where the solemn and affectionate proprietor condescended to inform the young fellow that he was glad to see him, and that he looked none the worse for his travels. And I'll venture to bet that, when Charley laid his head upon the pillow at "Long's," that evening, his last thought—and, for the matter of that, prayer too -was for the welfare of the woman whom he had left in the pride of happiness, and had returned to find abased in the humility of sorrow and despair! And for some time afterward Charley Dalton had to enact a little farce, which is very often played by young fellows in situations like his, who wish to keep their character for honesty and virtue, and not to give employment to those gentlemen who, by a pleasant figure, are said to be "of the long robe." I mean, he had to keep two faces, till he became a regular Janus, the one face for the woman he loved-insanely and wickedly loved, I grant you, and very much after the style of the gentilhommes in Octave Feuillet's pleasing novels-and one face for the world and society at large. He could not help showing, by the tell-tale inflexions of his voice, the tremulous glance of the eye, that he had not forgotten the love of his youth. He blamed himself for it, but he could not help it; and, until some select committee of the Virtuous took him to task about it, he could not muster enough resolution. But so it was; he kept up the two faces. He might have read the words of Robert Browning in the "Last Words," when he says, "God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures Boasts two soul-sides-one to face the world with, One to show a woman when he loves her." CHAP. XXVII. his high estate" in the sporting world. Men used to cite Grantley as a proverb in the way of good luck, and envy the career he was running. Now the merest turn of the cards had abased him to the ground; a slip of the foot, a swerve on the part of the animal on which he had placed his fortunes, and all was gone from him; and, worse than all, men had seen his fall, and were even then speculating on it, in that pleasant, sympathetic manner in which our dearest friends will speculate on our misfortunes and wonder who will get our sherry, and where we bought our sparkling Môsel; just in the same way as Fauntleroy's friends did, when they called to see him for the last time before his doom. Even now he imagined the Children of Promise were scenting the carcass afar off, and whetting their beaks for the banquet, and oiling their well-curled locks for the onslaught; even now he saw, in his mind's eye, the posters which advertised, in words as pathetic as the second column of the Times, "The sale of property belonging to a gentleman going abroad." Going abroad! There is, to my thinking, much pathos in those words-they always seem to speak of exile from England to the shores of Boulogne and Ostend; that the gentleman would not go abroad unless he could not possibly help it. It was the day after the Derby, and settling-day was gradually approaching, when, to the uttermost, every farthing was to be exacted from him, and he would be left "back-bare, heart-sick," and with (worse than all) a wife dependent on him, and forced to share his disgrace. Oh, those days after! What very uncomfortable sensations they do admit-more uncomfortable than the quarte heure of Rabelais, or unhappy Goldsmith's feelings, when he had been junketing with the fair at Mulberry Gardens, and put his hand in his pocket to find the "MY PRIDE IS BROKEN, MEN HAVE SEEN reckoning, and found therein the usual occu MY FALL." Such might have been the bitter plaint of Harry Grantley, on the day after the Derby, when every hope on which he had staked his fortunes had proved illusory, when the pleasing mirage of success had forever faded, and left but the cold, grey, barren reality, in place of the gorgeous rays which erstwhile had illumined the sky. Just as in times passed by, in good King Arthur's day, the lists were set near Enid's home; and the mighty Geraint, whose strength and puissance were so great that, in the estimation of the eyes of those who loved him, "himself, beyond the rest pushing, could move the chair of Idris"-the mighty Geraint, avenging the great insult done to fair Guinevère, felled to the earth Edryn, son of Nudd; then the bitter wail, which heads this chapter, was drawn from the fallen man's lips. And in just the same way might Grantley in his ruin have complained that men had seen his fall. Mingled, I dare say, with the blow of having lost all his money and ruined his fortune, came the bitter assurance that he had "fallen from pant-nothing. Above all things unpleasant, are these days after. The day after a ball: what need that I tell you of the ghastly white pinched faces of the women, who looked so queenly under the brilliant light of the candelabra, who moved along the floor in the true Junonian style. Can these be they, the leadenfaced shivering beings, who shudderingly await their carriages in the unwelcome morning light? Such is the day after the ball. And then the supper-room, what a horrible debris strews the table, and what a faint odour of dying flowers, and wine whose sparkle has departed, and spoilt masses of what was once a miracle of the confectioner's art-all, all departed with the garish sunlight! And then the morning after that call-supper of yours, O festive young Templar! the memory thereof, I think, is exceedingly generous unto you. When you sat with your Sodales last night, "birling at the wine," wh a wonderful facetiousness characterised all your sayings! You were a Curran and a Sheridan and a Pitt-tria juncta in uno'; you set the table in a roar, as the sparkling Burgundy circled round the board, and the wit-bestowing wine of Champagne danced and sparkled in the tumbler, and you deemed it immensely jolly; but this morning how has the bloom departed! how is it that you cannot think of last-night's festal scene without a shudder of disgust? How comes it that from your parched throat can scarce issue the agonizing prayer for soda-water, and your head seems to weigh at least a ton, and to be the home of many buzzing insects? "Where be your gibes," my Yorick of the Temple? "Where be your oddities" this morning? All vanished into the limbo of the Past. And the morning after the battle-I cannot bring my-fasten on-she who after having been jointly self to speak of that; many and better pens have lent their pathos to illustrate this ghastly scene: the horrid dead calm after the pomp and chivalry of the previous day; the ghastly grinning corpses, amongst whom the birds of prey are already revelling; the mangled bodies of those who a short time before trolled the merry song and passed the joyous story round; the darlings of the women, the admired amongst menspectacles now, that the fond eye of a mother would shrink from in disgust. For himself, all this would be but a little pleasurable excitement, and in his code of morality the more pigeons to pluck the better for him; but he felt a slight repugnance to introducing his pure young wife to the indifferent flock of "kestrels and falcons" at the baths, to suffer the virtuous English lady, in whose fair fame never a breath of calumny had blown, to breathe the same air with La Comtesse Barbe Bleue, whose good fame had been so blown upon and bespattered that there remained not a single clean spot for the carrion-flies to suspected of poisoning her husband at the mature age of twenty-one, had for ever afterwards led men on to destruction by the false light of her cruel blue eyes, and enmeshed them in the strands of her pale yellow hair, till her name was a byword; or with those delightful creatures Floralie (of the Varietés) and Emerande (of the Opera Comique), who had both worshipped at the shrine of our Lady of Lorette for many years, and concerning whom the least said the soonest mended. Grantley knew full well how these people peck at and flout anyone other than themselves, who ventures within the magic circle of their iniquity; and he knew that if he wanted to kill his wife this would be the simplest way. Decidedly then he must write to Oaklands, and he sat down and penned a letter to the Squire, with a "full, true, and particular" account of his losses and misfortunes, and the evil straits to which he was reduced. "SIR,-I can offer no apology [he pleaded] for my conduct. I know it is as bad as bad can be; but I vow that when I promised you that I would, with God's help, try and keep my wife shielded from all harm and injury, I did try most earnestly to keep the vow; but it was no use: the demon of play was too strong, and I have been obliged to succumb. That I am fully aware. you will probably curse me and disown me for ever, All that I can ask is that you will take my wife back to her home and mother. I dare not take her with me where I am going. She is innocent enough now; won't you try and keep her so?" Such are the mornings after; and the morning after a great horse-race partakes of the bitter characteristics of all three I have touched on. There is the vague feeling of remorse, mingled with painful regret for past folly, and, coupled with these, a mad upbraiding of that Bona Dea, whom gamblers set up and prostrate themselves before-Fortune! But, alas! no better resolutions for the future, no strivings to amend; merely a "better-luck-next-time" kind of feeling, and a bitter envy of the winning man, who himself is trying, in barbaric style, to propitiate what he considers an offended Deity by expending a tithe of the enormous sums he has won, in charity. I will do Grantley the credit to say that he bore his losses like a man, and when he found that it was no use repining, sat down, with a calmness worthy of a far better cause, to consider his plans for the future, and determined to write to Oaklands, and make what he called "a clean breast" of it to the Squire, not for a moment expecting that the old man would help him. Ella he might take off his hands, certainly; but not a penny, probably, to save him from starvation. Well, thank goodness! there were foreign refuges, and he would try his luck at the Baden tables; among all the fallen angels there, probably some more fallen than himself; where he would not be noticed in his degradation, and where he might have the privilege of rubbing shoulders with princes whose estates might be represented by the algebraic And the next day saw the old gentleman at symbol nil, and with princesses whose cha- Portman-square, and Ella sobbing out all her racters would admit of the self-same definition; grief on his shoulder. It was like a breath of with innocent tourists come to have a glance at fresh air for her to see the hale old genial face the tables, and destined to leave the same with of her father in that room. He seemed to their portmonnaies considerably lightened, and bring with him a delicious flavour of country a pleasurable feeling of satisfaction that they health and honesty, after the jaded conventionhad rather done the thing in the way a freebornality of the society in which she had been living British tourist should. And much more to the same effect-the piteous tale of a bad, bad business, which made the Squire curse the day that he entrusted the tenderest of his flock to a gambler, and made the loving mother shed tears of bitter agony when she pictured her treasure alone and miserable. "I will go up to Town and see this villain myself, much as I object to travelling," cried the Squire. "The man has some good points in him though, else he would not be so anxious for the safety of Ella." lately. "Come home, Ella; come home with me! Your mother will break her heart if you don't come. And as for that husband of yours, let him go his own way. He has made his bed; let him lie on it," pleaded the Squire; but rather fruitlessly; for I think that the force of Love was greater in Ella Grantley's heart than the gentle pleading of a father's authority or a mother's affection. "Go and leave Harry, now that he is miserable and broken? Papa, I could not dream of such a thing. Do you suppose that I did not swear to love him and cherish him for woe as well as weal? I could never be happy unless by his side. I don't mind poverty, and even disgrace, with him; and who knows? Perhaps, now that he has lost everything, he may think a little more of me!" Oh wonderful tenacity of hope in woman's breast! Thank Heaven for it! While we men are despairing and wearing our hearts out over expected disgrace or misfortune, and with the gloomiest of faces meeting them half-way, they whom in our insensate folly we dare to call the weaker sex, the inferior beings, or some such pleasant name, keep their faces set directly forward to catch the first ray of light, with as much eagerness as the watchers on the hill-top await the coming of the dawn, and never abandon dear Hope till every possible chance has been destroyed, and every strand in the cable severed. It is not well, I think, that Keats calls" Hope's bards accursed." "While there's life there's hope" is not the less true because commonly used. At length the cause of all the 'misery came. Grantley, having settled honourably all his gambling debts, came into the presence of his wife and her father prepared to meet a storm of invective and abuse-and feeling, sooth to say, that he deserved it most richly, But the eloquence of a wife's love seemed to have blunted the Squire's wrath; for his greeting of his son-in-law, if sad, was courteous. "You got my letter, sir?" said the prodigal son. "What do you think of what I proposed?" "I will answer for him, Harry," said Ella, with ineffable love and tenderness in the glance which she bent on her erring husband: "I will not leave you, go where you will (for I suppose we shall have to leave this). I will go with you. None shall come between us again." Who shall tell but that a momentary pang of hopeless contrition shot athwart Grantley's breast as he listened a momentary regret for all his misspent life, and the misery he had brought on others? If ever he had loved his wife he loved her then. Then, certainly, the awful form of Virtue stood before him, grand and holy, and bade all thoughts of self flee, and perchance left him a better man. At all events, there was a trembling and choked sound in his voice, as he muttered, "My poor darling, you cannot, must not be made to suffer for my fault and ill-luck! Recollect, I am an outcast and a wanderer from this time forward. I shan't have a farthing when everybody is satisfied!" "Well, if there is no use pleading with you both," sighed the Squire, mournfully, "I sup pose you must take your own way, like head, strong people that you are! But you may look to me, Grantley, wherever you are for my daughter's sake you shan't want!" And with that he was gone. "What an awful brick the Squire is!" cried Grantley. "Cheer up, Ella; we'll make it all right yet; but we must leave this house, and go abroad. I am afraid that everything here must be sold, and that very shortly. Can you make up your mind to follow the fortune of a brokendown turfite like me? Can you bear to soothe me yet in my misfortune, and to lead the life that I shall have to lead in order to keep body and soul together?" 66 Anything-anywhere with you, if you will promise to love me and be with me a little more. As to leaving this great house, and all its melancholy splendour, I shan't mind that the least bit. I have never been able to breathe in London, and never spent a happy hour in the place. There, naughty boy, you are forgiven, though you never deserved it, for thinking that I would forsake you and go home!" And the holy kiss of reconciliation was bestowed; and, I can venture to assert, there was more happiness in that moment than in all the weary time before. Reconciled, they sat down to consider their plans for the future, with which we shall not at the present moment trouble ourselves, but go on and take leave of the house and its belongings, set the stage-carpenters to work at pulling down the materials of this scene, and bid the stage-manager "form up" his people for the last act in this highly veracious and exciting drama. We shall soon get to the end now, be the day weary or never so long. At length it ringeth for even-song: my characters-I am sure you will feel the most grateful pleasure in hearing-are "forming up" for the last sensation-scene. There will be much deadly business to do ere the curtain falls, and the scene is left in chill darkness ere the characters whom we have been acquainted with fade away into obscurity, and leave not even their memory behind them, when the writer shall have thrown aside his pen, half-sorry to leave the people he has been living with, and more than half-glad that he can at length exclaim, "Hic finis longe chartæque viæque”—when, in Thackeray's touching language, it will be time for the children to put back the puppets into, the box, for the play will have been played. To understand the scene which followed on Grantley's downfal, and the consequent sale and breaking-up of his London establishment, one would need to be deeply versed in the manners and customs of the "Ebrew Jew." Scenting booty from afar, they came with flourish of trumpet and beat of drum, the eagle-beaked, the oily-haired Children of Promise from Hounsditch (as one would say in epic language)-Moss Abrahams, than whom deadlier hand at tracking a bankrupt, and oilier tongue at praising the doubtful masters and still more doubtful sherry wine, never called "old clo' in infancy's happy days; from the Minories Moses Isaacson led the deft band of bailiffs-Moses of the curly hair and handsome presence, than whom greater favourite with the ladies and more cunning performer on the concertina never enlivened the Margateboat on Whit-Monday; and with him his helpmeet Leah, and his daughters three, each one with eyes of the raven's hue and hookèd noses, than whom fairer Roses of Sharon never extracted the luscious periwinkle with the insinuating pin, and called themselves by the affectionate names of Mariar, Hann, and Laurer Jane. In troops they came, the gentleman of the hooked beak and blubber-lips, and handled the beautiful furniture with their greasy fingers, and talked knowingly of the pictures, and tasted the wine, and shook their heads, as they assured everybody that they had prophesied that the Captain couldn't stand the pace, and that this Derby had done for him! And with them came the usual tribe of musty-looking men, with an invariable straw in their mouths, and clothes that presented the appearance of being used in a double sense-a bed by night, a suit of clothes by day-suspicious-looking loafers, who frightened the housemaid by their grim leers, and drank beer in solemn silence, and smoked incessant pipes. These were the men in possession, the most hated and reviled of all the human race-though I suppose the hangman's apology would stand good for them, "that some-one must do it"! row with "Lucia," or plaintively sighed with "Amina." A friend had bought this relic, and had paid a most fabulous sum in bidding against a wealthy Hebrew, who wanted it for his daughter. The purchaser's name was Charley Dalton, and for a man who couldn't play a note, it seemed rather a waste of money, especially as it could not be of the slightest use to its owner. I daresay the young fellow had some plan in his head. Qui virra verra. At all events the end has come, and the last van-load of goods has been taken from the house, and the house itself, with stolid indifference, is ready for its next occupant, and the tribe that haunted it has departed -gone are the seedy men who had possession, gone are the Jews, to fresh prey further-afield— faded away are the winning accents of the auctioneer, and Captain Harry Grantley and his wife are standing on the pier, waiting for the Ostend boat. All grace go with the tender, suffering wife, who is bidding a sad adieu to the land of her birth, to herd among strangers and Bohemians-and so prays the fine young fellow who stands on the pier, as the good boat steams lazily away, and strains one last look at the figure whom he still loves and reverences. SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. BY MRS. ABDY. "To be always in society, or to be always in solitude, is be always in the wrong." The delicate souls of Jeames the matchless footman, and Chawles his brother-that pair who rivalled the "strong Gyas and the equally The Student-how calm is his dwelling of rest, strong Cloanthus"-had been spared this blow; Where seldom the threshold is crossed by a guest! for they had given warning, and were by this He says that vast stores to his care are consigned; time sunning their calves in some other livery He talks about ruling the kingdom of mind on some other door-step. Like rats, they had Yet surely his strength is commencing to failscented the falling of the house, and had fled His eye has grown dim, and his cheek has grown pale; with speed. One never looks for anything Our time and our talents are not quite our own, like affection in the servants of this age. With I deem that the Student is too much alone! the famous age of Burke's chivalry has fled all Not so his young neighbour-the Heir of the Grange; the old hereditary affection of servant for masHe lives in a sphere of excitement and change: ter that mingled love and respect which characIn the sports of the field he is first of the throngterized the servitor of the gone-by age is not the At midnight he joins in the dance and the song. mark of the modern flunkey. He eats the bread But I fancy he finds, in the midst of his speed, and he wears the gorgeous livery of his master, That pleasure is very hard labour indeed! and hates him the while with as much fervour It has long to the sage and the prudent been known as does "Ruy Blas" in the opera, and wouldn't That the Heir of the Grange is too seldom alone. have the slightest objection, should opportunity My friends, you will never do wisely and well, offer, with the worthy just mentioned, to be his If far from the crowd you continually dwell; executioner! Failing that, he contents himself The truths taught in books you may carefully scan, with making careful mental notes of all the conBut surely "Mankind's proper study is Man:" versation, that they may catch his notice at din-Yet seek not the opposite course, nor repair ner and otherwise, and retailing the same, carefully, collated and improved, at the "Pig and Whistle," where he and his fellow-flunkies take their daily beer. It would weary you to tell how, at last, the house was dismantled, when lot the last had been disposed of to the click of the eloquent auctioneer's hammer-how all poor Ella's trifles, and the piano, at which she had spent a few of the rare happy moments in her London life, over whose notes she had poured forth her sor To join the gay idlers at Vanity Fair- A Manual for those who wish to join "the Fraternity of the We." To prevent any possible misconstruction, the author | CHAP. I. WHICH IS INTRODUCTORY. 'Difficile est, proprie communia dicere."-Horace De Arte Poeticâ, l. 128. Literal Translation.-" "Tis hard to neatly say what oft is said." Special Translation.-""Tis a confoundedly hard thing to write a good introduction." hundred Argus eyes are continually scanning the literary horizon, watching the appearance of would-be luminaries. An hundred Briarean hands, armed with the weapon "mightier than the sword," are ever ready to raise the fortunate to "the pinnacle of fame," or to sink the unlucky in the depths of oblivion. Often a "civil" war is waged, between the friends and enemies of some aspirant for literary honours, and then the conflict is fearful. But sometimes there is a terrible unanimity in the sentence of condemnation, which consigns a once hopeful and buoyant heart to the gnawings of despair. And should some daring mortal gain popularity without the approving smile of the reviewer, he only serves to develope the inexhaustible resources of the Guild. As the crowd at Ephesus yelled, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians!" so these gentlemen cry out, "Our craft is in danger; great is the Fraternity of the We," and no town-clerk is at hand to offer his advice. subjected to the most ingenious tortures; and If the transgressor is sensitive, his feelings are should he, happily, be impervious to 66 the paper pellets of the reviewers,' a still more deadly One hundred years ago, the science of periodical criticism was not in existence. If an author's opinions were offensive to any one, a book of equal bulk was written; or the gen-weapon is brought to bear upon him, in the tleman's objections were embodied in a pamph- influence which the brethren of "The We" let, the title-page of which would satisfy the exert upon public opinion. His works are description of the "Fable for Critics,"vigorously attacked until whoever praises them is considered a literary heretic, a semi-Pagan, almost out of the pale of civilization. "An old-fashioned title-page, such as presents A tabular view of the volume's contents." The quarterly review is emphatically an off-shoot of the Nineteenth Century. To state the causes which assisted at the foundation of the "Modern and Honourable Guild of Critics," or to delineate its progress, growth, and increase of power, would require more time and space than we are willing to bestow upon it, and would, moreover, be of no benefit to the object of this essay. Suffice it to say that there exists a body of men, which has been aptly named "The Fraternity of the We." This order has obtained so much influence over public opinion, that it has effectually blocked up the entrance to the Elysian fields of literary fame, and stands, like an ever-vigilant Cerberus, but having as many heads as the Hydra, warning off all who do not present satisfactory credentials. Occasionally a Hercules appears, who by sheer strength and determination overcomes all obstacles in his path; or an Orpheus, by whose dulcet strains even the grim frown of the Critic is relaxed, while over the stern features creeps a kindly smile. But these cases are "few and far between." An There are some persons who think that Byron's "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,' although its "noble author" acknowledged its injustice, contains much that is applicable to the critics of the present day. There are others, who disapprove of the reading of criticisms; saying that it destroys independence and originality of thought, and who obstinately persist in forming opinions of their own. But these deluded men are decidedly behind the age, and should not be regarded for a moment. For what purpose were reviews invented, but to furnish opinions, ready made, for those who are either too lazy, or too ignorant to form their own? Wouldst thou, gentle reader, join this omnipotent fraternity? Dost thou aspire to literary empire, or indulge in visions of authors writing under the stinging lash of sarcasm? Follow in our train, and thou shalt receive an honourable station in "The Guild of Critics." The only requisites are, unbounded self-confidence, assiduous visits to some public library (for the pose of examining and copying title-pages), and a careful study of the precepts which it is now our task to record, pur |