mented with multitudes of the most beautiful round spots, which resemble eyes in the wings of the finest butterflies. The limax inhabits this charming shell. This creature is the sea-snail.

The CONCHA OF VENUS was the next shell in this young lady's collection that engaged my attention. One of them was three inches long, and two and a half in diameter. The valves were convex, and in longitudinal direction deeply striated. The hinge at the prominent end was large and beautifully wrought, and the opening of the shell was covered with the most elegant wrinkled lips, of the most beautiful red colour, finely intermixed with white; these lips do not unite in the middle, but have slender and beautiful spines round about the truncated ends of the shell. This shell of Venus is an American, and valued by the collectors at a high rate.

But of all the curious shells in this wonderful collection, the HAMMER OYSTER was what I wondered at most; it is the most extraordinary shell in the world. It resembles a pick-ax, with a very short handle and a long head. The body of the shell is in the place of the handle of the instrument, and is four inches and a half long, and one inch and a half in diameter. What answered to the head of the pick-ax was seven inches long, and three quarters

of an inch in diameter. This head terminates at each end in a narrow obtuse point, is uneven at the edges, irregular in its make, and lies crosswise to the body yet the valves shut in the closest and most elegant manner. The edges are deeply furrowed and plaited, and the lines run in irregular directions. The colour without is a fine mixture of brown and purple; and within a pearly white, with a tinge of purple. This rare shell is an East-Indian, and whenever it appears at an auction is rated very high. I have known ten guineas given for a perfect one.

With a large quantity of these most beautiful shells, which are rarely seen in any collections, and with all the family of the pectens, the cardiæ, the solens, the cylindri, the murexes, the turbines, the buccina, and every species of the finest genera of shells, Miss NOEL formed a grotto that exceeded every thing of the kind I believe in the world; all I am sure that I have seen, except the late Mrs. HARCOURT'S in Richmondshire; which I shall give my reader a description of, when I travel him up those English Alpes. It was not only, that Miss NOEL'S happy fancy had blended all these things in the wildest and most beautiful disposition over the walls of the rotunda; but her fine genius had produced a variety of grots within her grotto, and falling waters, and points of view. In one place was the famous

Atalanta, and her delightful cave: and in another part, the Goddess and Ulysses's son appeared at the entrance of that grot, which under the appearance of a rural plainness had every thing that could charm the eye: the roof was ornamented with shell-work; the tapestry was a tender vine; and limpid fountains sweetly purled round.

But what above all the finely fancied works in Miss NOEL's grotto pleased me, was, a figure of the philosopher Epictetus, in the centre of the grot. He sat at the door of a cave, by the side of a falling water, and held a book of his philosophy in his hand, that was written in the manner of the antients, that is, on parchment rolled up close together. He appeared in deep meditation, and as part of the book had been unfolded and gradually extended, from his knee on the ground, one could read very plain, in large Greek characters, about fifty lines. The English of the lesson was this—

THE MASTER SCIENCE.

"All things have their nature, their make and form, by which they act, and by which they suffer. The vegetable proceeds with perfect insensibility. The brute possesses a sense of what is pleasurable and painful, but stops at mere sensation. The rational, like the brute, has all the powers of mere

sensation, but enjoys a farther transcendent faculty. To him is imparted the master-science of what he is, where he is, and the end to which he is destined. He is directed by the canon of reason to reverence the dignity of his own superior character, and never wretchedly degrade himself into a nature to him subordinate. The master-science, he is told, consists in having just ideas of pleasures and pains, true notions of the moments and consequences of different actions and pursuits, whereby he may be able to measure, direct or controul his desires or aversions, and never merge into miseries. Remember this Arrianus. Then only you are qualified for life, when you are able to oppose your appetites, and bravely dare to call your opinions to account; when you have established judgment or reason as the ruler in your mind, and by a patience of thinking, and a power of resisting, before you choose, can bring your fancy to the test of truth. By this means, furnished with the knowledge of the effects and consequences of actions, you will know how you ought to behave in every case. You will steer wisely through the various rocks and shelves of life. In short, Arrianus, the deliberate habit is the proper business of man; and his duty, to exert upon the first proper call, the virtues natural to his mind; that piety, that love, that justice, that veracity, that

gratitude, and that benevolence, which are the glory of human kind. Whatever is fated in that order of incontroulable events, by which the divine power preserves and adorns the whole, meet the incidents with magnanimity, and cooperate with chearfulness in whatever the supreme mind ordains. Let a fortitude be always exerted in enduring; a justice in distribution; a prudence in moral offices; and a temperance in your natural appetites and pursuits. This is the most perfect humanity. This do, and you will be a fit actor in the general drama; and the only end of your existence is the due performance of the part allotted you."

Such was Miss NOEL's grotto, and with her, if it had been in my power to choose, I had rather have passed in it, the day in talking of the various fine subjects it contained, than go in to dinner; which a servant informed us was serving up, just as I had done reading the above recited philosophical lesson. Back then we returned to the parlour, and there found the old gentleman. We sat down immediately to two very good dishes, and when that was over, Mr. NOEL and I drank a bottle of old Alicant. Though this gentleman was upwards of eighty, yet years had not deprived him of reason and spirits. He was lively and sensible, and still a most agree