tening his nose against the window- | in blue), as a young world-observer, and worthy art-friend, a young scion of British Adel, who had come to refresh himself at the Urquellen of his race, and see his brethren of the great family of Hermann." glasses of his study, and looking what the Engländer was about. Then he put on his gray cap with the huge green shade, and sauntered to the door: then he walked round me, and formed one of a band of street-idlers who were looking on: then at last he could restrain himself no more, but, pulling off his cap, with a low bow, began to discourse upon arts, and architecture in particular. "It is curious," says he, "that you have taken the same view of which a print has been engraved." I saw instantly that the old fellow was of a romantic turn, from this rodomontade to his lady nor was she a whit less so; nor was Dorothea less sentimental than her mamma. She knew every thing regarding the literature of Albion, as she was pleased to call it; and asked me news of all the famous writers there. "That is extraordinary," says II told her that Miss Edgeworth was (though it wasn't, for I had traced my drawing at a window off the very print in question). I added that I was, like all the world, immensely struck with the beauty of the edifice; heard of it at Rome, where it was considered to be superior to any of the celebrated fountains of that capital of the fine arts; finally, that unless, perhaps, the celebrated fountain of Aldgate in London might compare with it, Kalbsbraten building, except in that case, was incomparable. This speech I addressed in French, of which the worthy Hofarchitect understood somewhat, and, continuing to reply in German, our conversation grew pretty close. It is singular that I can talk to a man and pay him compliments with the utmost gravity, whereas, to a woman, I at once lose all self-possession, and have never said a pretty thing in my life. My operations on old Speck were so conducted, that in a quarter of an hour I had elicited from him an invitation to go over the town with him, and see its architectural beauties. So we walked through the huge halffurnished chambers of the palace, we panted up the copper pinnacle of the church-tower, we went to see the Museum and Gymnasium, and coming back into the market-place again, what could the Hofarchitect do but offer me a glass of wine and a seat in his house? He introduced me to his Gattinn, his Leocadia (the fat woman one of the loveliest young beauties at our court; I described to her Lady Morgan, herself as beautiful as the wild Irish girl she drew; I promised to give her a signature of Mrs. Hemans (which I wrote for her that very evening); and described a fox-hunt, at which I had seen Thomas Moore and Samuel Rogers, Esquires; and a boxing-match, in which the athletic author of "Pelham" was pitched against the hardy mountain bard, Wordsworth. You see education was not neglected, for though I have never read the works of the above-named ladies and gentlemen, yet I knew their names well enough. my Time passed away. I, perhaps, was never so brilliant in conversation as when excited by the Asmanshauser and the brilliant eyes of Dorothea that day. She and her parents had dined at their usual heathen hour; but I was, I don't care to own it, so smitten, that for the first time in my life I did not even miss the meal, and talked on until six o'clock, when tea was served. Madame Speck said they always drank it; and so placing a teaspoonful of bohea in a caldron of water, she placidly handed out this decoction, which we took with cakes and tartines. I leave you to imagine how disgusted Klingenspohr and Schnabel looked when they stepped in as usual that evening to make their party of whist with the Speck family! Down they were obliged to sit; and the lovely Dorothea, for that night, declined to play altogether, and sat on the sofa by me. at Kalbsbraten. The little court was removed to Siegmundslust, his Highness's country-seat: no balls were taking place, and, in consequence, I held my own with Dorothea pretty well. I treated her admirer, Licutenant Klingenspohr, with perfect scorn, had a manifest advantage over Major Schnabel, and used somehow to meet the fair one every day, walking in company with her mamma in the palace garden, or sitting under the acacias, with Belotte in her mother's lap, and the favorite romance beside her. Dear, dear Dorothea! what a number of novels she must have read in her time! She confesses to me that she had been in love with Uncas, with Saint Preux, with Ivanhoe, and with hosts of German heroes of romance ; and when I asked her if she, whose heart was so tender towards imaginary youths, had never had a preference for any one of her living adorers, she only looked, and blushed, and sighed, and said nothing. What we talked about, who shall tell? I would not, for my part, break the secret of one of those delicious conversations, of which I and every man in his time have held so many. You begin, very probably, about the weather'tis a common subject, but what sentiments the genius of Love can fling into it! I have often, for my part, said to the girl of my heart for the time being, "It's a fine day," or, "It's a rainy morning!" in a way that has brought tears to her eyes. Something beats in your heart, and twangle! a corresponding string thrills and echoes in hers. You offer her any thing her knitting-needles, a slice of bread and butter. what causes the grateful blush with which she accepts the one or the other? Why, she sees your heart handed over to her upon the needles, and the bread and butter is to her a sandwich with You see I had got on as well as man love inside it. If you say to your could do, until the confounded court grandmother, Ma'am, it is a fine season and the balls began, and then day," or what not, she would find in - why, then came my usual luck. the words no other meaning than Waltzing is a part of a German their outward and visible one; but say girl's life. With the best will in the so to the girl you love, and she under-world-which, I doubt not, she enstands a thousand mystic meanings in them. Thus, in a word, though Dorothea and I did not, probably, on the first night of our meeting, talk of any thing more than the weather, or trumps, or some subjects which to such listeners as Schnabel and Klingenspohr and others might appear quite ordinary, yet to us they had a different signification, of which Love alone held the key. Without further ado then, after the occurrences of that evening, I determined on staying at Kalbsbraten, and presenting my card the next day to the Hof-Marshal, requesting to have the honor of being presented to his Highness the Prince, at one of whose court-balls my Dorothea appeared as I have described her. It was summer when I first arrived tertains for me, for I never put the matter of marriage directly to herDorothea could not go to balls and not waltz. It was madness to me to see her whirling round the room with officers, attachés, prim little chamberlains with gold keys and embroidered coats, her hair floating in the wind, her hand reposing upon the abominable little dancer's epaulet, her goodhumored face lighted up with still greater satisfaction. I saw that I must learn to waltz too, and took my measures accordingly. The leader of the ballet at the Kalbsbraten theatre in my time was Springbock, from Vienna. He had been a regular Zephyr once, 'twas said, in his younger days; and though he is now fifteen stone weight, I can, hélas! recommend him conscientious ly as a master; and I determined to take some lessons from him in the art which I had neglected so foolishly in early life. It may be said, without vanity that I was an apt pupil, and in the course of half a dozen lessons I had arrived it very considerable agility in the waltzing line, and could twirl round the room with him at such a pace as made the old gentleman pant again, and hardly left him breath enough to puff out a compliment to his pupil. I may say, that in a single week I became an expert waltzer; but as I wished, when I came out publicly in that character, to be quite sure of myself, and as I had hitherto practised not with a lady, but with a very fat old man, it was agreed that he should bring a lady of his acquaintance to perfect me, and accordingly, at my eighth lesson, Madame Springbock herself came to the dancing-room, and the old Zephyr performed on the violin. If any man ventures the least sneer with regard to this lady, or dares to insinuate any thing disrespectful to her or myself, I say at once that he is an impudent calumniator. Madame Springbock is old enough to be my grandmother, and as ugly a woman as I ever saw; but, though old, she was passionnée pour la danse, and not having (on account, doubtless, of her age and unprepossessing appearance) many opportunities of indulging in her favorite pastime, made up for lost time by immense activity whenever she could get a partner. In vain, at the end of the hour, would Springbock exclaim, "Amalia, my soul's blessing, the time is up! "Play on, dear Alphonso!" would the old lady exclaim, whisking me round: and though I had not the least pleasure in such a homely partner, yet for the sake of perfecting myself, I waltzed and waltzed with her, until we were both half dead with fatigue. At the end of three weeks I could waltz as well as any man in Germany. At the end of four weeks there was a grand ball at court in honor of H. H. the Prince of Dummerland, and his Princess, and then I determined I would come out in public. I dressed myself with unusual care and splendor. My hair was curled and my mustache dyed to a nicety; and of the four hundred gentlemen present, if the girls of Kalbsbraten did select one who wore an English hussar uniform, why should I disguise the fact? In spite of my silence, the news had somehow got abroad, as news will in such small towns, von Fitz-Boodle was coming out in a waltz that evening. His highness the Duke even made an allusion to the circumstance. When on this eventful night, I went, as usual, and made him my bow in the presentation, "Vous, Monsieur,' "said he vous qui êtes si jeune, devez aimer la danse." I blushed as red as my trousers, and, bowing, went away. Herr I stepped up to Dorothea. Heavens! how beautiful she looked! and how archly she smiled, as, with a thumping heart, I asked her hand for a waltz! She took out her little mother-of-pearl dancing-book, she wrote down my name with her pencil: we were engaged for the fourth waltz, and till then I left her to other partners. Who says that his first waltz is not a nervous moment? I vow I was more excited than by any duel I ever fought. I would not dance any contre-danse or galop. I repeatedly went to the buffet and got glasses of punch (dear simple Germany! 'tis with rumpunch and egg-flip thy children. strengthen themselves for the dance !) I went into the ball-room and looked the couples bounded before me, the music clashed and rung in my earsall was fiery, feverish, indistinct. The gleaming white columns, the polished oaken floors in which the innumerable tapers were reflected — all together swam before my eyes, and I was in a pitch of madness almost when the fourth waltz at length came. Oh, how my hand trembled as I placed it round the waist of Dorothea! With my left hand I took her right did she squeeze it? I think she did to this day I think she did. Away we went! we tripped over the polished oak floor like two young fairies. "Courage, monsieur," said she, with her sweet smile. Then it was "Très bien, monsieur." Then I heard the voices humming and buzzing about. "Il danse bien l'Anglais." “Ma foi, oui,” says another. On we went, twirling and twisting, and turning and whirling; couple after couple dropped panting off. Little Klingenspohr himself was obliged to give in. All eyes were upon us we were going round alone. Dorothea was almost exhausted, when I have been sitting for two hours since I marked the points, thinking-thinking. I have committed crimes in my life who hasn't? But talk of remorse, what remorse is there like that which rushes up in a flood to my brain sometimes when I am alone, and causes me to blush when I'm abed in the dark? I fell, sir, on that infernal slippery floor. Down we came like shot; we rolled over and over in the midst of the ball-room, the music going ten miles an hour, 800 pairs of eyes fixed upon us, a cursed shriek of laughter bursting out from all sides. Heavens ! how clear I heard it, as we went on rolling and rolling! "My child! my Dorothea!" shrieked out Madame Speck, rushing forward, and as soon as she had breath to do so, Dorothea of course screamed too; then she fainted, then she was disentangled from out my spurs, and borne off by a bevy of tittering women. "Clumsy brute!" said Madame Speck, turning her fat back upon me. I remained upon my seunt, wild, ghastly, looking about. It was all up with meme-I knew it was. I wished I could have died there, and I wish so still. Klingenspohr married her, that is the long and short; but before that event I placed a sabre-cut across the young scoundrel's nose, which destroyed his beauty forever. O Dorothea! you can't forgive me you oughtn't to forgive me; but I love you madly still. My next flame was Ottilia: but let us keep her for another number; my feelings overpower me at present. CHAPTER I. OTTILIA. THE ALBUM. THE MEDITERRANEAN HEATH. TRAVELLING some little time back in a wild part of Connemara, where I had been for fishing and seal-shooting, I had the good luck to get admission to the château of a hospitable Irish gentleman, and to procure some news of my once dear Ottilia. Yes, of no other than Ottilia v. Schlippenschlopp, the Muse of Kalbsbraten-Pumpernickel, the friendly little town far away in Sachsenland - where old Speck built the town pump, where Klingenspohr was slashed across the nose, where Dorothea rolled over and over_in_that horrible waltz with Fitz-BooPsha!-away with the recollection: but wasn't it strange to get news of Ottilia in the wildest corner of Ireland, where I never should have thought to hear her gentle name? Walking on that very Urrisbeg Mountain under whose shadow I heard Ottilia's name, Mackay, the learned author of "The Flora Patlandica," discovered the Mediterranean heath, such a flower as I have often plucked on the sides of Vesuvius, and as Proserpine, no doubt, amused herself in gathering as she strayed in the fields of Enna. Here it is the self-same flower, peering out at the Atlantic from Roundstone Bay; here, too, in this wild lonely place, nestles the fragrant memory of my Ottilia! gratify almost every stranger who came into his native town. Any old place with which I have once been familiar (as, perhaps, I have before stated in these "Confessions" but never mind that) is in some sort dear to me; and were I Lord Shootingcastle or Colonel Popland, I think after a residence of six months there I should love the Fleet Prison. As I saw the old familiar pipe, I took it down, and crammed it with Cavendish tobacco, and lay down on a sofa, and puffed away for an hour well-nigh, thinking of old, old times. "You're very entertaining to-night, Fitz," says young Blake, who had made several tumblers of Punch for out saying a word. Don't ye think ye'd be more easy in bed than snorting and sighing there on my sofa, and groaning fit to make me go hang myself? "I am thinking, Blake," says I, "about Pumpernickel, where old Speck gave you this pipe." In a word, after a day on Bally-me, which I had gulped down withlynch Lake (where, with a brown fly and a single hair, I killed fourteen salmon, the smallest twenty-nine pounds weight, the largest somewhere about five stone ten), my young friend Blake Bodkin Lynch Browne (a fine lad who has made his continental tour) and I adjourned, after dinner, to the young gentleman's private room, for the purpose of smoking a certain cigar; which is never more pleasant than after a hard day's sport, or a day spent in-doors, or after a good dinner, or a bad one, or at night when you are tired, or in the morning when you are fresh, or of a cold winter's day, or of a scorching summer's afternoon, or at any other moment you choose to fix upon. What should I see in Blake's room but a rack of pipes, such as are to be found in almost all the bachelors' rooms in Germany, and amongst them was a porcelain pipe-head bearing the image of the Kalbsbraten pump! There it was the old spout, the old familiar allegory of Mars, Bacchus, Apollo virorum, and the rest, that I had so often looked at from Hofarchitect Speck's window, as I sat there by the side of Dorothea. The old gentleman had given me one of these very pipes; for he had hundreds of them painted, wherewith he used to ""Deed he did," replies the young man; "and did ye know the old Bar'n?" "I did," said I. "My friend, I have been by the banks of the Bendemeer. Tell me, are the nightingales still singing there, and do the roses still bloom?" "The hwhat ? cries Blake. "What the divvle, Fitz, are you growling about? Bendemeer Lake's in Westmoreland, as I preshume; and as for roses and nightingales, I give ye my word it's Greek ye're talking to me." And Greek it very possibly was, for my young friend, though as good across country as any man in his county, has not the fine feeling and tender perception of beauty which may be found elsewhere, dear madam. "Tell me about Speck, Blake, and Kalbsbraten, and Dorothea, and Klingenspohr her husband." "He with the cut across the nose, is it?" cries Blake. "I know him well, and his old wife." "His old what, sir!" cries Fitz |