of her heart's aspirations, as in the case of the
woman who marries. The latter is apt to think
that she has fulfilled her mission, so far as her
heart is concerned, when she drives away from
the church door. She cannot, of course,
contemplate such a thing as loving again and being
married again. "When she is married, the
lamp of her love is at the brightest—and when
things are at their brightest they are apt to
fade.

The old maid's love does not exhaust itself
in too fierce a flame. Objects arise to engage
her affection every day. She has always a heart
to give away to every new comer who may have
a claim upon it, and though she gives it away
fully and entirely, she always has it still to give.
In one word, her love is not a selfish love.

I very strongly suspect that old maids are in
the aggregate happier than married women—
happier because they are left more to the influence
of their own single natures, because
they are not subjected to the will of others,
and because their position exempts them from
the tear and wear of passions which too often
leave the heart chilled and the nature
perverted.

When I think how happy, how good, how
beautiful even in their fronts, our maiden aunts
are, I feel very much disposed to finish the
novel which I now have in hand, by making the
culminating point of happiness at the end of the
third volume, the resolve of my heroine not to go
to St. George's, Hanover-square, with Augustus,
but to live and die an old maid.

It is a very old idea that aunts, and, I will
add, uncles, are in some way designed by nature
to be impartial third parties in life, to whom first
and second parties may fly in time of distress
and trouble. The French call their mutual friend
the pawnbroker, ma tante. We, in England, call
him our uncle. I think the French have adopted
the true personification. The aunt is fully
entitled to say, with a certain person of our
acquaintance, that aunt is the friend, not uncle.
I cannot imagine how we English originally
made the mistake of calling our mutual friend-
in-need our uncle. Compared to the true,
kind-hearted, unselfish, unpretending aunt, our
uncle is a blustering, ostentatious, purse-proud,
vain old humbug. He is only kind to his
nephews and nieces when it administers to his
own vanity and his own importance. What
trouble does he take for us? He only gives
away his money because he has got more of it
than he knows what to do with. It is the
easiest thing in the world to give away money;
but it is not an easy thing to give away love
and sympathy, to give away ease and rest, to
give away to others the love and care that you
might keep for yourself. No; the uncle is a
constituted sham and a humbug, and I shall
seize an early opportunity to write an essay
upon him, and take him down a peg.

Meanwhile, I will endeavour to discharge
some part of my debt of gratitude—I can never
discharge it all—to aunty.

I shall not be stating at all an exceptional case
when I say that I had an aunt who was an
"aunty dear" to three generations. This is one
of the blessed things about our aunts. They
are sent into the world to be good and also to
live long. The good die early, sentimental
folks say. Stuff! The good, thank Heaven!
live to have false teeth and wear false hair, and
they are the most delightful creatures to kiss in
the world. I can only think of that dear old
aunty of mine (though I never saw her until
she was threescore: she was my grand-aunt)
as a fair young creature of seventeen summers,
with blue eyes, and flaxen hair streaming over
her shoulders to her waist. I have this vision
of her—though, when I knew her, she was
wrinkled, and wore a brown wig that was
anything but invisible, and a cap that some folks
would call a fright—because she once told me
that she was like that when, as a girl, she ran
over the hill one morning early to bid good-bye
to her lover, who was going away to sea. She
held me on her knee, and patted me on the head,
and strained me to her breast, when she told me
that story; and I knew that she had kept her
great wealth of love for me and mine. . For the
sailor-boy never came back. She had a lock of
his hair, which she used to take from a sacred
drawer and show me. It was jet black, and
when she handled it, it curled round her finger,
as if the spirit of her sailor-boy had come back
from the depths of the sea to embrace her with
all that was left of him on earth.

"And what did you do, aunty," I said, " when
you heard the news?"

"What did I do, laddie? I criet and criet
until my heart was dry and my een were sair.
I think I should ha' deet if your mother
hadna' come; but when she came I took up
wi' her. She had bonny black een just like my
laddie's, and I loved her and nursed her for his
sake. And when they had ower mony o' them
at hame, I took her to live with me, and she was
my lassie until your father married her. And
then I was lonely again until your father had
ower mony o' them, when I took your sister,
and now I've got you: and a pretty handful I've
had with the lot o' ye."

She did not mean these last sharp words a bit;
for she took one of the succeeding generation
to live with her, and it was always in danger of
being smothered with kisses.

Ah, dear aunty in Heaveu, what would have
become of some of us but for you?

HARDIHOOD AND FOOLHARDIHOOD.

THE month of July, 1865, when noted down
in the annals of English families, will bear the
black record of four lives, belonging to young,
robust, intelligent, hopeful men, swept away.
And for why? Because of foolhardihood.

There is a Swiss household, within sight of
Mount Cervin, which has lost a hale, strong,
brave son—a man tempted for hire to assist his
employers to conquer impossibilities. And for
why? Because of foolhardihood.