loved you ever since he came from college?”—

“Long before, sir!” cried Highfield, warmly.

“Hold your tongue, sir, if you please—Lucia, answer
for yourself.”

“I will believe any thing my father says, even
were it ten times more improbable,” replied she, with
one of her long absent smiles.

“And how think you he ought to be rewarded?”

“My gratitude will”—

“Now Lucia you are at your old tricks again; I
tell you I wont hear a word about that infernal gratitude.”

“What shall I say, sir?”

“Say what your heart prompts, and do what
never mortal woman did before—speak the truth,
even though it make your old father happy.”

“Lucia,” said Charles.

“Daughter,” said Mr. Lee.

“Charles,” said Lucia, and gave him her hand—
“You shall know my feelings when it will be my
duty to disguise nothing from you.”

Highfield lost his passage; the ship sailed without
him, taking with her all his wardrobe.

Goshawk called that morning as early as fashionable
hours would permit, to take the first opportunity
of enforcing his attractions on Lucia, in Highfield's
absence.

“She no see any body,” said Juba.

Mr. Goshawk said he had particular business.
Juba demurred—

“She busy wid young Massa Highfield.”

“What, is not Mr. Highfield gone?”

“No sir, he going another voyage soon.”

“Not gone! why what prevented him?”

Juba grinned mortally—“Miss Lucia prevent
him. Icod, Massa Goosehawk bill out of joint, I
reckon,” quoth Ebony, half aside.

Goshawk soon got to the bottom of the matter;
which he forthwith communicated to the azure coterie
at Miss Appleby's, each of whom made a famous
speech on the occasion, and voted Lucia a Goth.

“To fall in love with a man of no genius!” cried
Miss Overend.

“Who can't write a line of poetry!” cried Miss
Appleby.

“Who hates argument!” cried the great Puddigham.

“Who places actions before words!” cried Paddleford.

“Who never made a set speech in his life!” cried
Prosser.

“Who hates passion—”

“Despises criticism—”

“And never reads a review—” cried they all together.

Every member of the azure tribe, to whom Goshawk's
despairing passion had been long known,
took it for granted, that having so excellent an apology,
he would now certainly die of despair, or suddenly
make away with himself, after writing his own
elegy. He did neither; but he became if possible
ten times more miserable than ever. He railed at
this world, and the things of this world; he tied a
black riband round his neck, drank gin and water,

and ate fish every day. One day he talked of joining
the Greeks, and the next the Cherokees; sometimes
he sighed away his very soul in wishes for
speedy annihilation, and then he sighed away
his soul again, in pining for the delights of Italy,
lamenting that he was not rich enough to go thither,
occupy a palace and hire a nobleman's wife to come
and be his housekeeper, like my Lord Byron. Man
delighted not him, or woman either; he sucked
melancholy as the bee sucks honey out of every
flower; the sunshine saddened, the clouds made him
melancholy, and the light of the moon threw him into
paroxysms of despair. Finally he announced
his determination to retire from this busy, noisy, heartless,
naughty, good for nothing world, and spend the
remainder of a life of disappointment and misery, in
the great mammoth cave in Kentucky. But what was
very remarkable, and shows the strange inconsistencies
of genius, there was no public place, no party,
no exhibition of any kind, at which this unhappy
gentleman did not make his appearance, notwithstanding
his contempt of the world, and its empty
pleasures.

In process of time, there was a great dispersion
from the tower of Babel at Miss Appleby's. That
azure and sublime lady, descended at last, as she
said, “to link her fate, chain down her destiny, and
trammel her genius, with an honest grocer from
Coenties slip, who, not being able to speak English
himself, had a great veneration for high and lofty declamation.

Miss Overend got tired of the executive
Greek committee, and paired off with a little broker,
who had got rich by speculating in the bills of broken
banks, and drank champaigne instead of small
beer at dinner. Paddleford married an heiress from
somewhere near the Five Points; and the great
Puddingham became a member of the city corporation,
where he served on divers important committees,
drew up divers laws, that puzzled wiser men
than himself to expound, and became a sore persecutor
of mad dogs, and wallowing swine, insomuch
that if a dog in his sober senses, or a swine of ordinary
discretion, saw him coming afar off, he would
incontinently flee away like unto the wind. He became
moreover, a great philanthropist, and it was
observed that he never, in the capacity of assistant
justice at the quarter sessions, pronounced sentence
on an offender, without first making him a low bow,
and begging his pardon for the liberty he was about
to take.

Poor Mr. Goshawk, being thus as it were left
alone howling in the wilderness of the city, continued
to nourish his despair at all public places. He was
a constant attendant at the Italian opera, where he
kept himself awake by nodding and bobbing his admiration;
beating time with his chin upon his little
ivory headed switch, and now and then crying
“Bravo” to the Signorina. Every body said what
an enthusiast was Mr. Goshawk, and what a soul he
had for music, until one night he mistook Yankee

Doodle for “Di Tanti,” which ruined his reputation
for ever as a connoiseur. By slow, imperceptible,
yet inevitable degrees, he at length sunk to his
proper level; for the most stupid at last will become
tired of affectation, and the most ignorant detect
their kindred ignorance. His loud pompous nothings;
his affected contempt of the world and distaste
for life; his disjointed, silly, and unpurposed
poetical effusions; and his mysterious sorrows, all
combined, failed in the end to sustain his claim to
genius. The admiration of his associates dwindled
into indifference, and even the young ladies tittered
at his approach. He tried the pretender's last stake—
the society of strangers. He went to the Springs,
where it was his good fortune to encounter the rich
and sentimental widow of a rich lumber merchant,
from the neighbourhood of the great Dismal Swamp.
She was simplicity itself; she adored poetry, idolized
genius, and the routine of her reading had
prepared her to mistake, high sounding words for
lofty ideas, and namby-pamby twaddle for genuine
feeling. Goshawk thundered away at the innocent
widow, and finally soon melted her heart, by declaiming
about the worthlessness of this world, and
the heartlessness of mankind. The poor lady came
to think it the greatest condescension possible, for
him to select her from this mighty mass of worthlessness.
Finally, he declared his enthusiastic love.

“La! Mr. Goshawk,” said the widow, “I

thought you despised the world, and the people in
it.”

“Divine widow,” cried the poet, “you belong to
another world, and a higher order of beings.”

Goshawk is now the happy husband of the widow,
and lords it over a wide tract of the great Dismal.
He orders his gentleman of colour to cut down pine
trees like Cicero declaiming against Verres; reads
Lord Byron under the shade of a bark hut; and
makes poetry extempore riding to church over a log
causeway in a one horse wagon with wooden springs.
The widow has already discovered that her husband
is no witch, for nothing makes people more clear
sighted than marriage; and the man of genius has
found out that his lady has a will of her own.

Our heroine remains the happy, rational, lovely
wife of Highfield, and talks just like other well-bred
sensible people. She prefers Milton to Byron,
and the Vicar of Wakefield to an entire new Waverly.
She admires her husband, though he can't
write poetry; and is a sincere convert to the opinion,
that high moral principles, gentlemanly manners,
amiable dispositions, a well constituted intellect, and
the talents to be useful in society, are a thousand
times more important ingredients in the character of
a husband, than affected sensibility, or the capacity
to disguise empty nothings in pompous words, and
jingling rhymes.

My worthy friend Mr. Lightfoot Lee is so happy,
that he begins seriously to doubt whether the world

is really going forwards or backwards. There is
reason to apprehend that he and Mr. Fairweather
will soon agree on this great question, and then there
will certainly be an end to their long friendship.

“Ah massa,” said King Juba one day to Mr. Lee,
who was apt to boast of his excellent management
in bringing about this happy state of things—“Ah
massa, icod, if I no tell massa Highfield about dem
dare visit to he bedside, when he light headed, he
no marry Miss Lucia arter all.”

“Pooh, you old blockhead, don't you know marriages
are made in heaven?”

“May be so, massa, but old nigger hab something
to do wid um for all dat—guy!”

“Get away you stupid old ninny!”

“Massa wouldn't dare call me ninny, if I was a
white man,” quoth Juba, as he strutted away with
the air of a descendent of a hundred ebony kings.