Although Harry Warrington was the least envious of men, and did honour to his brother as in all respects his chief, guide, and superior, yet no wonder a certain feeling of humiliation and disappointment oppressed the young man after his deposition from his eminence as Fortunate Youth and heir to boundless Virginian territories. Our friends at Kensington might promise and vow that they would love him all the better after his fall; Harry made a low bow and professed himself very thankful; but he could not help perceiving, when he went with his brother to the state entertainment with which my Lord Castlewood regaled his new-found kinsman, that George was all in all to his cousins: had all the talk, compliments, and petits soins for himself, whilst of Harry no one took any notice save poor Maria, who followed him with wistful looks, pursued him with eyes conveying dismal reproaches, and, as it were, blamed him because she had left him. "Ah!" the eyes seemed to say, "'tis mighty well of you, Harry, to have accepted the freedom which I gave you; but I had no intention, sir, that you should be so pleased at being let off." She gave him up, but yet she did not quite forgive him for taking her at her word. She would not have him, and yet she would. Oh, my young friends, how delightful is the beginning of a love-business, and how undignified, sometimes, the end!

This is what Harry Warrington, no doubt, felt when he went to Kensington and encountered the melancholy, reproachful eyes of his cousin. Yes! it is a foolish position to be in; but it is also melancholy to look into a house you have once lived in, and see black casements and emptiness where once shone the fires of welcome. Melancholy? Yes; but, ha! how bitter, how melancholy, how absurd to look up as you pass sentimentally by No. 13, and see somebody else grinning out of window, and evidently on the best terms with the landlady. I always feel hurt, even at an inn which I frequent, if I see other folks' trunks and boots at the doors of the rooms which were once mine. Have those boots lolled on the sofa which once I reclined on? I kick you from before me, you muddy, vulgar highlows!

So considering that his period of occupation was over, and Maria's rooms, if not given up to a new tenant, were, at any rate, to let, Harry did not feel very easy in his cousin's company, nor she possibly in his. He found either that he had nothing to say to her, or that what she had to say to him was rather dull and common-place, and that the red lip of a white-necked pipe of Virginia was decidedly

more agreeable to him now than Maria's softest accents and most melancholy moue. When George went to Kensington, then, Harry did not care much about going, and pleaded other engagements.

At his uncle's house in Hill Street the poor lad was no better amused, and, indeed, was treated by the virtuous people there with scarce any attention at all. The ladies did not scruple to deny themselves when he came; he could scarce have believed in such insincerity after their caresses, their welcome, their repeated vows of affection; but happening to sit with the Lamberts for an hour after he had called upon his aunt, he saw her ladyship's chairmen arrive with an empty chair, and his aunt step out and enter the vehicle, and not even blush when he made her a bow from the opposite window. To be denied by his own relations-to have that door which had opened to him so kindly, slamined in his face! He would not have believed such a thing possible, poor simple Harry said. Perhaps he thought the door-knocker had a tender heart, and was not made of brass: not more changed than the head of that knocker was my Lady Warrington's virtuous face when she passed her nephew.

"My father's own brother's wife! What have I done to offend her? Oh, Aunt Lambert, Aunt Lambert, did you ever see such coldheartedness?" cries out Harry, with his usual impetuosity.

"Do we make any difference to you, my dear Harry?" says Aunt Lambert, with a side-look at her youngest daughter. "The world may look coldly at you, but we don't belong to it: so you may come to us in safety."

"In this house you are different from other people," replies Harry. "I don't know how, but I always feel quiet and happy somehow when I come to you."

"Quis me uno vivit felicior? aut magis hâc est

Optandum vitâ dicere quis potuit?"

calls out General Lambert. "Do you know where I got these verses, Mr. Gownsman ?" and he addresses his son from college, who is come to pass an Easter holiday with his parents.

"You got them out of Catullus, sir," says the scholar.

"I got them out of no such thing, sir. I got them out of my favourite Democritus Junior-out of old Burton, who has provided many indifferent scholars with learning;" and who and Montaigne were favourite authors with the good General.

CHAPTER X.

WHERE WE DO WHAT CATS MAY DO.

E have said how our Virginians, with a wisdom not uncommon in youth, had chosen to adopt strong Jacobite opinions, and to profess a prodigious affection for the exiled royal family. The banished prince had recognized Madam Esmond's father as Marquis of Esmond, and she did not choose to be very angry with an unfortunate race, that, after all, was SO willing to acknowledge the merits of her family. As for any little scandal about her sister, Madame de Bern

stein, and the Old Chevalier, she tossed away from her with scorn the recollection of that odious circumstance, asserting, with perfect truth, that the two first monarchs of the House of Hanover were quite as bad as any Stuarts in regard to their domestic morality. But the king de facto was the king, as well as his Majesty de jure. De

Facto had been solemnly crowned and anointed at church, and had likewise utterly discomfited De Jure, when they came to battle for the kingdom together. Madam's clear opinion was, then, that her sons owed it to themselves as well as the sovereign to appear at his royal court. And if his Majesty should have been minded to confer a lucrative post, or a blue or red ribbon upon either of them, she, for her part, would not have been in the least surprised. She made no doubt but that the King knew the Virginian Esmonds as well as any other members of his nobility. The lads were specially commanded, then, to present themselves at Court, and, I dare say, their mother would have been very angry had she known that George took Harry's laced coat on the day when he went to make his bow at Kensington.

A hundred years ago the King's drawing-room was open almost every day to his nobility and gentry; and loyalty—especially since the war had begun-could gratify itself a score of times in a month with the august sight of the sovereign. A wise avoidance of the enemy's ships-of-war, a gracious acknowledgment of the inestimable loss the British Isles would suffer by the seizure of the royal person at sea, caused the monarch to forego those visits to his native Hanover which were so dear to his royal heart, and compelled him to remain, it must be owned, unwillingly, amongst his loving Britons. A Hanoverian lady, however, whose virtues had endeared her to the prince, strove to console him for his enforced absence from Herrenhausen. And from the lips of the Countess of Walmoden (on whom the imperial beneficence had gracefully conferred a high title of British honour) the revered Defender of the Faith could hear the accents of his native home.

To this beloved Sovereign, Mr. Warrington requested his uncle, an assiduous courtier, to present him: and as Mr. Lambert had to go to Court likewise, and thank his Majesty for his promotion, the two gentlemen made the journey to Kensington together, engaging a hackney-coach for the purpose, as my Lord Wrotham's carriage was now wanted by its rightful owner, who had returned to his house in town. They alighted at Kensington Palace Gate, where the sentries on duty knew and saluted the good General, and hence modestly made their way on foot to the summer residence of the Sovereign. Walking under the portico of the Palace, they entered the gallery which leads to the great black marble staircase (which hath been so richly decorated and painted by Mr. Kent), and then passed

through several rooms, richly hung with tapestry and adorned with pictures and bustos, until they came to the King's great drawingroom, where that famous "Venus" by Titian is, and, amongst other masterpieces, the picture of "St. Francis adoring the infant Saviour," performed by Sir Peter Paul Rubens; and here, with the rest of the visitors to the Court, the gentlemen waited until his Majesty issued from his private apartments, where he was in conference with certain personages who were called in the newspaper language of that day his M-j-ty's M-n-st-rs.

George Warrington, who had never been in a palace before, had leisure to admire the place, and regard the people round him. He saw fine pictures for the first time too, and I dare say delighted in that charming piece of Sir Anthony Vandyke, representing King Charles the First, his Queen and Family, and the noble picture of "Esther before Ahasuerus," painted by Tintoret, and in which all the figures are dressed in the magnificent Venetian habit. With the contemplation of these works he was so enraptured, that he scarce heard all the remarks of his good friend the General, who was whispering into his young companion's almost heedless ear the names of some of the personages round about them.

"Yonder," says Mr. Lambert, "are two of my Lords of the Admiralty, Mr. Gilbert Elliot and Admiral Boscawen : your Boscawen, whose fleet fired the first gun in your waters two years ago. That stout gentleman all belaced with gold is Mr. Fox, that was Minister, and is now content to be Paymaster with a great salary."

"He carries the auri fames on his person. Why, his waistcoat is a perfect Potosi !" says George.

"Alieni appetens-how goes the text? He loves to get money and to spend it," continues General Lambert. "Yon is my Lord Chief Justice Willes, talking to my Lord of Salisbury, Doctor Hoadley, who, if he serve his God as he serves his King, will be translated to some very high promotion in heaven. He belongs to your grandfather's time, and was loved by Dick Steele and hated by the Dean. With them is my Lord of London, the learned Doctor Sherlock. My lords of the lawn sleeves have lost half their honours now. I remember when I was a boy in my mother's hand, she made me go down on my knees to the Bishop of Rochester; him who went over the water, and became Minister to somebody who shall be namelessPerkin's Bishop. That handsome fair man is Admiral Smith. He