We are so prone to these things, with our terrible notions of duty. Ah, let me look, let me watch, let me wait, unhurried, unprompted! Bid me not venture on aught that could alter or end what is present! Say not, Time flies, and Occasion, that never returns, is departing! Drive me not out, ye ill angels with fiery swords, from my Eden, Waiting, and watching, and looking! Let love be its own inspiration! Shall not a voice, if a voice there must be, from the airs that environ, Yea, from the conscious heavens, without our knowledge or effort, Break into audible words? And love be its own inspiration?’ It appears, however, that even this hesitating hero would have come to the point at last. In a book, at least, the hero has nothing else to do. The inevitable restrictions of a pretty story hem him in; to wind up the plot, he must either propose or die, and usually he prefers proposing. Mr. Claude—for such is the name of Mr. Clough’s hero—is evidently on his road towards the inevitable alternative, when his fate intercepts him by the help of a person who meant nothing less. There is a sister of the heroine, who is herself engaged to a rather quick person, and who cannot make out anyone’s conducting himself differently from her George Vernon. She writes:— ‘Mr. Claude, you must know, is behaving a little bit better; He and Papa are great friends; but he really is too _shilly-shally_,— So unlike George! Yet I hope that the matter is going on fairly. I shall, however, get George, before he goes, to say something. Dearest Louise, how delightful to bring young people together!’ As the heroine says, ‘dear Georgina’ wishes for nothing so much as to show her adroitness. George Vernon does interfere, and Mr. Claude may describe for himself the change it makes in his fate: