tory.

PART II.

I was at the Baths of Lucca during a season made gay by the presence
of a large proportion of the agreeable and accessible court of
Tuscany. The material for my untiring study was in abundance, yet it
was all of the worldly character which the attractions of the place
would naturally draw together, and my homage had but a choice between
differences of display, in the one pursuit of admiration. In my walks
through the romantic mountain-paths of the neighborhood, and along the
banks of the deep-down river that threads the ravine above the
village, I had often met, meantime, a lady accompanied by a well-bred
and scholar-like looking man; and though she invariably dropped her
veil at my approach, her admirable movement, as she walked, or stooped
to pick a flower, betrayed that conscious possession of beauty and
habitual confidence in her own grace and elegance, which assured me of
attractions worth taking trouble to know. By one of those "unavoidable
accidents" which any respectable guardian angel will contrive, to
oblige one, I was a visiter to the gentleman and lady--father and
daughter--soon after my curiosity had framed the desire; and in her I
found a marvel of beauty, from which I looked in vain for my usual
escape--that of placing the ladder of my heart against a loftier and
fairer.

Mr. Wangrave was one of those English gentlemen who would not exchange
the name of an ancient and immemorially wealthy family for any title
that their country could give them, and he used this shield of modest
honor simply to protect himself in the enjoyment of habits, freed, as
far as refinement and culture could do it, from the burthens and
intrusions of life above and below him. He was ceaselessly educating
himself--like a man whose whole life was only too brief an
apprenticeship to a higher existence--and, with an invalid but
intellectual and lovely wife, and a daughter who seemed unconscious
that she could love, and who kept gay pace with her youthful-hearted
father in his lighter branches of knowledge, his family sufficed to
itself, and had determined so to continue while abroad. The society of
no Continental watering-place has a very good name, and they were
there for climate and seclusion. With two ladies, who seemed to occupy
the places and estimation of friends, (but who were probably the paid
nurse and companion to the invalid,) and a kind-hearted old secretary
to Mr. Wangrave, whose duties consist