to go some miles out of their way, and to take the coast road, in order to view its romantic scenery en pas

sant.

Miss Crawley now opened the conversation, after a few side-long looks, and serpentine motions, with apologizing for her brother's absence, enumerating the variety of his official, political, and professional engagements, stating the coincidence of the assizes, and the Glannacrime election, as an additional cause for the hurry of business; and episodically introducing sketches of the family importance in general; her second brother being a sergeant-at-law; her third a first commissioner; her eldest nephew being that year sheriff of the county; her next a major in the army, a peninsula hero, covered with orders; and the amiable cadet, she added, "the Magnus Apollo of the age and country, was a young barrister of great poetical, political, and diplomatic promise, her éléve,

and, as the poet said, darling without end." Encouraged by the silent attention, and occasional inclination of the Commodore's head, Miss Crawley added to this information some slight notices of herself; and in apologizing for what she called 'the literary litter of her boudoir, she referred to habits, that had become second nature, and that required an almost regenerated spirit to be broken, a light, to make darkness visible, a superhuman intervention; she sighed, and then threw up her eyes, and then added with an air, half primitive, half dramatic,

"It was my good fortune, or should I not rather say my ill fortune, early in life to be distinguished by the celebrat ed Lady Clotworthy, of Bath, whose prize poems.

Here the Commodore involuntary took up his hat, and Miss Crawley suspecting that she was bestowing more of "her tediousness" on him than might

suit with his previous arrangements, observed,

"I have obtruded this family sketch upon you, in the expectation of presenting you to the originals; for we hold a family congress here to-day; and whether your visit to Dunore be a pilgrimage of taste, or of mere amusement, my brother will be happy to do the honours of these romantic scenes in the absence of their lord, whom he represents."

My visit, madam, has not been destitute of the gratifications of taste; but it is not a pilgrimage made merely in pursuit of amusement; business of a more serious nature."

The word "serious" fell like an electric spark upon the imagination of Miss Crawley; and the first self-created vision she had conjured up vanished before another of equal interest and importance; for she was now led to believe, that herself, and not her brother, was the object of this visit; that what she

had taken for temporal distinction, was "the beauty of holiness," and that she saw before her, not, as she had supposed, a mere idle elegant English man of fashion," prominant ses ennuis," in the wilds of Munster, but one of an higher calling, who might unite worldly elevation to that which is above the world's giving or taking away: some male Huntingdon, some imitative Wilberforce, whom the odour of her new fangled sanctity had allured to the scenery of Dunore.

Miss Crawley was of that undefined age which is occasionally found to vibrate between the folly and susceptibility of youth, and the despondence and experience of disappointed senility: that drowning age in which female celibacy catches at every straw held out by hope, or offered by vanity, and which, with the illusive chemistry of self-love, converts every circumstance of the day's ordinary routine into the

chance of that change so devoutly wished. She had long sighed for a fellow labourer in that cause, which, like all other causes tinctured with human leaven, is best carried on with the auxiliary of rank, fortune, or personal advantage.* The object might now stand before her, her hour might have arrived, and the sudden hopes kindled by this visit (hopes always on the qui vive), for a moment stunned and deprived her of her wonted, elegant, graceful, picturesque presence of mind. The half conscious gaze, which, (while all these deep but rapid ruminations crossed her mind), she fixed upon the Commodore's face, crimsoned that face almost to the brow; Miss Crawley saw and caught the soft infection; it called a faint blush to her pale and sallow cheek: then inhaling the odour of the offensive flowers, that withered in a tawdry vase

*"A saint in crape is twice a saint in lawn,”