man in the world whom she ought to select! I suppose it’s the additional odds in favour of widowhood that constitute the great attraction--females are naturally capricious. Well, I shall try and take the matter easily, at all events. I dare say it won’t break my heart whichever way it goes. I shall make observations, and if she really has the bad taste to prefer this man, he’s welcome to her--a woman who could love him would never do for my wife; that one fact would argue an amount of incompatibility of temper which would be furnishing work for Doctors’ Commons before the first year’s connubial infelicity was over. I wonder whether there’s any lunch going on; it’s astonishing how thirsty anything of this kind makes me! Pale ale I must have, or _mit colum!_” And having arrived at this conclusion, he thrust his hands--of whose delicate appearance he was especially careful--into his pockets to preserve them from the cold, and strolled off to put his resolution into practice. In the meantime, Marmaduke De Grandeville, while listening with his outward ears to General Grant’s dull electioneering details, was inwardly congratulating himself on the favourable impression he had made on that very sensible young man, the Honourable Charles Leicester, and thinking what a useful ally he had secured to assist him in carrying out his matrimonial project. Verily, there are as many comedies performed off the stage as upon it! The ball at Broadhurst took place on the evening of the day on which the above conversation had passed, and was a wonderful affair indeed. It was given for a special purpose, and that purpose was to conciliate everybody, and induce everybody to promise General Grant their vote and interest at the ensuing election. Accordingly, everybody was invited--at least everybody who had the slightest pretension to be anybody--and everybody came; and as almost everybody brought somebody else with them, a wife, or a daughter, or the young lady from London who was spending Christmas with them, there was no lack of guests. The object of the entertainment was no secret; and the king of the county, the Marquis of C----------, being in the conservative interest, and consequently anxious to secure the General’s return, not only came himself, but actually brought a real live duke with him to exhibit to the company. This was a great stroke of policy, and told immensely, particularly with the smaller anybodies who were almost nobodies, but who, having associated with a duke, straightway became somebodies, and remained so ever after. Moreover, in all cases of incipient radicalism, chartist tendencies, or socialist symptoms, his Grace was an infallible specific. Depend on it, there is no better remedy for a certain sort of democracy than a decoction of strawberry-leaves; apply that to the sore place and the patient instantly becomes sound in his opinions, and continues a healthy member of the body politic. The particular duke on the occasion