the brow of a fellow-pilgrim-One, who, having ceased to feel, began to observe, and who was ready to wander forth to any land for any space of time, because for her earth held no longer a home! Such was the travelling party.

EVENING THE FIRST.

INTRODUCTORY LETTER.

Paris. You ask me, my dear sister, to write to you. You say, that separated as we have been from our infancy, it is time now that we should become acquainted, although it be only on paper. Ah, dissembler! you too, like all the rest of the world, retain the real motive in your heart, and find another of fairer seeming for the lip. You have taken my place at the board, and by the hearth of her who adopted me as her own. You hear her speak of the absent one, you find continually memorials of your stranger sister; in one corner, a roll of scribbled papers, in another a bundle of unfinished sketches, and in some bye-nook of the old mansion a girlish portrait: thus your curiosity is excited-well, be it so. not regret more than I do, that my hurried departure from England prevented us from meeting, had it been for one hour, and exchanging one embrace in my old home; nevertheless you must do as I have done,-smile calmly and yield to destiny. If any

You do

thing could induce me to turn Turk, it would be their most comfortable doctrine of fatality; but this is heterodoxy.

I will write to you, but you must expect me to write little of myself, much of the people with whom I journey, and of the places whereat we linger. Every person is endowed with two separate beings-two lives two worlds. The one, external, and drawn from persons, places, chances, and changes: this is the existence which others see and note,-from which they judge us to be happy or miserable,—the life, as it were of the body, of which poverty and riches, health and sickness, society and solitude, form the events. Mine has, hitherto, been very monotonous, every day bringing with it a recurrence of the same duties, the same enjoyments, a quiet walk, a twilight chat, an evening visit. The other life is internal. Feelings, affections, waking dreams, memories, and anticipations make up its history. Alas! I dare not tell you of the tumult, the confusion,change that once but now the case is reversed. Stiller than the lake waters on a summer evening · than the slumber of a tired child, is now that inward world of thronging hopes and fears, which kept my youthful spirit in one perpetual fever; while abroad all is variety and excitement. Yes, all of interest that now occupies my life is drawn perforce from external sources. I live in a new world. Blue lake and flower-wreathed mountain, and dark pine forest, all these things, which used to be mere names, are no longer worshipped as unseen divinities, but have assumed tangible forms, and have impressed themselves in the cabinet of memory in characters which

can never be erased or forgotten. Every morning wakens me to some new anticipations. Every evening I lie down with some new and glorious picture of nature, enshrined as a fresh treasure, something more to muse on and to love. A day passes not which brings not with it some picture, or song, or cken, that tells a tale of the bye-gone years, and touching one link of the chain of incidents, which have long lain mere barren facts in the mind, clothes those facts with vitality and beauty, and peoples the past with touching and beautiful forms. Ah, Minna! it is of all these things I will tell you. You must not sit still at home, as I did for so many years, and fancy there is nothing worth interest to you beyond the hawthorn hedge that bounds your village garden ;nothing worth love besides your quiet pussy, good cat and excellent mouser though she be ;-nothing worth a sigh but a broken china bowl and a spoiled bonnet. You must ramble with me over these enchanting countries, take a peep at the changing aspect of nature, at the still more changing aspect of man, and though you know not yet, as I know, that hope is a vain dream, and sorrow an useless folly, because all beneath the sun is vanity, yet will I try to make you read with interest the little snatches of history and sketches of far-off countries, which you will not find upon a graver page. We are all about to turn collectors. We shall not journey only along the high roads, but turn aside occasionally into the byepaths and untrodden wildernesses, and if any of us chance to pick up a little bit of locality, you shall have the same forthwith.

How shall we pass this long, long evening? This was a question more easily asked than answered. It was our first evening at Versailles, and a very gloomy evening it was. Harry had already thoroughly investigated the apartment, had opened every drawer, and even with laudable diligence taken up every cushion of every chair. In vain; not a work-box, book, or even stray sheet of paper that promised employment. May and Violet had already wandered at least twenty times from one dismal window to the other; pat, pat, pat, down came the rain, quick, sharp and regular; no hope of a cessation. Violet declared at last, with a miserable yawn, that the rain fell as fast before the window facing the town, as before that one facing the court-yard. To what important results will not a trifle often lead! Newton's apple floats before my mind's eye; but I abstain-that instance has been so often quoted. "Mamma," said a little girl, the youngest member of our party, "mamma, I have finished the last page of the last volume of Evenings at Home-mamma, I wish they had written a hundred volumes of Evenings at Home."

It was then that Lady Julian proposed that we should while away our evenings abroad, by noting down any little incident or legend we might hear during the day and deposit the same in one portfolio

a literary or littery omnibus, to be opened occasionally for the benefit and amusement of the community. This scheme, being a novelty, was hailed with great delight.

"The very thing, my dear aunt!" exclaimed Violet, "you could not have devised a more pleasant plan for putting us all on the qui vive, and for passing