land. The solitude of the Club begins to be unbearable, and I found Muggins this morning preparing a mysterious apparatus of travelling boot-trees, and dusting the portmanteaus.

If you are not getting on well with the Kickleburys at Homburg I recommend you to go to Spa. Mrs. Nightingale is going thither, and will be at the Hôtel d'Orange; where you may use my name and present yourself to her; and I may hint to you in confidence that Miss Fanny will have a very pretty little fortune.

ON A LADY IN AN OPERA-BOX.

GOING the other night to the Conservatoire at Paris, where there was a magnificent assemblage of rank and fashion gathered together to hear the delightful performance of Madame Sontag, the friend who conferred upon me the polite favor of a ticket to the stalls, also pointed out to me who were the most remarkable personages round about us. There were ambassadors, politicians, and gentlemen, military and literary; there were beauties, French, Russian, and English: there were old ladies who had been beauties once, and who, by the help of a little distance and politeness (and if you didn't use your opera-glass, which is a cruel detector of paint and wrinkles), looked young and handsome still and plenty of old bucks in the stalls and boxes, well wigged, well gloved, and brilliantly waistcoated, very obsequious to the ladies, and satisfied with themselves and the world.

Up in the second tier of boxes I saw a very stout, jolly, good-humored-looking lady, whose head-dress and ringlets and general appurtenances were unmistakably English- and whom, were you to meet her at Timbuctoo, or in the Seraglio of the Grand Sultan amongst a bevy of beauties collected from all the countries of the earth, one would instantly know to be a British female. I do not mean to say that, were I the Padishah, I would select that moon-faced houri out of all the lovely society, and make her the Empress or Grand Signora of my dominions; but simply that there is a character about our country women which leads one to know, recognize, and admire, and wonder at them among all women of all tongues and countries. We have our British Lion; we have our Britannia ruling the waves: we have our British female- the most respectable, the most re

markable, of the women of this world.

And now we have

come to the woman who gives the subject, though she is not herself the subject, of these present remarks.

As I looked at her with that fond curiosity and silent pleasure and wonder which she (I mean the Great-British Female) always inspires in my mind, watching her smiles, her ways and motions, her allurements and attractive gestures - her head bobbing to this friend whom she recognized in the stalls - her jolly fat hand wagging a welcome to that acquaintance in a neighboring box-my friend and guide for the evening caught her eye, and made her a respectful bow, and said to me with a look of much meaning, "That is Mrs. Trotter-Walker." And from that minute I forgot Madame Sontag, and thought only of Mrs. T.-W.

"So that," said I, "is Mrs. Trotter-Walker! You have touched a chord in my heart. You have brought back old times to my memory, and made me recall some of the griefs and disappointments of my early days."

"Hold your tongue, man!" says Tom, my friend. "Listen to the Sontag; how divinely she is singing! how fresh her voice is still!"

I looked up at Mrs. Walker all the time with unabated interest. "Madam," thought I, "you look to be as kind and good-natured a person as eyes ever lighted upon. The way in which you are smiling to that young dandy with the double eyeglass, and the empressement with which he returns the salute, show that your friends are persons of rank and elegance, and that you are esteemed by them-giving them, as I am sure from your kind appearance you do, good dinners and pleasant balls. But I wonder what would you think if you knew that I was looking at you? I behold you for the first time: there are a hundred pretty young girls in the house, whom an amateur of mere beauty would examine with much greater satisfaction than he would naturally bestow upon a lady whose prime is past; and yet the sight of you interests me and tickles me, so to speak, and my eyeglass can't remove itself from the contemplation of your honest face."

What do you suppose
Himself, to be sure.

What is it that interests me so? interests a man the most in this life? It is at himself he is looking through his opera-glass — himself who is concerned, or he would not be watching you so keenly. And now let me confess why it is that the lady in the upper box excites me so, and why I say, "That is Mrs. Trotter-Walker, is it?" with an air of such deep interest.

Well then. In the year eighteen hundred and thirty odd, it happened that I went to pass the winter at Rome, as we will call the city. Major-General and Mrs. Trotter-Walker were also there; and until I heard of them there, I had never heard that there were such people in existence as the General and the lady the lady yonder with the large fan in the upper boxes. Mrs. Walker, as became her station in life, took, I dare say, very comfortable lodgings, gave dinners and parties to her friends, and had a night in the week for receptions. Much as I have travelled and lived abroad, these evening réunions have never greatly fascinated me. Man cannot live upon lemonade, wax candles, and weak tea. Gloves and white neck-cloths cost money, and those plaguy shiny boots are always so tight and hot. Am I made of money, that I can hire a coach to go to one of these soirées on a rainy Roman night; or can I come in goloshes, and take them off in the ante-chamber? I am too poor for cabs, and too vain for goloshes. If it had been to see the girl of my heart, (I mean at the time when there were girls, and I had a heart,) I couldn't have gone in goloshes. Well, not being in love, and not liking weak tea and lemonade, I did not go to evening parties that year at Rome: nor, of later years, at Paris, Vienna, Copenhagen, Islington, or wherever I may have been.

What, then, were my feelings when my dear and valued friend, Mrs. Coverlade, (she is a daughter of that venerable Peer, the Right Honorable the Lord Commandine,) who was passing the winter too at Rome, said to me, " My dear Dr. Pacifico, what have you done to offend Mrs. Trotter-Walker?"

"I know no person of that name," I said. "I knew Walker of the Post Office, and poor Trotter who was a captain in our regiment, and died under my hands at the Bahamas. But with the Trotter-Walkers I haven't the honor of an acquaintance."

"Well, it is not likely that you will have that honor," Mrs. Coverlade said. "Mrs. Walker said last night that she did not wish to make your acquaintance, and that she did not intend to receive you."

"I think she might have waited until I asked her, Madam," I said. What have I done to her? I have never seen or heard of her: how should I want to get into her house? or attend at her Tuesdays confound her Tuesdays!" I am sorry to say I said, "Confound Mrs. Walker's Tuesdays," and the conversation took another turn, and it so happened that I was called away from Rome suddenly, and never set eyes upon

Mrs. Walker, or indeed thought about her from that day to this.

Strange endurance of human vanity! a million of much more important conversations have escaped one since then, most likely but the memory of this little mortification (for such it is, after all) remains quite fresh in the mind, and unforgotten, though it is a trifle, and more than half a score of years old. We forgive injuries, we survive even our remorse for great wrongs that we ourselves commit; but I doubt if we ever forgive slights of this nature put upon us, or forget circumstances in which our self-love had been made to suffer.

Otherwise, why should the remembrance of Mrs. TrotterWalker have remained so lively in this bosom? Why should her appearance have excited such a keen interest in these eyes? Had Venus or Helen (the favorite beauty of Paris) been at the side of Mrs. T.-W., I should have looked at the latter more than at the Queen of Love herself. Had Mrs. Walker murdered Mrs. Pacifico, or inflicted some mortal injury upon me, I might forgive her but for slight? Never, Mrs. TrotterWalker; never, by Nemesis, never!

And now, having allowed my personal wrath to explode, let us calmly moralize for a minute or two upon this little circumstance; for there is no circumstance, however little, that won't afford a text for a sermon. Why was it that Mrs. General Trotter-Walker refused to receive Dr. S. Pacifico at her parties? She had noticed me probably somewhere where I had not remarked her; she did not like my aquiline countenance, my manner of taking snuff, my Blucher boots, or what not? or she had seen me walking with my friend Jack Raggett, the painter, on the Pincio a fellow with a hat and beard like a bandit, a shabby paletot, and a great pipe between his teeth. I was not genteel enough for her circle-I assume that to be the reason; indeed, Mrs. Coverlade, with a good-natured smile at my coat, which I own was somewhat shabby, gave me to

understand as much.

You little know, my worthy kind lady, what a loss you had that season at Rome, in turning up your amiable nose at the present writer. I could have given you appropriate anecdotes (with which my mind is stored) of all the courts of Europe (besides of Africa, Asia, and St. Domingo,) which I have visited. I could have made the General die of laughing after dinner with some of my funny stories, of which I keep a book, without which I never travel. I am content with my dinner: I can carve beautifully, and make jokes upon almost

any dish at table. I can talk about wine, cookery, hotels all over the Continent:- anything you will. I have been familiar with Cardinals, Red Republicans, Jesuits. German Princes, and Carbonari; and what is more, I can listen and hold my tongue to admiration. Ah, Madam! what did you lose in refusing to make the acquaintance of Solomon Pacifico, M. D.!

And why? Because my coat was a trifle threadbare; because I dined at the "Lepre" with Raggett and some of those other bandits of painters, and had not the money to hire a coach and horses.

Gentility is the death and destruction of social happiness amongst the middle classes in England. It destroys naturalness (if I may coin such a word) and kindly sympathies. The object of life, as I take it, is to be friendly with everybody. As a rule, and to a philosophical cosmopolite, every man ought to be welcome. I do not mean to your intimacy or affection, but to your society; as there is, if we would or could but discover it, something notable, something worthy of observation, of sympathy, of wonder and amusement in every fellow-mortal. If I had been Mr. Pacifico, travelling with a courier and a carriage, would Mrs. Walker have made any objection to me? I think not. It was the Blucher boots and the worn hat and the homely companion of the individual which were unwelcome to this lady. If I had been the disguised Duke Pacifico, and not a retired army-surgeon, would she have forgiven herself for slighting me? What stores of novels, what foison of plays, are composed upon this theme, - the queer old character in the wig and cloak throws off coat and spectacles, and appears suddenly with a star and crown, - a Haroun Alraschid, or other Merry Monarch. And straightway we clap our hands and applaud-what?- the star and garter.

But disguised emperors are not common now-a-days. You don't turn away monarchs from your door, any more than angels, unawares. Consider, though, how many a good fellow you may shut out and sneer upon! what an immense deal of pleasure, frankness, kindness, good-fellowship, we forego for the sake of our confounded gentility, and respect for outward show! Instead of placing our society upon an honest footing, we make our aim almost avowedly sordid. Love is of necessity banished from your society when you measure all your guests by a money-standard.

I think of all this- a harmless man - seeing a good-naturedlooking, jolly woman in the boxes yonder, who thought herself once too great a person to associate with the likes of me.