arisina, where the
waterfall is even more musical than the birds, more lulling than the
evening winds; where all is pale, except the stars; all hushed, except
their beating pulses! Will this do? No! What think you, then, of a
_Bazaar_?

O thou wonderful nineteenth century! thou that believest in no miracles
and doest so many, hast thou brought this, too, about, that ladies'
hearts should be won, and gentlemen's also, not in courts of tourney or
halls of revel, but over a counter and behind a stall? We are, indeed, a
nation of shopkeepers!

The king of Otaheite, though a despot, was a reformer. He discovered
that the eating of bread-fruit was a barbarous custom, which would
infallibly prevent his people from being a great nation. He determined
to introduce French rolls. A party rebelled; the despot was energetic;
some were executed; the rest ejected. The vagabonds arrived in England.
As they had been banished in opposition to French rolls, they were
declared to be a British interest. They professed their admiration of
civil and religious liberty, and also of a subscription. When they had
drunk a great deal of punch, and spent all their money, they discovered
that they had nothing to eat, and would infallibly have been starved,
had not an Hibernian Marchioness, who had never been in Ireland, been
exceedingly shocked that men should die of hunger; and so, being one of
the bustlers, she got up a fancy sale and a _Sandwich Isle Bazaar_.

All the world was there and of course our hero. Never was the arrival of
a comet watched by astronomers who had calculated its advent with more
anxiety than was the appearance of the young Duke. Never did man pass
through such dangers. It was the fiery ordeal. St. Anthony himself was
not assailed by more temptations. Now he was saved from the lustre of
a blonde face by the superior richness of a blonde lace. He would
infallibly have been ravished by that ringlet had he not been nearly
reduced by that ring which sparkled on a hand like the white cat's. He
was only preserved from his unprecedented dangers by their number. No,
no! He had a better talisman: his conceit.

'Ah, Lady Balmont!' said his Grace to a smiling artist, who offered him
one of her own drawings of a Swiss cottage, 'for me to be a tenant, it
must be love and a cottage!'

'What! am I to buy this ring, Mrs. Abercroft? _Point de jour_. Oh!
dreadful phrase! Allow me to present it to you, for you are the only one
whom such w