She is a Creole from Montserrat, and her reputation as a second-rate danseuse tolerably well-established in Paris. I wish you joy, young gentleman, of your fiancée, and I bid you good evening." And before I could recover from my bewilderment the old gentleman had departed.

Maria was still in hysterics-real or acted. I waited till she recovered, handed her into her house without a word, ran home to my hotel, and next morning sailed in the "Lively Nancy," Liverpool brig, A 1, 205 tons burthen, bound for Rio Janeiro, without even opening a delicate little three-cornered pink note, inscribed in stiff characters (Maria did write a queer fist) which was placed in my hands just before my departure. I am sorry I did not keep it—such little mementoes of a burntout passion are curious to refer to years after the désillusion is past.

Two years after this little event in my life I was at Worthing in Sussex. Reader, were you ever there? If not, take my advice, and let no persuasion ever induce you to go there, unless you are fond of the kind of existence that oysters may be supposed to enjoy. Two or three donkeys and two or three hackney coaches, two or three pleasure-boats that no one ever sails in, two or three shops that no one but the natives ever patronizes, two or three hotels, with two or three lodgers each, two or three Bath chairs, with two or three invalids, and two or three miles of sand too swampy to walk on. These, with mildewed-looking houses, and an air of lethargic drowsiness pervading all and everything about the place, constitute the attractions of Worthing.

After the second day spent in this delectable spot I felt strongly disposed to commit suicide. "Why not leave the place ?" asks the reader. Do not be too inquisitive, my friend; you may think of a thousand reasons why I could not leave the place if you exercise your inventive faculties, and you are at liberty to fix on any one of them you please as being my individual one.

The third day comes. Breakfast was finished, and the digestive cigar lighted the "Times" was in my hand, and my smoking cap on my head. I had rung the bell twice for that confounded servant in the black cap, and the dirty gown, to take away the cloth. I took another pull at the bell-a quick and a savage one.

"I beg your pardon, sir; but the servant is out," said a very pretty voice, and looking up a very different sort of person from the dirty servant-girl met my eyes. Such a little angel I ! Such a coquettish little figure such laughing blue eyes, and such lively little corkscrew ringlets that

"Curled to give her neck caresses,"

or would have done so, but that she wore a French-cut dress, fastening close round the throat a very becoming style, by the way, though rather disappointing withal. I pulled the cigar from my mouth, and the cap from my head, laid down the Times, and got up from my seat.

"Pray, whom have I the pleasure of addressing ?" said I, in rather a Sir Charles Grandison style, or, at all events, with as much respect as I could have shown to a duchess.

"I am the landlady's daughter, sir," was the modest reply.

Gracious powers! thought I. And my landlady takes in washing!! The beauty was gone from my room, but not from my mind. All day long I sat thinking of her, and wondering how I could contrive to have another interview. The result of my deliberations was a determination to beg permission to sit with my landlady and her daughter that

very evening at tea. What though the old woman was a laundress, was not I a cosmopolitan? Did not my father teach me to despise birth? And, in fact, could I not, like every other man, find a thousand excuses for doing what I wished? At all events I did it.

"Mother" was certainly a very vulgar old woman-pertinaciously vulgar. She would persist in talking on every subject I started with her daughter, in spite of the other's exercise of all her tact to keep her quiet. Sarah Budd (such was the beauty's name) was decidedly superior in intelligence and education to her mother. Still, I confess that she dropped her h's-though I ought to add that, with an honesty greatly to her credit, she made up for the injustice done to that important letter of the alphabet, by inserting it in places where orthography ignores its existence. But what cared I for such trifles? She was pretty, lively modest, good-tempered, and intelligent, and I was at Worthing! Any one's conversation was a relief to me, and especially that of a pretty girl. By degrees I fell violently in love with Sarah Budd.

Of course, Mother Budd was delighted at the prospect of having a gentleman for a son-in-law; for I absolutely proposed marriage, and fixed the day for the wedding-a clandestine one it was to be, of course, as far as my relatives were concerned.

I had a few twinges of disgust now and then, when Phil Budd, who kept the little beer-shop hard by, and who was Sarah's uncle, used to call me "Nevvey, as is to be." What a nuisance it is to a man that he can't marry a woman withont tying all her relations to his back at the same time! Well-the wedding-day approached. We sat in Mother Budd's back-parlour, admiring Sarah's wedding-dress, and discussing the various arrangements for to-morrow, including the fly, with the white horse with broken knees, that was to take us to church.

There was

opened it.

a knock at the street door. Mother Budd went and

"Mr. Frank Spilsby? Yes, he do live here," I heard her say. "All right, then," said a gruff voice; "come along, Jim."

In another second, a hook-nosed man, in a suit of rusty black, with a thick stick and a white hat, entered the little back-parlour, followed by another man in a very similar costume.

"Mr. Frank Spilsby, I arrest you, at the suit of Jonathan Diddler; here's the warrant. Debt, 84l. 58. 6d. Costs, &c."

I shan't soon forget the scene that ensued. Fanny cried, and stamped, and screamed. Mother Budd objurgated, and pronounced me a "owdacious, low, nasty willain." The hook-nosed man made facetious remarks, sotto voce, to his companion; while I put on my hat, and made ready to depart.

I passed that night and the next three days in Lewes Gaol. On the fourth day, my father released me, and took me to London, but only to ship me, next morning, on board a vessel bound for the Cape of Good Hope.

We are now in Cape Town, in a wealthy Dutchman's house. This is the great hall, and the family are assembled at tea. These Cape Dutchmen love tea as well as any English washerwoman, and a terrible meal they make of it. There are heaps of bread and butter, dishes full of hot meat, jars of preserves, and baskets of fruit-melons, grapes, and oranges. It is a large and lofty room that we are sitting in, uncarpeted, and without ceiling but the boards below us and above us,

and the cross-beams are of dark wood, well oiled and polished, and clean as the old frouw's cap of snowy linen. The fire-place is worthy of a feudal baron's hall, and so are the huge brass dogs on which many a goodly log is blazing, though the weather is not very cold, but rather damp. Old Mynheer Botha sits at one end of the table, and his worthy dame at the other. Between them are any number of children, of all sizes, from the sturdy youth of four-and-twenty to the talkative little child of seven. About half way down the table is Mr. Frank Spilsby, sitting next to a pretty, dark-haired girl, and whispering very lame Dutch into her ear. No matter-Dutch is an excellent language (if you know ever so little of it) to swear in, or to make love in and, alas! I was again the victim of a serious attachment.

Katje was a dear little girl-pretty, simple, and moderately well educated. She had but one little failing-too great an admiration for a red coat. She often sentimentally regretted that I was not a soldier; but I used to look so tender on such occasions, and ask her so plaintively whether she wished me to be shot in battle, that the little angel would throw her arms round my neck and—

"Captain Firelock!" cried a servant entering the room, and followed by an officer of infantry in his confoundedly becoming scarlet shelljacket. Mem. Captain F was slim and well-made; otherwise the said jacket would have been the very reverse of elegant.

Mynheer rose to shake hands with a gripe of the gallant captain's hand that made him bite his lip. The frouw did likewise, and Katje blushed dreadfully. How excessively provoking.

"How do, Spilsby?" said the captain, with a nod.

"How are you?" was my reply-wishing all the while that he was laid up with the small-pox or the typhus-fever.

Hang the fellow, if he had n't coolly taken my place next to Katje, and was already talking to her in a tone too low to be overheard, while she was blushing deeper and deeper every moment. My blood boiled, and I have no doubt I looked like an ass, from the half-pitying, halfcontemptuous glances the captain threw on me now and then.

At length I did what every very young man would probably have done in my place. I left the room and the house. I ought not to have abandoned the field; but just have sat coolly down on Katje's other side, and addressed her in Dutch, of which the captain knew not a word. This would have annoyed him, and exposed his weak points; but I was too young and too angry to manage those things well, and so I went home, knocked my forehead about in the most orthodox style of brokenheartedness, and went to bed where I kicked about all night as violently as if I had supped on boiled pork and Soyer's nectar.

Next morning a note was brought me. I opened it and read thus:"DEAR SPILSBY,

"You must have been aware that I have long been attached to Miss Katje Botha; and you must, I think, have perceived that my love was not unrequited by her, though she had unfortunately pledged her hand to you hastily and rashly.

"I must now call on you to release her from this engagement which can only bring unhappiness to you both; and of course I am ready to give you every personal satisfaction in the matter.

Yours, &c.

"J. FIRELOCK."

Which meant that the captain had robbed me of my lady-love, and was perfectly ready to shoot me into the bargain.

Next morning at six o'clock we met, with our seconds, on the Cape Flats, to the left of the village of Rondebosch, about four miles from town; and I had the satisfaction of losing the tip of my right ear by the captain's bullet, while the only damage I did him in return was to spoil a very bad wide-awake hat, which he wore on the occasion.

After these two close shaves the seconds interfered. Both parties were declared to have behaved in the most "honourable" manner, and voilà tout.

A six months' hunting expedition into the interior of South Africa cured my heart-ache, but left me no more proof than before against the blind god's arrows. Alas! how many have hit me since then.

I have one consolation, however. Love may occasionally lead to disagreeable results in youth; but a dose of it in old age is ever followed by the most absurd and ridiculous of effects. I am taking the disease early.

JAMQUE cano Oceanum, (quid enim tam carmine dignum?)

Qui patet immensis conspiciendus aquis;

Quem pedibus celerem, nullâ cohibente catenâ,

Nescio quas terras circumiisse juvat;

Sidera qui nunc summa petit, nunc (ecce) quiescit,
Ut tener in cunis, et sine voce, puer.
Dulce mihi vada salsa cità sulcare carinâ;
Ire per æquoreas quam mihi dulce vias!
Quocunque aspicio, supra color unus et infra,
Cæruleus late, quo vehor, omne silet.
Crede, procella licet taciturna silentia rumpat,
Non poterit somnos rumpere nocte meos.
Quid mihi cum terrâ? tumidas ego Tethyos undas,
Sicut avis nidum, quà sua mater, amo.

Nam mihi nascenti, (fama est) ceu sedula nutrix,
Pro cunis gremium subdidit unda suum.
Illâ clamor erat nunquam ante auditus in horâ ;
Lusit inassuetis squamea turba modis;
Tollere se celsas ausi delphines in auras;
Lætitiæ volucres signa dedere novæ.

Vidi equidem, erranti lustris bis quinque peractis,
Quot varios casus! prælia quanta mari!

Nec vidisse piget, (non desunt æra !) nec unquam,
Heu, melior, dixi, sors aliena mea!

Scilicet et quando, crudeli armata sagittâ,

Mors veniet, magnas me petat inter aquas.

Ventæ Belgarum.

W. HOLLIS.

A friend at my elbow, who has made sixteen unsuccessful attempts to get one of his puns into "Punch," suggests that we were the Cape Flats!

VOL. XXXI.

U

THE ARABS AT AMBOISE.

On the right bank of the Loire, close to one of the stations of the railroad from Orleans to Nantes, which transports the traveller in a few hours from the centre of civilized France to the heart of Brittany, and all its wild traditions and druidical mysteries, stands an ancient and timehonoured town-important in the history both of France and England, during a series of centuries, a town beloved of Anne of Brittany and of Mary Stuart, the scene of stirring and romantic adventures without number, all of which have paled before the interest it has excited of late years as the place of captivity of a great chief, and, within a few weeks, as forming a rich part of that spoil which the immense possessions of the house of Orleans is likely to furnish to the present ruler of the French nation.

Tourists on the Loire know the charming town of Amboise very well; and none ever missed, in days of yore, visiting its fine castle, whose high walls are bathed by the noble river. This pleasure has, however, long been denied them, for the captive whose misfortunes have excited so much sympathy throughout Europe, and whose "hope, deferred" is still destined to "make his heart sick," the ill-fated Abd-'el-Kader, with his followers, are still detained there, and likely so to be, in spite of the "I would if I could" of his supposed struggling friend, the nephew of another great prisoner of days gone by.

Amboise, a few years since, was a smiling, lively little town, and the castle was a pleasure residence of the last king; the gardens were delicious, the little chapel of St. Hubert a gem, restored in all its lustre, and the glory of artists and amateurs. All is now changed: a gloom has fallen on the scene, the flowers are faded, the gates are closed, the pretty pavilions are shut-up; there are guards instead of gardeners, and a dreary prison frowns over the reflecting waters, which glide mournfully past its

towers.

If you pause awhile on the bridge of Amboise, and look up to the windows of the castle, you may, perhaps, see one or other of the captives seated sadly and motionlessly, or it may be slowly pacing along a high gallery which runs from tower to tower, but it is rare at present that the dispirited inhabitants of those dismal chambers have energy to seek even such recreation as this, and the traveller may drive through Amboise twenty times, without having his curiosity to see Lord Londonderry's protégé gratified.

The writer of these pages happened to be in the neighbourhood when Abd-'el-Kader was transferred from Pau, the birthplace of Henri Quatre, in the Pyrenees, to this once gay Château on the Loire, and was amongst those who witnessed the arrival of the party.

The evening was very chilly and misty, and but few persons had been tempted to linger late by the river side; the attention, however, of those who had not yet "betaken them home," was attracted by a steam-boat full of passengers, coming from Paimbeuf, which stopped beneath the walls of the castle, and gave a signal apparently understood by a guard of soldiers, which had been loitering on the shore. The arrival of the steamer was immediately communicated to the governor of the castle, and much unwonted movement ensued.