flower garden were delicious; the night was calm, and the moon gleamed far
over the quiet ocean.

At this moment a soft sound of music arose at a distance. I looked in vain
for the musicians--none were visible. The strain, incomparably managed,
now approached, now receded, now seemed to ascend from the sea, now to
stoop from the sky. All crowded to the casement--to me, a stranger and
unexpecting, all was surprise and spell. I, almost unconsciously, repeated
the fine lines in the Tempest:--

"Where should this music be? I' the air, or the earth?
It sounds no more: and sure, it waits upon
Some god of the island--
This music crept by me upon the waters,
Allaying both their fury and my passion
With its sweet air--But 'tis gone!
No, it begins again."

The prince returned my quotation with a gracious smile, and the words of
the great poet,

"This is no mortal business, nor no sound
This the earth owns."

The private band, stationed in one of the thickets, had been the
magicians. Supper was laid in this handsome apartment, not precisely

"The spare Sabine feast,
A radish and an egg,"

but perfectly simple, and perfectly elegant. The service was Sevre, and I
observed on it the arms of the Duke of Orleans, combined with those of the
Prince. It had been a present from the most luxurious, and most
unfortunate, man on earth. And thus closed my first day in the exclusive
world.

On the next evening, I had exchanged fresh breezes and bright skies for
the sullen atmosphere and perpetual smoke of the great city; stars for
lamps, and the gentle murmurs of the tide, for the turbid rush and heavy
roar of the million of London. During the day, I had been abandoned
sufficiently to my own meditations. For though we did not leave Brighton
till noon, Marianne remained steadily, and I feared angrily, invisible.
Mordecai, during the journey, consulted nothing but his tablets, and was
evidently plunged in some huge financial speculation; and when he dropped
me at a hotel in St James's, and hurried towards his den in the depths of
the city, like a bat to its cave, I felt as solitary as if I had dropped
from the moon.

But an English hotel is a cure for most of the sorrows of English life.
The well-served table--the excellent sherry--a blazing fire, not at all
unrequired in the first sharp evenings of our autumn--and the newspaper
"just come in," are capital "medicines for the mind diseased." And like
old Marecha