speaking in the voice of an angel, until the one appeared celestial, and the other demoniacal; and on these occasions, when Diana had departed in a rage, Leonora was generally found with her blue eyes bathed in tears.

So, of course, estrangement grew between Diana and young Hope, who often wondered at himself how he could possibly so far have mistaken his own feelings as to have fancied himself almost in love, and did, in fact, thank his stars that he had never asked her if she had felt the same.

Now, it is just possible that Diana's good principle might have taught her to control her fast-growing aversion, or at least that her good sense would have enabled her to conceal it; but Leonora knew better than to allow this; and winds on all sides blew the spark into the flame. Her character being one entire artifice, or rather a piled-up heap of artifices, every one of which was open and apparent to the mind of Diana, and every one of which not only grated upon, but actually injured her, she was kept in a constant state of excitement, and the more this repugnant feeling manifested itself upon the surface of her manners, the more loving and child-like affectionate did Leonora grow.

It is, perhaps, little mean things which excite more contempt in candid minds than large wrong ones. Of course Leonora was much too angelical to eat. Mrs. Moryllion Shrubsole was constantly trying to tempt her appetite with dainty morsels, and Young Hope, fearing that she would evaporate away for want of needful aliment;—and, in truth, the idea of food, for it was scarcely more, which she took, certainly was not sufficient to keep soul and body together with any safety in the knot. Now, it happened that one day, after dinner, when every body had been deploring the dreadful prospect of Miss Keane's dying of starvation, that Diana chanced, somewhat suddenly, to enter one of the side rooms, and in it found the New Companion devouring, like a pin-a-fored boy, an enormous thick slice of bread and butter, which she had unquestionably purloined. Diana's eye flashed scorn, but Leonora, swallowing down the mouthful in a way that threatened suffocation, smiled very sweetly, and said,

"I am going to feed the pheasants-will you go too? See, I have provided food for my favourites."

"I might spoil their repast, as I have spoiled yours," said Diana, scornfully.

"My dear Diana," said Mrs. Moryllion Shrubsole, "you don't know how sorry I feel to see you so prejudiced. I did hope that you would have felt some compassion for this interesting girl, considering her melancholy orphan condition-fatherless, motherless-and she, too, so amiable, so lamb-like, so gentle."

66

My dear aunt, my first impression of the character of this girl is perfectly indelible."

"I wish, at least, that you would control the expression of your feelings."

"She irritates me beyond my own self-constraint." "And yet, she is so gentle, so deferential to you."

"Her gentleness is nothing but art, her deference only to make me appear older than I am, and she younger."

"Ö, Diana! and she so affectionate to you, so tender. Why, my dear, if you were to conduct yourself towards any body else as you do to her, they would get indignant, enraged-they would fly into a passion with you."

"And I should like them all the better."

"O, Diana! Like people better for being passionate and revengeful than for being forbearing and forgiving! How wrong you must be!"

"For one emotion of generous indignation, I could almost find in my heart even to shake hands with this hypocritical girl." "O Diana !"

"And you are blind to her real character! She is a compound of cunning and selfishness!"

"Selfishness! No, no; she is, on the contrary, self-denying! So simple, so gentle, so guileless, so forgiving. Why, dear Diana, if you were not blinded by your prejudices, you must love her for her forbearance towards yourself. How often do you treat her with rude scorn, and yet, did she ever turn again ?"

"No, she has not the spirit !"

"No, she has not the wrong spirit."

"She has not the right spirit !"

"She is ready to love you at any moment that you will let her." "And I-"

"You hate her."

"Hate her! Do I hate her? Odious word! My soul sickens at it. O, how I wish I could emphatically contradict the charge."

"Liking deserves liking, love deserves love. Why do you not repay this girl in her own coin ?"

"I do. Little as I love her, little as I like her, she loves and likes me less. And is it in nature that she could love me, treating her as I do? Ask your own common sense just that simple question, and then tell me what is all her fawning but mere hypocrisy."

"It is her gentleness."

"It is her duplicity!" O, if I could only rouse her into the expression of an honest, an open feeling, even though that feeling were hatred, I think that I should not so utterly despise her. But the more I scorn her, the more does she crouch, and, like a base dog, kiss the hand that strikes her. No! no! She has nothing open in her nature, much less her enmity. She can sting, but she knows not how to strike."

"Diana, your passions are getting the entire mastery over you. You frighten me."

"Pah! I am soul-sick, heart-sick, at the paltriness of lackadaisical sentiment and sensibility, and the trickery of fictitious gentleness, and the imposture of loving charity-I am weary of it all! And yet, with this you are cheated out of your reason, and I am cheated out of your affection."

"What do you mean ?"

"What had I done that this girl should cross my path, and not only cross my path, but cling to me like a curse? Does she not hourly irritate my honest, but, it may be, hot-headed nature, and, while exciting my worst passions, place her own saintly-nay, her own diabolical angelicalness beside me, making even you think that I am the demon, and she the seraph? Am I not hourly placed in the blackest comparison beside her, and am I not losing the love that I most prize ?"

"It is your own fault, Diana."

66

My own fault! Did I bring this curse upon myself? Did I invite this hypocrite among us?"

"For shame, Diana! I had hoped to have reasoned you out of those prejudices, and believe me you are but punishing yourself." I know it, and that helps to madden me.'

"Such a pattern of gentleness might have taught you better." "Pattern by her! O, if I had the slightest trace of resemblance, I should loathe myself."

66

"Take care, Diana, that you do not make others dislike you too." Nay, if they only love me on my good behaviour, let them withdraw their love as soon as they will."

"You seem not to value it very highly."

"I never value niggardly gifts, and as to being loved on compulsion, I would sooner be hated."

"I am sorry for your violent temper. I wish you were more like that amiable, unfortunate orphan. I confess I am surprised that the desolateness of her condition has not made some appeal to your heart."

"O, it is quite a fortune for her! a stock in trade, a letter of credit, a kind of cash capital. Ha! ha! ha!"

"This is quite unwomanly! I wish I had not spoken to you on this subject, and indeed I should not have done so had not young Hope asked me."

"Asked you?"

"Yes. He could not bear to see that gentle girl so crushed and scorned any longer; he begged me to expostulate, otherwise he would have spoken to you himself."

"Spoken to me himself! interposed between me and that base piece of treachery! presumed to have meddled with my likings, and dictated on my manners! Edward Hope do this! I learn something!" "And I think you will have soon to learn something more-something that you may like even less."

"What may that be, madam?”

"That you have lost Edward Hope ?"

Poor Diana stood motionless.

"And that Leonora Keane has gained him."

Diana Slade was standing near the door. With the suddenness of a spasm she opened it. There stood Leonora Keane-listening.

HORACE WALPOLE.*

HORACE WALPOLE and the world are old acquaintances. Who has not visited Strawberry Hill? We have scarcely yet done grieving over the demolition of the dwelling, and here we have again the converse of its master. Surely never man talked better than the Walpole, and fortunately for us talked too on paper, that most happy perpetuity of speech. Strawberry Hill and its owner's multitudinous correspondences are perfect legacies to society. The bijouterie of the one and the jeu-d'esprit of the other scattered hither and thither, might fairly furnish out a whole community with relics. Had Horace Walpole striven for celebrity by endeavouring to achieve great actions, as hosts of other men have done, and though performing them have been forgotten, he would not have amassed one tittle of the popularity which he has acquired by talking. Whilst others were playing the game of life, he stood by, and made greater winnings by betting on the issues. Places and pensions, and red ribands and blue, changed hands and were won and lost, whilst the master of Strawberry appeared an indifferent spectator. But was this indifference real or assumed? Was he really above contention, or only afraid of defeat? Ay, multiform are the shapes of pride, and wide as the antipodes the opposite operations of the same moving power. One man will throw all his energies, his whole capacity, his entire strength, into the struggle for some given object, with most men that of personal aggrandisement; another will employ an equal power in self-restraint, affecting superiority to the very desire which stimulates the other, the fear of defeat uniting with the satisfaction of occupying an altitude of elevation of mind superlatively above the littleness of that desire which is influencing the energies of the ambitious aspirant; and yet in both these cases the same master passion may be dominant. Chatham struggling for power, and Walpole affecting to overtop him by holding it in contempt, might both be full of one and the same feeling. A proud man would sooner lose a prize, however dearly coveted, than subject himself to the hazard of defeat, and thus the passion may be the stronger in that case wherein it is called upon to control itself, rather than in any other field of operation. This, as we think, was the exercise of Walpole's pride.

This fundamental of Horace Walpole's character, like the foundation of a house, is of course that which is least visible in the elevation. To have been discerned it would have been defeated. The masterpassion may, however, have a thousand subordinates. The mind that is denied a great thing sometimes balances the amount by a large total of small ones; Horace Walpole appeared in the character of a philosopher, and yet whoever heard of a philosopher delighting in knickknackery and bijouterie? Dethroning Ambition, he made Taste his idol, and reared a hundred altars to the goddess at Strawberry Hill, became himself her high priest, and spent his life in the devotion. And yet not without many an anxious, longing, lingering look after * Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford, to Sir Horace, his Britannic Majesty's Resident at the Court of Florence, from 1760 to 1785. Concluding Series.

wigs and batons, and the paraphernalia of power. Courts, and not solitudes, were assuredly his legitimate sphere of action. The di. plomatist is in every stroke of his pen. We doubt, indeed, whether he was candid to himself, and there need be no smile at such a supposition, for all men find themselves the easiest dupes, and practise on their own credulity accordingly; while, though they would be ready enough to suspect another, they forget to doubt themselves, so that this self-deceiving, instead of being the highest effort of hypocrisy, is in fact the lowest, and a mere every-day matter. If nature put forth her usual strength and vigour in Horace Walpole, her efflorescences were nipped in the bud by the prunings of art. We doubt whether one of the letters which form the new series of those from his pen, addressed to Sir Horace Mann, during a period of five-and-twenty years, whilst the latter resided at Florence as his Majesty's Resident, we doubt, we say, whether one of these sprang out of the impulse of honest feeling. This world of ours is embellished with a certain number of show things. We have show houses and show people. Horace Walpole made himself both the one and the other. His house was a gallery of virtù, and he himself spoke, looked, and acted as one conscious that he was ever seen and noted, aware that his least action could not fall to the ground, or his least word pass unchronicled. His letters are not written so much from himself as they are written to others: they are not what he may be thinking, but what he wishes them to think: what he may feel, but what he desires them to feel: they are not the impressions made upon himself, but the impressions that he wishes to make. And yet because a man can do nothing but what exhibits himself, whether by the display of reality or its avoidance, so the mind, keen at inference, detects the truth, through the very process of reversing falsehood; and thus Horace Walpole has painted himself with a very miniature fidelity by the million strokes of his own pen. His letters, too, have the double merit of delineating his friends whilst displaying himself. Many a man who is blind to his own character has a perfectly marvellous vision into that of others. Horace Walpole possessed this acuteness of perception. Not that he dived into the depths of those oceans of passion that rush and roll beneath the placid surface of some men's calm collectedness, or plunged his dissecting knife into the joints and marrow of the mental constitution; but he was most apt in his penetration to a certain depth. He knew the superficial strata of mind at a glance. Aspirations after place, and ambition for ribands, and all the multitudinous trickeries of the ruling passion, were as open to him as though the tortuous windings had been woven and knotted under a transparent surface; and this perception doubtless had a result helping much the contentment of his life. Half epicurean and half philosopher, there was as much taste as dignity in the shade of his retirement: he could smile at the passions which agitated courts and courtiers, whilst he solaced himself in his well-beloved and highly ornamented Strawberry, exclaiming, "I am exempt from these fussy passions and these low ambitions." It will be found in every instance wherein the mind takes the trouble to investigate, that no man ever received the mark of celebrity without deserving it for some peculiar quality. The mistakes of the world