all the time, than the benevolent Hulkem
himself. Of course Hassam acknowledges himself
to be outdone in generosity and in every other
quality by Hulkem. Of course the lovers are
united, and of course they are happy ever
afterwards.

In addition to stories, there is, in the Belle
Assemblée, a good store of letters professing
to come from all sorts of queer people,
which partake also of the nature of narratives,
and some of which appear month after
month almost like the parts of a serial story.
Of this sort are the letters of Hymenæa in
Search of a Husband; the idea founded, of
course, on CÅ“lebs in Search of a Wife. Their
design seems to be to show forth how many
blockheads, oafs, rogues, and vagabonds will set
themselves to work within a given time to win
the affections of a young lady gifted with some
personal attractions and possessed of forty
thousand pounds. One after another the rogues
and blockheads are exhibited for the reader's
benefit, and made to go through their paces,
which, to say truth, are lame and clumsy in the
last degree. Throughout these letters there is
an obvious determination to be clever which is
extremely trying. The delineations of
character, the strictures on fashionable life and
morals, and the descriptions of what goes on
in society, are all intended to strike one as the
work of a first-class observer, but fail, for some
reason, to do so.

The correspondents of the B. A. are
numerous, and some of them absurd. Here is a
specimen of a correspondent whose domestic
happiness has been destroyed in consequence of
one of her sisters having once heard Catalini,
the celebrated singer, at a Bath concert!
Philomela is a "girl of very animated spirits,"
she informs the editor, blest with a very
good voice, which has been much admired
in the narrow circle of her village, and the
exercise of which used to afford intense delight
both to herself and to her mother and sisters,
as they sat at their work. But this blissful
state of things was not to be allowed to go on.
"About two months since," writes the fair
vocalist, "an aunt whom I have at Bath invited
my sister Kitty to come and pass a month with
her. Kitty went, and has returned; and here,
sir, is the cause of all my uneasiness . . .
How miserably changed is she since she left us.
She talks about nothing but Catalini; and if I
begin a song, tells me, and tells others, that if
I were to hear Catalini I should never attempt
to sing again. She passed the room, the other
day, whilst I was singing her former favourite
song, ' 'Twas within a mile of Edinburgh
Town,' and I heard her say to my brother, who
was with her, 'Will that Phill never have done
squalling?' If, in the midst of my work, I
insensibly slip into a tune, she stops her ears
without ceremony, and crossly asks me if I
mean to murder her. She has got, moreover,
several outlandish words which she occasionally
throws in my face to jeer me; the other night
I happened to cough so as to drown my tune,
when she clapped her hands, and cried 'Bravo!
Encora!' "

Rather "outlandish," under the circumstances,
it must be owned. Philomela goes on
after this to tell of all the disgrace engendered
in the family by her sister's affected admiration
of Catalini, and entreats the editor of the Belle
Assemblée to write something in his magazine,
which her sister will see, and which may bring
her to a sense of the impropriety of her present
proceedings; something like what she herself
writes, she thinks, would do, "but in better
language, and more like a sermon." The miserable
Philomela concludes thus: "Kitty is not
the same girl that she was; she talks some-
times very strangely, and frequently, instead
of reminding me of my prayers, as she used
to do, falls asleep and forgets them herself.
The other night, when we had been out dancing,
we both fell asleep without saying them; I
awoke about two in the morning, and,
remembering the omission, waked my sister after
much difficulty; she was in a dreadful passion,
and absolutely beat me. Now, sir, this was all
Bath."

A magazine which addresses itself to the
fashionable world should have something to
say about its leaders. In each number of the
B. A. there is a biographical sketch of some
member of the British aristocracy, accompanied
by a portrait. These portraits are chiefly
after pictures by Hoppner, and exhibit the
female aristocracy of the time clad in loose
robes, and with unconfined locks blown about,
as it seems in most cases, by a high wind. The
biographical notices are very brief. In one of his
"Sketches," not having much else to say, the
author goes into ecstacies about the highly moral
tone of the existing arrangements at court.
"There probably never was a period in which
the females of the British court exhibited a more
laudable and splendid pattern of those virtues
which adorn the sex in every station of life. . . .
The court—at least the female part of it—
under the controlling and matronly prudence
of the queen, is made what it ought to be—the
conservator and example of morals and chastity
of manners in fashionable life, the source from
which refinement flows, and in which, however
fashion may bear sovereign sway, she is never
suffered to infringe upon the severity of
virtue."

It is evident enough, then, that, in a general
way, the compiler of these biographies is a good
deal put to it to find matter with which to fill
up his space. This is, indeed, so obvious, that
when this unfortunate chronicler of nothings
does get a chance of having something to say
about one of his "illustrious ladies," one feels
almost a sense of relief. Such a chance comes
in his way at last when he gets to work at the
life of Lady Charlotte Campbell, and he makes
the most of it. After treating of the beauty
of this lady, of her high position in the fashionable
world, he tells of her real claim to fame
and distinction in these words: "Her ladyship
will always maintain a conspicuous place in the