affinity to all beautiful things, visible or invisible; but likewise that he possessed a genius for celebrating such things, which in a less indolent and more ambitious nature, would have been sure to have gained a fair poet's name ere now. For this Mr. Falsgrave was just hovering upon his prime of years; a period which, in such a man, is the sweetest, and, to a mature woman, by far the most attractive of manly life. Youth has not yet completely gone with its beauty, grace, and strength; nor has age at all come with its decrepitudes; though the finest undrossed parts of it--its mildness and its wisdom--have gone on before, as decorous chamberlains precede the sedan of some crutched king. Such was this Mr. Falsgrave, who now sat at Mrs. Glendinning's breakfast table, a corner of one of that lady's generous napkins so inserted into his snowy bosom, that its folds almost invested him as far down as the table's edge; and he seemed a sacred priest, indeed, breakfasting in his surplice. "Pray, Mr. Falsgrave," said Mrs. Glendinning, "break me off a bit of that roll." Whether or not his sacerdotal experiences had strangely refined and spiritualized so simple a process as breaking bread; or whether it was from the spotless aspect of his hands: certain it is that Mr. Falsgrave acquitted himself on this little occasion, in a manner that beheld of old by Leonardo, might have given that artist no despicable hint touching his celestial painting. As Pierre regarded him, sitting there so mild and meek; such an image of white-browed and white-handed, and napkined immaculateness; and as he felt the gentle humane radiations which came from the clergyman's manly and rounded beautifulness; and as he remembered all the good that he knew of this man, and all the good that he had heard of him, and could recall no blemish in his character; and as in his own concealed misery and forlornness, he contemplated the open benevolence, and beaming excellent-heartedness of Mr. Falsgrave, the thought darted through his mind, that if any living being was capable of giving him worthy counsel in his strait; and if to any one he could go with Christian propriety and some small hopefulness, that person was the one before him. "Pray, Mr. Glendinning," said the clergyman, pleasantly, as Pierre was silently offering to help him to some tongue--"don't let me rob you of it--pardon me, but you seem to have very little yourself this morning, I think. An execrable pun, I know: but"--turning toward Mrs. Glendinning--"when one is made to feel very happy, one is somehow apt to say very silly things. Happiness and silliness--ah, it's a suspicious coincidence." "Mr. Falsgrave," said the hostess--"Your cup is empty. Dates!--We were talking yesterday, Mr. Falsgrave, concerning that vile fellow, Ned." "Well, Madam," responded the gentleman, a very little uneasily.