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THE NEW MIRROR.

EVERY NUMBER EMBELLISHED WITH A STEEL ENGRAVING.

THREE DOLLARS A YEAR.

VOLUME III.]

EDITED BY G. P. MORRIS AND N. P. WILLIS.

NEW YORK, SATURDAY, APRIL 6, 1844.

PLATES IN THE PRESENT NUMBER. PERHAPS it is as well to call the reader's attention to the extra plate given in this number, as well as to the beauty and finish of the engraved view of Grein, on the Danube. Quite of course, we can never be paid for this outlay of this first number, but we have "thrown in" the title-page as a frank and grateful acknowledgment of public favour, and an earnest of our warm enthusiasm and zeal in the conduct of the Mirror. We may repeat also, here, that from more practised facilities and enlarged means, we shall give in the coming year a much better series of embellishments-a pictorial series, indeed, that would be a cheap bargain, of itself, without a line of letter-press. Will the reader please us by looking at this beautiful number and remembering that it is given by us as an equivalent for-sixpence only!

DASHES AT LIFE WITH A FREE PENCIL.

THE PHANTOM-HEAD UPON THE TABLE.
A SINGULAR STORY FROM REAL LIFE.

Showing the humiliations of the barriers of high-life.
THERE is no aristocracy in the time o' night. It was
punctually ten o'clock, in Berkeley Square. It rained on the
nobleman's roc. It rained on the beggar's head. The
lamps, for all that was visible except themselves, might as
well have been half way to the moon, but even that was not
particular to Berkeley Square.

A hack cabriolet groped in from Bruton-street.

PAYABLE IN ADVANCE.

[NUMBER 1.

the wearer, taking his gloves from his pocket, as the man arose, and slowly walking up and down the hall while he drew them leisurely on.

From the wet and muddy overshoes had been delivered two slight and well-appointed feet, however, shining in pliable and unexceptionable jet. With a second look, and the foul-weather toggery laid aside, the humbled footman saw that he had been in error, and that, hack-cab and dirty overshoes to the contrary notwithstanding, the economizing guest of "my lord" would appear, on the other side of the drawing-room door, only at home on "velvet of three pile" an elegant of undepreciable water!

"Shall I announce you, sir?" respectfully inquired the

servant.

"If Lord Aymar has come up from the dinner table-yes! If the ladies are alone-no!"

"Coffee has just gone in to the ladies, sir!"
"Then I'll find my own way!"

Lady Aymar was jamming the projecting diamond of a bracelet through and through the thick white leaf of an Egyptian Kala, lost apparently in an ellipse of reverie-possibly in a swoon of slumberous digestion. By the drawingroom light, in her negligent posture, she looked of a ripeness of beauty not yet sapped by one autumnal minute-plump, drowsy and voluptuous. She looked up as the door opened. 'Spiridion !"

"Sappho !"

"Don't be silly!-how are you, Count Pallardos? And how like a ghost you come in, unannounced! Suppose I had

"Shall I ring any bell for you, sir?" said the cabman, been tying my shoe, or any thing!" pulling aside the wet leather curtain.

"No! I'll get out any where! Pull up to the side-walk!" But the passenger's mind changed while paying his shilling.

"Is your ladyship quite well?"

"I will take coffee and wake up to tell you! Was I asleep when you opened the door? They were all so dull at dinner. Ah me! stupid or agreeable, we grow old all the

"On second thoughts, my good fellow, you may knock same! How am I looking, Spiridion ?" at the large door on the right."

The driver scrambled up the high steps and gave a single knock-such a knock as the drivers of only the poor and unfashionable are expected to give, in well-regulated England.

66

Ravishingly! Where is Lady Angelica?"

"Give me another lump of sugar! La! don't you take coffee?"

"There are but two cups, and this was meant for a lip of more celestial earth-has she been gone long?"

The door opened, and the rustling dress of Lady Angelica Aymar made music in the room. Oh how gloriously beautiful she was, and how changed was Count Spiridion Pallardos by her coming in! A minute before so inconsequent, so careless and complimentary-now so timid, so deferential, so almost awkward in every motion !

The door was opened only to a crack, and a glittering livery peered through. But the passenger was close behind, and setting his foot against the door, he drove back the suspicious menial and walked in. Three men, powdered and emblazoned in blue and gold, started to their feet, and came towards the apparent intruder. He took the wet cap from his head, deliberately flung his well-worn cloak into the arms of the nearest man, and beckoning to another, pointed to his overshoes. With a suppressed titter, two of the foot-to a man's name, in high life at least, than "pirate" or men disappeared through a side-door, and the third, mumbling something about sending up one of the stable-boys, turned to follow them.

The new-comer's hand passed suddenly into the footman's white cravat, and, by a powerful and sudden throw, the man was brought to his knee.

"Oblige me by unbuckling that shoe!" said the stranger in a tone of imperturbable coolness, setting his foot upon the upright knee of the astonished menial.

The shoe was taken off, and the other set in its place upon the plush-covered leg, and unbuckled, as obediently. "Keep them until I call you to put them on again!" said

The name of "Greek count" has been for a long time, in Europe, the synonym for "adventurer"-a worse pendant

"robber." Not that a man is peculiar who is trying to make the most out of society and would prefer an heiress to a governess, but that it is a disgrace to be so labelled! An adventurer is the same as any other gentleman who is not rich, only without a mask.

Count Pallardos was lately arrived from Constantinople, and was recognized and received by Lord Aymar as the son of a reduced Greek noble who had been the dragoman to the English embassy when his lordship was ambassador to the Porte. With a promptness a little singular in one whose patronage was so difficult to secure, Lord Aymar had immediately procured, for the son of his old dependant, a

small employment as translator in the Foreign office, and The blood of Count Spiridion ran round his heart like a with its most limited stipend for his means, the young count snake coiled to strike. He turned to a portfolio of drawings had commenced his experience of English life. His ac- for a cover to self-controul and self-communing, for he felt quaintance with the ladies of Lord Aymar's family was two that he had need of summoning his keenest and coldest stages in advance of this, however. Lady Aymar remem- judgment, his boldest and wariest courage of conduct and bered him well as the beautiful child of the lovely Countess endurance, to submit to, and outnerve and overmaster, his Pallardos, the playfellow of her daughter Angelica on the humiliating position. He was under a roof of which he shore of the Bosphorus; and on his first arrival in England, well knew that the pride and joy of it, the fair Lady Anhearing that the family of his patron was on the coast for gelica, the daughter of the proud earl, had given him her sea-bathing, Spiridion had prepared to report himself first to heart. He well knew that he had needed reserve and manthe female portion of it. Away from society in a retired agement to avoid becoming too much the favourite of the cottage ornée upon the sea-shore, they had received him lady mistress of that mansion; yet, in it, he had been twice with no hindrance to their appreciation or hospitality; and insulted grossly, cuttingly, but in both cases unresentably— he had thus been subjected, by accident, to a month's un- once by unpunishable menials, of whom he could not even shared intoxication with the beauty of the Lady Angelica. complain without exposing and degrading himself, and once The arrival of the young Greek had been made known to by the supercilious competitors for the heart he knew was Lord Aymar by his lady's letters, and the situation had been || his own—and they too, unpunishable ! procured for him; but Pallardos had seen his lordship but once, and this was his first visit to the town establishment of the family.

The butler came in with a petit verre of Curaçoa for Miladi, and was not surprised, as the footmen would have been, to see Lady Angelica on her knee, and Count Pallardos imprisoning a japonica in the knot a la Grecque of that head of Heaven's most heavenly moulding. Brother and sister, Cupid and Psyche, could not have been grouped with a more playful familiarity.

At this moment, at a sign from Lady Aymar, her lord swung open the door of a conservatory to give the room air, and the long mirror, set in the panel, showed to Spiridion his own pale and lowering features. He thanked heaven for the chance! To see himself once more was what he bitterly needed!—to see whether his head had shrunk between his shoulders--whether his back was crouchedwhether his eyes and lips had lost their fearlessness and pride! He had feared so-felt so! He almost wondered that he did not look like a dependant and a slave! But oh, no! The large mirror showed the grouped figures of the drawing-room, his own the noblest among them by nature's undeniable confession! His clear, statuary outline of fea"Pitcher and bowl of the purest crockery, my dear lady! tures-the finely-cut arches of his lips-the bold, calm darkMay I venture to draw this braid a little closer, Angelica-ness of his passionate eyes-his graceful and high-born to correct the line of this raven mass on your cheek? It robs us now of a rose-leaf's breadth at least-flat burglary, my sweet friend!"

"Spiridion "said Lady Aymar,-" I shall call you Spiridion till the men come up-how are you lodged, my dear! Have you a bath in your dressing-room?"

mien,-all apparent enough to his own eye when seen in the contrast of that mirrored picture he was not changed! -not a slave-not metamorphosed by that hour's humiliations! He clenched his right hand, once, till the nails were driven through his glove into the clammy palm, and then rose with a soft smile on his features, like the remainder of a look of pleasure.

But the Lady Angelica sprang to her feet, for a voice was heard of some one ascending from the dining-room. She flung herself into a dormeuse, Spiridion twirled his two fingers at the fire, as if bodily warmth was the uppermost necessity of the moment, and enter Lord Aymar, followed by a great "I have found," said he, in a composed and musical statesman, a famous poet, one sprig of unsurpassed nobility,|| tone, “I have found what we were looking for, Lady Anand one wealthy dandy commoner.

Lord Aymar nodded to his protegé, but the gentlemen grouped themselves, for a moment, around a silver easel, upon which stood a Correggio, a late purchase of which his lordship had been discoursing, and in that minute or two the name and quality of the stranger were communicated to the party-probably, for they took their coffee without further consciousness of his presence.

The statesman paired off to a corner with his host to talk politics, the poet took the punctured flower from the lap of Lady Aymar, and commenced mending, with patent wax wafers, from the or-molu desk near by, the holes in the white leaves; and the two ineffables lingered a moment longer over their Curacoa.

Pallardos drew a chair within conversation-reach of Lady Angelica, and commenced an unskilful discussion of the opera of the night before. He felt angry, insulted, unseated from his self-possession, yet he could not have told why. The two young men lounged leisurely across the room, and the careless Lord Frederick drew his chair partly between Pallardos and Lady Angelica, while Mr. Townley Manners reclined upon an ottoman behind her and brought his lips within whisper-shot of her ear, and, with ease and unforced nonsense, not audible nor intended to be audible to the "Greek adventurer," they inevitably engrossed the noble beauty.

gelica!"

He raised the large portfolio from the print-stand, and setting it open on his knee, directly between Lord Frederick and Lady Angelica, cut off that nobleman's communication with her ladyship very effectually, while he pointed out a view of the Acropolis at Athens. Her ladyship was still expressing her admiration of the drawing, when Spiridion turned to the astonished gentleman at her ear.

"Perhaps, sir," said he, "in a lady's service, I may venture to dispossess you of that ottoman! Will you be kind enough to rise!"

With a stare of astonishment, the elegant Mr. Townley Manners reluctantly complied; and Spiridion, drawing the ottoman in front of Lady Angelica, set the broad portfolio upon it, and seating himself at her feet upon the outer edge, commenced a detailed account of the antiquities of the grand capital. The lady listened with an amused look of mischief in her eye, Lord Frederick walked once around her chair humming an air very rudely, Mr. Manners attempted in vain to call Lady Angelica to look at something wonderful in the conservatory, and Spiridion's triumph was complete. He laid aside the portfolio after a moment or two, drew the ottoman back to its advantageous position, and, self-assured and at his ease, engrossed fully and agree. ably the attention of his heart's mistress.

Half an hour elapsed. Lord Aymar took a kind of dis