After Markham's interview with his patron, he went down into the country to spend a few weeks with his parents, and in his native air he soon regained what he had lost in point of health. It is not to be supposed that all this time no thought of Clara should have entered his mind. But if our readers imagine that he came home as love-sick as he went abroad, they greatly mistake. Love is not the most rational and reasonable thing in the world, but still it must in ordinarily-constructed minds have some little ground of hope and probability to rest upon. If there had been at parting any expressions on the part of Markham and of Clara that there was a mutual understanding between them, however faint and few those expressions might have been, something would have been afforded for their love to build upon. But they were mutually ignorant of each other's feelings; and though in their separation they thought one of the other, yet those thoughts were rather a species of aerial castle-building, than any regular, calm, deliberate anticipation of probability. Clara thought much of Markham, but knew not that he thought any thing of her; Markham thought much of Clara, but knew not that she had any thoughts to spare for him. They merely thought how delightful, if it should prove eventually that the regard was mutual; but on that point they were ignorant. Markham had in his situation much business to attend to. New scenes were around him, and new faces were presented to him, and new acquaintances were forming around him. And when his health failed him, and he had thoughts that life might soon be sacrificed to his change of climate, there came into his mind thoughts of real and actual interests which supplanted his consideration of imaginary and possible interests. His mind looked towards the place of his birth, and towards his kind and revered parents; and he thought of their sorrows, and of the bitterness of their bereavement, should he be removed from them. He had not formed such an acquaintance as Clara had with Miss Henderson. He had not met with any thing to keep alive in his mind a romantic or passionate feeling; but, on the contrary, every thing contributed to sober down his thoughts to the level of literal truth and solidity of real life. It is not, therefore, to be wondered at that when he returned to England his romantic tenderness should be a little abated, and that he should think rather more of the actual than the possible. We are sorry for the romantically-disposed that it did so happen. It would have been far more agreeable for them to read, and far more pleasant for us to write, a very tender pathetic scene of the meeting of Clara and Horatio. We should have been very glad of an opportunity to display our eloquence in describing the emotion of Markham as soon as he arrived in England, at the thought that now he was breathing the same air as his beloved and beautiful Clara Rivolta. It would have gratified us mightily to have described