that their dear jackets were so utterly soaked through, that they should be obliged to go in mufti to the Fitzvalseurs' carpet-dance. Lacquers went home to a stately dinner and an admirably dressed and coiffée Zantippe, who would have been more cheering and refreshing if she had a little less handsome a toilette and a little more pleasant good humour. Freddy drove me off with him to Audley Court, where he had asked me to dine, I gladly accepting, hours with Pearl being the summum bonum of earthly felicity with me; and Randolph galloped on his own way back to Grassmere, thinking of the Rocksilver, of Sunshine, with some other entanglements of his past and plans for his future, as he rode his grey at a pace fit for Croxton Park or the Grand Military.

As he passed along by the side of that small stream dignified in Toadyshire by the name of river, which bordered the Audley estate, he heard the ring of a pony's hoofs, and a merry laugh that he knew well enough. "Ah, bonjour! Will you ride a race after the rain ?”

Quick as the wind, Sunshine rode past him, lifting her gay bright face to his, all the brighter for gleaming out of the dark afternoon mist.

"My little Arab shall beat your Grey Darrell. Fifty to one I reach the milestone first!"

"Done! For the best Jouvins!" laughed Randolph, though he felt a much greater desire to snatch her up from her little Arab, and carry her off to Grassmere, as the Gordons of old had summarily wooed and won the ladye loves whom fate and foe kept from them. Away they went, and the little half-bred Arab set off at such speed, when his rider struck his silky black flanks with her riding-whip, as promised to beat Randolph by a length, though he was counted one of the best riders that had ever graced the Queen's or cleared bullfinches with the Pytchley and the Tedworth. Probably he did not try to work up his grey to do her best; probably, he preferred losing the Jouvins, and giving her the pleasure of victory; at any rate, the little Arab dashed along the turfy road at a pace worthy of his ancestry, both English and Syrian, that would really have drawn him down admiration if he could have been entered for the Goodwood or the Ascot Cup, and Sunshine won the distance by a couple of yards, clapping her gauntlets with joyous laughter.

"I won! I won! I told you I should! Who can defy me?" The bright blue eyes lifted to him chased the Rocksilver's black ones straight out of Randolph's mind.

"Not I," said he, passionately, as he reined up Grey Darrell close by the Arab's side. "Sunshine, some people will tell you that my love is no great prize, but such as it is it is yours, as long as my life will last, stronger and deeper than I ever felt it for any other woman before. Whatever faults I may have had to others I will have none for you, for God knows how dear you are to me!"

This form of address would have had far too little Grandisonian reverence in it to suit Miss Clementina, who would doubtless have expected Randolph to kneel on the ground, without any respect to the muddy state of the roads, and tender in submissive language his respectful homage and undying devotion. But Sunshine seemed to be very well satisfied with it in its modern, brief, and unreverential form. As Randolph bent down from his saddle, and his moustache touched those mischievous lips which spoke such cruel satire on his volunteer rifle corps,

Miss Clementina, on the other side of the river, going to visit her district, after the rain, with a gigantic umbrella, goloshes in which you could have put Sunshine's whole body, and her own pet page, bearing a packet of stiff tracts, looked stricken dumb with righteous indignation, trembling till every bone in the umbrella skin rattled.

"In a public road!" she murmured, almost paralysed with horror. "What next? How utterly lost to all self-respect, to all maidenly feeling, to all proper reserve! He shall never enter my house again!"

Past them, too, in the usually deserted highway rolled, just at the juncture, a carriage, with the Saltire arms on the panels and hammercloth, and Mrs. Rocksilver looked through the window at Grey Darrell and the little Arab, and set her fine white teeth together. "Faites votre jeu, monsieur; but it will be odd if win!".

you

RECOLLECTIONS OF G. P. R. JAMES.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot?

WHEN the writer of "Richelieu," encouraged by the frank praises of Sir Walter Scott, commenced his long career of authorship, I was travelling in Italy, and engaged in studies which made me more familiar with the middle ages than with modern literature. And, on my return to England, I was but slowly overtaking his rapid powers of production, when I had the pleasure of knowing him as my friend and neighbour.

We were both residing on one of the most beautiful portions of the south coast, and I certainly never enjoyed splendid scenery in more agreeable companionship. He was at that time occupied-as usual-in writing a new romance; or rather in dictating it—a practice which he informed me he had adopted at the recommendation of Sir Walter Scott, who (as a piece of authorcraft) thought it both expeditious and economical. With a regularity rarely departed from, he was steadily at work with his amanuensis from soon after an early breakfast till two o'clock. He then walked for about two hours; and I was fortunate when he made me his companion by taking my home in his way. Pleasant was often our talk while

High o'er the hills, and low adown the dale,

We wandered many a wood, and measured many a vale ;*

or looked from some well-known steep upon the line of picturesque and rocky coast which lay before us in almost Italian beauty. It is only in this way that a natural and easy intercourse can be enjoyed with one who feels that something not too common is expected from him; and those walks will be long remembered. On his return he dictated or corrected till near dinner-time, and in the evening (when not in society) he looked over his manuscript copy. This, till he saw "daylight" (to use

* Spencer.

his own phrase) in the progress of his story, was generally his daily

routine.

But I am not about to become his Boswell. It is because the notices which have appeared since his death, while doing justice to him in every other respect, have been very chary in their acknowledgment of his talents, that I am induced to devote a page or two to his memory. His qualities of disposition have been dwelt upon as they deserved. His active friendship, his kindly feelings, his generous hospitality, could not be overrated. And why should not his talents have been as frankly praised? Who has replaced him? There was a time when one or two three-volume works of fiction yearly from his pen, seemed to be thought so absolute a necessity by the public, that it might have been supposed the machinery of society would stop whenever the supply should cease. Punch might smile at the two cavaliers who had so often appeared at the commencement of a romance, or might have represented him, pictorially, as grinding his works out of a mill; but in how few of our writers can we now look for the same unaffected style, or easy narrative, or for the pure and unobtrusive moral tone that distinguished everything he wrote? Of how few works of fiction can we say, as of his, that we rise from their perusal without any perversion of our feelings or principles. He had, also, that power of productiveness which has, in itself, been considered an attribute of genius. Like Scott or Voltaire, he could have sat in a library of his own creation; and if he had not the power which the former so eminently possessed of giving life and actuality to the personages he brought before us, he occasionally followed closely upon his great master in his descriptions of natural scenery and events. I only write from memory; but I may mention, inter alia, the thunderstorm, in "Margaret of Burgundy;" the trial scene, in "Corse de Leon," the burning forest, in "Ticonderoga;" the Italian lake, in "Pequinello;" the battle of Evesham, in "Forest Days;" the attack on Angoulême and the battle of Jarnac, in the "Man at Arms;" and the revolt at Barcelona, in "De L'Orme;" a very incomplete list, but all that I at present recollect.

There was one quality in which he was peculiar. It was the natural and easy introduction into his narrative of reflections and remarks that often show great knowledge both of the world and of human nature. When we were in habits of daily intercourse, I mentioned to him that this had always struck me, and that it was my intention to make a collection of them. It at once involved me in one of the embarrassments frequently consequent upon his generosity; for in the course of the day he made me a present of half a dozen of his works, at the same time wishing me, as he thought proper to express it, a less dry and laborious occupation. If it had not, he said, been for the awkwardness of a writer's selecting his own "beauties," he should probably have undertaken it himself. He even fixed upon a publisher. A variety of occupations, however, local and political, prevented me from proceeding with my task beyond sufficient matter for one small volume: and from this I make, at hazard, a few brief extracts.

"Eloquence consists not in many words, but in few; the thoughts, the associations, the images may be many; but the acme of eloquence is in the rapidity of their expression."

"It unfortunately happens that talent is less frequently wanted than the wisdom to employ it."

"Let not people speak lightly of lovers' quarrels. Lovers should never quarrel, if they would love well and love long."

"In the awful struggle which has gone on for ages between good and evil, the eye of man has looked upon a mass of agony, sorrow, and despair which could it all be beheld at once, or conceived even faintly-would break man's heart for the wickedness and cruelty of his own nature."

"The mirror, like every other invention of human vanity, as often procures us disappointment as gratification."

"In the sad arithmetic of years, multiply by what numbers you will, you can never produce one-and-twenty more than once."

"Thought loads the heart and does but little good, when our resolutions are once taken."

"Providence,' says a powerful but dangerous author of another land, 'has placed Disgust at the door of all bad places.' But, alas! she keeps herself behind the door as we go in, and it is only as we come out that we meet her face to face."

"Servants have a wonderful pleasure in revealing useful information when it is too late; though they take care to conceal everything they see amiss while their information can be of any service to their masters."

"Apprehension is to sorrow what hope is to joy,-a sort of avantcoureur who greatly magnifies the importance of the personage he precedes."

"Trust a woman's eye to discover when a man is insincere. She can always do it when her own heart is not concerned."

"Cast that man from your society for ever who does or says a thing in your presence which you would blush to have said or done yourself."

"How often do idle words betray the spirit within. They are the careless gaolers which let the prisoner forth out of his secret dungeon. They have cost, if history be true, many a king his crown, many a woman her reputation, and many a lover his lady's hand."

"The great mass of a man's mind, like the greater part of his body, he takes care to cover; so that no one may judge of its defects, except they be very prominent."

"If we miss the precise moment, whether it be by a minute or by years matters not, we have lost the great talisman of Fate for ever."

But it is not by such fragmentary specimens as these that we can judge of Mr. James's talents. If any one is unacquainted with his works, and wishes to estimate him as he deserves, let him read his "Attila;" which, as an historical romance, has rarely-except by the Great Master himself-been equalled; and having read it, he may say

of him in the words used by his guide and friend on a different occasion, that few writers have so well "succeeded in amusing hours of relaxation, or relieving those of languor, pain, or anxiety," as the author of "Richelieu" and of " Attila."

In the usual intercourse of society he was rather an agreeable companion than a brilliant diner-out; and even the brightest, amongst these, are stars that have their periods of obscuration. I have seen the elder Matthews in a state of depression which might almost have threatened suicide. In an hour or two he was

The life of pleasure and the soul of whim,

One of our

the best toned and most gentlemanly of humorists. opium-eating celebrities would suddenly become silent as if he had been shot; nor did he soon recover. And we are told of a party of wits-one of them no less a personage than Theodore Hook-that having been invited by a City notability to amuse his guests, they became, en revanche, solemnly stupid, reserving their talents for an after-symposium of their own. But whatever he may have been generally, I remember how much the friend we have lost contributed to one of the most brilliant evenings I have ever witnessed at any dinner-table, from Albemarlestreet to my own. He was unable, in the first instance, to accept my invitation, in consequence of the expected arrival of a visitor. On the morning of the day, he wrote me a note to say that if I had still a vacant place he would be happy to come. I need not mention how I answered it. He entered the drawing-room with an evident determination to be agreeable. Amongst the guests was one of the "best hands" of the Quarterly Review, who was an admirable talker. There were others of some mark. And for five hours the ball never fell.

But cœtus dulces valete! I must bring these reminiscences to a close. If it was thought by the Romans to have been an act of piety to preserve from desecration the tombs of the departed, we may hold it to be a still higher duty to guard their memories from wrong; and, above all, when the wrong is done to one of whom we may say, in the language of Bassanio, that he was

-the kindest man,

The best conditioned and unwearied spirit

In doing courtesies.

That e'er drew breath.

I am glad to have the privilege of speaking as he merits of one whom I so much esteemed. We rarely flatter the dead; and I never gave expression to praise with more sincerity than now.