covered in a wonderful manner, and said, "Good morning, Miss Waddle," in the tenderest tone. Miss Waddle thought that good morning the real music of the spheres, and reciprocated with trembling emotion. The situation became instantly embarrassing. They said no more. Without doubt both were struggling with unutterable things. Their hands met. Their eyes did the same. The electric telegraph was in operation. The barrier was passed.

"Miss Waddle," said the stranger, "do you believe in love at first sight?"

"Happy stranger," sighed Miss Waddle, "love is heaven and heaven is love."

"Miss Waddle, you are the soul of poetry and feeling. Do you imagine I have known you but a day? Alas! I have known you for years."

"Good heavens!" cried Miss Waddle, "how is that?-last night

"Last night," said the stranger, "we met for the first time, indeed, face to face; but for years I have been intimately acquainted with you.'

"Where! oh where ?" said Miss Waddle, hysterically.

"In my dreams-in the visions of the night-after I was asleep, when the world was in the arms of slumber, when no body was awake-in fancy-imagination-ethereal being, you have visited my lonely heart. I knew you in an instant when we really met. My heart succumbed at once."

"Oh! not another hour like this remains in unknown time," said Miss Waddle, sinking into the stranger's arms, and closing her eyes as if she had gone away in a very bad faint, indeed. The rapidity of her recovery, however, when the stranger pressed his lips to hers, and the strong vitality with which she returned the pressure, made it probable that she had not been obliged by her emotions to retire very far into the land of forgetfulness.

"You must be mine," said the stranger.

"Thine, thine for ever," said Miss Waddle, energetically.

"Fly we then whilst none discover," cried the stranger, urging her towards the creek. A small boat lay moored there. It belonged to Miss Waddle. The stranger bore her yielding form into the boat, seated her half recumbent in the sternsheets, and pulled down the creek. Miss Waddle's dream of life was out. Her fondest, wildest dreams were in the act of bring realized. She was not only loved, courted, proposed to, but she was eloping-really and truly eloping-running

away-in a boat-her darling lover pulling the oars. "Tyrant barks in vain ye ride," exclaimed Miss Waddle, sotto voce.

"The mouth of the creek is only a quarter of a mile from the steamboat landing," said Mr. Huntly, "and the Albany boat passes in an hour. Pursuit will be idle."

Miss Waddle was perfectly conscious that no one would be idle enough to pursue; but she clasped her hands, looked back in a terrified manner, and answered tremulously:

"Pull, fervid stranger, pull!"

And the stranger pulled faster and faster, and Miss Waddle breathed freer and freer, not that any body was after her, but that these little alternations of hope and fear, anxiety and exultation were proper for a young lady eloping with her beau ideal. And she was. Her beau ideal! What was he? She would not insult him by inquiring. Short of a count he could not be; nothing under the degree of a count could have such a moustache. Moustaches were not common in those days. A count he must be-should be. Miss Waddle drew her tablets from her pocket. She could not think of leaving her mother without a word. She was too tender a daughter for that. But she would not write to her directly. The shock might be too great. It should be broken softly. She would intrust the commission, the delicate commission, to a friend. She would write to Miss Pilkington, and beseech her to seek her disconsolate maternal guardian, and break the news of her desertion to her. Miss Pilkington was a gossip, and a gad-about. Miss Pilkington was malicious. But the sacred trust of friendship should be reposed in her, and would doubtless conquer all her ordinary propensities; and if all Persepolis knew it in an hour after Miss P. received the note, could Anna Maria Sophronia help it? In what other bosom could she confide with more security? Were they not all the same? So Miss Waddle

wrote:

"TRUEST OF FRIENDS: My agitation overcomes me. I am about to bid adieu, perhaps an eternal adieu, to the scenes of our childhood. Ah! Julià, I love-and am beloved. Oh, my heart! The Count Edward de Huntly has borne away, with gentle violence, my too confiding form. Our boat is launched upon the wave of life-together we must hereafter ride its storms. Break this gently to my dear mother, and believe me, that neither in the splendors of a court, nor the gayeties of a capital, will I forget my humble friends."

That was the unkindest cut of all. Would Miss Pilkington die of envy and rage? Miss Waddle fancied she hoped not

but she put a dash under the humble, to be sure of its being appreciated. Vain precaution. Miss Pilkington went into hysterics over it, and the De Bounces were not seen in the village for three months. They had been at the party. They were included in the "humble friends." Providence preserved their reason, but the eldest never entirely recovered the shock, and the younger sister fell into a melancholy which threatened her life for several weeks.

Miss Waddle and the stranger reached the dock. The steamer was there. They were in the very nick of time. The gods were propitious. Before night they were in the city. They drove to the Irving. The minister came. The service was performed. Miss Waddle was Mrs. Huntly. She felt some degree of wonder that Mr. H. should sink his title, but did not linger over the idea. She was too happy. It was sufficient for her that she could call him so.

"My lord," said Miss Waddle.

"My who?" said the ardent stranger. "You, my lord," said Miss Waddle.

The stranger could not repress a laugh. "Who told you, my love, I was a lord?"

"I don't know-no one-I took it for granted-I-"

"Bless you, Mrs. Huntly, I am in the wholesale and retail. liquor line."

"The liquor line!" gasped Miss Waddle.

"True as preaching, my love."

"Three cents a glass?"

"Nothing less than sixpence, I assure you."

When Miss Waddle recovered from her hysterics she was in bed. They were debating whether it would be necessary to shave her head. The possibility of such an indignity restored her at once. She sat upright in bed, and waved them majestically away. The doctor left. Mr. Huntly staid. Mr. Huntly received the whole charge. He bore up manfully for an hour. At the end of that time he was a defeated man. He had agreed to sail for Europe in the next packet. Every thing in the shape of property was realized; the wholesale and retail liquor store sold; the farm-Miss Waddle's farm-added to the stock, and the treacherous shores of America abandoned before Miss Pilkington or Persepolis discovered they had been sold.

Miss Waddle now resides in the Rue St. Honoré. The cidevant Mr. Huntly has a large vineyard, which they visit occasionally together, and of which she speaks as "the domain," in

her letters home. They are known as the Count and Countess De Bourde (Huntly, Miss Waddle having explained in her first, being an assumed name), and Persepolis is sold to this day.

Miss Waddle is a model. She has risen superior to fortune. She has conquered fate. Deceived in her beau ideal, she has made him what he ought to have been at first, and has the proud satisfaction of knowing that Persepolis believes her a veritable countess, and dies daily deaths of envy at her for

tune.

THE DIVAN.

I.

A LITTLE maid of Astrakan,

An idol on a silk divan;

She sits so still, and never speaks,

She holds a cup divine;

"Tis full of wine, and on her cheeks
Are stains and smears of wine!

II.

Thou little girl of Astrakan,
I join thee on the silk divan:

There is no need to seek the land,

The rich bazaars where rubies shine;

For mines are in that little hand,

And on those little cheeks of thine!

RICHARD CUMBERLAND.

Memoirs of Richard Cumberland, written by himself; containing an Account of his Life and Writings, interspersed with Anecdotes and Characters of several of the most Distinguished Persons of his Time, with whom he has had intercourse and connection. With Illustrative Notes. By HENRY FLANDERS, author of the "Lives and Times of the Chief-Justices." Philadelphia: Parry & McMillan. 1856.

THE present American edition of Cumberland's Autobiogra phy is generally a reprint from the London edition of 1806. What was the ruling motive in the mind of the "Professor of his own history," as Jean Paul calls himself, in the production of the work, we are by no means certain that we know. He says: "The copyright of these memoirs produced to me the sum of five hundred pounds." That perhaps was the leading inducement to their preparation, since at the time they were undertaken, the failure of his Spanish embassy, and the refusal or neglect of the English government to refund the advances its prosecution had forced upon him, left him in a very straitened pecuniary position. But the motive and the inducement are two things. We have said that we are not certain of the motive. We wish we were quite certain that it was not what it seems to us to have been. Nothing goes more against the grain of our thinking, than an ill opinion of any one who has done the world service in any department of art. We never yield to its influence until we have exhausted every word of testimony against it. In the present instance, unfortunately, we can discover nothing upon which to build up a more charitable hypothesis than that which at first suggests itself. The motive of Cumberland in his autobiography appears to be the same which mainly characterized his efforts through life-vanity. Nor is his vanity of a common and ordinary kind. It is not the pleasant surface-vanity which revels in its own good opinion, and wears its satisfaction as a cloak, beneath which the owner is shielded from the biting wind of criticism, or the foggy breath of envy. Garrick described him as "a man without a skin;" and if, in fact, he was fitted by nature with the ordinary cuticle and epidermis of humanity, both were so amazingly thin that a child's arrow, headed with a bent pin, and shot