followed him as well as we could, though certainly not _passibus æquis_. As we moved to the door we could hear sundry criticisms on the scene. “Articles of ejectment!” said a limb of the law. “The favourite distanced!” cried a Newmarket squire. “I did not think the breach practicable!” observed a gentleman in regimentals. We overtook the unfortunate object of all these comments about a hundred yards from the house. His wobegone countenance might well have stopped our malicious disposition to jocularity; nevertheless we could not refrain from whispering in his ear, “Gerard! a decided _turn out_!” “I beg your pardon,” said the poor fellow, mingling a smile’ for his pun with a tear for his disappointment, “I beg your pardon; I consider it a decided _take in_.” SOLITUDE IN A CROWD. “This is to be alone; this, this is solitude.”--BYRON. Reader! Were you ever alone in a crowd? If not, thank your stars, and bestow a grain of pity upon those who must return a different response to the question. A crowded solitude, if we may use such a strange expression, is, in sober sadness, as melancholy a sensation as human nature is capable of enduring. A crowded solitude! If you are young, thoughtless, and talkative, you will be astonished at the idea; and there will be nothing extraordinary in your surprise. The ancient poets--poor ignorant souls!--have given us a very different description of being alone. They have defined various kinds of solitude, suited to various descriptions of men; but all of them are alike founded on mistaken notions and groundless prejudice. Were we to follow their opinions, we should place the solitude of the lover in whispering groves, purling rills, and moonlight; that of the sage in a library or an observatory; that of the poet in a dish of vegetables and a Sabine farm; and _à fortiori_, that of the Etonian in an uncarpeted domicile, with a fractured window on the one side and a smoking fire on the other. Is this solitude? Far from it! We must most strenuously contend that true solitude is to be found in a multitude. We are aware that the solitude we are now discussing is not that which is generally understood by the term. Many persons have probably never heard of any but a corporeal solitude; that which we are describing is mental. The one is to be found in caves and Caucasus; the other in theatres and Almack’s. The former delights in moonshine--the latter in candelabras; the first sets a great value upon the silence and pure air of the country--the second gives the preference to the noise and squeeze of the fashionable world; and which of these is real solitude--the corporeal, which is removed from the sight and hearing of all objects; or the mental, which both hears and sees a variety of things, and is utterly unconscious that it does either?