provided he could assume the bearing and consequence of a man whose knowledge was universal. He proposed to Isabel, and was feelingly and kindly refused.

Good heavens! what, after this, could be thought of Isabel in the coteries of the settlement! Deluded girl, was it for this that thou wert arrayed by nature with all this prodigality of charms, both of mind and person, and fitted out for India with so much cost to thy friends? Mr. B***'s failure did not discourage other suitors. They came, and were repulsed. Seeing this, the rest of the eligibles kept aloof, and poor Isabel sat through the tediousness of the ball-room and the concert quite unmolested, unless perchance a straggling aide-de-camp or two, in the course of a saunter through the room, ventured to expend upon her the vapid nothings of his famished intellect.

Now all this on Isabel's part was error,―error fatal at length to her happiness. Oh, that she could have lowered her lofty and towering, but visionary ideas of what a husband ought to be, or what he might be made, down to the concert-pitch of the world as it is; that she had learned, by being more conversant with mediocrity, to have been more tolerant towards it ;-that, instead of struggling and panting after ideal excellence, she had found out

She

that the happiest and best of unions are rather compromises between what we expect and what we find, than the entire fulfilment of what fancy and hope are so wont to dream of! Then she might have wedded well and respectably, and in the course of things have produced children, and run the ordinary round of conjugal happiness, and in the fulness of time have returned home, and graced the first societies of England, of which she was in every respect worthy. But she could not listen with feigned attention, scarcely with patience, to common-place remarks propounded with as much gravity as if they were philosophical discoveries. could take no part in the pointless satire, the stale jest, and the prosy narrative, that necessarily constitute the essence of Anglo-Indian conversation. Her's were no vulgar endowments. A large expanded soul, a cultured mind, that comprehended very considerable stores of acquired knowledge; taste, feeling, a green flourishing memory, pregnant with inexhaustible stores of entertainment and reflection; a perpetual stream of fresh ideas, and a voice to give them utterance that fell upon your ear as the genuine music of the heart;-with so many gifts and such natural powers, let those who know India, and the English society of India, judge whether they, who disposed of poor Isabel's destiny,

acted wisely and judiciously. There was a restless pining constantly going on in her mind for the country she had quitted, the dear scenes of her childhood and her youth, and the groupe of happy faces which fancy conjured up to her remembrance. She indulged a great deal too much that silent anguish, which is felt so acutely when the soul has no affinities, no fellowships, in the crowd of vacant faces that surround it;-for ever was she stealing in vision to the vales, hills, woods, streams, of her native place—the modest mansion, the home of her modest affections, the seat of her purest joys, and the blue wreath of smoke that curled from its roof, as if to warn her, after her return from a prolonged walk, of the lateness of the hour, and the sweet affectionate chidings that rebuked her delay. From all this, the world of waters had severed her, perhaps for ever; but the chain which bound her to that spot, though lengthened by distance, was never broken. She felt its force to the last. Thus occupied, she would weep alone, benighted in her soul's gloom, for whole days and nights.

Soon after her refusal of Mr. B***, her parents had died, and Isabel, through some untoward domestic circumstance, was left without one natural protector, save the kind friends with whom she found an asylum in India. And most affectionately

was it accorded to her; for so powerful are the influences of beauty, goodness, and virtue,―virtue, too, enshrined in the fairest of forms,-that every one of those selfish, every-day feelings, which are so apt to break out where there is no considerable enlargement or cultivation of the mind, was restrained, and nothing was said, not even by a look, that served to remind her for one moment of her destitution and dependence. Isabel, however, felt them; and her beauty withered, and her smile, though as delightful and interesting as ever, was mingled more and more with a languor that betokened inward suffering; and she went the unmeaning round of Anglo-Indian visits, tiffins, balls, assemblies, dinners, and listened to idle ridicule and empty gossip, and sate at feasts where daily hecatombs were offered up to vanity and ostentation,

-"joyless all, and unendeared;"

but no amusements, scarcely her own insatiable thirst for literature, could fill up the cheerless void which existed in the bosom of one, who was made to love, but who could not love where she found nothing lovely.

Yet what false interpretations pass amongst the ladies and gentlemen of this world for profound commentaries-what gross blunders for sagacious

truths! No person thought it worth while to penetrate into the real causes of the decay of that beauteous frame. The easiest solution, and the most in unison with their own sentiments and habitudes of thought, was at hand, and they adopted it. Isabel, they took it for granted, was wasted with disappointment, because no offers were made her, and with regrets for having refused Mr. B***, who, on the very day, perhaps the very hour, of his rejection, had made another offer to another lady, which was accepted, that lady being luckily of a disposition or temperament not liable to be shocked by Mr. B***'s flogging his black servants because they could not comprehend his broken Hindostannee; and being gifted with an understanding that tamely brooked the usurped superiority of that of her husband. Moreover, as if to heighten poor Isabel's disappointment, there was a conspiracy of the accidents of life, and every thing happened to Mr. B*** as had been predicted. The small residue of Mr. W****'s liver soon gave way, and made the happy vacancy at the Board of Revenue; the cholera morbus did its duty at the Sudder-ulDawlet court, and Mr. B*** had only to wait another propitious death to arrive at the consummation of his hopes, the seat in council. But they knew her not, nor was it possible they should. She was