bear than you expected, my venerable uncle," cried Charles, pointing with an air of triumph to the dead brute.

"Ishmail's tulwar!-Why, you little bantam-cock, you don't pretend to say that you killed the bear!"

"And why not?" replied Charles, coolly wiping the bloody sword, and returning it to Ishmail.

"The devil you did! but how did you manage it?—and what was Mansfield about with his spear? It was wont to be a deadly one."

"It played me false this time, however." And Mansfield proceeded to relate the particulars of the adventure. In the mean time the Doctor was stooping over the dead bear, and examining the tremendous muscular development of his limbs with great interest.

"Od, but it's an awfu'-like beast," muttered he, half soliloquizing. "Did any leevin ever see the like o' thae fore-paws-they're as grit as my waist, and fit to squeeze the life out o' a bull, let alone a Christian -and to think o' that bit slip o' a laddy fechtin him wi' a sword! Od, it's just past belief-It minds me o' the story o' Dauvid and Goly-o'Gath."

The rest of the party having duly admired the size of the bear, the length of his claws, and the richness of his fur, there was nothing further to be said on the subject; so “boot and saddle" was the word. A spare pony was provided for Mansfield, poor Bundoolah being too severely wounded to be fit for work-and in five minutes they were all cantering homewards.

Night had closed in before they reached the cantonment; and the chill mountain-breeze whistled bleak and cheerless through the woods; but a good dinner and a bright fire awaited them-and one there was who fondly hoped that the smile of beauty would greet his return; so with light hearts they pushed merrily forward, smoking their cigars and talking over the adventures of the day.

I remarked that evening that Master Charles succeeded in getting up a very comfortable little flirtation with the blooming Kate; and from the sunny smile which danced in her deep blue eye, and played around her pretty mouth, as she listened to his half-whispered conversation, I felt satisfied that the flaming account of his exploits, given by Mansfield at dinner, had not been lost upon her. Charles retired to rest with his head and heart brimfull of love; and that night his pillow was beset by fleeting visions of blue eyes and bear-skins, tigers, turtle-doves, and true-love-knots.

So ended a Day on the Neilgherry Hills.

We may perhaps hear more of our friends hereafter.

KOONDAH.

FLIRTATION.

"Or, sans nous amuser à ces gueux de rois, si tu veux être libre, n'aye jamais une femme." Moyen de Parvenir.

OUR readers of course know the now somewhat hackneyed joke of Tom Sheridan,-" whose wife shall I take?" In a somewhat similar sense to his, we are to be understood in saying, with old François Beroalde, n'aye jamais une femme. What that facetious writer's objections may have been to a wife of one's own, as an obstacle to personal freedom, it is not to our present purpose to inquire. Most (married) men will find an answer of their own at hand; and as for our female readers, if they also cannot give a tolerably shrewd guess,-why, " plague of their bringing up." The grievous restraint upon independence of which we are about to treat, does not arise e vinculo matrimonii, but from the far more cruel thraldom which falls upon the unfortunate Damon who enters upon 66 a flirtation."

And pray, Sir, what is a flirtation?

We shall not be so discourteous as pettishly to ask where that man could have passed his days, who is under the necessity of putting such a question; though it would sorely embarrass us to give a more direct and categorical reply. At first sight, nothing appears more simple to define, nothing more obvious to comprehension, than a flirtation. But no sooner do we set about the task of making a foreigner (or a native still more strange to the usages of his country) understand the true and genuine import of the word, than we feel ourselves, (like the philosopher of antiquity, who was asked to define the great first cause,) flung back upon ourselves, and compelled to ask for a delay, before we venture upon an answer. A flirtation, indeed, is one of those curious phenomena which baffle all ingenuity to circumscribe by language; and we are obliged to content ourselves with an appeal to experience, as of a something quod nequeo dicere et sentio tantum. The reason is plain : a flirtation is the last quintessential result of the moral, political, social, and animal complex, called English society. It is a transaction resulting from so many springs of action, thoughts, desires, appetites, and habitudes,-from such conventional principles, and acquired tastes,from such a jumble of ethical fictions, and physical facts, that to define it properly, would be to trace the history of the country and its constitution, and to follow the genesis of its ideology, from the days of King Lud to this present year of grace, 1837. Nay, to do common justice to the theme, we should unite the lore of a black-letter lawyer with the physiology of Mr. Lawrence; and combine the critical acumen of a Horne Tooke with the metaphysical intuition of a Locke.

It is sufficient to call to mind that a flirtation is a social relation subsisting between two individuals of the highest and most cultivated classes of our country, of persons who have undergone the last influences of what is called the world, and who are in every respect the furthest removed from the children of nature, in order at once to com

prehend the whole extent of the difficulty: for, whatever in the parties is common to man, and therefore intelligible to man, has undergone A change

Into something new and strange.

And to infer from the naked generalities of ordinary humanity, to the acquired particularities of the subjects of a flirtation, would be a setting at nought the commonest elements of logic.

No wonder, then, that those who are not bred to the usage, should so frequently fail to perceive all the nice distinctions of the phenomenon, or should be so much at a loss to comprehend the frequent references to it which pervade the polite conversations of our English salons. It was but the other day, that we were thrown into the uttermost perplexity by the abrupt qu'est ce que c'est qu'une flirtation of an intelligent Frenchman; and marvellous were the periphrases by which the company endeavoured to enlighten him on the subject-or, in other words, to describe the indescribable. Upon our return to the quietude of the study, our whole thoughts were directed to the untying of this knotty point; and the first suggestion, as usual in similar cases, was a reference to Johnson: for long and frequent disappointment has not broken our Englishman's habit of looking for instruction in that quarter. But the "right, not left," and "left, not right," of the great lexicographer, was a Drummond light, when compared to the obscurity in which he finds and leaves "flirtation." To flirt, he tells us, is, according to Skinner, a word formed from the sound (of what?); and he defines it, as meaning "to throw anything with a quick elastic motion:"

"Dick, the scavenger,

Flirts from his cart the mud in Walpole's face.'

This is a regular floorer; what could the most ingenious Frenchman, what could the whole erudite Quarante, with their esprit comme quatre, make of that? Just, for instance, fancy the slight, the delicate, the sylph-like Lady Di. Phthisic flirting, (that is, throwing with a quick elastic motion,) the entire sixteen stone sixteen of that patriotic alderman, Sir Pelion Heavisides, (though it were no further than from one cushion of an ottoman to another ;) the whole unwieldy mass falling, dab, like the scavenger's mud: quelle idée! And then as to the word being formed from the sound, you might watch for an entire opera night Lord Lazy Lackaday, and Lady Selina Silence, who flirt as if they had returned from a trip to the cave of Trophonius, without detecting an audible manifestation; though, like the man in the fairy tale, you could hear the grass grow as you walk.

So far, then, so bad; but let us try once more. To flirt, has yet another signification,-namely, " to move with a quick pace," as, for instance,

"Permit some happier man

To kiss your hand, or flirt your fan.*"

As far as the kissing of hands goes, that might pass upon a foreigner; but every Englishman knows that nobody kisses hands now-a-days, except at levee, nor has done so since the days of Sir Charles Grandison. Nay, it is even thought by some persons perfectly good ton to flirt with

* Dorset.

a pretty woman with your hat on; though we could never bring ourselves exactly to do that. But the matter grows much worse as we proceed: what on earth could a foreigner make of moving a lady's fan at a quick pace; unless, indeed, it were to throw it into the fire, a circumstance which could hardly take place without the flirtation coming to an abrupt close.

To flirt, we are further told, is "to jeer, to gibe at one," a thing which well-bred people seldom venture upon, before each other's faces. It implies, also,-oh, confusion worse confounded !—" to run about perpetually." Now every one knows, that knows anything, that the worst attribute of a flirtation is its tendency towards blocking up doorways, and monopolizing snug corners, for a whole evening together. Lastly, to flirt is "to be unsteady and fluttering;" and there we must admit a slight approach to daylight. We have seen some very young ladies in a terrible flutter on such occasions, biting their glove, or tearing a rose-bud, leaf by leaf, as they listen; or perhaps giggling through a long night's flirtation, from very delight. But, unfortunately for the hypothesis, old stagers are never thus affected. They sit as quiet and as demure, in the very height of the paroxysm, as if they were at sermon, or listening to the reading of their defunct husband's will in their own favour. Once more, then, we are flung all aback; and Johnson isa goose.

Turning from the verb to the substantive, by a most portentous blunder, (as a reviewer would call it,) the Doctor tells us that a flirt is " a young hussey," for which statement he quotes the authority of Addison. Several young flirts about town had a design to cast us out of the fashionable world." Here, indeed, is the well known exclusiveness of high society, totidem verbis; and we concede that the patronesses of Almack's are often amongst the most thorough-paced goers in a regular flirtation; but then this is a mere accident, and by no means to be confounded with the essence of the thing. Flirting is the especial business of the married and the middle-aged; and whenever "young husseys" venture on the practice, they clearly mistake their vocation; and they are sure to spoil their market by such rashness. On the other hand, nothing tends (except in the very, very great) to cure any tendency to exclusive airs, more directly, than the getting into a good brick-andmortar flirtation. Flirting women are too dependent on the forbearance of society, to dare being offensive. In order to pass muster, they must acquire an à plomb, and a quietude of manner, as respects themselves; and practise a conciliatory abstinence from all provocation to retort, as respects their bearing towards others.

But if the verb and the concrete substantive are thus misunderstood, the Doctor's attempt to define " a flirtation" is utterly unintelligible. This, he says, is a cant word among women; and he instances a passage in the "Guardian," which declares that "a muslin flounce, made very full, would give a very agreeable flirtation air." Now, a muslin flounce, made very full, is, or not long ago was, a perfect banalité; and a flounce without a petticoat would have been scarcely less heterodox to fashion, or less offensive to delicacy, than a petticoat without a flounce. The squire's wife and her cook-maid were flounced in common; and flirtation had no more to do with the matter, than Tenterden steeple with the Goodwin Sands. Or, granting that such a connexion could

by any ingenuity be imagined, would it not be by the lady's conferring the flirtation air on the flounce, rather than by the influence of the flounce on the lady? But the entire theory is an absurdity; nor could better be expected from such an authority. "What's Hecuba to him, or he to He-cuba ?" His own chère moitié never could have had an opportunity of teaching (like history) by example, what manner of thing a flirtation might be and if she had, the effort would but have been love's labour lost; for it stands on perpetual record that Mrs. Thrale carried on what was very like a flirtation with Piozzi, under Johnson's very nose, without his entertaining a suspicion of what was going forward.

He, therefore, who would learn something about a flirtation, must look elsewhere for his information than in dictionaries and encyclopædias. The shortest way, perhaps, of conveying a proximate notion of the subject would be by the method of exclusion; by describing what a flirtation is not and first, a flirtation is not what is usually called " paying one's addresses to a young woman." Simile non est idem. So much the reverse is it of such a ceremony, that when a "man of wit and pleasure about town" is so far abandoned of gods and married women, as to attempt a flirtation with a spinster, his first notion (if he stands in any fear of duelling pistols, and actions per quod servitium amisit,) is to tell the lady, in so many words, I am not a marrying man. The most approved practice, indeed, is to take every possible opportunity for insinuating into the unwilling ears of the party the disgracious truth, in order that, under any circumstances, there" shall be no mistake." There are a thousand means of effecting this. The reference to example does well enough as for instance-" There's Jack of ours, he can afford to marry whom he pleases;" (and here you may sigh deeply, and look as many unutterable things as you can throw into one pair of eyes.) "Lucky dog! his father cut his throat when Jack was in petticoats,-long minority, entailed estate, &c. &c." And then, if you are in a splenetic humour, you may add," but Jack's not to be had. He knows better than to marry it's no go with him; that the mammas may depend upon." Another time you may let drop, just for information sake, as Jeremy Diddler says, that " my governor left me 500l. a-year, in the funds; tolerably good thing for a younger brother; keeps my cab and my cob with an occasional trip to Paris or Vienna. Very well for a bachelor, you know; but 'twouldn't do to marry on; it wouldn't pay for my wife's shoes. No, no; can't marry, by Jove." Or, if you have a case in point at hand, you may take the opposite tack,-" There goes that fool, Bob Martingale. He ran off the other day with a deuced pretty girl;-lots of accomplishments and all that: but he'll not get a shilling; -fifth daughter of the third son of a Scotch Earl. He must sell out, of course; or else he'll be cut by the whole regiment. Our men don't drive women in buggies." With a few such occasional speeches as these, you may flirt with a girl for a whole season together, ride with her in the morning, dance with her at night, turn the pages of her music-book, walk with her in the shrubbery, and suffer no other mortal to approach her; and if she is fool enough to draw inferences from such conduct, rather than believe your own express declarations, and if she breaks her heart at your not "popping the question," when, in the month of August, you leave her for the grouse,-your conscience,