ink that novelties are butterflies
To be pursued as food for inanition),
Her charming figure and romantic history
Became a kind of fashionable mystery.

The women much divided--as is usual
Amongst the sex in little things or great.
Think not, fair creatures, that I mean to abuse you all--
I have always liked you better than I state:
Since I 've grown moral, still I must accuse you all
Of being apt to talk at a great rate;
And now there was a general sensation
Amongst you, about Leila's education.

In one point only were you settled--and
You had reason; 't was that a young child of grace,
As beautiful as her own native land,
And far away, the last bud of her race,
Howe'er our friend Don Juan might command
Himself for five, four, three, or two years' space,
Would be much better taught beneath the eye
Of peeresses whose follies had run dry.

So first there was a generous emulation,
And then there was a general competition,
To undertake the orphan's education.
As Juan was a person of condition,
It had been an affront on this occasion
To talk of a subscription or petition;
But sixteen dowagers, ten unwed she sages,
Whose tale belongs to 'Hallam's Middle Ages,'

And one or two sad, separate wives, without
A fruit to bloom upon their withering bough--
Begg'd to bring up the little girl and 'out,'-
For that 's the phrase that settles all things now,
Meaning a virgin's first blush at a rout,
And all her points as thorough-bred to show:
And I assure you, that like virgin honey
Tastes their first season (mostly if they have money).

How all the needy honourable misters,
Each out-at-elbow peer, or desperate dandy,
The watchful mothers, and the careful sisters
(Who, by the by, when clever, are more handy
At making matches, where ''t is gold that glisters,'
Than their he relatives), like flies o'er candy
Buzz round 'the Fortune' with their busy battery,
To turn her head with waltzing and with flattery!

Each aunt, each cousin, hath her speculation;
Nay, married dames will now and then discover
Such pure disinterestedness of passion,
I 've known them court an heiress for their lover.
'Tantaene!' Such the virtues of high station,
Even in th