That he was not a little shocked at the gay frivolity of his beautiful bride, and she as much disappointed at the staid demureness of her stolid-looking husband, is not to be wondered at; but their friends knew well that time would smooth down greater discrepancies than even these; and if ever there was a country, the monotony of whose life could subdue all to its own leaden tone, it was Holland in old days. Whether engaged in the active pursuit of gain in the great cities, or enjoying the luxurious repose of chateau life, a dull, dreary uniformity pervaded every thing--the same topics, the same people, the same landscape, recurred day after day; and save what the season induced, there was nothing of change in the whole round of their existence. And what a dull honeymoon was it for that young bride at the old Chateau of Overbecque! To toil along the deep sandy roads in a lumbering old coach, with two long-tailed black horses--to halt at some little eminence, and strain the eyes over a long unbroken flat, where a wind-ill, miles off, was an object of interest--to loiter beside the bank of a sluggish canal, and gaze on some tasteless excrescence of a summerhouse, whose owner could not be distinguished from the wooden effigy that sat, pipe in mouth, beside him--to dine in the unbroken silence of a funeral feast, and doze away the afternoon over the "Handelsblatt," while her husband smoked himself into the seventh heaven of a Dutch Elysium--Poor Caroline! this was a sorry realization of all her bright dreamings! It ought to be borne in mind, that many descendants of high French families, who were either too proud or too poor to emigrate to England or America, had sought refuge from the Revolution in the convents of the Low Countries; where, without entering an order, they lived in all the discipline of a religious community. These ladies, many of whom had themselves mixed in all the elegant dissipations of the court, carried with them the most fascinating reminiscences of a life of pleasure, and could not readily forget the voluptuous enjoyments of Versailles, and the graceful caprices of "La Petit Trianon." From such sources as these the young pupils drew all their ideas of the world, and assuredly it could have scarcely worn colors more likely to fascinate such imaginations.