HALF A MILLION OF MONEY.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "BARBARA'S HISTORY."

CHAPTER XVIII. TIMON.

"IT is good to be merry and wise," saith an
old song; but every man cannot be a laughing
philosopher, and though it is comparatively easy
to be either merry or wise "upon occasion," it is
supremely difficult to be both at the same time.
The two conditions mix almost as reluctantly as
oil and water, and youth seldom makes even an
effort to combine them. Happy youth, whose
best wisdom it is, after all, to be merry while it
may! Which of us would not gladly barter this
bitter wisdom of later years for but a single
season—nay, a single day—of that happy thoughtless
time when the simplest jest provoked a
laugh, and the commonest wayside flower had a
beauty long since faded, and all life was a pleasant
carnival? What would we not give to
believe once more in the eternity of college friendships,
and the immortality of prize poems?—to
feel our hearts beat high over the pages of
Plutarch and Livy?—to weep delicious tears for
the woes of Mrs. Haller, and to devour the old
romances with the old omnivorous relish?

Alas! the college friend and the prize poem
are alike forgotten; Sir George Cornewall Lewis
has laid his ruthless hand upon our favourite
heroes; our souls abhor the very name of
Kotzebue; and we could no more revive our
interest in those two mounted cavaliers who
might have been seen spurring by twilight across
a lonely heath in the west of England some two
hundred and odd years ago, than we could undertake
to enjoy the thirteen thousand pages of
Mademoiselle Scudéry's Grand Cyrus. Ay, that
pleasant dream is indeed over; but its joys are
"lodg'd beyond the reach of fate," and of the
remembrance of them no man can disinherit us.
Have we not all lived in Arcadia?

Wisdom apart, however, what more commendable
merriment may there be than a dinner at
Richmond when the year and the guests are
young, and the broad landscape lies steeped in
sunshine, and the afternoon air is sweet with
new-mown hay, and the laugh follows the jest as
quickly and gaily as the frothing champagne
follows the popping of the corks? Now and
then, a tiny skiff with one white sail skims down
the molten gold of the broad river. The plumy
islands and the wooded flats look hazy in the
tender mist of sunset. A pleasant sound of gay
voices and chinking glasses finds its way now
and then from the open window below, or the
adjoining balcony; and, perhaps, the music of a
brass band comes to us from the lower town,
harmonised by distance.

Thus bright and propitious was it on the
eventful day of Saxon's "little dinner;" and
care had been taken by his friends that every
detail of the entertainment should be as faultless
as the weather itself. The guests had all been
driven down in open carriages; the costliest
dinner that money could ensure, or taste devise,
was placed before them; and the best room in
the famous hotel was pre-engaged for the occasion.
It had seldom held a more joyous party.

Lord Castletowers and Major Vaughan were
there of course, having run up from Surrey for
the day; Sir Charles Burgoyne, serenely insolent;
the Hon. Edward Brandon, with his hair
standing up like the wig of an electrified doll,
from inward excitement and outward rubbing;
Mr. Laurence Greatorex, looking, perhaps,
somewhat abstracted from time to time, but
talking fluently; two other Erectheum men, both
very young and prone to laughter, and both
highly creditable to their tailors and bootmakers;
and last, though not least, the Graziana and her
party. For actresses, like misfortunes, never
come alone. Like Scottish chieftains, they travel
with a " tail," and have an embarrassing aptitude
for bringing their uninvited "tail" on all
kinds of inconvenient occasions. In the present
instance, the heroine of the day had contented
herself with only two sisters and a brother; and
her young host not only welcomed them with all
his honest heart, but thought it very kind and
condescending on her part to bring them at all.
The brother was a gloomy youth, who said little,
ate a great deal, and watched the company in a
furtive manner over the rim of his wine-glass.
The sisters were fat, black-eyed little souls, who
chattered, flirted, and drank champagne incessantly.
As for the prima donna herself, she was
a fine, buxom, laughter-loving creature of about
twenty years of age, as little like a Juno, and as
much like a grown-up child as it is only possible for
a Neapolitan woman to be. She could be majestic