men, and even children, are shouldering one another in a perpetual race-where every nerve strives, and every pulse beats with some great passion, even to bursting-there is no room for the stricken deer to lie down though but to die, much less to endea

vour to recover.

The chariot wheels of Lord and Lady St. Clair, of Mrs. Neville, of Tremaine's political friend Lord A. (who, it may be remembered, had deserted him), and of a hundred other minions of splendour, who have their reward in this life, drove not one inch the slower than their usual pace, because Georgina might be dying of a broken heart, or Tremaine perishing by inches wherever he might be ; the one in the cause of Heaven, the other of honour. No! like Macbeth, they were content to find the Be all, and the end all, here;' and, provided that were brilliant, they jumpt the life to come.'

It was not, therefore, among such as these, that either Evelyn or Georgina could obtain that diversion for thoughts ill at ease, or remedy for health undermined, which both of them so needed. Yet something there was to both, in the little excitements occasioned by a change of place, which no heart, however monotonously disposed, but sometimes feels. This was not, however, in the towns they had visited. To Georgina, and Evelyn too, in their present state, London seemed one vast vacuity, and Paris a burning dream.

It was at the gate of a cottage garden in the Orleannois, in one of the softest evenings ever known in France, that a graceful little French girl, with brown, but well turned hands, presented a scarcely browner loaf and a glass of milk to Georgina; and this little French girl looked so naïve and éveillée, and was dressed so piquantely, in a jacket and short jupe, showing the most charming symmetry at every turn; and the simple rose with which she had decked her dark hair, just where it parted, Madona-like, across her oval polished forehead, was so tastefully disposed; and moreover she curtseyed her thanks so prettily for the little piece of silver bestowed upon her for the milk and bread she had supplied; she was so .humble, yet so proud withal, to have done any thing for so sweet a lady-"Mademoiselle est si douce, et si malade," said the little French girl; all this, together with the scene around, excited more interest in Georgina than any thing she had met with since she -left Yorkshire.

It was, indeed, a scene to do the heart good; especially if it wanted soothing: for not only was the air in that soft climate, and softest of evenings, a luxury sufficient for the most sickly sense, but the cottage garden, at the gate of which the poor exhausted Georgina had stopped, was a blaze of flowers, displaying such colours, and emitting such scents, as we poor islanders, with all our ruralities,

are condemned never to know. Then, again, in a large stack-yard, only just across the garden, the fragrant process of building several hayricks was going on. These were supplied by a succession of carts, drawn by oxen, from the plain of Orleans, which lay but a short distance off. The venerable pile of its cathedral could indeed be distinctly seen in the distance, and its curfew heard, as if warning all travellers to come within its protection before night should set in.

Georgina, however, was much more disposed to listen to a song of birds, perfectly ravishing, that arose from the echoing of a number, seemingly endless, of nightingales and thrushes, that lived on the banks of the copsy stream which passed the end of the little garden. This fairy rivulet ran winding under various root-formed banks, and gurgling over mossy stones, till it broke out of the valley into the great plain of Orleans abovementioned; where, uniting itself with the Loire, it proceeded in broad and majestic march, till, at a distance, it seemed lost among the ever-memorable walls and consecrated steeples of this old, eventful, and still respectable city. All this formed exactly a fit scene, both for father and daughter.

CHAP. IV.

ECCENTRIC.

Though this be madness, yet there's method in't!"

"You are a Gentleman of my own way."

SHAKSPEARE.

SHAKSPEARE.

We have exerted ourselves much in vain, if the reader has not by this time formed such a notion of Evelyn's character, or rather disposition, as to believe that whenever he was free from the trammels of his ordinary life, he was any thing but an ordinary traveller, over whatever road he chose to take. With all his practical knowledge and habits of business, he had been, particularly in his youth, and was even now, the child of his feelings for the time being. Those feelings, though always natural, approached sometimes even to the romantic. This had made him often be thought eccentric by the world; though perhaps the eccentricity was no more than to pursue a by-path or a cross track, when the high beaten way was not so agreeable. I mean this not merely as a figure.

He was particularly fond of making journeys, whether of business or pleasure, on horseback; and on

these occasions no man alive, not of a similar mind, could make him out. A fine prospect would always take him a mile out of the road, perhaps over hedge and ditch; nor, magistrate as he was, did he scruple to commit a trespass on such an occasion, if he could not enjoy what he wanted without it.

Above all, what he could never resist when alone, was a clean village inn, or country garden, in any sequestered spot, if there was a rich, busy, or merely quiet landscape around it. Here he would sometimes loiter for days at a time, though expected elsewhere. This was the sort of solitude he enjoyed; and as he had always books, and read, wrote, and thought much, he traced many of his best acquisitions to these moments of seclusion.

Seclusion indeed he denied it to be; for though he might pass hours either in the window that had first tempted him, by overlooking a fresh garden, or a wood impervious to the sun in the heat of the day, yet he could, he said, return to the world, whenever the stage coach stopt to water or change horses; and there was always the resource of the inn kitchen.

This liberty was so pleasing to him, that the proximity even of friends could not tempt him to interrupt it; and he is known to have passed two whole days at the gate of a park belonging to a very old acquaintance, without the owner of it ever knowing he had been there.