continued into private life--girls believing all the pretty things said to them--men going home and laughing at them all--wallflowers very black, women engaged ten deep very sunshiny--the governor very glorious, and my noble self very fascinating. And now," said Sydie, taking up his pipe, "pass the punch, old boy, and never say I can't talk!" THE STORY OF A CRAYON-HEAD; OR, A DOUBLED-DOWN LEAF IN A MAN'S LIFE. I was dining with a friend, in his house on the Lung' Arno (he fills, never mind what, post in the British Legation), where I was passing an autumn month. The night was oppressively hot; a still, sultry sky brooded over the city, and the stars shining out from a purple mist on to the Campanile near, and the slopes of Bellosguardo in the distance. It was intensely hot; not all the iced wines on his table could remove the oppressive warmth of the evening air, which made both him and me think of evenings we had spent together in the voluptuous lassitude of the East, in days gone by, when we had travelled there, fresh to life, to new impressions, to all that gives "greenness to the grass, and glory to the flower." The Arno ran on under its bridge, and we leaned out of the balcony where we were sitting and smoking, while I tossed over, without thinking much of what I was doing, a portfolio of his sketches. Position has lost for art many good artists since Sir George Beaumont: my friend is one of them; his sketches are masterly; and had he been a vagrant Bohemian instead of an English peer, there might have been pictures on the walls of the R. A. to console one for the meretricious daubs and pet vulgarities of nursery episodes, hideous babies, and third-class carriage interiors, which make one's accustomed annual visit to the rooms that once saw the beauties of Reynolds, and Wilson, and Lawrence, a positive martyrdom to anybody of decent refinement and educated taste. The portfolio stood near me, and I took out a sketch or two now and then between the pauses of our conversation, looking lazily up the river, while the moonlight shone on Dante's city, that so long forgot, and has, so late, remembered him. "Ah! what a pretty face this is! Who's the original?" I asked him, drawing out a female head, done with great finish in pastel, under which was written, in his own hand, "Florelle." It was a face of great beauty, with a low Greek brow and bronze-dark hair, and those large, soft, liquid eyes that you only see in a Southern, and that looked at you from the sketch with an earnest, wistful regard, half childlike, half impassioned. He looked up, glanced at the sketch, and stretched out his hand hastily, but I held it away from him. "I want to look at it; it is a beautiful head; I wish we had the original here now. Who is she?"