al notes expressing sympathy and approbation,
where there are long speeches extolling ladies' charms, or protesting
eternal fidelity, or bewailing the cruelty of some tyrannical fair one.
The interviews, and declarations, and parting scenes of tender lovers,
also bear the marks of having been frequently read, and are scored, and
marked with notes of admiration, and have initials written on the
margins; most of which annotations have the day of the month and year
annexed to them. Several of the windows, too, have scraps of poetry
engraved on them with diamonds, taken from the writings of the fair Mrs.
Phillips, the once celebrated Orinda. Some of these seem to have been
inscribed by lovers; and others, in a delicate and unsteady hand, and a
little inaccurate in the spelling, have evidently been written by the
young ladies themselves, or by female friends, who had been on visits to
the Hall. Mrs. Phillips seems to have been their favourite author, and
they have distributed the names of her heroes and heroines among their
circle of intimacy. Sometimes, in a male hand, the verse bewails the
cruelty of beauty and the sufferings of constant love; while in a female
hand it prudishly confines itself to lamenting the parting of female
friends. The bow-window of my bedroom, which has, doubtless, been
inhabited by one of these beauties, has several of these inscriptions. I
have one at this moment before my eyes, called "Camilla parting with
Leonora:"

"How perished is the joy that's past,
The present how unsteady!
What comfort can be great, and last,
When this is gone already!"

And close by it is another, written, perhaps, by some adventurous lover,
who had stolen into the lady's chamber during her absence:

"THEODOSIUS TO CAMILLA.

"I'd rather in your favour live,
Than in a lasting name;
And much a greater rate would give
For happiness than fame.

"THEODOSIUS. 1700."

When I look at these faint records of gallantry and tenderness; when I
contemplate the fading portraits of these beautiful girls, and think,
too, that they have long since bloomed, reigned, grown old, died, and
passed away, and with them all their graces, their triumphs, their
rivalries, their admirers; the whole empire of love and pleasure in
which they ruled--"all dead, all buried, all forgotten," I find a cloud
of melancholy stealing over the present gaieties around me. I was
gazing, in a musing mood, thi