acquaintance of the party
so misrepresented.

It is rather singular, and perhaps I may have been fortunate, but in
more than half-a-dozen instances I have found the very parties to whom
this character has been given, although high-minded and high-spirited,
the very antithesis to the character which has been assigned them. That
some do deserve the character is undoubted--but there is no species of
calumny to be received with such peculiar caution. It may be right to
be on your guard, but it never should be the ground for a positive
avoidance of the party accused. Indeed, in some degree, it argues in
his favour, for it is clear that the whole charge they can bring against
his character is an infirmity to which we are all more or less
subjected; and he who looks for perfection in his acquaintance or his
friends, will inevitably meet with disappointment.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

Brussels.
I have lost all my memoranda! I cannot find them any where. Well--
children are a great blessing when they are kept in the nursery--but
they certainly do interfere a little with a papa who has the misfortune
to be an author. I little thought, when my youngest girl brought me up
a whole string of paper dolls, hanging together by the arms, that they
had been cut off my memoranda. But so it was; and when I had
satisfactorily established the fact, and insisted upon an inquisition to
recover my invaluables, I found that they had had an auto-da-fe, and
that the whole string of dolls, which contained on their petticoats my
whole string of bewitching ideas, had been burnt like so many witches.
But as the man said in the packet--"Is that all?" Oh, no!--they come
rushing in like a torrent, bounding, skipping, laughing, and screaming,
till I fancied myself like another Orpheus, about to be torn to pieces
by Bacchanals (they are all girls), and I laid down my pen, for they
drive all my ideas out of my head. May your shadows never grow less,
mes enfans, but I wish you would not make such a cursed row.

The author and the author of existence do not amalgamate. That's a
fact.

Their joyous countenances are answered by a look of despair--their
boiling-water heat drives my thermometer down to zero--their confounded
merriment gives me a confounded headache--their animal spirits drive me
to vegetable spirits--their cup of bliss running over makes me also
require a bumper--brandy resto