interesting: I fancied it wore the characters of a widow’d look, and in that state of its declension, which had passed the two first paroxysms of sorrow, and was quietly beginning to reconcile itself to its loss;—but a thousand other distresses might have traced the same lines; I wish’d to know what they had been—and was ready to inquire, (had the same bon ton of conversation permitted, as in the days of Esdras)—“What aileth thee? and why art thou disquieted? and why is thy understanding troubled?”—In a word, I felt benevolence for her; and resolv’d some way or other to throw in my mite of courtesy,—if not of service.

Such were my temptations;—and in this disposition to give way to them, was I left alone with the lady with her hand in mine, and with our faces both turned closer to the door of the Remise than what was absolutely necessary.

THE REMISE DOOR. CALAIS.

CALAIS.

This certainly, fair lady, said I, raising her hand up little lightly as I began, must be one of Fortune’s whimsical doings; to take two utter strangers by their hands,—of different sexes, and perhaps from different corners of the globe, and in one moment place them together in such a cordial situation as Friendship herself could scarce have achieved for them, had she projected it for a month.

This

—And your reflection upon it shows how much, Monsieur, she has embarrassed you by the adventure—

When the situation is what we would wish, nothing is so ill-timed as to hint at the circumstances which make it so: you thank Fortune, continued she—you had reason—the heart knew it, and was satisfied; and who but an English philosopher would have sent notice of it to the brain to reverse the judgment?

In saying this, she disengaged her hand with a look which I thought a sufficient commentary upon the text.

It is a miserable picture which I am going to give of the weakness of my heart, by owning, that it suffered a pain, which worthier occasions could not have inflicted.—I was mortified with the loss of her hand, and the manner in which I had lost it carried neither oil nor wine to the wound: I never felt the pain of a sheepish inferiority so miserably in my life.

The triumphs of a true feminine heart are short upon these discomfitures. In a very few seconds she laid her hand upon the cuff of my coat, in 

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