ved no
more,--but the rising nations of white men wherever they are to be
seen. You English have no sympathy with a people who claim to be at
least your equals. The clown has trod upon the courtier's heels till
the clown is clown no longer, and the courtier has hardly a court in
which he may dangle his sword-knot."

"If so the clown might as well spare the courtier," not meaning the
rebuke which his words implied.

"Ah--h,--but the clown will not spare the courtier, Mr. Glascock. I
understand the gibe, and I tell you that the courtier shall be spared
no longer;--because he is useless. He shall be cut down together with
the withered grasses and thrown into the oven, and there shall be an
end of him." Then she turned round to appeal to an American gentleman
who had joined them, and Mr. Glascock made his escape. "I hold it to
be the holiest duty which I owe to my country never to spare one of
them when I meet him."

"They are all very well in their way," said the American gentleman.

"Down with them, down with them!" exclaimed the poetess, with a
beautiful enthusiasm. In the meantime Mr. Glascock had made up his
mind that he could not dare to ask Caroline Spalding to be his wife.
There were certain forms of the American female so dreadful that no
wise man would wilfully come in contact with them. Miss Petrie's
ferocity was distressing to him, but her eloquence and enthusiasm
were worse even than her ferocity. The personal incivility of which
she had been guilty in calling him a withered grass was distasteful
to him, as being opposed to his ideas of the customs of society; but
what would be his fate if his wife's chosen friend should be for ever
dinning her denunciation of withered grasses into his ear?

He was still thinking of all this when he was accosted by Mrs.
Spalding. "Are you going to dear Lady Banbury's to-morrow?" she
asked. Lady Banbury was the wife of the English Minister.

"I suppose I shall be there in the course of the evening."

"How very nice she is; is she not? I do like Lady Banbury;--so soft,
and gentle, and kind."

"One of the pleasantest old ladies I know," said Mr. Glascock.

"It does not strike you so much as it does me," said Mrs. Spalding,
with one of her sweetest smiles. "The truth is, we all value what
we have not got. There are no Lady Banburys in our country, and
therefore we think the more of them when we meet them here. She is
talking of going to Rome for the Carnival, and has ask