But perchance a young maiden, led away by the excitement of the hour, could not find it in her heart to address similar language to Lady Clara Vere de Vere’s brother. The last victim always believes that she is to be the exception to all general rules; she may transgress, but not pay the penalty—pluck the forbidden fruit, and for doing so not forfeit Eden—plunge wildly into sin, and sorrow, and shame, and yet find peace in her heart and the light of heaven lying on her path; but cause and effect are eternal, and, youth gone, and pleasure gone, and the power to attract gone, and the inward sense of right succeeded by the stings of conscience and the gnawing of remorse, what is left but to weep madly and in vain for “The tender grace of a day that is dead”? But we are in Caldwell’s,—let us go into the gallery and look down. I know not the name of the new dances, but how the women swim round the room, as the music now hurriedly hastens, now softly dies away. The girl that dances here so modestly to-night in twelve months will have lost her maiden shame, will be dressed in silks and satins, will be dancing at the Argyll, and supping at Scott’s or Quin’s. That girl they call Rose—and a rose she is, for she might shine in a Belgravian drawing-room, and walks in beauty as a fairy queen—might have lit up a home with her love, and made a brave heart proud; but here she comes, night after night, and domestic life is to her tame after music and dancing such as she has here. Beauty you will not find much of, nor that overdress which stamps the character of the women at the Casino or the Argyll in unmistakeable terms; and the men are the class you usually meet in these places. They may be pickpockets, or they may be peers; you can scared tell the difference in these levelling days. If I had not Mr Caldwell’s express assertion to the contrary, I should certainly say that that young fellow with a pint bottle of champagne in his hand was decidedly drunk,—at any rate, he has very much the appearance of a tipsy person; but the waiters seem to be of Mr Caldwell’s opinion, and are still offering him more drink, and the women around seem to think it is rather fun than otherwise. Ah! little do they reflect how such as he, under the influences of drink, forget the decencies of life, the claims of duty, forget even the common instincts of common humanity; so that the wife, whom he has vowed to love, honour, and protect, is abandoned, and the home forsaken, for the orgies of the public-house. Do the women around us ever expect to be the wives and mothers of such, or have they, young and fair as many of them seem, learnt already that recklessness as to the future which robs life of all its glory, and incarcerates the soul in a living grave? I can see, even here, a gaiety more sad than tears. But I need not continue my description; dancing in public rooms in the metropolis is much the same everywhere. Of course the place is all that