It has always been a puzzle to his very large circle of acquaintance, that my old friend, Charles Dashwood, is not married. And although, out of my superior wisdom, I do not share this astonishment, I must confess it to be reasonable enough in the ordinary and superficial observer. Thus, I did not attempt to contradict my wife's voluble friend, Mrs. Babington, when, only a day or two since, she favoured me with her sentiments on this subject.

"For the last ten, fifteen, ay, twenty years," she began, while my thoughtful friendship mentally thanked heaven that Dashwood was safely out of hearing of such a cold-blooded calculation, "I have been in daily expectation of the intelligence that Mr. Dashwood had taken unto himself a wife. Every successive season that I have returned to town from the sea-side or the Continent, I have examined my pile of letters and billets, in the anticipation that one of the highly-glazed envelopes would yield forth the wedding-cards, and at home' of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Dashwood. You know, he is the very man of all one's acquaintance that you would naturally suppose most likely to marry. There is nothing in the world to prevent it; everything, on the contrary, tending to render it the most desirable consummation possible. Ever since I have known him, he has been entirely his own master, with a liberal income, a handsome house, of which any woman might be satisfied to be the mistress; in fact, with every attendant circumstance to render matrimony most desirable. Then he himself is young (at least he was, and indeed twenty years seems to have made small difference in him), quite good-looking enough for a man-clever-kind-hearted-very popular in society. Que voulez vous de plus? I declare I should stare very wonderingly at the woman who could refuse such a combination of attractions. Shouldn't you?"

Here she took breath, and stopped for an answer; so I bowed assentingly, although I had happened to see, with

VOL. XLIV.-NO. CCLIX.

out staring, one or two females answering her description.

66

Well, then, it follows, of course, that since the fault does not lie on the other side, it must be all his own; and yet he has the name of being a great admirer of the ladies; and, indeed, during all these years that I have known him, I remember he has always had some one fair object of his attention at the various parties, balls, and pic-nics where we are accustomed to meet. There was that pretty Clara Vandeleur (you knew her, surely -a tall girl, with black eyes, and beautiful eyebrows?) - everybody used to talk about Clara Vandeleur and Mr. Dashwood; everybody said that would be a match. But she married Captain Allan, and went off to Gibraltar; and next season there was our friend completely en prise, to all appearance, by the golden-haired beauty, Miss Dundas. She suddenly vanished from among us (didn't she go into a nunnery?) and Mr. Dashwood consoled himself by a tre-mendous flirtation with little Rosa Sunningham. I confess I never thoroughly fathomed that mystery; and why, when, as every one said, she might have had the handsome, brilliant, affluent Charles Dashwood, Rosa quietly went and married that sober, matter-of-fact country cousin of hers, I don't comprehend to this day. Well, after that let me see who

came next?"

stern-browed and kindly-hearted!)—at school we were classmates, and partners together in every boyish frolic; at College we were chums; and when my profession called me into active life, and he, happy fellow! as I thought then, with a ready-made income, and no one to control him in the spending it, set off for the tour of Europe, separating us for some two or three years, even then we corresponded, with a regularity and a length of manuscript more befitting the letter-writing powers traditionally imputed to young ladies, than the bearded, broad-clothed "men of the world," as we began to consider ourselves.

that of his sole,

When again we met, our friendship resumed itself, and I was soon called upon to enter on the duties of the post he had assigned me exclusive confidant. And I had no sinecure. His nature was impulsive, mercurial, and unreserved. It was more as a safety-valve to the exceeding candour of his disposition than anything else, I believe, that he poured out to me his thoughts and feelings. Certainly, it was not for the purpose of gaining advice, for which he never troubled me; and, indeed, when on some occasions I volunteered a little in that respect, my counsel was uniformly and at once rejected. That was not to be wondered at, so unlike as we were.

And

Temperaments like his are the surest to be soon influenced by love. his experiences dated from his schooldays, when little Ada Kirby nearly broke his heart by preferring a bigger boy's bigger oranges to his, accompanied, though they were, by an inge nious impromptu, which we had both lain awake half the night before composing.

Then, at Oxford, how hardly I fought to prevent his marrying a young milliner there, with nothing to recommend her but her bright eyes and glossy hair, and whom, Iveritably believe, he would, in spite of me, have made Mrs. Charles Dashwood, had she not put such a step out of the question by eloping one morning with a very youthful baronet in an adjacent college.

His long letters during his travels were chiefly filled with the same burden. Such agonies of admiration as he suffered in Paris, Vienna, Baden, Rome, Venice, Florence, Lisbon, Madrid, and even St. Petersburg, were, I should think, seldom endured by man,

Till I grew familiar with his peculiar traits of disposition, I was in constant alarm with regard to my friend's matrimonial prospects. I looked for the announcement of his marriage with the expectant faith of Mrs. Babington, though, to be sure, with not quite the same assured satisfaction in the expectancy. His taste, with regard to women, was so catholic-he was so honestly and unconventionally indifferent to all considerations of rank, fortune, education, or position that I remained in perfect suspense as to whether I should be haply called on to greet as his wife a Spanish gitana or an Italian prima donna, a French marquise or a Parisian grisette, a Russian widow, rolling in gold, or a Welsh milkmaid, to whom shoes and stockings would be a novel luxury.

"I never thought to look upon thy single face again!" I observed to him, some time after his return, when I had been gently rallying him on the highflown strain of devotion in which he used to write to me concerning various of his foreign beauties.

"Ah! all that is past," he replied, with earnest emphasis; "those were boyish feelings, keenly felt, but soon forgotten. It is very different now. When a man loves, it is an irrevocable, irredeemable destiny, whether for good or evil."

I divined the coming "confidence." I believe I am a very good listenercertainly, I have always been so to to him and on this occasion I was a patient auditor to his eloquent description of the lady's attractions and his own devotion. I forget at this moinent whether it was Jane Wilmot or Clara Vandeleur that had now enslaved him. His attachment to one demoiselle followed so closely on the other, I may be forgiven the slip of memory. However, I know that both affairs ended in nothing. I scarcely know why; but I must confess that my knowledge of the concluding passages in Charles' love adventures was always of the vaguest. He was less confidential on those points; it was with regard to their commencements and rapid growth that he always placed me au fuit.

I remember one morning, when I had not seen him for some time, he came to my chambers, and threw himself into a chair opposite to my writingtable, with a face of the most radiant ecstacy.