are brought unpleasantly to one's recollection by such an indiscreet invocation."

"So Florio thought, and by way of letting the world perceive the essential difference between the base and the pure coin, he wrote an ode on England, which commenced as such an ode should!"

"Do you happen to recollect any of it, ma'am?"

"Only the first line, which I greatly regret, as the rhyme is Florio's chief merit. But this line is, of itself, sufficient to immortalize a man." "Do not keep us in torment, dear Mrs. Legend, but let us have it, for heaven's sake!"

"It began in this sublime strain, sir,- Beyond the wave !-Beyond the wave!' Now, Miss Effingham, that is what I call poetry!"

"And well you may, ma'am," returned the gentleman, who perceived Eve could scarce refrain from breaking out in a very unsentimental manner-" So much pathos."

"And so sententious and flowing!"

Condensing a journey of three thousand miles, as it might be, into three words, and a note of admiration. I trust it was printed with a note of admiration, Mrs. Legend?"

"Yes, sir, with two-one behind each wave-and such waves, Mr. Effingham!"

Indeed, ma'am, you may say so. One really gets a grand idea of them, England lying beyond each.".

"So much expressed in so few syllables!"

"I think I see every shoal, current, ripple, rock, island, and whale, between Sandy Hook and the Land's End."

"He hints at an epic."

'Pray God he may execute one.

Let him make haste, too, or he

may get 'behind the age,' 'behind the age."

Here the lady was called away to receive a guest. "Cousin Jack!"

"Eve Effingham?"

"Do you not sometimes fear offending?"

"Not a woman who begins with expressing her admiration of such a sublime thing as this. You are safe with such a person any where short of a tweak of the nose."

"You never were more mistaken in your life, Mademoiselle; every body here looks upon it as a matter of life and death."

The new guest was Mr. Pindar, one of those careless, unsentimental fellows, that occasionally throw off an ode that passes through Christendom, as dollars are known to pass from China to Norway, and yet, who never fancied spectacles necessary to his appearance, solemnity to his face, nor soirées to his renown. After quitting Mrs. Legend, he approached Eve, to whom he was slightly known, and accosted her.

"This is the region of taste, Miss Effingham," he said, with a shrug of the jaw, if such a member can shrug; "and I do not wonder at finding you here."

He then chatted pleasantly a moment, with the party, and passed on, giving an ominous gape as he drew nearer to the oi polloi of literature.

A moment after appeared Mr. Gray, a man who needed nothing but taste in the public, and the encouragement that would follow such a taste, to stand at, or certainly near, the head of the poets of our own time. He, too, looked shily at the galaxy, and took refuge in a corner. Mr. Pith followed; a man whose caustic wit needs only a sphere for its exercise, manners to portray, and a society with strong points about it to illustrate, in order to enrol his name high on the catalogue of satirists. Another ring announced Mr. Fun, a writer of exquisite humour, and of finished periods, but who, having perpetrated a little too much sentiment, was instantly seized upon by all the ultra ladies who were addicted to the same taste in that way, in the room.

These persons came late, like those who had already been too often dosed in the same way, to be impatient of repetitions. The first three soon got together in a corner, and Eve fancied they were laughing at the rest of the company, whereas, in fact, they were merely laughing at a bad joke of their own, their quick perception of the ludicrous having pointed out a hundred odd combinations and absurdities that would have escaped duller minds.

"Who, in the name of the twelve Cæsars, has Mrs. Legend got to lionize, yonder, with the white summit and the dark base?" asked the writer of odes.

66

'Some English pamphleteer, by what I can learn," answered he of satire ; some fellow who has achieved a pert review, or written a Minerva Pressism, and who now flourishes like a bay tree among us. A modern Horace, or a Juvenal on his travels."

"Fun is well badgered," observed Mr. Gray. "Do you not see that Miss Annual, Miss Monthly, and that young alphabet, D. O. V. E., have got him within the circle of their petticoats, where he will be martyred on a sigh?"

"He casts longing looks this way; he wishes you to go to his rescue, Pith."

"I let him take his fill of sentiment! I am no homœopathist in such matters. Large doses, in quick succession, will soonest work a cure. Here comes the lion, and he breaks loose from his cage like a beast that has been poked up with sticks."

"Good evening, gentlemen," said Captain Truck, wiping his face intensely, and who having made his escape from a throng of admirers, took refuge in the first port that offered. "You seem to be enjoying yourselves here in a rational and agreeable way. Quite cool and refreshing in this corner.'

"And yet we have no doubt that both our reason and our amusement will receive a large increase from the addition of your society, sir," returned Mr. Pith. "Do us the favour to take a seat, I beg of you, and rest yourself."

"With all my heart, gentlemen; for, to own the truth, these ladies make warm work about a stranger. I have just got out of what I call a category."

"You appear to have escaped with life, sir," observed Pindar, taking a cool survey of the other's person.

"Yes, thank God, I have done that, and it is pretty much all," answered the captain, wiping his face. 66 'I served in the French war

Truxtun's war, as we call it and I had a touch with the English in the privateer trade, between twelve and fifteen; and here, quite lately I was in an encounter with the savage Arabs down on the coast of Africa; and I account them all as so much snow-balling compared with the yard-arm and yard-arm work of this very night. I wonder if it is permitted to try a cigar at these conversation-onies, gentlemen?" I believe it is, sir," returned Pindar, coolly. "Shall I help you to a light?"

"Oh! Mr. Truck!" cried Mrs. Legend, following the chafed animal to his corner as one would pursue any other runaway, "instinct has brought you into this good company. "You are now in the very focus of American talents."

66

Pith.

Having just escaped from the focus of American talons," whispered

"I must be permitted to introduce you myself. Mr. Truck, Mr. Pindar-Mr. Pith-Mr. Gray-gentlemen, you must be so happy to be acquainted, being, as it were, engaged in the same pursuits!"

The captain rose and shook each of the gentlemen cordially by the hand, for he had, at least, the consolation of a great many introductions that night. Mrs. Legend disappeared to say something to some other prodigy.

"Happy to meet you, gentlemen," said the captain. "In what trade do you sail?"

66

66 By whatever name we may call it," answered Mr. Pindar, we can scarcely be said to go before the wind."

"Not in the Injee business, then, or the monsoons would keep the stun'sails set, at least."

"No, sir; but yonder is Mr. Moccasin, who has lately set up, secundum artem, in the Indian business, having written two novels in that way already, and begun a third."

"Are you all regularly employed, gentlemen ?"

"As regularly as inspiration points," said Mr. Pith. "Men of our occupation must make fair weather of it, or we had better be doing nothing."

"So I often tell my owners, but "go ahead' is the order. When I was a youngster a ship remained in port for a fair wind, but now she goes to work and makes one. The world seems to get young as I get

old."

"This is a rum litterateur," Gray whispered to Pindar.

"It is an obvious mystification," was the answer: poor Mrs. Legend has picked up some straggling porpoise, and converted him, by a touch of her magical wand, into a Boanerges of literature. The thing is as clear as day, for the worthy fellow smells of tar and cigar smoke. I perceive that Mr. Effingham is laughing out of the corner of his eyes, and will step across the room and get the truth in a minute."

The rogue was as good as his word, and was soon back again, and contrived to let his friends understand the real state of the case. A knowledge of the captain's true character encouraged this trio in the benevolent purpose of aiding the honest old seaman in his wish to smoke, and Pith managed to give him a lighted paper without becoming an open accessary to the plot.

"Will you take a cigar yourself, sir," said the captain, offering his box to Mr. Pindar.

"I thank you, Mr. Truck, I never smoke, but am a profound admirer of the flavour. Let me entreat you to begin as soon as possible."

Thus encouraged, Captain Truck drew two or three whiffs, when the rooms were immediately filled with the fragrance of a real Havana. At the first discovery, the whole literary pack went off on the scent. As for Mr. Fun, he managed to profit by the agitation that followed, in order to escape to the three wags in the corner, who were enjoying the scene with the gravity of so many dervishes.

"As I live," cried Lucius Junius Brutus, "there is the author of a—a—a— actually smoking a cigar !-How excessively piquant !"

"Do my eyes deceive me, or is not that the writer of e-e- -efumigating us all!" whispered Miss Annual.

"Nay, this cannot certainly be right," put in Florio, with a dogmatical manner. "All the periodicals agree that smoking is ungenteel in England."

66

You never were more mistaken, dear Florio," replied D. O. V. E. in a cooing tone. "The very last novel of society has a chapter in which the hero and heroine smoke in the declaration scene."

"Do they, indeed! That alters the case. Really, one would not wish to get behind so great a nation, nor yet go much before it. Pray, Captain Kant, what do your friends in Canada say, is, or is not, smoking permitted in good society there? the Canadians must, at least, be ahead of us."

"Not at all, sir," returned the editor in his softest tones, "it is revolutionary and jacobinical."

But the ladies prevailed, and, by a process that is rather peculiar to what may be called a "credulous" state of society, they carried the day. This process was simply to make one fiction authority for another. The fact that smoking was now carried so far in England, that the clergy actually used cigars in the pulpits, was affirmed on the authority of Mr. Truck himself, and, coupled with his present occupation, the point was deemed to be settled. Even Florio yielded, and his plastic mind soon saw a thousand beauties in the usage, that had hitherto escaped it. All the literati drew round the captain in a circle, to enjoy the spectacle, though the honest old mariner coutrived to throw out such volumes of vapour as to keep them at a safe distance. His four demure-looking neighbours got behind the barrier of smoke, where they deemed themselves entrenched against the assaults of sentimental petticoats, for a time, at least.

"Pray, Mr. Truck," inquired S. R. P., "is it commonly thought in the English literary circles, that Byron was a development of Shakspeare, or Shakspeare a shadowing forth of Byron?"

"Both, marm," said the captain, with a coolness that would have done credit to Aristabulus, for he had been fairly badgered into impudence, profiting by the occasion to knock the ashes off his cigar, "all incline to the first opinion, and most to the last."

"What finesse !" murmured one. "How delicate!" whispered a second. "A dignified reserve!" ejaculated a third. "So English!" exclaimed Florio.

"Do you think, Mr. Truck," asked D. O. V. E., "that the profane songs of Little have more pathos than the sacred songs of Moore; or that the sacred songs of Moore have more sentiment than the profane songs of Little?"

"A good deal of both, marm, and something to spare. I think there is little in one, and more in the other."

"Pray, sir," said J. R. P., "do you pronounce the name of Byron's lady-love, Guy-kee-oh-ly, or, Gwy-ky-oh-lee?”

"That depends on how the wind is. If on shore, I am apt to say 'oh-lee;' and if off shore, 'oh-lie.””

"What

"That's capital!” cried Florio, in an extasy of admiration. man in this country could have said as crack a thing as that?" "Indeed it is very witty," added Miss Monthly-"what does it mean?" "Mean! More than is seen or felt by common minds. Ah! the English are truly a great nation !-How delightfully he smokes !"

"I think he is much the most interesting man we have had out here," observed Miss Annual, "since the last bust of Scott!"

"Ask him, dear D. O. V. E.," whispered Julietta, who was timid, from the circumstance of never having published, "which he thinks the most ecstatic feeling, hope or despair?"

The question was put by the more experienced lady, according to request, though she first said, in a hurried tone, to her youthful sister "you can have felt but little, child, or you would know that it is despair, as a matter of course."

The honest captain, however, did not treat the matter so lightly, for he improved the opportunity to light a fresh cigar, throwing the still smoking stump into Mrs. Legend's grate, through a lane of literati, as he afterwards boasted, as coolly as he could have thrown it overboard, under other circumstances. Luckily for his reputation for sentiment, he mistook "ecstatic," a word he had never heard before, for "erratic;" and recollecting sundry roving maniacs that he had seen, he answered promptly

"Despair, out and out."

"I knew it," said one.

"It's in nature," added a second.

"All can feel its truth," rejoined a third.

"This point may now be set down as established," cried Florio, "and I hope no more will be said about it."

"This is encouragement to the searchers after truth," put in Captain

Kant.

"Pray, Hon. and Rev. Mr. Truck," asked Lucius Junius Brutus, at the joint suggestion of Junius Brutus and Brutus, "does the Princess Victoria smoke?"

"If she did not, sir, where would be the use in beina princess. I suppose you know that all the tobacco seized in England, after a deduction to informers, goes to the crown."

"I object to this usage," remarked Captain Kant, "as irreligious, French, and tending to sans-culotteism. I am willing to admit of this distinguished instance as an exception; but on all other grounds, I hall maintain that it savours of infidelity to smoke. The Prussian government, much the best of our times, never smokes."