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ter, Sir Creswell Creswell, some more work to do-I will, upon my honour.

However, the peignoir had not iced me enough that time to prevent my tumbling out of the house in as delicious an ecstasy as if I had been eating some of Monte Cristo's "hatchis." As I went out, not looking before me, I came bang against the chest of somebody else, who, not admiring the rencontre, hit my cap over my eyes, and exclaimed, in not the most courtly manner, you will acknowledge, "You cursed owl, take that, then! What the devil are you doing here, I should like to know ?"

"Confound your impudence !" I retorted, as soon as my ocular powers were restored, and I saw the blue eyes, fair curls, and smart figure of my ancient Iolaus, now my bitterest foe-"confound your impertinence! what the devil are you doing here? you mean."

"Take care, and don't ask questions about what doesn't concern you," returned Little Grand, with a laugh-a most irritating laugh. There are times when such cachinnations sting one's ears more than a volley of oaths. "Go home and mind your own business, my chicken. You are a green bird, and nobody minds you, but still you'll find it as well not to come poaching on other men's manors."

"Other men's manors! Mine, if you please," I shouted, so mad with him I could have floored him where he stood.

"Phew!" laughed Little Grand, screwing up his lips into a contemptuous whistle, "you've been drinking too much Bass, my daisy; 'tisn't good for young heads-can't stand it. Go home, my innocent."

The insult, the disdainful tone, froze my blood. My heart swelled with a sense of outraged dignity and injured manhood. With a conviction of my immeasurable superiority of position, as the beloved of that divine creature, I emancipated myself from the certain sort of slavery I was generally in to Little Grand, from regarding him as such a knowing hand, and spoke as I conceived it to be the habit of gentlemen whose honour had been wounded to speak.

"Mr. Grandison, you will pay for this insult. I shall expect satisfaction." Little Grand laughed again-absolutely grinned, the audacious young imp-and he twelve months younger than I, too!

"Certainly, sir. If you wish to be made a target of, I shall be delighted to oblige you. I can't keep ladies waiting. It is always Place aux dames! with me; so, for the present, good morning!"

And off went the confounded young coxcomb into the Casa di Fiori, and I, only consoled by the reflection of the different reception he would receive to what mine had been (he had a braceleted bouquet, too, the young pretentious puppy!), started off again, assuaging my lacerated feelings with the delicious word of satisfaction. I felt myself immeasurably raised above the heads of every other man in Malta-a perfect hero of romance; in fact, fit to figure in my beloved Alexandre's most highly wrought yellow-papered roman, with a duel on my hands, and the love of a magnificent creature like my Eudoxia Adelaida. She had become Eudoxia Adelaida to me now, and I had forgiven, if not forgotten, the dirty peignoir: the bottled porter lay, of course, at Brodie's door. If he would condemn spiritual forms of life and light to the common realistic aliments of horrible barmaids and draymen, she could not help it, nor I either. If angels come down to earth, and are separated from their natural nourishment of manna and nectar (those are

very

the correct items in the cartes of Paradise, n'est-ce-pas?), they must take what they can get, even though it be so coarse and sublunary a thing as Guinness's XXX, must they not, sir? Yes, I felt exalté with my affair of honour and my affaire de cœur, Little Grand for my foe, and my Marchioness for a love. I never stopped to remember that I might be smashing with frightful recklessness the Sixth and the Seventh Commandments. If Little Grand got shot, he must thank himself; he should not have insulted me; and if there was a Marquis St. Julian, why, I pitied him, poor fellow! that was all.

Full of these sublime sensations-grown at least three feet in my bottes vernies-I lounged into the ball-room, feeling supreme pity for those young snobs of ensigns who were chattering round the door, admiring those poor, pale garrison girls. They had not a duel and a Marchioness; they did not know what beauty meant-what life was!

I did not dance-I was above that sort of thing now-there was not a woman worth the trouble in the room; and about the second waltz, I saw my would-be rival talking to Ruthven, a fellow in Ours. Little Grand did not look glum or dispirited, as he ought to have done after the interview he must have had; but probably that was the boy's brass. He would never look beaten if you had hit him till he was black and blue. Presently Ruthven came up to me. He was a raw young cub, and not over used to his business, for he began the opening chapter in rather schoolboy fashion.

"Hallo, Gus! so you and Little Grand have been falling out. Why don't you settle it with a little mill? A vast deal better than pistols. Duels always seem to me no fun. Two men stand up like fools, and- 99

"Mr. Ruthven," said I, very haughtily, "if your principal desires to apologise

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Apologise! Bless your soul, no! But-"

"Then," said I, cutting him uncommonly short indeed, "you can have no necessity to address yourself to me, and I beg to refer you to my friend and second, Mr. Heavystone." Wherewith I bowed, turned on my heel, and left him.

I did not sleep that night, though I tried hard, because I thought it the correct thing for heroes to sleep sweetly till the clock strikes the hour of their duel, execution, &c., or whatever it may hap. Egmont slept, Argyle slept, Philippe Egalité, scores of them, but I could not. Not that I funked it, thank Heaven-I never had a touch of that-but because I was in such a delicious state of excitement, self-admiration, and heroism, which had not cooled when I found myself walking down to the appointed place by the beach with poor old Heavy, who was intensely impressed by being charged with about five quires of the best creamlaid, to be given to the Marchioness in case I fell. Little Grand and Ruthven came on the ground at almost the same moment, Little Grand eminently jaunty and smart, and most confoundedly handsome. We took off our caps with distant ceremony; the Castilian hidalgos were never more stately; but, then, what Knights of the Round Table ever splintered spears for such a woman?

The paces were measured, the pistols taken out of their case. We were just placed, and Ruthven, with a handkerchief in his hand, had just enumerated, in awful accents, "One! two!"-the "three!" yet hovered

on his lips, when we heard a laugh-the third laugh that had chilled my blood in twenty-four hours. Somebody's hand was laid on Little Grand's shoulder, and Conran's voice interrupted the whole thing. "Hallo, young ones! what farce is this ?""

"Farce, sir!" retorted Little Grand, hotly-" farce? It is no farce. It is an affair of honour, and—”

"Don't make me laugh, my dear boy," smiled Conran; "it is so much too warm for such an exertion. Pray, why are you and your once sworn friend making popinjays of each other?"

"Mr. Grandison has grossly insulted me," I began, " and I demand satisfaction. I will not stir from the ground without it, and————”

"You shan't," shouted Little Grand. "Do you dare to pretend I want to funk, you little contemptible

Though it was too warm, Conran went off into a fit of laughter.

I dare say our sublimity had a comic touch in it of which we never dreamt. "My dear boys, pray don't, it is too fatiguing. Come, Grand, what is it all about?"

"I deny your right to question me, Captain Conran," retorted Little Grand, in a fury. "What have you to do with it? I mean to punish that young owl yonder-who didn't know how to drink anything but milk-and-water, didn't know how to say bo! to a goose, till I taught him-for very abominable impertinence, and I'll"

"My impertinence! I like that!" I shouted. "It is your unwarrantable, overbearing self-coneeit, that makes you the laughing-stock of all the mess, which

"Silence!" said Conran's still stern voice, which subdued us into involuntary respect. "No more of this nonsense! Put up those pistols, Ruthven. You are two hot-headed, silly boys, who don't know for what you are quarrelling. Live a few years longer, and you won't be so eager to get into hot water, and put cartridges into your best friends. No, I shall not hear any more about it. If you do not instantly give me your words of honour not to attempt to repeat this folly, as your senior officer, I shall put you under arrest for six weeks."

O Alexandre Dumas! - O Monte Cristo!-O heroes of yellow paper and pluck invincible! I ask pardon of your shades; I must record the fact, lowering and melancholy as it is, that before our senior officer our heroism melted like glace à la Vanille in the sun, our glories tumbled to the ground like twelfth-cake ornaments under children's fingers, and before the threat of arrest the lions lay down like lambs.

Conran sent us back, humbled, sulky, and crestfallen, to La Valette, and resumed his solitary patrol upon the beach, where, before the sun was fairly up, he was having a shot at curlews. But if he was a little bit stern, he was no less kind-hearted; somehow one felt reliance upon him and security in him, and in the afternoon of that day, while he lay, after his siesta, smoking on his little bed, I unburdened myself to him. He did not laugh at me, though I saw a quizzical smile under his silky black moustaches.

"What is your divinity's name?" he asked, when I bad finished. "Eudoxia Adelaida, Marchioness St. Julian."

"The Marchioness St. Julian! Oh!"

"Do you know her ?" I inquired, somewhat perplexed by his tone. He smiled straight out this time.

"I don't know her, but there are a good many Peeresses in Malta and Gibraltar, and along the line of the Pacific, as my brother Ned, in the Belisarius, will tell I could count twoscore such of my acquaintance

off at this minute."

you.

I wondered what he meant. I dare say he knew all the Peerage (and a precious large one it is growing, with its titled usurers and cottonspinners, electro-plate and Paisley shawl millionnaires, named after villages in whose smallest cottages they first saw light); but that had nothing to do with me, and I thought it strange that all the Duchesses, and Countesses, and Baronesses should quit their country seats and town houses to locate themselves along the line of the Pacific.

"She's a fine woman, you say, St. John ?" he went on, smiling still. "Fine!" I reiterated, bursting into a panegyric, with which I won't bore your ears as I bored him.

"Well, you're going there to-night, you say; take me with you, and we'll see what I think of your Marchioness."

I looked at his fine figure and features, recalled certain tales of his conquests, remembered that he knew French, Italian, German, and Spanish, but, not being very able to refuse, acquiesced with a reluctance I could not entirely conceal. Conran, however, did not perceive it, and after mess took his cap, and went with me to the Casa di Fiori.

HE SPEAKS NOT OF THE OLD TIMES.

BY J. E. CARPENTER.

He wears a look of gladness
When I linger by his side,
He chides me for my silence,

And the tears I cannot hide;
He knows not whence my sorrow,
Or he deems my heart is free,
For he speaks not of the old times
So very dear to me.

He knows we roved together,

In the days when we were young,
The same dear home we dwelt in,
The same sweet songs we sung;
But the vow was never spoken,
And it never now will be,
For he speaks not of the old times
So loved, so lost, to me.
His words are kind as ever,

As when first on me he smiled,
But I cannot meet his glances
As I could when but a child;
Yet the love my girlhood gave him
Is cherished still by me,

Though he speaks not of the old times
That I never more may see.

NIGHTINGALE NOTES.

BY SIR NATHANIEL.

§ 2.

Is the nightingale's strain, after all, a melancholy one? For age after age the answers were nearly all one way, directly or indirectly in the affirmative. Of late years a negative has been not unfrequently set up, by philosopher as well as poet.

"Dulcis

The ancients commonly called her flebilis and querula. variat Philomela querelas." "Flet Philomela nefas incesti Tereos," &c. How could she but be sad, and her every note a wail, whose life had been a tragedy so dismal, such as no metamorphosis could make as though it had not been?

Now the earliest of our popular and true poets, Dan Chaucer to wit, has an epithet for Philomela that sounds, to modern ears at least, the flat reverse of this view of the case. When the goldfinch, after "leaping pretilè fro bough to bough," had done singing,

condition.

So passing swetely, that by manifolde

It was more pleasaunt than I could devise,

The nightingale with so mery a note
Answered him, that al the wood ronge
So sodainly, that, as it were a sote,
I stood astonied; so was I with the song
Thorow ravished, that til late and longe,
I ne wist in what place I was, ne where;

And ayen, me thought, she songe ever by mine ere.

6

But merry, in Chaucer's time, as Leigh Huntt has remarked, did not mean solely what it does now; but any kind of hasty or strenuous prevalence, as "merry men," meaning men in their heartiest and manliest "He speaks even of the merry organ,' meaning the church organ-the merry organ of the mass." " So that the Chaucer passage will not go for so much as it might seem to promise, against the melancholy party in these polemics.

Shakspeare makes his exiled Sir Valentine sit alone in "shadowy desert, unfrequented woods,"

And to the nightingale's complaining notes,

Tune his distresses, and record his own.‡

No doubt has this

There is an interchange of sympathy and sorrow.
banished gentleman, in his own dejection, of the character of the song-
ster's strain. None but a melancholy one could he brook; but to him
the melancholy of the nightingale's burden is so self-evident, and so pro-
found, that he haunts with delight the woodland solitude she frequents.
The voice of any other bird would be as of one that singeth songs to a
heavy heart-and we all know what the Wise Man says of that.

The Flower and the Leaf.
† Imagination and Fancy.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona, v. 4.

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