great as a king; at least as great

musing on the cold reception which the castle of his uncle had seemed to give him. Some of these parties were singing, some laughing and shouting, all of them careless, none uncivil. If their jollity displayed no mental happiness, it discovered no discontent. To be sure, he that is drunk, they say, is as and many of these were as princes. But there was a tone of pleased existence among them, which a lover of human nature would have been glad to observe. Now and then a girl's voice was heard floating, at first alone on the air, in the stanza of a quaint ballad ; and this was followed by five or six deeper voices roaring the burden in chorus. The open air softened the roughness, and dignified the want of skill of these chanters as they came close to De Vere. After they had passed, as the distance increased, the sounds died gradually away, and were succeeded by the shriller notes of a tabor and pipe, which occupied a set of dancers at the inn below.

"These good people," said De Vere, as he slackened his pace to listen and moralize, "cannot be unhappy, if they are not positively in a state of happiness. But the feeling is negative-they have no sensibilities.”

A few stragglers at that moment passed, one of whom in a female voice, articulately, and not meanly, sang an air which was just then very popular all over England.

"How blest the maid whose bosom

No headstrong passion knows."

"That may be the true secret," said De Vere, as she went by. "I begin to believe that the less heart we have, the better the chance of happiness. For may not happiness after all, be characterised as the absence of uneasiness, rather than positive pleasure?"

With this profound reflection, and in a most philosophical train of thought, he lost himself in reverie, till the concourse of people whom he met, night-wandering from the fair, began to make him fear that he might fail in his expectation of the lodging which he had ordered his groom to secure for him; and on arriving at the Fox, he found his fears were realized.

CHAPTER VI.

A RENCONTRE.

That light we ser,

Is burning in my hall.

SHAKSFEARE.

Your accent is something finer than you could purchase in so removed a dwelling.

SHAKSPEARK

DE VERE found that the inn which he thought was to give him shelter was filled with the "rude, swilled insolence of these late wassailers;" and the landlord, after many expressions of coucern, assured him of the impossibility of giving him accommodation.

De Vere, however, was not only young enough not yet to take much thought of personal inconvenience, but his mind was full; and one effect of being under the influence of an

absorbing interest, is to make most others sink in the comparison. He had ridden fifty miles that day, and the topics of reflection which had employed him, had made his mind stand in need of rest, still more than his body; yet he heard the sentence of banishment passed upon him, without a murmur, though a pampered minion of the world, arriving in his travelling carriage, and thus disappointed, would have complained, and execrated his hard fortune, though he might only have had to proceed a stage farther to a comfortable inn. As it was, De Vere was not only careless of his situation, but seemed disposed to gaze on the rustic, and certainly not very refined scene, that was. going forward. From all the rooms of the Fox, was heard the sound" of riot and ill-mannered merriment." And at another time, perhaps, he could not have borne to look at the loose hinds who made it, "thanking the gods amiss."

Many a hoarse cadence saluted his ear; many a practical joke his eye. Yet, with a heart full of feelings appertaining even to sadness, and thinking of her who was the very queen of elegance, he stopped a few moments to contemplate, we will not say to be amused with,

this coarse undress of nature. We cannot account for this, except that he was glad of any occurrence that could divert him from himself. Upon the same principle, that he who best understood the heart's most paradoxical seeming, makes Hamlet, with his mind full of high purpose, stop to find pastime in arguing with a grave-digger.

In sooth, it is not more extraordinary than true, that even while the soul is absorbed with some great predominant subject, we are not always indisposed to throw away a moment upon objects which we might otherwise despise.

But a very few minutes gave De Vere quite enough of these boors; and though he was not in the best humour with the grandees of the world, and thought even humble moderation preferable to the passions he had witnessed among those who were considered as the lords of life, he found that it was not among the dregs of it he was to seek consolation. He turned, therefore, from the inn, and after hearing that Ralph and his horses could be taken care of, moved off on foot, literally to seek his fortune for the night.

He had not proceeded far, before a brisk step