LOVE.

CHAPTER I.

RETROSPECTION.

That wealth and title sue to me,

Glads me,

I own, since 'tis for thee

Such glorious glittering baubles I resign;

Or should a smile my cheek adorn,

Oh! trust me I but smile in scorn

To think their merits should contend with thine.

THE LATE M. G. LEWIS, ESQ.

MISS ELTON was the beauty of her day; not merely a pretty girl in right of youth and freshness, but a decided beauty. One might have said of many of her contemporaries, they are charming, but Miss Elton was faultlessly handsome: the Prince said so, the Duke of avowed it, Lord D. declared it, and so did the

old applewoman at her stall, the untutored peasant at his plough, the commonest person in the street; yes, the homage she received was unquestioned and universal. It was pleasant to her to receive and to hear the various proofs of this power, and the variety of modes in which it was tendered; but nevertheless she was not spoiled by this adulation, or rendered heartless by living in the sunshine of prosperity. An indulgent maiden aunt had brought up this orphan heiress, and from her birth Mabel Elton had never heard any harsh word, never been rebuked, never known the common lot of humanity, or the roughness of existence; she had breathed a perfumed atmosphere, she had listened but to the music of fond affection. There seemed to her no end to life, or to its happiness. At sixteen, such was the beautiful creature whose history still remains fresh in the recollection of those who trod the same opening path of fragrance, "with hearts as gay and faces half as fair." One of her friends at that early epoch of her existence said to her

"I wonder, Mabel, to see you throwing away all your advantages, apparently indifferent to every thing, and every person; if I were you, nothing less than being a duchess would satisfy me; were you only handsome, you might rate yourself less high; but with your immense fortune, who is there that you could not command? either or any of your gifts is enough to fall to the portion of one individual; but, as you are, with all the adventitious circumstances of riches and ancient lineage, combined with charm and beauty, I shall only think you lack one thing, that is common sense, if you do not fill the highest station in the land: but you are not ambitious."

"I am ambitious,—you mistake me entirely, Emily; I am ambitious, but it is of love: not the degree and kind of love which satisfies the people I see; but a love such as I have the pattern of in my own mind, such as I see a vision of in my dreams, such as I could myself write of, but such as I never either saw or heard of in books, or in real life."

"This is the romance of sixteen, but it is

most unfortunate that you should nourish it; I am not old, I am not ugly, Mabel, I may hope for a reasonable share of affection in marriage, but I have lived long enough to know that the love you talk about is merely ideal; a species of madness while it lasts, and then a gloomy disappointment-when repentance comes too late. Mabel, Mabel, you will rue the day when you sacrifice solid happiness to ideal rapture."

"The happiness I aim at is not ideal, it exists somewhere; the ambition I entertain is higher than all other ambition, for it can only be attained by a total abnegation of selfishness.”

"Nonsense! Mabel. Pardon me for being so blunt of speech, self-love and social are the same, and as to love in its best estate, it is a selfish passion."

"Oh! how little you know about it! I will not talk any more on the subject, but my career is marked out; I'll live for love, and, not obtaining it, I'll die."

"I am glad to hear you pronounce that sibylline prediction in such a gay tone of voice; at least it proves to me that as yet there is no