a killing man of the world poor Ernest was, his biographer tells us, that

'On the top of a small leather portmanteau, near by, (the three-halfpenny inkstand, the like of which you may buy "in most small shops in Soho,") stood two pair of varnished-leather boots of a sumptuous expensiveness, slender, elegant, and without spot, except the leaf of a crushed orange blossom clinging to one of the heels. The boots and the inkstand were tolerable exponents of his (the fashionable author's) two opposite but closely woven existences.'

A printer's Devil comes to him for his Tale, and as the man of genius has not written a word of it, he begins to indite a letter to the publisher, which we print with what took place subsequently; that the public may be made acquainted with the habits of Free Pencils' in composition.

"As it was

He had seized his pen and commenced :"Dear Sir,-The tale of this month will be called not yet conceived, he found a difficulty in baptizing it. His eyebrows descended like the bars of a knight's visor; his mouth, which had expressed only lassitude and melancholy, shut close, and curved downward, and he sat for some minutes dipping his pen in the ink, and at each dip adding a new shoal to the banks of the inky Azores.

A long sigh of relief, and an expansion of every line of his face into a look of brightening thought, gave token presently that the incubation had been successful. The gilded note-paper was pushed aside, a broad and fair sheet of "foreign post" was hastily drawn from his blotting-book, and forgetful alike of the unachieved cup of tea (!) and the waiting "devil" of Marlborough Street, the felicitous author dashed the first magic word on mid-page, and without title or motto, traced rapidly line after line, his face clearing of lassitude, and his eyes of their troubled languor, as the erasures became fewer, and his punctuations further be

tween.

"Any answer to the note, sir?" said the maid-servant, who had entered unnoticed, and stood close at his elbow, wondering at the flying velocity of his pen.

He was at the bottom of the fourth page, and in the middle of a sentence. Handing the wet and blotted sheet to the servant, with an order for the messenger to call the following morning for the remainder, he threw down his pen and abandoned himself to the most delicious of an author's pleasures-revery in the mood of composition. He forgot work. Work is to put such reveries into words. His imagination flew on like a horse without his rider-gloriously and exultingly, but to no goal. The very waste made his indolence sweeter-the very nearness of his task brightened his imaginative idleness. The ink dried upon his pen. Some capricious association soon drew back his thoughts to himself. His eye dulled. His lips resumed their mingled expression of pride and voluptuousness. He started to find himself idle, remembered that he had left off the sheet with a broken sentence, without retaining even the concluding word, and with a sigh more of relief than vexation, he drew on his boots. Presto!-the world of which his penny

halfpenny inkstand was the immortal centre-the world of heaven-born imagination-melted from about him! He stood in patent leather, human, handsome, and liable to debt!

And thus fugitive and easy of decoy; thus compulsory, irresolute, and brief, is the unchastised toil of genius-the earning of "the fancy-bread" of poets!

It would be hard if a man who has "made himself a name," (beside being paternally christened,) should want one in a story-so, if you please, I will name my hero in the next sentence. Ernest Clay was dressed to walk to Marlborough Street to apply for his "guinea a page in advance, and find out the concluding word of his MS., when there was heard a footman's rap at the street door. The baker on the groundfloor ran to pick up his penny loaves jarred from the shelves by the tremendous rat-a-tat-tat, and the maid ran herself out of her shoes to inform Mr Clay that Lady Mildred-wished to speak with him. Neither maid nor baker were displeased at being put to inconvenience, nor was the baker's hysterical mother disposed to murmur at the outrageous clatter which shattered her nerves for a week. There is a spell to a Londoner in a coroneted carriage which changes the noise and the impudence of the unwhipped varlets who ride behind it into music and condescension.

"You were going out," said Lady Mildred, "can I take you any where ? "

“You can take me," said Clay, spreading out his hands in an attitude of surrender, "when and where you please; but I was going to my publisher's,"

The chariot steps rattled down, and his foot was on the crimson carpet, when a plain family-carrriage suddenly turned out of Grosvenor Square, and pulled up as rear his own door as the obstruction permitted.'

Both the carriages, the coroneted chariot and the plain coach 'out of Grosvenor Square,' contain ladies who are wildly in love with the celebrated writer for the Magazines. He is smitten by the chariot; he has offered marriage to the family coach; which of the two vehicles shall carry him off? The rival owners appear in presence, (at Mrs Rothschild's ball!) and after a slight contest between vice and virtue, the well-principled young man of genius finishes the evening by running away with the coronet to a beautiful retreat in Devonshire, leaving his bride-elect to wear the willow. This may be considered as Volume I. of the "Heart-book.' Who would not be interested in reading the secrets of such a heart-who would not pardon its poetic vagaries?

In Volume II. the Free Pencil,' seeing in the newspapers the marriage of an old flame, merely in joke writes the lady a letter so thrilling, tender, and impassioned, that she awakens for the first time to a sense of her exquisite beauty, and becomes a coquette for ever after. The Free Pencil' meets with

her at Naples; is there kissed by her in public; crowned by her hand, and proclaimed by her beautiful lips the prince of poets; and as the lady is married, he, as a matter of ordinary gallantry, of course wishes to push his advantages further. But here (and almost for the only time) he is altogether checked in his advances, and made to see that the sovereign power of beauty is even paramount to that of 'free penciling' in the genteel world. By way of episode, a story is introduced of a young woman who dies of love for the poet, (having met him at several balls in London.) He consoles her by marrying her on her death-bed. In Volume III., the Free Pencil recovers his first love, whom he left behind in the shawl-room at Mrs Rothschild's Ball, and who has been pining and waiting for him ever since. The constancy of the beautiful young creature is rewarded, and she becomes the wife of the highly-gifted young man.

Such briefly is the plot of a tale, purporting to be drawn from English life and manners; and wondering readers may judge how like the portrait is to the original; how faithfully the habits of our society are here depicted; how Magazine writers are the rulers of fashion in England; how maids, wives, and widows, are never tired of running away with them. But who can appreciate the powers of description adorning this likely story; or the high-toned benevolence and morality with which the author invests his hero? These points can only be judged of by a perusal of the book itself. Then, indeed, will new beauties arise to the reader's perception. As, in St Peter's, you do not at first appreciate the beautiful details, so it is with Mr Willis's masterpiece. But let us, for present recreation, make one or two brief extracts

A Lady arriving at a tea-party.—Quietly, but with a step as elastic as the nod of a water-lily, Lady Mildred glided into the room, and the high tones and unharmonized voices of the different groups suddenly ceased, and were succeeded by a low and sustained murmur of admiration. A white dress of faultless freshness of fold, a snowy turban, from which hung on either temple a cluster of crimson camelias still wet with the night-dew; long raven curls of undisturbed grace falling on shoulders of that undescribable and dewy coolness which follows a morning bath (!) giving the skin the texture and the opaque whiteness of the lily; lips and skin redolent of the repose and purity, and the downcast but wakeful eye so expressive of recent solitude, and so peculiar to one who has not spoken since she slept-these were attractions which, in contrast with the paled glories around, elevated Lady Mildred at once into the predominant star of the night.'

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What a discovery regarding the qualities of the morning 'bath'—how naïvely does the nobleman of nature' recommend the use of that rare cosmetic! Here follows a description of the triumphs of a Free Penciller:'—

VOL. LXXXII. NO. CLXVI.

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—'We are in one of the most fashionable houses in May Fair.... On the heels of Ernest, and named with the next breath of the menial's lips, came the bearer of a title laden with the emblazoned honours of descent. Had he entered a hall of statuary, he could not have been less regarded. All eyes were on the pale forehead and calm lips that had entered before him; and the blood of the warrior who made the name, and of the statesmen and nobles who had borne it, and the accumulated honour and renown of centuries of unsullied distinctions-all these concentrated glories in the midst of the most polished and discriminating circle on earth, paled before the lamp of yesterday, burning in the eye of genius. Where is distinction felt? In secret, amidst splendour? No! In the street and the vulgar gaze? No! In the bosom of love? She only remembers it. Where, then, is the intoxicating cup of homage-the delirious draught for which brain, soul, and nerve are tasked, tortured, and spent where is it lifted to the lips? The answer brings me back. Eyes shining from amid jewels, voices softened with gentle breeding, smiles awakening beneath costly lamps-an atmosphere of perfume, splendour, and courtesy-these form the poet's Hebe, and the hero's Ganymede. These pour for ambition the draught that slakes his fever -these hold the cup to lips, drinking eagerly, that would turn away, in solitude, from the ambrosia of the gods.

'Clay's walk through the sumptuous rooms was like a Roman triumph. He was borne on from lip to lip-those before him anticipating his greeting, and those he left still sending their bright and kind words.

after him.'

We shall next notice a wonderful history of foreign life, containing the development of a most wonderful idiosyncrasy. It is that of an author-our Free Penciller!' His life is but a sleeping and forgetting-the new soul that rises in him has had elsewhere its setting, and cometh again from afar. He has not only a Pythagorean belief, but sometimes a consciousness of his previous existence, or existences-nay, he has not only a consciousness of having lived formerly, but often believes that he is living somewhere else, as well as at the place where at the present moment he may be. In a word, he is often conscious of being two gentlemen at once ;-a miraculous égarement of the intellect described in the following manner :

Walking in a crowded street, for example, in perfect health, with every faculty gaily alive, I suddenly lose the sense of neighbourhood. I see-I hear but I feel as if I had become invisible where I stand, and was, at the same time, present and visible elsewhere. I know every thing that passes around me, but I seem disconnected, and (magnetically speaking) unlinked from the human beings near. If spoken to at such a moment, I answer with difficulty. The person who speaks seems addressing me from a world to which I no longer belong. At the same time, I have an irresistible inner consciousness of being present in another scene of every-day life-where there are streets, and houses, and people-where I am looked on without surprise as a fam

liar object-where I have cares, fears, objects to attain-a different scene altogether, and a different life from the scene and life of which I was a moment before conscious. I have a dull ache at the back of my eyes for the minute or two that this trance lasts, and then slowly and reluctantly my absent soul seems creeping back, the magnetic links of conscious neighbourhood, one by one, re-attach, and I resume my ordinary life, but with an irrepressible feeling of sadness. It is in vain that I try to fix these shadows as they recede. I have struggled a thousand times in vain to particularise and note down what I saw in the strange city to which I was translated. The memory glides from my grasp with preternatural evasiveness.'

This awakening to a sense of previous existence is thus further detailed. The death of a lady in a foreign land,' says Mr Willis, leaves me at liberty to narrate the circumstances which follow.' Death has unsealed his lips; and he may now tell, that in a previous state of existence he was in love with the beautiful Margaret, Baroness R, when he was not the present free penciller,' but Rodolph Isenberg, a young artist of Vienna. Travelling in Styria, Rodolph was taken to a soirée at Gratz, in the house of a certain lady of consequence there,' by a very courteous and well-bred person, a gentleman ' of Gratz,' with whom Mr Willis had made acquaintance in the coupé of a diligence. No sooner was he at the soirée than he found himself on the balcony talking to a very quiet young ' lady,' with whom he discoursed away for half-an-hour very unreservedly,' before he discovered that a third person,

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a tall

lady of very stately presence, and with the remains of remarkable beauty,' was earnestly listening to their conversation, with her hand upon her side, in an attitude of repressed emotion? On this, the conversation languished;' and the other lady, his companion, rose, and took his arm to walk through the rooms. But he had not escaped the notice of the elder lady.

'Later in the evening,' says he, my friend came in search of me to the supper room. "Mon ami!" he said, "a great honour has fallen out of the sky for you. I am sent to bring you to the beau-reste of the handsomest woman of Styria-Margaret, Baroness R, whose château I pointed out to you in the gold light of yesterday's sunset. She wishes to know you-why, I cannot wholly divine-for it is the first sign of ordinary feeling that she has given in twenty years. But she seems agitated, and sits alone in the Countess's boudoir. Allons-y!" As we made our way through the crowd, he hastily sketched me an outline of the lady's history: "At seventeen, taken from a convent for a forced marriage with the baron whose name she bears; at eighteen a widow, and, for the first time, in love-the subject of her passion a young artist of Vienna on his way to Italy. The artist died at her château-they were to have been married-she has ever since worn weeds for him. And the remainder you must imagine-for here we are!" The Baroness