"A

LACK a-day," exclaimed aunt Deborah, on throwing down the newspaper, which she had been reading, "what will folks come to at last? I declare, my poor brain is all in a whirly-gig at the number of advertisements that are here before me; why there's not such a thing as an old woman to be met with in London. I've made a pretty kettle of fish of my matters; all my clothes, bought only two or three years ago, are antiquated. I am told that I must not wear an article of my wardrobe; my jew els must be reset, my hair must be hidden, my eye-brows must be coloured, and I must be wholly transmogrified, and all this to please my two giddy nieces, who look to inheriting my fortune, and who say that they would be ashamed of me if I went out as discreetly and respectably dressed as I used to do when I visited our neighbour the rich squire, or the mayor of our county town. Then again, how to choose amongst all these ornaments for the person, and these infallible cures for old age? Here (putting on her spectacles and taking up the paper) here we have a Kalydor, the meaning of which I don't understand, which is to beautify the plainest face, there a bloom to restore the spring tint to features, of which autumn had long ago taken leave. In another long advertisement we find oils to make a plentiful crop grow upon a sterile forehead, and bear's grease to produce hair where gone ever grew before. One puff assures us that a single dose of some revivifying cordial will impart the spark of youth to old age; another challenges all the world to make a wig like what the advertiser recommends to the public; here a whole column explains the nature of a dye, which will impart the fine jet hue of the raven to an iron-gray grandmother; there something brief, but impressive, en

courages an old maid with spare locks, greasy and straight as a pound of candles, to try Mr. Superexcellent's curling fluid, which will bestow on her nut-brown curls as thick and well formed as those of her poodle dog; self-adjusting corsets invite on one hand; a more improved model of stays invite on the other; the one is to combine ease and proportion; and to give ease to stiff rheumatism and deformity; the other is to supply the deficiences of nature, and to convert the straits of Toolong into the harbour of breast, changing a thin neck of mutton to the plump bosom of a pigeon; then again, Circassian dews, and Bayadere tooth powders, vegeta ble teeth, and ivory imperceptibles, induce those whom age, accident, or decrepitude, has deprived of their grinders, or whose breath is not that of the violet, to empty their purses in order to be able to smile in spite of their teeth, and to sigh out spicy gales under the noses of admiring beaux. Every grandam expects now to be a Minor de L'Enclos, as the respectable powdered gentlemen of old times now vapour about in auburn peruques, sacks, and whale-boned body clothes. Alas! alas! our youth is now too experienced, and old age is no longer reverend and honourable." Thus spoke aunt Deborah, when the French dress-maker appeared with a variety of dresses for her use. "Oh law," cried the old lady, "I should be starved with cold in that spider-web concern, with a taffetas slip under it, why it is only fit for a girl of thirteen ; frocks and slips indeed for the wrong side of sixty !" "Oh! milady, dat's nutting," replied Mademoiselle. "Nutting indeed; why this is a mere net to catch butterflies in." "Very well, catch what you like." "Yes, catch and catch can," said aunty; surely my madcap neices must have sent me this in order to laugh at me,

COS

"but

coloured hue from lying by; a fourth was too tight and too short, in consequence of aunty's having grown a little larger than when it was first made tight enough to sew her up in it; a fifth (trimmed with sable) had been attacked by moths; a sixth was spoiled by Grace's throwing eau de Cologne over it, one was country made; and another was promised by my niece to her lady's maid; laces had lost their colour, patterns were not of vogue; thus was all her former ornaments come to nothing; thus, in a few weeks, was all the matron-like respectability of a worthy country gentlewoman brought down to the standard of drawing-room lumber, and confounded with a legion of old fantwinkling faded coquettes, who outlive admiration, pass by consideration and esteem, and infest the theatres and gaudy apartments of the fashionable world. Nor was this the worst; if her coming to town was so fraught with trouble and vexation, her quitting it was still more serious and perplexing. Her coffers were drained from the ruinous expense of six weeks in town; her niece Grace had run away with the Lancer, whose fortune had long since been spent, and Isabella had lost her character by flirting it away with a married man. Aunt Deborah was blamed for all this,

laughed at in town, and pitied in the country. On her return she brought down with her a variety of fashions, which induced her female neighbours to borrow them of her; but instead of the welcome and admiration which she anticipated, her charitable acquaintances and her faithful waiting woman brought her back all the kind expressions of the ladies of the neighbourhood, such as "a beautiful gros de Naples indeed, and exquisitely made, but what a caricature must aunt Deborah be in such a juvenile habit! This frock and slip are admirable, but what an old fool must our neighbour be to venture on wearing such a dress! Poor thing, her old noddle must be turned ere she could have been persuaded to make herself thus ridiculous." So much for the tittle-tattle behind her back, the conversation in her presence little less annoying; "Poor Grace!" was an object of insulting commiseration to half her acquaintance; whilst her other niece was the theme of village scandal. One niece accompani ed her husband to the rules of the King's Bench, the other run away with a recruiting officer, aunt Deborah shut her door against every one, turned Methodist, and thus ended "the Journey to London."

was

man, in a kind of military travelling dress, and a foraging cap trimmed with fur, though the gray locks which stole from under it hinted that his fighting days were over. Beside him was a pale, beautiful girl of eighteen, dressed in something of a northern or Polish costume. One servant was seated in front, a rusty, crusty-looking fellow, with a scar across his face; an orange-tawney schnur-bart, or pair of mustachios, bristling from under his nose, and altogether the air of an old soldier.

those princely families which had
lived with almost oriental magnifi-
cence, but had been broken down
and impoverished by the disasters of
Poland. The Count, like many oth-
er generous spirits, had been found
guilty of the crime of patriotism, and
was, in a manner, an exile from his
country. He had resided for some
time in the first cities of Italy, for the
education of his daughter, in whom all
his cares and pleasures were now cen-
tred. He had taken her into so-
ciety, where her beauty and her ac-
complishments had gained her many
admirers; and had she not been the
daughter of a poor broken-down Pol-
ish nobleman, it is more than proba-
ble that many would have contended
for her hand. Suddenly, however,
her health had become delicate and
drooping; her gaiety fled with the
roses of her cheek, and she sunk into
silence and debility. The old Count
saw the change with the solicitude of
a parent.
"We must try a change of
air and scene," said he; and in a few
days the old family carriage was rum-
bling among the Appenines.

Their only attendant was the veteran Caspar, who had been born in the family, and grown rusty in its service. He had followed his master in all his fortunes; had fought by his side; had stood over him when fallen in battle; and had received, in his defence, the sabre-cut which added such grimness to his countenance. He was now his valet, his steward, his butler, his factotum. The only being that rivalled his master in his affections was his youthful mistress ; she had grown up under his eye. He had led her by the hand when she was a child, and he now looked upon her with the fondness of a parent; nay, he even took the freedom of a parent in giving his blunt opinion on all matters which he thought were for her good; and felt a parent's vanity in seeing her gazed at and admired.

The evening was thickening: they had been for some time passing through narrow gorges of the mountains, along the edge of a tumbling stream. The scenery was lonely and The rocks often beetled savage.

over the road, with flocks of white goats browsing on their brinks, and gazing down upon the travellers. They had between two and three leagues yet to go before they could reach any village; yet the muleteer, Pietro, a tippling old fellow, who had refreshed himself at the last haltingplace with a more than ordinary quantity of wine, sat singing and talking alternately to his mules, and suffering them to lag on at a snail's pace, in spite of the frequent entreaties of the Count and maledictions of Caspar.

The clouds began to roll in heavy masses among the mountains, shrouding their summits from the view. The air of these heights, too, was damp and chilly. The Count's solicitude on his daughter's account overcame his usual patience. He leaned from the carriage, and called to old Pietro in an angry tone.

"Forward!" said he. "It will be midnight before we arrive at our inn." "Yonder it is, Signior," said the muleteer.

"Where ?" demanded the Count. "Yonder," said Pietro, pointing to a desolate pile of buildings about a quarter of a league distant.

"That the place? why, it looks more like a ruin than an inn. I thought we were to put up for the night at a comfortable village."

Here Pietro uttered a string of piteous exclamations and ejaculations, such as are ever at the tip of the tongue of a delinquent muleteer. "Such roads! and such mountains! and then his poor animals were wayworn, and leg-weary; they would fall lame; they would never be able to reach the village. And then what could his Excellenza wish for better than the inn; a perfect castello-a piazza-and such people!-and such a larder and such beds !-His Excellenza might fare as sumptuously and sleep as soundly there as a prince!"

The Count was easily persuaded, for he was anxious to get his daughter out of the night air; so in a little while the old carriage rattled and jingled into the great gateway of the inn.