whose luxuries were poetry, and to whose triumphs she gave all the brilliant colouring of hope. Who, in after life, can help smiling at the fancies in which early anticipation revelled; how absurd, how impossible, do they not now appear! Yet, in such mockery lurks much of bitterness: the laugh rings hollow from many a disappointment, and many a mortification.
Henrietta had all this to acquire, and was taking on that very evening one of her first lessons in experience. Contrary to their wont, her wishes were at variance with themselves—the past and the future contended in her. Impatient to enter the "new more magnificent world," on whose threshold she now stood, she was yet withheld by all the tenderest recollections of her childhood. She could not brook the thought of abandoning her uncle, as his long and gloomy evenings arose sadly before her—she saw him wandering all solitary through their favourite walks—sitting down to his lonely meals—watching by himself the dim hearth, and thinking continually of her. She raised not her eyes, but every object was distinctly visible to them,
