ith a full knowledge of its own vanity and
nothingness,--which saith, The object of my passion still remains, but
it is worthless in my sight--never more can I renew my early feeling--I
marvel how I ever could have loved--I loathe, I disdain the weakness of
my former self;--ah, the end of such love is indeed despair!

"Do you mark yonder black marble slab, which is spread as over a tomb?
It covers the most silvery fountain that ever mirrored the golden light
of noon, or caught the fall of the evening dew, in an element bright
as themselves. The radiant likeness of a spirit rests on those waters.
I bade him give duration to the shadow he flung upon the wave, that
I might gaze on it during his absence. The first act of my immortality
was to shut it from my sight. There must that black marble rest for
ever."

[By the way, the ancients are excellent judges of beauty. Socrates calls
beauty (we dare not use the contemptible _it_,) a short-lived
tyranny: Xenophon says "Fire burns only when we are near it; but a
beautiful face burns and inflames, though at a distance: Plato calls
beauty a privilege of nature: Theophrastus (arch fellow,) a silent
cheat: Theocritus, (cunning elf,) a delightful prejudice; Carneades, a
solitary kingdom, (which he doubtless would keep to himself): Domitian
says that nothing is more grateful, (not even killing flies); Aristotle
affirms that beauty is better than all the letters of recommendation in
the world: Homer, that it is a glorious gift of nature; and Ovid calls
beauty a favour bestowed by the gods, which this same Ovid shows the
gods to have been jealous of among mortals." Certainly the moderns do
not wage war for a beautiful woman, as did the ancients: we fear they
would rather fight for an old castle.

To conclude, if, as Steele tells us, "to make happy is the true empire
of beauty;" why, buy the Book of Beauty, to be sure.]

* * * * *

THE COMIC OFFERING

[MISS SHERIDAN presents us with her third volume of ladye mirth,
as heretofore, over-flowing with fun and patter, and sprinkled with
some sixty or seventy Cuts--many of them, to use a critical term,
of "spirited design." Probably, the most humorous tale among the
fifty is--]

THE FLYBEKINS, OR THE FIRE-ESCAPE.

The Flybekins were distant connexions of the great Lord B., living
"genteelly" in the west of England: and Mr. and Mrs. Flybekin were the
only adult members of the family at the period of