Let no man, nor woman either, consider these observations flummery or verbiage. They are my calm deliberate opinions, written, it is true, under circumstances of considerable irritation, but nevertheless deliberate. I have no love to the army, for I have been sacrificed for a dragoon. My affections have been slighted, my person vilified, my professional prospects damaged, and my constitution fearfully shaken in consequence of this military mania. I have made an idiot of myself in the eyes of my friends and relatives. I have absolutely gone upon the turf. I have lost some valuable inches of epidermis, and every bone of my body feels at the present moment as sore as though I were the sole survivor of a terrific railway collision. A more injured individual than myself never mounted upon a three-legged stool, and from that high altitude I now hurl down defiance and anathemas upon the regulars, be they horse or foot, sappers or miners, artillery, pioneers, or marines! It was my accursed fate to love, and love in vain. I do not know whether it was the eye or the instep, the form or the voice, of Edith Bogle, which first drew my attention, and finally fascinated my regards, as I beheld her swimming swan-like down the Assembly Rooms at the last Waverley Ball. A more beautiful representative of Die Vernon could not have been found within the boundary of the three kingdoms. Her rich auburn hair flowed out from beneath the crimson network which strove in vain to confine within its folds that bright luxuriant sea--on her brow there lay one pearl, pure as an angel's tear--and oh! sweet even to bewilderment was the smile that she cast around her, as, resting upon the arm of the moody Master of Ravenswood, she floated away--a thing of light--in the mazy current of the waltz! I shall not dwell now upon the circumstances of the subsequent introduction; on the delicious hour of converse at the supper-table; or on the whispered, and--as I flattered myself--conscious adieux, when, with palpitating heart, I veiled her fair shoulders with the shawl, and felt the soft pressure of her fingers as I tenderly assisted her to her chair. I went home that night a love-sick Writer to the Signet. One fairy form was the sole subject of my dreams, and next morning I woke to the conviction, that without Edith Bogle earth would be a wilderness, and even the bowers of Paradise damp, chilly, and uncomfortable.