mouche, and, while Beau Freke and Sir Randal were sipping their chocolate beside him, he suddenly started up, and breaking away from the astonished coiffeur, who stood staring at him, openmouthed, with comb and curling-irons uplifted, and with his queue almost erect with astonishment, uttered a few frantic and unintelligible ejaculations, and proceeded to describe himself as the unluckiest dog in the world. "What's the matter?" the Beau inquired, tranquilly regarding him. "I cannot chase her image from my breast," Gage pursued. "I'm wretched-distracted." "Whose image?" Sir Randal demanded. "I thought you had long since forgotten Colombe Mirepoix?" "I heard there was a little milliner in St. James's-street whom you cast eyes on," Beau Freke said. "Is she the cause of your affliction? If so, egad,,we'll send for her at once." "This is a vraie affaire de cœur, messieurs," Chassemouche said. "Mon maître est eperdûment amoureux-I tell him he shall console himself-but he will not believe me. He fret-pauvre monsieur, how he fret-he break his heart-and about what?—a prude." "Peace, Chassemouche. Clare is not a prude." "Soh! we have learnt her name, at all events," Sir Randal said. "Messieurs, I appeal to you," Chassemouche cried. "Am I wrong to style that demoiselle a prude, who shall refuse un si bon parti comme mon maître-refuse him when he kneel at her feet, and offer her his hand?-and she not his equal, messieurs, who ought to feel flattée-honorée by his notice." "Silence, I say, Chassemouche," Gage roared. "Pardon, monsieur. My devotion make me speak. It is Mademoiselle Clare Fairlie of whom monsieur est si amoureux. Jugez, messieurs, if I am wrong in saying she ought to be fière of the admiration of such a one as my master.' "Once more I bid you hold your peace, Chassemouche." "Is it possible you can have offered this girl marriage, Monthermer?" Beau Freke asked. "Monsieur, you juge it impossible-but it is perfectly true, parole d'honneur," Chassemouche replied. "You do not contradict him, Monthermer, and I must therefore conclude Chassemouche is right. 'Sdeath! what could put such a thought into your head? You must be bewitched. Marry at your time of life with your fortune-your position. Marry Fairlie's daughter! Bah !" "Exactly what I say to monsieur," Chassemouche interposed. "Ten-twenty years hence, it will be time enough to think of a wife," the Beau pursued. "It were madness now.' "Word for word what I tell him," Chassemouche said. "Monsieur doit prendre une femme quand il a jeté le premier feu de sa jeunesse. He will tire of Mademoiselle Clare in a month." "Chassemouche, I'll strangle you, if you go on thus," Gage cried, furiously. "Faith! you've had a narrow escape, Monthermer," Sir Randal said; “and I congratulate you upon it. It is not every woman who would have let you off so easily.' "I tell him that too," the loquacious coiffeur remarked. "But what can be her motive for refusing you?" the young baronet pursued. "She say he is too much of a rake," Chassemouche replied, with a laugh. "Poh! poh! an idle reason. She must have another. Of course, she's handsome, or you wouldn't be in love with her, Monthermer." "She's the sweetest being in creation," Gage cried, rapturously. "And the divinity inhabits this paradise? Strange she has not dazzled us with her presence. Her father locks her up, I suppose?" "Mais non, monsieur," Chassemouche replied. "Mr. Fairlie scold -no matter-she not leave her room." "My curiosity is piqued," Meschines cried. "I must contrive to see her. She may listen to me, though she won't to mer." you, Monther "Sir Randal, I will not permit this," Gage cried, sternly. "Let him alone," Beau Freke said. Cost what it will, you must cure yourself of this foolish passion." "But, my good fellow, I shall die under the operation." "Die! pshaw! You will live to laugh at your infatuation." "After all, there is no risk. Her heart is as hard as marble. Try her, if you like, Meschines." "I mean to do," the young baronet replied. "Zounds!" Gage cried, with a sudden pang, "I was wrong in giving you permission. I recal it." "It is too late," Sir Randal replied, with a laugh. "Why, fear if you think she is proof against me?" "Oui, n'ayez pas peur, monsieur," Chassemouche said, with a grin. "Asseyez-vous, je vous en prie, et laissez-moi finir de vous coiffer." His master's toilette completed, Chassemouche quitted the room. On the landing-place he was met by Bellairs, who informed him Mr. Fairlie desired to speak with him. "Corbleu! What about?" the Frenchman demanded. "Can't say," the valet replied; "but he seems in a terrible fume." And the trembling coiffeur bent his steps towards the steward's apartments. JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART. TWO-AND-TWENTY autumns past, and Sir Walter Scott lay a-dying at his own dearly-loved and dearly-purchased Abbotsford. "Lockhart," he said, to the husband of his first-born, "I have but a minute to speak to you. My dear, be a good man-be virtuous— be religious-be a good man. Nothing else will give you comfort when you come to lie here." A day or two after, and Sir Walter breathed his last, in the presence of all his children-on a beautiful day, as his son-in-law has with noble, affecting simplicity described it "so warm that every window was wide open-and so perfectly still, that the sound of all others most delicious to his ear, the gentle ripple of the Tweed over its pebbles, was distinctly audible as we knelt around the bed, and his eldest son kissed and closed his eyes." Past are the two-and-twenty autumns. And gone are they that knelt around the bed, while they could hear the ripple of the Tweed, but a breath from the master of Abbotsford they could not hearnor should hear again for ever. Gone, one and all. Last of them he, who detailed the solemn scene-he, to whom the dying veteran had said, with that affectionate earnestness, "My dear, be a good man,"-"nothing else will comfort you when you come to lie here." The time came not many days ago. Under the same roof as Sir Walter, perchance in the same room, and just at the same age, his son-in-law, John Gibson Lockhart, lay a-dying on the last Saturday in November. "When you come to lie here," there seems a touching force, an affecting precision in the words, as applying to one who had recently left his London home for foreign shores, and returned, and then gone for awhile, in quest of healthful change, to be his only daughter's guest at Abbotsford. In hope, he came there to recruit his life; in effect, he came there to die. Beneath Sir Walter's roof, and sinking under the same disease, and arrived at the same term of years, the sole survivor of that mourning group in 1832 has been summoned to join them again elsewhither; the spirit has returned to God who gave it, and the body lies beside Sir Walter's in the old Abbey of Dryburgh. A very youngster was Lockhart when his earliest doings in literature drew attention to him, as one whose decisive tone and incisive style marked him out for mischief-one qualified to lead galling guerilla sorties against the Whigs, and to prove a rankling thorn (if not in himself a whole Scotch thistle) in the side of the Edinburgh Review. What he has since called "Tory mischief" was then his cue. Blackwood against the Blue and Yellow quarterly, gave fine scope for the kind of assault he then delighted in, and at the dashing recklessness of which Sir Walter could not help chuckling in sup pressed glee, albeit trying to get up a frown for appearances' sake; it was light skirmishing pitted against heavy dragooning, as to weight-while, as to time, the nimble partisans of Ebony, striking out once a month, had signal odds against the disciplined regulars of Jeffrey's corps, which could only acknowledge the blow once in three. Great is the change in the tactics of both the magazine and the review, since that noisy era,-and as happy as great. Nothing but a morbid spleen, surely, can, at this time of day, find a titillating pleasure in recourse to the piping-hot stimulants then in vogue; sound heart and sound head must alike revolt at the ingredients of which they were compounded-the scurrilous imputation, to give fiery flavour to the draught-the heaped-up personalities, the wholesale tu quoque's, the crammed-together scandals, the clotted nonsense, to make the gruel thick and slab. There was a public for such performances in those days; but the performances would want a public now, at least a public worth having, and not merely of publichouse origin. By such mad tricks, then, in Blackwood, and by the publication of "Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk," did Lockhart win his way into the notice of very many and the regard of a few: the Letters being, by his subsequent confession, such as nobody but a very young and a very thoughtless person could have dreamt of publishing. They excited great interest at the time, from the clever personal sketches they contain, which indeed still attract attention to the book, so keen is the observation, so effervescent the animal spirits, so discursive the treatment which characterise them. "Valerius" is said to have been written off in three weeks-the young author reading over chapter by chapter, as he had penned them, to his stout ally in politics, literature, and general entente cordiale, John Wilson, during their daily "constitutionals" around Edinburgh. "I thus heard it piecemeal as it went on," Wilson is reported to have said, "and had much difficulty in persuading him that it was worth publishing." It is evidently the work of one who might have brought more power of conception to bear on it, more warmth of colouring, more finish in details; but it is undeniably of the first class of so-called classical novels, a genre in which not over many have essayed their skill, and of them an improper fraction has signally failed. The sweetness and solemnity of Christianity in its dawn are finely realised; the dew of the morning lies fresh on its pages ; and there is a chaste calm in the manner of the narrative that is sometimes inexpressibly engaging-far more touching and lastingly effective than the tropical brilliancy of Moore's " Epicurean," or the gorgeous pomp of Croly's "Salathiel." Athanasia the Christian virgin, and Sabinus the hearty centurion, are perhaps the two characters that one remembers the best; and only the incurably forgetful will forget, when once read, the scenes in the Flavian amphitheatre and the Mammertine dungeons. The domestic tales of "Matthew Wald" and "Adam Blair" have power and interest, but of a morbid kind, and show traces of the author's then recent commerce with German literature-though Wilson, by-the-by, who was no student of the German, fell into the same key when writing some of his Shadow stories of Scottish Life, such as "Simon Gray," and "Expiation." They both contain repeated proofs of a master hand-a daring conception, and a graphic strength in the execution. But how different the atmosphere, close, oppressive, sometimes lurid, from that which invests the Waverley series!" Reginald Dalton," again, is a spirited fiction, the chief interest of which pertains to the descriptions of university life at Oxford-descriptions suggestive of unmeasured horror to the minds of many grey elders, who, having never been at Oxford themselves, now bitterly lamented having sons there-so different was Reginald's riotous career from their dignified ideal of cloistered learning, apostrophised as Vos, dulcissima mundi Nomina, vos musæ, libertas, lætia, libri, The story itself is rather intricate, and flags heavily at times-an undue proportion of unequivocal bores being introduced, and extra license given them to prose. Genuine touches of nature come in at intervals, and come with power: And Nature holds her sway as Lockhart tells No one of Lockhart's fictions, however, seemed to go further than to promise better things to come. They were to all appearance the product of superfluous energies, and only shadowed forth what wrought-up energy, fixed and resolute and concentrated, might one day effect, when the novelist's vigour was thoroughly matured, his art in perfect training, and his judgment mellowed. But he left the path of fiction, to retrace it no more, for better or for worse-a desertion pardonable after all, even had his promise been twice as great as it was, when one reflects that he was son-in-law to the author of "Ivanhoe" and "Rob Roy," to the creator of Peter Peebles and Jeannie Deans. His translations of the Spanish Ballads were so fine, so forcible, so free, that sceptics and myth-makers hinted, or more, that Sir Walter must have had a hand in them. The old Spanish Ballads themselves, to use the words of Christopher North, in one of his most charming papers," "are like fragments of fine bold martial That, namely, entitled "Christmas Presents," which he made the graceful vehicle of compliment to some of his more youthful contemporaries, whose literary ventures he is supposed, on this occasion, to be selecting as "Christmas Presents," for the "children of his old age. The youngest of the authors thus noticed by old North, and then just gaining the first notice of the public, was one destined in after years to be, like Christopher himself, the popular editor of a popular "monthly,"-we mean Mr. Harrison Ainsworth. That gentleman had |