e Templeton's heir as not to feel a doubt lest I should
some day or other sponge upon his lordship for a place. Lord Saxingham
is in the administration, you know. Somehow or other I have an equivocal
amphibious kind of place in London society, which I don't like; on one
side I am a patrician connection, whom the _parvenu_ branches always
incline lovingly to--and on the other side I am a half-dependent cadet,
whom the noble relations look civilly shy at. Some day, when I grow
tired of travel and idleness, I shall come back and wrestle with these
little difficulties, conciliate my methodistical uncle, and grapple with
my noble cousin. But now I am fit for something better than getting on
in the world. Dry chips, not green wood, are the things for making a
blaze! How slow this fellow drives! Hollo, you sir! get on! mind, twelve
miles to the hour! You shall have sixpence a mile. Give me your purse,
Maltravers; I may as well be cashier, being the elder and the wiser man;
we can settle accounts at the end of the journey. By Jove, what a pretty
girl!"

BOOK II.

"He, of wide-blooming youth's fair flower possest,
Owns the vain thoughts--the heart that cannot rest!"
SIMONIDES, _in Tit. Hum_.

CHAPTER I.

"Il y eut certainement quelque chose de singulier dans mes
sentimens pour cette charmante femme."*--ROUSSEAU.

* There certainly was something singular in my sentiments for this
charming woman.

IT was a brilliant ball at the Palazzo of the Austrian embassy at
Naples: and a crowd of those loungers, whether young or old, who
attach themselves to the reigning beauty, was gathered round Madame de
Ventadour. Generally speaking, there is more caprice than taste in
the election of a beauty to the Italian throne. Nothing disappoints a
stranger more than to see for the first time the woman to whom the
world has given the golden apple. Yet he usually falls at last into the
popular idolatry, and passes with inconceivable rapidity from indignant
scepticism into superstitious veneration. In fact, a thousand things
beside mere symmetry of feature go to make up the Cytherea of the
hour.--tact in society--the charm of manner--nameless and piquant
brilliancy. Where the world find the Graces they proclaim the Venus.
Few persons attain pre-eminent celebrity for anything, without some
adventitious and extraneous circumstances which have nothing to do
with the thing celebrated. Some qualities or some circumstances throw a