Lord Mowbray bowed, and acknowledged that the bower was one of the beauties of Montgomery Hall not yet revealed to him.

"Well then," said the General, "your Lordship must see it. So, Emily, haste! equip yourself for the garden.-Who else will be of our party? Frances, my queen, you will go too? Miss Macalpine, Pennington, and the rest."

General Montgomery had an unfeigned and universal pleasure in every thing connected with the country; his passion was confined to no one particular enjoyment of the numberless sources which a country life opens of happiness and interest; to no one individual object, either of farming, planting, or gardening: of all he was susceptible, to all he alternately directed his attention thus building up for himself, in these rational pursuits, an endless fabric of happiness and lasting enjoyment. His bower, however, was a favourite par excellence; and, perhaps, the more so from the pleasure and trouble Lady Emily took in its decoration and embellishment. Thither he now led the

way, with the eagerness of one who is conscious of paying homage to the taste and fondness of a being dearly cherished by him; while he was at the same moment indulging his own predilection for the favoured spot.

"Your house, I have observed, General,” said Lord Mowbray, as he turned round and looked at it from the end of the terrace, "is of the Elizabethan style of architecture. How well that style is adapted to our climate, and how connected with our history as a people! It is to be lamented that so characteristic a taste- -a taste, one may say, so perfectly of English growth, and so interwoven with one of our proudest eras, should now-a-days be abandoned for imperfect, garbled imitations of classical beauties; which, at the same time that they are alien to our feelings, are inapplicable both to our skies and our habits, and can never be employed (in our domestic buildings at least) without losing one chief merit of all architecture, consistency. For when we inquire how, in this exotic style of building, our comfortsour true English comforts, are provided for,

we find its adoption destroys them all! The bay-windows, the oaken-wainscoted halls, the large fireplaces of our old English mansions, which bring back to our remembrance all the comforts and all the virtues of home-bred growth, are abandoned for the open galleries and porticos, (that lose all use for want of the sun, and all effect for want of light and shade,) and for the large, stuccoed, scagliogled and comfortless apartments of the South, which freeze us out of our enjoyments, while they make us shrink at the same time into the insignificance of copyists. I will allow," continued Lord Mowbray, as he stood on the stone steps descending from the terrace to the garden-"I will allow that, in these decorations, we may take a lesson from other countries; and our forefathers did so in adopting the terraced gardens of Italy and France; but then, it is only because the principle of common sense allows it. It is fitting that a mansion should be surrounded with something like ornament; and that we should not step out of a drawing-room exactly into

a turnip-field, or long grass, or straggling wood. A formal parterre, fine vases, and statues lining the long alleys; these evergreen hedges, sheltering the flowers alike from the keen blast and from the sun; these fountains, playing on each side of this decorated scene; and the sun-dial in the midst, are all in unison with the vicinity of man's habitation; and though perhaps roses bloom not here, as Virgil tells us they did in the Ausonian land, twice in every year; yet, when they do put forth, and the sun shines upon us, the whole is harmonious and in keeping."

:

Thus did Lord Mowbray descant on the subject of taste-a subject always dear to him, and on which he loved to dwell if only that it brought back to his recollection the countries where he had first imbibed its truest principles. Unlike the generality of virtuosos, however, his enthusiasm for the productions of a peculiar people, or a particular style of art, did not blind him to excellence when found elsewhere: and as he had studied the question of taste par principe, so he was

enabled to apply the instruction with a consideration of the monuments of ancient art afforded to practical purposes, even under totally different circumstances.

General Montgomery listened with delight to sentiments so closely in affinity with his own; and his concurrence with all that Lord Mowbray advanced, appeared in the deep and uninterrupted attention which he paid to him while speaking, and by the smile of delight which lit up and animated his features.

The only impatient listener on the occasion was Lady Frances, who had reckoned upon nothing to compensate her for the ennui of the walk but Lord Mowbray's attentions. These she had hitherto succeeded in engrossing entirely to herself; and mortified now at his seeming indifference, and at the interest which he displayed on other subjects, she resolved to attract his notice by attacking the opinions advanced by him, though ignorant of, as well as indifferent to the subject. Taking up the question, therefore, as a means of drawing his attention, but her pique at the same time not allowing