cepting a tug of the pigtail which hung in a bramble, and a few thorns which took advan tage of the absence of my buck-skins."

My heart melted within me, and I agreed with the opposition carrier that if he would convey the vanquished champion and the ponderosity of Mr. D., I would endeavour to persuade my horse to accommodate the five forlorn damsels. The proposal was thankfully agreed to. The fragments of the wreck were removed to the road-side, the miserable hack turned into the first field that presented itself, and I finished the remainder of the journey with eleven ladies and not a single accident.

Having thus immortalized myself in my debut in pic-nics, I must inform my reader, in confidence, that I never intend to risk the laurels which were so hardly obtained; for, independently of a notion which still haunts me that both the warriors are in reality much better whips than myself, and that the next opportunity would make it appear, I suffered so excessively from fear, anxiety, broiling, and dislocation, that I lay for many days under serious apprehensions of a consumption; and

am strictly commanded by the faculty that my next act of vagrancy be committed in a vehicle drawn by four post-horses, and dancing upon springs of the newest invention.

CHATELAR.

He would wait the hour

When her lamp lightened in the tower;
'Twas something yet, if, as she pass'd,
Her shade was o'er the lattice cast.

SCOTT.

THERE are no mysteries into which we are so fond of diving as the mysteries of the heart. The hero of the best novel in the world, if he could not condescend to fall in love, might march through his three volumes and excite no more sensation than his grandmother; and a newspaper without an elopement, or a breach of promise, has no news at all.

It is not my desire to affect any singular exception from established tastes, and I am ready to confess that the next best thing to being in love one's self is to speculate on the hopes and fears and fates of others. Il tide the heart that has no sympathy for the little schemes and subterfuges, which form the only romance of a world so matter of fact !-I have

never listened to a lame excuse for love's delinquencies without an anxious longing to play the prompter; and have witnessed the ceremony of cross-questioning with as much trepidation as I could have felt had I been the culprit myself. It is not, however, to be maintained that the love adventures of the present age can, in any way, compete with the enchantment of days agone; when tender souls were won by tough exploits, and Cupid's dart was a twenty-foot lance, ordained only to reach the lady's heart through the ribs of the rival. This was the golden age of love, albeit I am not one to lament it, thinking, as I do, that it is far more sensible to aid and abet my neighbour in toasting the beauty of his mistress, than to caper about with him in the lists, for contradiction's sake, to the imminent danger and discomfort of us both. After this came the

middle or dark ages of love, when it had ceased to be a glory, but had lost nothing of its fervour as a passion. If there is here less of romance than in the tilting days, there is considerably more of interest, because there is more of mystery. In the one, the test of true

love was to make boast; in the other, it was to keep secret. Accordingly, for an immense space of time, we have nothing but such fragments of adventures as could be gathered by eavesdroppers, who leave us to put head and tail to them as best suits our fancy; and the loves of Queen Elizabeth, who lived, as it were, only yesterday, are less known than the loves of Queen Genevra, who perhaps never lived at all.

These reflections occurred to me some little time ago, during a twilight reverie in the long, gloomy banqueting-room of Holyrood. It was the very land of love and mystery, for there was scarcely one of the grim warriors who frowned from the walls but had obtained his share of celebrity in lady's bower, as well as in tented field, and scarcely one of whom the adventures handed down have been more than sufficient to excite curiosity. I continued speculating through this line of kings, blessing the mark and confounding the painter, who has given us so little of their history in their faces, till I grew quite warm upon the subject, and found myself uniting and reasoning upon the few facts of