"But, oh, Mrs. kittel of fish to fry!

Pople! there's been such a Come, I'll tell you all about it, chapter and verse. Oh, such a rumpus! All owing to our Louisa, poor dear roamantic girl. You must know that, when Mr. Scribbleton sent for me and Louisa, it was to get her married, and he had agreed with his friend Mr. Jeremiah Lawsun that she should marry him, for he is the most legible person for a husband in all Maderass, if they should like each other; and Mr. Lawsun is a great man, Mrs. Pople, and is very rich, and means to return to England next year, and live in some great square, quite in stile. At first, when they told me that he belonged to two different boards, I thought it was no such great catch for Louisa; for I said to myself and are we dragged all this way for the poor girl to marry one of the play-actors after all? For you know, in our country, when they talk of the player-folk, they say Mr. So-and-So belongs to the boards of Common-Garden, and Mr. This-orthat-and-the-other, to the boards of Drury Lane; and so for want of knowing how things are called here, when they told me that Mr. Lawsun belonged to two or three boards, I was foolish enough to set him down for a stage-player. But no such thing he is at the head of a court they call the sudderall

dolly, or something like it; but Captain Froth explained it all, and said that it is an apple-court from the silly courts, to set them right when they are wrong. No wonder, then, Mrs. Pople, the poor man is so much fatigued every day, he had hardly time to come a courting, for there must be always I suppose something to set right in the silly courts, or they could not be called by that name. But, can you believe it, dear Mrs. Pople? The poor denuded thing, after humming and hawing, off and on, for two or three times, would not have him after all. To be sure Mr. Lawsun was stif and formall, and so cross that he seemed as if he was angry with his own shadow for following him. Still there's many a miss would have been glad to have stood in Louisa's shoes and had him for a husband, and if he had been cross and ill-tempered after they were married, would have given him as good as he could bring. But no, she said, it was like swallering a dose of physick. Upon that I said, we must all swaller physick, if it was for our good. But you must know she fell in love with a young gentleman of the navy she danced with at Edmonton, and Gregson found a letter directed to Louisa, that had fallen out of his pocket when he called on us the day after the ball, and instead of

The Sudder-ul-dawlut Court, or Court of Appeal.

bringing it to me, put it into Louisa's riting-desk, and so she has been stark mad for the man ever since. And as ill-luck would have it, he came out to the Ingys in one Hugh Reilly's* ship; and then, when Mr. Lawsun proposed to her, she said she had not a heart to bestow, for it was on board a ship with young Leeftenant Cleveland. So my husband went on board Hugh Reilly's ship, and then there was what he calls a clear siezement ;† and the young man said he was not in love with our Louisa, but with another Louisa-who shall be nameless-and then he said he had dropped a letter from his pocket, which he was going to beg our Louisa to give to your Louisa-bless me the secret's all out-and all the fuss that has happened was owing to this letter. Oh, Mrs. Pople, what a taking was our poor child in! She had so many historical fits, one after another-there was never any thing like it. And then she consented to have Mr. Lawsun, and then she would not-and the proud stif gentleman was angry, and said she might go farther and fare worser, and then took himself off in a huf; and my husband says, it all comes of reading novels. So we have all three of us been at sixes and sevens ever since."

*

• The Euryalus frigate.

*

*

† Ecclaircissement,

Then follow some minute details of her daughter's sufferings on this occasion, which the editor thinks are described to more advantage in the young lady's letter to her Edmonton correspondent, Eustathia; and as that letter unfolds some important events relative to the Scribbleton family, he did not think it consistent with his duty to suppress it.

"Madras, April 18th, 18—.

"My beloved Eustathia,

"The struggle is over, and the cherished dream of my earthly happiness dispersed like a vapour of the night. A fatal light broke in upon me, as I told you in my last letter. It flashed only to render more visible the deepening gloom of fate that hung over me, the chilling prospect of dragging along, for the rest of an embittered existence, the dull prosing companion, to whom, in the first paroxysms of my anguish, after the heart-withering explanation of Cleveland, and goaded by the ceaseless importunities of my father, I had yielded a reluctant assent a companion,-oh! Eustathia, what a freezing sensation, even in this hot climate, comes over me at the thought!-a companion, I say, united to me by no sympathy of mind, but linked artificially with my destinies by the sordid chain of worldly advantage. Oh! poverty, I exclaimed, thou that art blindly shunned as a curse, and de

precated as a dæmon, by the unthinking idolaters of fortune, give me thy coarsest fare, clothe me in thy most ragged attire, let me live beneath the smoky rafters of thy meanest cottage, I shall be happy, if love, and the hallowed choir of domestic affections that follow in his train, hover near me ! Can the false, candle-light glare of pomp and ostentation brook a moment's comparison with the calm obscurity of a life gliding, like a gentle brook, through some secluded valley, while blest with that which enriches the peasant with a treasure that nobles might envy-that treasure of the soul, which no moths can corrupt, no thieves can steal? No. I sigh not, after the fashion of my sex, for a costly establishment, or a glittering equipage, nor for saloons lighted up with a thousand lamps, and echoing to midnight revelries. Oh! for a hovel, warmed only with love, through whose casement shines only the modest taper, whose ray invites the way-worn traveller to its humble but hospitable cheer! Give me but this, I should live and die content. Yes, Eustathia, for to you I unfold every secret of my bosom, before this fatal explanation, most gladly would I have shared with Cleveland his paltry lieutenant's pay; let the young ladies of the settlement turn up their noses at it, if they will; it would have been enough to have screened