CHAPTER XVIII.

IN WHICH WE GO A-COURTING.

OME of my amiable readers no doubt are in the custom of visiting that famous garden in the Regent's Park, in which so many of our finned, feathered, four-footed fellow-creatures are accommodated with board and lodging, in return for which they exhibit themselves for our instruction and amusement: and there, as a man's business and private thoughts follow him everywhere and mix themselves with all life and nature round about him, I found myself, whilst looking at some fish in the aquarium, still actually thinking of our friends the Virginians. One of the most beautiful motion-masters I ever

beheld, sweeping through his green bath in harmonious curves, now turning his black glistening back to me, now exhibiting his fair white chest, in every movement active and graceful, turned out to be our old homely friend the flounder, whom we have all gobbled up out of his bath of water souchy at Greenwich, without having the slightest idea that he was a beauty.

As is the race of man, so is the race of flounders. If you can but see the latter in his right element, you may view him agile, healthy, and comely: put him out of his place, and behold his beauty is gone, his motions are disgraceful: he flaps the unfeeling ground ridiculously with his tail, and will presently gasp his feeble life out. Take him up tenderly, ere it be too late, and cast him into his native

Thames again—

But stop: I believe there is a certain proverb about fish out of water, and that other profound naturalists have remarked on them before me. Now Harry Warrington had been floundering for ever so long a time past, and out of his proper element. As soon as he found it, health, strength, spirits, energy, returned to him, and with the tap of the epaulet on his shoulder he sprang up an altered being. He delighted in his new profession; he engaged in all its details, and mastered them with eager quickness. Had I the skill of my friend Lorrequer, I would follow the other Harry into camp, and see him on the march, at the mess, on the parade-ground; I would have many a carouse with him and his companions; I would cheerfully live with him under the tents; I would knowingly explain all the manoeuvres of war, and all the details of the life military. As it is, the reader must please, out of his experience and imagination, to fill in the colours of the picture of which I can give but meagre hints and outlines, and, above all, fancy Mr. Harry Warrington in his new red coat and yellow facings, very happy to bear the King's colours, and pleased to learn and perform all the duties of his new profession.

As each young man delighted in the excellence of the other, and cordially recognized his brother's superior qualities, George, we may be sure, was proud of Harry's success, and rejoiced in his returning good fortune. He wrote an affectionate letter to his mother in Virginia, recounting all the praises which he had heard of Harry, and which his brother's modesty, George knew, would never allow him to repeat. He described how Harry had won his own first step in the army, and how he, George, would ask his mother leave to share with her the expense of purchasing a higher rank for him.

Nothing, said George, would give him a greater delight, than to be able to help his brother, and the more so, as, by his sudden return into life as it were, he had deprived Harry of an inheritance which he had legitimately considered as his own. Labouring under that misconception Harry had indulged in greater expenses than he ever would have thought of incurring as a younger brother: and George thought it was but fair, and as it were, as a thank-offering for his own deliverance, that he should contribute liberally to any scheme for his brother's advantage.

And now, having concluded his statement respecting Harry's affairs, George took occasion to speak of his own, and addressed his

honoured mother on a point which very deeply concerned himself. She was aware that the best friends he and his brother had found in England, were the good Mr. and Mrs. Lambert, the latter Madam Esmond's school-fellow of earlier years. Where their own blood relations had been worldly and unfeeling, these true friends had ever been generous and kind. The General was respected by the whole army, and beloved by all who knew him. No mother's affection could have been more touching than Mrs. Lambert's for both Madam Esmond's children; and now, wrote Mr. George, he himself had formed an attachment for the elder Miss Lambert, on which he thought the happiness of his life depended, and which he besought his honoured mother to approve. He had made no precise offers to the young lady or her parents; but he was bound to say that he had made little disguise of his sentiments, and that the young lady, as well as her parents, seemed favourable to him. She had been so admirable and exemplary a daughter to her own mother, that he felt sure she would do her duty by his. In a word, Mr. Warrington described the young lady as a model of perfection, and expressed his firm belief that the happiness or misery of his own future life depended upon possessing or losing her. Why do you not produce this letter? haply asks some sentimental reader, of the present Editor, who has said how he has the whole Warrington correspondence in his hands. Why not? Because 'tis cruel to babble the secrets of a young man's love to overhear his incoherent vows and wild raptures, and to note, in cold blood, the secrets-it may be, the follies-of his passion. Shall we play eaves-dropper at twilight embrasures, count sighs and hand-shakes, bottle hot tears: lay our stethoscope on delicate young breasts, and feel their heart throbs? I protest for one, love is sacred. Wherever I see it (as one sometimes may in this world) shooting suddenly out of two pair of eyes; or glancing sadly even from one pair; or looking down from the mother to the baby in her lap; or from papa at his girl's happiness as she is whirling round the room with the captain; or from John Anderson, as his old wife comes into the room-the bonne vieille, the ever peerless among women; wherever we see that signal, I say, let us salute it. It is not only wrong to kiss and tell, but to tell about kisses. Everybody who has been admitted to the mystery,—hush about it. Down with him qui Dea sacrum vulgarit arcanæ. Beware how you dine with him, he will print your private talk: as sure as you sail with him, he will throw you over.

Whilst Harry's love of battle has led him to smell powder-to rush upon reluctantes dracones, and to carry wounded comrades out of fire, George has been pursuing an amusement much more peaceful and delightful to him: penning sonnets to his mistress's eyebrow, mayhap; pacing in the darkness under her window, and watching the little lamp which shone upon her in her chamber; finding all sorts of pretexts for sending little notes which don't seem to require little answers, but get them; culling bits out of his favourite poets, and flowers out of Covent Garden for somebody's special adornment and pleasure; walking to St. James's Church, singing very likely out of the same Prayer-book, and never hearing one word of the sermon, so much do other thoughts engross him; being prodigiously affectionate to all Miss Theo's relations-to her little brother and sister at school; to the elder at college; to Miss Hetty with whom he engages in gay passages of wit; and to mamma, who is half in love with him herself, Martin Lambert says; for if fathers are sometimes sulky at the appearance of the destined son-in-law, is it not a fact that mothers become sentimental and, as it were, love their own loves over again?

Gumbo and Sady are for ever on the trot between Southampton Row and Dean Street. In the summer months all sorts of junketings and pleasure-parties are devised; and there are countless proposals to go to Ranelagh, to Hampstead, to Vauxhall, to Marylebone Gardens, and what not? George wants the famous tragedy copied out fair for the stage, and who can write such a beautiful Italian hand as Miss Theo? As the sheets pass to and fro they are accompanied by little notes of thanks, of interrogation, of admiration, always. See, here is the packet, marked in Warrington's neat hand, "T's letters, 1758-9." Shall we open them and reveal their tender secrets to the public gaze? Those virgin words were whispered for one ear alone. Years after they were written, the husband read, no doubt, with sweet pangs of remembrance, the fond lines addressed to the lover. It were a sacrilege to show the pair to public eyes : only let kind readers be pleased to take our word that the young lady's letters are modest and pure, the gentleman's most respectful and tender. In fine, you see, we have said very little about it; but, in these few last months, Mr. George Warrington has made up his mind that he has found the woman of women. She mayn't be the most beautiful. Why, there is Cousin Flora, there is Cœlia, and Ardelia,

and a hundred more, who are ever so much more handsome: but her sweet face pleases him better than any other in the world. She mayn't be the most clever, but her voice is the dearest and pleasantest to hear; and in her company he is so clever himself; he has such fine thoughts; he uses such eloquent words; he is so generous, noble, witty, that no wonder he delights in it. And, in regard to the young lady,—as thank heaven I never thought so ill of women as to suppose them to be just, we may be sure that there is no amount of wit, of wisdom, of beauty, of valour, of virtue with which she does not endow her young hero.

When George's letter reached home, we may fancy that it created no small excitement in the little circle round Madam Esmond's fireside. So he was in love, and wished to marry! It was but natural, and would keep him out of harm's way. If he proposed to unite himself with a well-bred Christian young woman, Madam saw no harm.

He

"I knew they would be setting their caps at him," says Mountain. "They fancy that his wealth is as great as his estate. does not say whether the young lady has money. I fear otherwise."

"People would set their caps at him here, I dare say," says Madam Esmond, grimly looking at her dependant, "and try and catch Mr. Esmond Warrington for their own daughters, who are no richer than Miss Lambert may be."

"I suppose your ladyship means me!" says Mountain. "My Fanny is poor, as you say; and 'tis kind of you to remind me of her poverty!"

"I said people would set their caps at him. If the cap fits you, tant pis! as my papa used to say."

"You think, Madam, I am scheming to keep George for my daughter? I thank you, on my word! A good opinion you seem to have of us after the years we have lived together!"

"My dear Mountain, I know you much better than to suppose you could ever fancy your daughter would be a suitable match for a gentleman of Mr. Esmond's rank and station," says Madam, with much dignity.

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Fanny Parker was as good as Molly Benson at school, and Mr. Mountain's daughter is as good as Mr. Lambert's!" Mrs. Mountain cries out.

"Then you did think of marrying her to my son? I shall write to