that I have _epuise les ridicules_--have seen every manner
of absurdity the law of Chancery leaves at large--why hammer out the
impression by repetition?

What is here by way of postscript?

"Lady B. has made the acquaintance of a certain Sicilian
Countess, the handsomest woman here, and has engaged her for
Saturday. If you be the man you used to be, you'll not fail
to come."

*****

"Dear F----

"I cannot dine out. I can neither eat, drink, nor talk, nor
can I support the heat or 'confaz' of a dinner; but, if
permitted, will join your party on Saturday for half an
hour.

"Yours truly,

"H. Templeton."

Now has curiosity--I have no worthier name to bestow on it--got the
better of all my scruples and dislikes to such an agglomeration as a
pic-nic! Socially I know nothing so bad: the liberty is license, and the
license is an intolerable freedom, where only the underbred are at
ease. _N'importe_--I'll go; for while I now suspect that I was wrong
in believing the Countess to have been my old acquaintance, Caroline
Graham, I have a strange interest, at least, in seeing how one so like
her, externally, may resemble her in traits of mind and manner. And then
I'll leave Baden.

I am really impatient to get away. I feel--I suppose there is nothing
unusual in the feeling--that, as I meet acquaintances, I can read in
their looks those expressions of compassion and pity by which the sick
are admonished of their hopeless state; and for the very reason that
I can dare to look it steadily in the face myself, I have a strong
repugnance to its being forcibly placed before me. My greatest wish
to live--if it ever deserved the name of wish--is to see the upshot of
certain changes that time inevitably will bring out. I have watched
the game in some cases so closely, I should like to know who rises the
winner.

What will become of France under a regency? How will the new government
turn the attention of the _mauvaises tetes_, and where will they carry
their arms? What will Austria do, when the Pope shall have given the
taste for free institutions, and the Italians fancy that they are strong
enough for self-government? What America, when the government of her
newly acquired territory must be a military dictation, with a standing
army of great strength? What Ireland, when the landlords, depressed by
an increasing poor-rate, have brought down the gentry to a condition of