rked by leaving the unfortunate book sprawling
upon its face on the table, like a drunkard on the ground. He often
kept her waiting five minutes for her ride, or twenty for dinner;
would stop and detain her, in their walks, while he corrected the
practical blunders of some superannuated hedger and ditcher; had a
trick of whipping off the thistle-tops while driving her in the garden
chair, to the imminent indignation of her ponies; was sometimes seen
to nod after dinner, when the morning's run had been a good one; and
had an opinion of his own in politics, which precisely reversed those
of Lady Mandeville and her coterie.--In a word, he was often very
'tiresome!' and whenever the fair Henrietta was excited into
pronouncing that sentence on his proceedings, it was a signal for
ill-humour for the remainder of the day; or rather till the spoiled
child would condescend to be coaxed into a more satisfactory mood of
mind."

But we are more struck with the appalling fidelity of the following
scene in a tale named _the Divorcee_. The heroine, Amelia, is married
in early life to a Mr. Allanby, "a man with 10,000l. per annum,
and a grey pigtail:" the match turns out a miserable one: Amelia's
dishonour by Vavasor Kendal, her divorce, and Mr. Allanby's death are
told in a few pages--the guilty pair, Vavasor and Amelia, flee to
Paris, and we are introduced to this faithful picture of Parisian
vice:--

"The infirmity of Amelia's health served at least to release her from
those forced efforts of gaiety which had recoiled so heavily on her
feelings. Her day for vivacity was gone.--In an atmosphere whose
buoyancy is exhausted, the feather falls as heavily as the plummet.

"But instead of commiserating the languor and feebleness extending
from the physical to the moral existence of the invalid, Vavasor only
made her dulness an excuse for flying to the relief of society more
congenial with his own tendency to vice and folly. Lady Emlyn who
in London was the leader of a coterie devoted to the excitements of
high-play,--a coterie that felt privileged to inveigh with horror
against 'gambling,' because its members ventured their thousands
on games where cunning tempers the fortuities of chance,--on the
manoeuvres of ecarte and whist instead of the dare-all risks of
hazard and rouge-et-noir,--had now removed her card-table from
Grosvenor-square to a splendid hotel in the Rue Rivoli; where she had
the honour of assembling, twice a week, a la