usually come together to fetch Lord John, on their way to the Lido."

"Yet I could almost swear," persisted Jervis, "that I caught a glimpse of his face, just now, in the gondola that passed us at such speed."

"The gondola with the ragged boatmen? -Impossible, my dear Cleve!—the duke uses the gondola of the hotel di Grande Bretagna, whose boatmen we should know by their badge. The gondola we are in, is the one belonging to our Palazzo."

"Still, I think it was Lord John!"-persisted Jervis.

"What an idea!" cried Fairfax,—with a laugh. "He would have seen us, and pulled up. And what on earth should he be doing in a hack gondola, at this hour of the evening?"

Returning, perhaps, from some visit. "

"Lord John is the shyest fellow in the world! I have great difficulty in forcing him to pay the visits he ought to pay."

66 He may be more tractable about those he ought not to pay!" retorted Cleve, carelessly, and by no means intending a sarcasm.

But Fairfax, fancying his young friend might

have obtained a deeper insight than himself into the habits of his charge, began to feel anxious. Too proud to avow his mistrust or pry into secrets not spontaneously confided to him, he fell into an uneasy fit of musing.

"I suppose it is because I am what the Duke of Attleborough calls a snob," resumed he, after a few minutes' pause, "that I am tempted to believe we never diverge from the wisdom of our ancestors unless to our cost. Lord Wrexhill, though the most upright, excellent, and in some respects wisest of men, is full of the crotchets of the progress school. His favourite theory is the necessity of marching with the times, and forming systems to square with the altered circumstances of modern life."

"Surely that opinion scarcely deserves to be called a crotchet?" said Cleve.

"When carried to the extremes to which he extends it. Lord Wrexhill pretends that the discovery of steam has done for the body, what printing did for the mind; and that the facilities of railroads, enabling us to see those things of which formerly we were only able to read, half a young man's education ought to be locomotive."

"Since the time of the Tudors, no young nobleman was ever considered accomplished unless his education were completed by the grand tour."

"Ay, ay! but they went abroad to acquire exterior polish, -to learn to dance, fence, fiddle, and come back varnished with dilettanteism. Whereas Lord Wrexhill seems to fancy that history, geography, and statistics, are only to be perfected by flying in a special train from city to city;—and that (like some impresario dashing across Europe.

to engage a favourite singer), a man desirous to study Vitruvius's architecture, or the stratification of the Righi, instead of taking down, as formerly, a volume from his library, ought to possess himself of a first-class ticket and go and see! The marquis takes into the account neither loss of time (for to him waste of money is of little moment,) nor the hazard incurred by chance company or injurious examples; and I verily believe--But at what are you smiling, my dear Jervis?"

A better dissembler than Cleve would have answered" at your vehemence about nothing!"—and thus confused his friend into perceiving how rashly he was betraying his uneasiness concerning the influence of the Clevelands.

But dissimulation of any kind was foreign to the nature of Jervis; and without pretending to disguise that he had suffered his thoughts to stray from Fairfax's lengthy dissertation, he replied-his smile changing into

a blush as he proceeded, "I was thinking that, in spite of what the Duke of Attleborough calls the Paulus-Æmilius-Snooks nomenclature of the Americans, the Roman names are peculiarly fitted to the air and character of their women."

"You have seen so few Americans," replied Fairfax, a little nettled, "that I presume you generalize from a single instance. The delicate paleness and classical outline of feature of Mrs Cleveland, fulfil in short, your beau ideal of Virginia!"

"Exactly!" said Jervis, more pleased than ashamed to have been so well divined.

"Yours, but not mine!" added his friend. "I admit that the most beautiful women I have ever seen were Americans; nay, strange to tell, that their beauty is of the most refined and elegant order. I will admit even more; that some of the best informed women, and endowed with the highest sense of female duty, with whom I ever became ac