tion. He was naturally very handsome, and this, too, in a somewhat uncommon style of handsomeness, considering his race and his country; for though his eyes were of that clear, grave blue, which is seldom seen but in the north, the general cast of his countenance, both as to features and complexion, was rather what a painter would have called Italian. A profusion of dark chesnut curls lay on his forehead, the dancing blood of seventeen was in his cheek, and his lip just beginning to be shaded with down, had that firm juvenile richness, which so rarely survives a single season of debauchery, or even of dissipation. His figure was light and nervous, and there was even a certain elegance about its motions, although Reginald had never had one single lesson in fencing, and I believe only about a dozen in dancing, from an itinerant professor of the name of O'Leary. But as I have hinted, the young man was at great pains on this occasion in spoiling his own appearance. Nothing could be more absurd than the manner in which he had combed his fine hair back from the forehead it was meant to shade and to grace; and as for the new suit of clothes, it has been already insinuated that old Nathaniel Foy was an artist who had never sewed at the knee of any of the Stultzes.

According to the old-fashioned manners of the northern counties, the families who had in former times been intimate with the Chisneys, began, immediately on the arrival of the young couple, to pour in visits of congratulation; so that Mr. Dalton and his son, the day they went up to Thorwold-hall, were ushered into a drawing-room, crowded as well as gay. Groups of smiling young men and women were clustered about the windows, while high-looking old ladies sat apart on sofas, nodding and whispering; and rosy-gilled esquires, with well powdered curls, and capacious white waistcoats, stood sturdily in the middle of the floor, talking toryism and horse-flesh, and now and then looking at their watches.

Reginald had scarcely begun to recover himself from

the flurry into which the first glimpse of this animated scene had thrown him, ere the door of an antichamber was flung open, and the young Squire entered, leading by the hand his pretty and languishing bride. In a moment there was such a bustle of bowing and curtseying, presentation, congratulation, and compliment, that nobody had any leisure to take the least notice either of him or of his confusion. Dinner was announced very soon afterward, and it is impossible to say how much he was relieved, when he found himself seated at table between a couple of hearty old fellows, who had too much respect for business, to think of troubling him or any body else with conversation. When he looked round him, and saw the easy assurance with which beaux comported themselves to belles, how did his heart sink within him beneath the overwhelming consciousness of his own rawness! He knew he was blushing, and of course blushed on deeper and deeper; but luckily he durst not refuse the champaigne, which was continually offered him, and so, in the course of a few bumpers, his nerves acquired, in spite of him, some strength, and his cheeks some coolness.

As for "the happy pair" themselves, the moon of bliss had not yet filled her horn, so that there was little chance either of their observing the awkwardness of their youthful guest, or of their being displeased with that, (or indeed with any thing else,) had they observed it. Mr. Chisney was naturally rather a sombre looking person, (very sallow, and not a little marked with the small-pox;) hut at present the whole of his air and aspect was instinct with a breath of buoyancy and mercurialism-it seemed, indeed, as if he now and then were making an effort to bear himself gravely, and look like himself; but the next moment his wife's eye and his would meet, and the conscious simper resume all its predominancy. The young lady, however, was perhaps even more absurdly happy than her lord. Her eyelids were cast down from time to time with a very pretty air of shyness; but whenever she lifted

them again, the irrepressible sparkle of glee was quite visible. The tones of the voice were fortunately very soft and liquid, so that her frequent giggle in which she indulged was by no means so intolerable as that of a newly married young woman most commonly is. A bluff boisterous old boy of a baronet, who sat at her right hand, made a thousand apologies for being so antediluvian as to propose a bumper to their health the moment the cloth was removed; but even this trying incident produced no worse consequence than a charming blush and a tenfold titter to carry it off. As she sailed out of the dining-room, in the rear of all her female convoy, her small ring-laden fingers received a gentle squeeze en passant. When elderly people play such honey-moon pranks, it may be difficult not to laugh; but here a person of any bowels would scarcely have permitted himself even to smile.

Mr. Dalton was too much of a gentleman not to have been at his ease, and too good-natured a man not to have been pleased at such a party as this; but poor Reginald came home from it with many more of painful than of pleasurable recollections. And indeed

had this been otherwise, he must have added the original sin of dulness, to the unfortunate accident of mauvaise honte.

Neither Mr. Chisney nor his lady had, as we have seen, taken almost any notice of the Daltons the first time they visited them; but ere long, they had rather more leisure upon their hands. The bustle of formal congratulation could not last for many weeks-any more than the intoxication of their own spirits ;—and both of them, before the summer was over, were of opinion it was a very pleasant circumstance that the parsonage of Lannwell was within so very easy a distance of Thorwald-hall. Mr. Chisney, who was really a man of very good sense, found that there was nobody near him with whom he could live more agreeably than with the vicar of his own parish; while the young lady, after her husband bad giving up spend

all his mornings in her drawing-room, began some.

times to feel a little weary of herself, her piano-forte, and her flower-drawings, and deigned to discover that Reginald was genteel in spite of bashfulness, and conversable in spite of his reserve.

To polish a fine young man is a task which, perhaps, no woman at all capable of executing it, ever enters upon with much reluctance. The modesty of Reginald flattered her vanity; it was delightful to be listened to with so much submission by one who knew so many things that women never know, and for which women have therefore so great a respect-one who displayed, in the possession of what is commonly called knowledge, all the charming humility of ignorance and inexperience. Besides, Reginald Dalton was really a very handsome young fellow, and but for the unhappy cut of his coat, it was easy to see that a very little training might convert him into a beau, of whom no lady, married or unmarried, need be ashamed.

"Much blood, little breaking," is a maxim with which every sportsman is familiar, and the same thing holds good in regard to ourselves. In the course of a few weeks, Reginald Dalton could present himself at the Hail, free not only from all the painful, but almost from all the awkward, parts of his rusticity. He rode with Mr. Chisney, walked with his wife, and he and his father spent two or three evenings in almost every week at Thorwold. Rarely, perhaps, have the exterior manners of any young man undergone more remarkable improvement in so short a space. And, in truth, when Reginald himself looked back, and compared himself at the beginning of that year's autumn with what he had been at the termination of its spring, the difference was so great, that he might be pardoned for contemplating the rapidity of his own progress, with a very considerable share of complacency.

In one point of view, at the least, it was fortunate for Reginald that the young Squire and his lady were left so much alone during the greater part of that summer; for, had their house been from the beginning what it was towards the close of the season, he must

have either derived fewer advantages from frequenting it, or purchased them at the expense of undergoing a much severer species of tutorage.

The shooting season had commenced several weeks ere Mr. Frederick Chisney, the brother of the Squire, arrived at Thorwold. He was several years younger than Mr. Chisney; but he was already, in his own opinion, and in that of many others, the finer gentleman of the two. Every body indeed is acquainted with that common saying which has, time out of mind, furnished the vanity of cadets with some consolation for the comparative lightness of their purses; and in a limited sense, at the least, there is no question the saying has its origin in observation. Younger brothers all the world over, have their wits sharpened by the circumstances of their situation; while the consciousness of perfect security has a natural tendency to encourage indolence of mind, as well as repose of demeanor. But, on the other hand, is there nothing to refine in the sense of importance and power? Do not these things exert, over happily born spirits at least, a certain soothing and ennobling influence? And while the cadet has briskness for the bustle through which it is his business to fight his way, has not your elder brother, generally speaking, something far better adapted for the calmer sphere in which his birth has placed him? Though he be not, in the ball-room or mess-room sense of the word, the finer gentleman, is he not in reality the more mild in disposition of the two, the more gentle in bearing?

But Frederick Chisney was the younger brother all over, full to the brim of all that vivacity and restlessness of spirit, which your "terrarum Domini" are so much the better for wanting-a bold, gay, sprightly, and ardent youth. He had already spent two years at Christ-Church, and having gone thither from Eton, was at twenty as free from exterior awkwardness as any man of forty, and in his own opinion, quite as knowing in men and manners, as he could have been in reality if double his years had passed over his head. He was