as these. My enthusiasm, I suspect, must have
betrayed itself in some outward manifestation,
for I remember Crofton laughingly having remarked,

"You will turn my sister's head, Mr. Potts,
by such flatteries; all the more, since her
cookery is self-taught."

"Don't believe him, Mr. Potts; I have studied
all the great masters of the art, and you shall
have an omelette to-morrow for breakfast, Brillat
Savarin himself would not despise."

I blushed at the offer of an hospitality so
neatly and delicately insinuated, and had really
no words to acknowledge it, nor was my
confusion unfavourably judged by my hosts. Crofton
marked it quickly, and said,

"Yes, Mr. Potts, and I'll teach you to hook
a trout afterwards. Meanwhile, let us have a
glass of Sauterne together; we drink it out of
green glasses, to cheat ourselves into the fancy
that it's Rhenish."

"'Am Rhein, am Rhein, da wachsen unsere
Reben,' " said I, quoting the students' song.

"Oh, have you been in Germany?" cried she,

"Alas! no," said I. " I have never travelled."
I thought she looked disappointed as I said this.
Indeed I already wished it unsaid, but her brother
broke in with,

"We are regular vagabonds, Mr. Potts. My
sister and myself have had a restless paroxysm
for the last three years of life, and what with
seeking cold spots for the summer and hot
climates for winter, we are scarcely ever off the
road."

"Like the gentleman, I suppose, who eat
oysters for appetite, but carried his system so
far as to induce indigestion." My joke failed;
nobody laughed, and I was overwhelmed with
confusion, which I was fain to bury in my strawberries
and cream.

"Let us have a little music, Mary," said Crofton.
"Do you play, or sing, Mr. Potts?"

"Neither. I do nothing," cried I, in despair.
"As Sydney Smith says, ' I know something
about the Romans,' but, for any gift or grace
which could adorn society, or make time pass
more pleasantly, I am an utter bankrupt."

The young girl had, while I was speaking,
taken her place at the pianoforte, and was half
listlessley suffering her hands to fall in chords over
the instrument.

"Come out upon this terrace, here," cried
Crofton to me, "and we'll have our cigar.
What I call a regular luxury after a hard day
is to lounge out here in the cool night air, and
enjoy one's weed while listening to Spohr or
Beethoven."

It was really delightful. The bright stars
were all reflected in the calm river down below,
and a thousand odours floated softly on the air
as we sat there.

Are there not in every man's experience
short periods in which he seemed to have lived
longer than during whole years of life? They
tell us there are certain conditions of the atmosphere,
inappreciable as to the qualities, which
seem to ripen wines, imparting to young fresh
vintages all the mellow richness of age, all the
depth of flavour, all the velvety softness of time.
May there not possibly be influences which similarly
affect our natures? May there not be
seasons in which changes as great as these are
wrought within us? I firmly believe it, and as
firmly that such a period was that in which I sat
on the balcony over the Nore, listening to Mary
Crofton as she sang, but just as often lost to
every sound, and deep in a heaven of blended
enjoyments, of which no one ingredient was in
the ascendant. Starry sky, rippling river, murmuring
night winds, perfumed air, floating
music, all mingling as do the odours of an
incense, and, like an incense, filling the brain with
a delicious intoxication.

Hour after hour must have passed with me in
this half-conscious ecstasy, for Crofton at last
said,

"There, where you see that pinkish tint
through the grey, that's the sign of breaking
day, and the signal for bedtime. Shall I show
you your room?"

"How I wish this could last for ever!" cried
I, rapturously; and then, half ashamed of my
warmth, I stammered out a good night, and retired.

THE COST OF A BATTUE.

THE time may come when the fondest hopes
of the Very Reverend Dean Doleful, and Friend
Boanerges Broadbrim, will be realised; when all
violent muscular amusements having been
discontinued, pheasants and partridges having
become as scarce as bustards, foxes as rare as the
old English black rat, devoured by the brown
Hanoverian, hunting and shooting amusements
as obsolete as the tournaments of the middle
ages, gunpowder mills and kennels will be turned
into cotton-factories, or lecture-rooms. About
the same time the youth of England will be
satisfied with constitutional walks and gymnastic
drill, varied by tea-meetings, lectures on the
ologies, or part-singing.

The love of sport, as we in England comprehensively
term a long line of exciting and
pecuniarily unprofitable out-door amusements, is
at present one of the marked characteristics of
an Englishman. It prevails in all classes, it is
understood by both sexes, and it crops out in the
most curious and unexpected families. Quakers
ride to hounds: one of the greatest masters
of horse-knowledge is a distinguished and
intellectual member of that mild and stay-at-home
sect. A wealthy and serious soap-boiler of our
acquaintance, who, from a misdirected letter,
learned that his son and partner, in the teeth of
parental precept and example, had for several
years combined the best shooting and hunting
with his annual northern business tours,
was by no means alone in his misfortune,
although quite as much astonished and nearly
as much shocked as if he had discovered his
otherwise exemplary offspring robbing a till or
forging an acceptance. As will happen with