Such was the tale of our new acquaintance, nearly in his own words; but as he spoke rapidly and fluently, the time it occupied in telling was not, or at least did not seem, long. We felt that he had a good right to call upon us for a return, and finding myself, as usual, when I wish to recollect a good story, totally bankrupt of memory, I turned to the friend who had accompanied me from England--a gentleman in every sense of the word, a man of refined taste and excellent heart. I was very sure that, if he could so far conquer his laziness as to begin, whatever he told would prove interesting; but idleness was predominant, and he was endeavouring to push back the burden to my shoulders, when Monsieur Petit, who seemed to divine the spirit which held us so long together, glided into the room, and told us, that if we were curious in wine, he had some Burgundy so perfect in its kind that he would beg us just to try it. We nodded the universal head; and while our worthy host was producing his nectar, my friend, stimulated by the very anticipation, gave me one reproachful look for stirring him from his repose, and said, "Well, well, since it must be so, I will try if I can remember a story I once heard of our own country, and give you _Two Scenes from the Civil Wars_." TWO SCENES FROM THE CIVIL WARS. SCENE I. It was late on the night of an early day in spring--perhaps about two hours past midnight--and yet the inhabitants of a small lonely dwelling on the edge of a large piece of common-ground, lying about ten miles from Farringdon House, were all awake and up, and, with anxious eyes, gazing from the small long windows upon the blank darkness that hung over the world. A single candle stood upon a plain oaken table in the midst of the room, by the light of which might be seen, at one of the windows, a small finely-formed female figure, which still preserved all the lines of exquisite beauty, though a certain degree of stiffness, corresponding well with some deep wrinkles on the cheek, and with the white hair that was braided from the forehead, spoke the passing of many years under the petrifying power of Time, since that form had been in its prime, and the beauty, which still lingered, had known its first expansion. Leaning over her shoulder was a second figure so like the first--but with every grace which time had nipped in the other, just blown; with the cheek unwithered, and the brow unseared--that it seemed a living picture of what the other had been some twenty years before--a portrait in a family picture-gallery, where human loveliness may see and moralize on all the graces that the eternal reaper has gathered as he flew.