vidence too
strong to disbelieve. Here before me lies an English newspaper, with a
paragraph alluding to the mysterious murder of an English gentleman at
Baden. The dates, circumstances, all tally in the minutest particulars.
Shall I discredit these proofs?

The Countess is married to the Marquis de Courcelles; a distant relative
of the Archduchess, it is said. Let me dismiss the theme for ever--that
is, if I can. And now for one whose interest to me is scarcely less sad,
but of a very different shade of sadness.

This is my birthday, the 31st August. "Why had the month more than
thirty days?" is a question I have been tempted to hazard more than
once. Nor is it from ingratitude that I say this. I have long enjoyed
the easy path in life; I have tasted far more of the bright, and seen
less of the shady side of this world's high-road than falls to the share
of most men. With fortune more than sufficient to supply all that I
could care for, I have had, without any pretension to high talent,
that kind of readiness that is often mistaken for ability; and, what
is probably even more successful with the world, I have had a keen
appreciation of talent in other men--a thorough value for their superior
attainments; and this--no great gift, to be sure--has always procured me
acceptance in circles where my own pretensions would have proved feeble
supporters. And then, this delicacy of health--what many would have
called my heaviest calamity--has often carried me triumphantly through
difficulties where I must have succumbed. Even in "the House" have I
heard the prognostications of what I might have been, "if my health
permitted;" so that my weak point ministered to me what strength had
denied me.

Then, I have the most intense relish for the life of idleness I have
been leading; the lounging "do-nothingism" that would kill most men with
_ennui_, is to me inexpressibly delightful. All those castle-buildings
which, in the real world, are failures, succeed admirably in
imagination. I overcome competitors, I convince opponents, I conciliate
enemies at will, so long as they are all of my own making; and so far
from falling back disappointed from the vision, to the fact, I revel in
the conviction that I can go to work again at new fancies; and that, in
such struggles, there is neither weariness nor defeat. A small world for
ambition to range in! but I value it as Touchstone did his mistress,--"a
poor thing, but it was mine own."

It