have commenced his mathematical system with the assumption-that so far as women are concerned, a point has both length and breadth; that parallel lines will meet; and that the centre is not equi-distant from the circumference.

And so you have seen him at last. He has appeared in all his youth, beauty, glory, moustaches, pegtops, and watchcharms! · And he turns out not to be a Lord after all. Reginald Tapeleigh is only high up in the Foreign Office. He is not a clerk, you say. Far from it: he is a government attaché. He has been private secretary to Lord Mousetrapmere, and some of these days may be a secretary of legation, minister, ambassador; who knows? The brougham which he entered, when he left Babylon Bridge Railway Terminus, was not his. It belonged, you informed me, to his most intimate friend, Viscount Plumeleigh, who is at present shooting on his moor in Scotland; but Reginald rides his horse during the season, and, besides, can always have the use of his aunt the Countess of Millamant's carriage. He lives in charming chambers in the Albany. He has a handsome private fortune of his own-so Amelia-Charlotte has found out from some lawyer people in Lincoln's Inn:-the dear, clever, inquisitive creature! He sings delightfully, and can cut out profiles in black paper. If he has money, why does he continue to scribble in that stupid Foreign Office? Why doesn't he go into Parliament, or buy a yacht, or go buffalohunting in the far West, or do something bold and dashing? I will be bound that his "handsome private fortune," if inquired into, would dwindle down to twopence-which, in society, means a couple of hundred a year or so; and even with that pittance he might, if he chose, do something grand, and be something. I knew a young man, years ago, one Richard Roughton, whom the gentlemen called “Wild Dick." With all his wildness he was a gentleman; and for

a sweet courteous manner he had among women and children, he was adored by our sex. He had one of those souls which, to the end, never lose all their innate innocence, and retain a liking for bohea, raspberry jam, and blind-mans-buff. Away from us I am afraid Dick Roughton-one of the Roughtons of Buffshire, my dear, an excellent county family-diced and drank, and was as the wickedest of the wicked. He had spent nearly all his patrimony, till there remained only the twopence which I, perhaps uncharitably, conjecture to be the inheritance of Reginald Tapeleigh. He was in love with a great heiress, who would have had anything to say to him, even to saying yes, if he had proposed to run away with her; but her friends nothing at all. If Dick had shot Mr. Perceval, or been seen walking arm-in-arm with Mr. Cobbett, the gridiron man, he could not have been regarded with a more evil eye. He was not embarrassed. He had squandered

more ready money than he had incurred debts; but there were the dreadful facts, that he was desperately wild, and that he was becoming poor. Society doesn't forgive such a combination. Now, what do you think "Wild Dick Roughton-I can't help calling him by his reckless man's name-did? He capitalised his twopence into a sum of some two or three thousand pounds. He and the great

heiress (who was but a minor yet, else she would have given him all) broke, it was known afterwards, a common silver sixpence between them, and wore each a half by a ribbon round their necks. Wasn't it like Lucy Asheton and Edgar of Ravenswood? The end was happier. Dick Roughton gave one of the wildest suppers that had ever been known to all the young men of his wild set at the Old Slaughter's Coffee House. He went away, and was gone exactly six years. Nobody ever heard of him, save his few creditors, who were paid their claims through his lawyer, in regular

and handsome instalments; and, you may be sure, the heiress, although the letters she received must have been directed to the post-office or the pastrycook's, for none ever came to her papa and mamma's grand mansion. When Richard Roughton came back, he was riche à millions—positively overflowing with money, my dear. He was very gaunt and sunburnt, and honestly confessed that he had been to South America, gone into trade, and gained every penny of his fortune by sagacious operations in bullocks' horns and hides, cochineal, and quicksilver, and that he had left a flourishing firm under the title of Roughton, Robins, and Co., and in which he was still a sleeping partner, in Valparaiso. Malicious people hinted that the horns and hides were mere pretences, and that "Wild Dick" had made his money either by piracy in the Spanish main or by gambling in foreign funds; and some even went so far as to say that he must have murdered a Don; but there was the money. The two halves of the sixpence were joined, never to be put asunder. He married the heiress; was in Parliament within six months from his return; was made a baronet just before the Reform Bill passed; retired to Buffshire with his wife when that unhappy measure became law, and only last year I saw Sir Richard Roughton's name down in the list of High Sheriffs.

The embryo acquaintance you had formed with Reginald Tapeleigh seems to have made some steps towards maturity after you had been properly introduced to him. He belongs to the Hare and Hounds Club in St. James's Square. Mr. de Fytchett is likewise a member of that flourishing and genteel réunion. It is as natural for men to ask each other home-when they have homes-to dinner, as for women to ask each other how much they gave-when they give anything-for their bonnets. So, Mr. de Fytchett having dined with Reginald at the Club, and at the grand banquet

given to the Right Honourable James Goosequill on his proceeding to India as a member of council, and elsewherealthough you do not tell me where else-bethought himself that he might as well ask Reginald home to dinner in Pagoda Square. I am glad to hear that the entertainment went off so successfully, and was of the very genteelest description. Persons occupying even a more exalted station in life than our friends in Pagoda Square are not ashamed to have their dîners de parade sent in from the pastry cook's; to eatthey don't know what, cooked by-they don't know whom ; but I rejoice to learn that the De Fytchetts repudiate such hypocrisies, and that the preparation of the dinner was on this, as on previous occasions, confided to Mrs. Pattypan, the regular professed cook of Amelia-Charlotte's well-regulated establishment. It gave the highest satisfaction to all parties concerned; and I will venture to say that the satisfaction in question was felt in the highest degree by Mrs. Pattypan herself. For, surely, next to the rapture a great Captain. must feel at having gained a great victory, there must come the joy experienced by a cook who knows her calling, and is proud of it, at having served up a good dinner without the slightest hitch or mishap.

Not unadvisedly do I say, the cook's "calling." Of late years a ridiculous whim has sprung up of dignifying cookery with the appellation of an Art. The man-cook, forsooth, of modern times, is an "Artist; plays the piano; has his portrait engraved; has his menus executed in ornamental caligraphy on pink paper, with an embossed or laced border; scribbles poetry in a "studio" which should, properly, be a scullery; and, perhaps, finishes by publishing his Life and Times, in three volumes, octavo. He writes, too, a literary cookery-book, with some spurious Greek or Latin title; and mingles culinary recipes with nonsensical rhapsodies and