genuine, or had half the sway he thought of in his heart. Their immediate effect however, was a great bitterness and restlessness, and distaste for everything around him. He had got to hate his new life, his occupations, and the pleasures which perhaps palled more quickly than his occupations; and all that flutter of diplomatic talk, which is so like the flutter of the smallest parish business, but that the topics are more important. Those personal discussions and reports, the “he said” and “she said” which pretend to be of vital importance when the hes and the shes are kings and queens, but are so like common gossip in every other respect became tiresome beyond description. All this which had carried him away from his own presumably small affairs at first, and had sounded great and magnificent, sickened him now with its paltriness. “Depend upon it the Emperor meant so and so.” “But I assure you Count A---- said--” What was a man the better for this? he asked himself with disdain Nothing at all the better, much the worse, as having it urged upon his attention that mere gossip and nonsensical bustle, and officious fussiness thrust themselves in at the gravest moments, and have a part in the greatest events. Mrs. Bates discussing the affairs of her chapel and the private dissensions between the minister and the deacons, or a Secretary of Legation busily calculating how the Emperor and Count A. and Prince B. contradicted each other, what was the difference? Was it not all petty, miserable, unworthy? What was a man the better of it? And though the _salons_ were more lovely and the style of conversation more graceful, was not the subject everywhere much the same as in the parlour at Underhayes, in which Arthur had made such close acquaintance with the vulgarities of life? He was disgusted with them all. The only good under the sun was surely to enjoy as much as you could where you could, leaving all other considerations aside. Be happy--if that come within your powers--but if not happy, then be amused, if you are able to be so, distracted from your own thoughts, entertained, if not by the love and kindness, at least by the folly, and affectations, and self-regard of others. This creed was not naturally to the taste of a frank and open-hearted young man, sympathetic with his fellow-creatures, manly, and friendly, and gentle of heart; but his unhappiness had given him a twist, and all the training he was at present subject, to all the influences round him, led him that way. What did it matter? Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die. Arthur was on the eve of ceding to this creed. He was on the edge of that pit which is bottomless, and in which there is so little hope; and he might have ended by being a gay infidel, a chill but laughing cynic, even an unbeliever in everything good, who should not only accept that negative of every virtue, but be amused by it, the last degradation. He had all