said Lord de Clifford, stepping forward and assisting his dulcinea to descend. "In that case," said her ladyship, in her blandest tone, "I should be vaustly sorry that momselle should remain, however I may regret the loss of her company." As soon as mademoiselle had safely alighted, Herbert prepared to take her place; whereupon his amiable parent, with all the tender anxiety of a mother, fearing (as he was only three-and-thirty) that he would not be able to get in with no other assistance than that of his own servant, who stood at the door, cried out, "Croaker! Croaker! be so good as to help Mr. Herbert; Frump! Frump! how can you be so vaustly stupid; why don't you get down; don't you see Mr. Herbert a going to get into the carriage." While her ladyship was making these maternal arrangements, Lord de Clifford had handed Mademoiselle d'Antoville into his phaeton, and seated himself beside her; consequently, it only remained for his wife to take possession of the britschka, with her child, Mowbray, and M. de Rivoli, which she accordingly did. The parrot, getting impatient of delay, now began to exert its lungs, and cry, "Make haste! make haste! you are so vaustly stupid." "What a devilish clever bird that is of yours, my dear mamma," said Herbert Grimstone, almost deafened with its scream. 66 Very just observation," responded the parrot. "I declare it's downright witty," said Herbert, with a forced laugh. But the parrot did not like to be laughed at, so it began to scream louder than before. "Croaker! Croaker!" in her turn screamed the dowager; "bring down the cage, and put it into Lady de Clifford's carriage. The fact is," said she, turning towards Julia, "I brought it, Lady de Clifford, thinking it might be an agreeable addition to the little gurl; pretty dear! Polly's very pretty, isn't she?" "I hate it," said the child; "pray don't send it here :" but her words were lost in the sound of her grandmother's chariot wheels, while Monsieur de Rivoli's voice was heard above them, and even above the cracking of all the postillions' whips, exclaiming, "Mais diable! vous avez des drolles idées de l'agréable vous !" L2 CHAPTER XII. "A young author was reading a tragedy to Monsieur Piron, who soon discovered that he was a great plagiarist. The poet, perceiving Piron very often pull off his hat at the end of a line, asked him the reason. I cannot pass a very old acquaintance,' replied the critic, 'without that civility.' "Friends and comrades of mine," He exclaim'd, "as a sign, While I slept has come o'er me a dream all divine. DR. MAGINN's Homeric Ballads.-No. 4.-THE CLOAK. THE next evening found the whole party assembled in the little "cabaret" at Fusina, grumblingly awaiting the arrival of the gondolas to convey them to Venice, and the gentlemen unanimously consigning their respective couriers to the tender mercies of the nether powers, for not being there with the boats before them. The ladies, as is generally the case, were more resigned to their fate. Mowbray had stuffed his travelling-cap into a broken window, to guard Julia from cold; while Saville, with equal solicitude, had converted his cloak into tapestry for a broken door, to prevent an invasion of the winds, lest Fanny should share the fate of Olithyas, and be run away with by Boreas. Mademoiselle d'Antoville sat in a window-seat, recruiting her spirits with "le moindre supçon d'eau de vie." Beside her sat Lord de Clifford, like Jupiter in Olympus, surrounded by clouds-of smoke, which he was puffing from a meerschaum, emblazoned with the loves of Charlotte and Werter. Little Julia had formed a " parti quarrée" with Prince, Zoe, and Titania. Monsieur de Rivoli was trying to obtain a satisfactory glance of as much of his own face as was recognisable in a threeinch triangular piece of looking-glass, which gleamed from a brown paper frame, that formed a modest "basrelief" to the whitewashed wall. Herbert Grimstone was stretched upon some carpet bags at his mother's feet (deep in the study of his own work upon Timbuctoo); that amiable lady having taken the precaution to convert Mrs. Frump's Manchester shawl into a chaircushion, thereby effectually guarding herself from the dangerous results of any sedentary damp or cold which she might otherwise have been exposed to. Her next precaution was to tuck up her habit, and so reveal a neat white dimity petticoat, and a very judicious pair of cotton stockings and black leather shoes, which, with the feet they contained, were deposited in Frump's lap, who had received orders to take up her "lodging on the cold ground," and exemplify the ups and downs of life by a gentle friction of her ladyship's ankles. At a respectful but convenient distance, stood very perpendicularly, with his back against the wall, that enduring individual, Croaker; his mistress's clogs and the parrot's cage in one hand, while with the other he pressed to his manly breast Snap, her ladyship's canine favourite, around whose neck, with a benevolence which, as she herself would have said, "did credit to her head and hort," she tied a scarlet worsted comfortable, that formed an enlivening contrast to the drab density of the animal's natural complexion; notwithstanding which, it was blinking and shivering in all the naturalities of a demislumber, its nose pushed into the protecting bosom of Croaker, who generally acted as dry-nurse when Frump was otherwise engaged. Mrs. Seymour, having no "particulier," had seated herself on a table just above Herbert Grimstone, and was now, in her turn, beginning to complain of the bore of being kept waiting so long. "I wish I had something to do!" said she, "for it is by no means pleasant to be kept here all night, conjugating the verb." "Would you like to read?" said Herbert Grimstone, kindly offering her his own interesting work on Timbuctoo. "Thank you," said she, declining the proffered volume, "for reminding me that absence of evil is good." Herbert bit his lip, and accidentally, on purpose, let the, in every sense of the word, heavy book fall upon Mrs. Seymour's pretty little foot, that was swinging like the pendulum of a clock backward and forward. 66 Well, that is one way of making your book_go down, at all events," said Fanny, as she ran to rub Mrs. Seymour's foot. "To say nothing of making one feel what he writes," laughed Mrs. Seymour, in the midst of the pain. "Ah, I now see de reason le pauvre petit has look so sorry de whole route," whispered Monsieur de Rivoli to Mrs. Seymour. "Pourquoi ?" said she. 66 Why, do you not recollect, une foi quand Voltaire à pris l'air triste, and his friends not know for what Ma dame du Châtelet say to dem, Vous ne le devineriez pas; pourquoi Monsieur de Voltaire est si triste, mais je le sais. Depuis trois semaines, on ne s'entretient dans Paris que de l'exécution de ce fameux voleur, mort avec tant de fermeté; cela ennui M. de Voltaire, à qui l'on ne parle plus de sa tragédie; il est jaloux du roué!* and we have talk of nothing but de bal costumée,' and never once mention le petit Herbert's malheureux Timbuctoo!" Herbert, hearing his own name accompanied with a suppressed laugh, bent forward, and inquired, in his most piano voice, if Monsieur de Rivoli had been speaking of him. To do the French justice, they never like to hurt people's feelings, and, therefore, what we term insincerity is in their character nothing more than a practical illustration of their own clever caricatures, entitled, ce qu'on dit et ce qu'on pense;" so he, without the least hesitation, replied, 66 "I was only saying, my dear fellow, dat you were like Voltaire." "How so?" asked Herbert, with a mixed expression of pleasure and resentment; for his vanity led him to believe that nothing but his extraordinary talents could induce any one to class him with Voltaire, while his ears put a much truer but less flattering construction upon the laugh he had heard. "Parceque,” replied Monsieur de Rivoli, pointing to the dowager (whose head was luckily turned the other way, as she was in the act of rummaging in a large black bag for one of Mr. Tymmons's bill of costs, which * Before the first French revolution, the word "roué" was applied to all notorious characters, such as thieves, pickpockets, vaga bonds, and murderers; and not confined to the sense in which it is now used, as applied to a libertine, though the word was used in that sense also, with the true French addition and distinction of the word "aimable," "un roué aimable," meaning a libertine par excellence, in contradistinction to a simple vagabond. she had selected as an agreeable companion in a postchaise), "parceque vous etes devant l'age qui vous fit naïtre!" “Devilish good, indeed!" said Herbert, who, in his eagerness to grasp at the shadow of a compliment, totally lost the substance of the irony; "but you are so witty, my dear fellow." "Les prètres ne sont point ce qu'un vain peuple pense; 66 muttered Monsieur de Rivoli, as he turned away to hide the smile he could not suppress, and which was communicated like electric fluid to the mouths of every one present, except those of Herbert, his mother, and brother. Next to his own matchless work on " Timbuctoo," Herbert Grimstone's favourite topic was modern French literature. There were two reasons for this partiality: first, the obscene trash and inconceivable horrors that are hourly nightmared in French garrets, and assume a "local habitation and a name" from the Parisian press, unaffactedly charmed him, not only from the matter they contained being perfectly suited to his calibre of morality, but because the intellect they evinced acted as a sort of soothing sirup to the painful and feverish dentition of his vanity: in reading them, he felt that he too was a genius; that he too could write! Therefore, instead of flinging down the book with the pettish and "nil admirare" exclamation of "this fellow" or "this woman is deusedly overrated," which invariably followed his turning over the leaves of any of the standard writers of his own country, he always felt inclined, after the perusal of the pink and yellow covered, gnomeinspired trash, so lauded by "la jeune fame," to become, in his own person, an additional "ignus fatuus" on the charnel altars of modern French literature; but his chief reason arose from the pleasure and superiority he felt in talking before ladies of what they could possibly know nothing about; for, thank Heaven, except through the warning pages of the " Quarterly Review," the very titles of these books are unknown to our countrywomen; a circumstance which, doubtless, gave rise to a rather severe philippic against their ignorance, in Herbert Grimstone's valuable work on "Timbuctoo," where, discussing the state of the universe at large, past, present, and future, he naturally and patriotically makes a sort |