a melancholy interest to the narrative. She finally fell a victim to her sufferings, and found at the age of twenty-six, a premature grave at Autun, in France, on her return to her native England. In the course of her pilgrimage she visited Paris, Geneva, Milan, Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples, Genoa, and various other cities. All the wonders of art and glories of nature in Italy's elysian land, seem to have borrowed additional splendor and beauty from the touches of her magic pencil--and in her reflections upon men and manners there is a purity of sentiment which could neither be sullied by the temptations of wealth and fashion, nor by the prevalence of licentious customs in that voluptuous climate. We cannot deny to our readers the pleasure of a few extracts, which will fully justify the estimate we have placed upon this delightful volume. The frivolous extravagance which in many things characterises the French people, and especially the Parisian circles, is thus described: "_La mode_ at Paris is a spell of wondrous power: it is most like what we should call in England a rage, a mania, a torrent sweeping down the bounds between good and evil, sense and nonsense, upon whose surface straws and egg-shells float into notoriety, while the gold and the marble are buried and hidden till its force be spent. The rage for cashmeres and little dogs, has lately given way to a rage for Le Solitaire, a Romance written, I believe, by a certain vicomte d'Arlincourt. Le Solitaire rules the imagination, the taste, the dress of half Paris: if you go to the theatre, it is to see the 'Solitaire,' either as tragedy, opera, or melodrame: the men dress their hair and throw their cloaks about them _à la Solitaire_; bonnets and caps, flounces and ribbons are all _à la Solitaire_; the print shops are full of scenes from Le Solitaire; it is on every toilette, on every work table;--ladies carry it about in their reticules to show each other that they are à la mode; and the men--what can they do but humble their understandings and be _extasiés_, when beautiful eyes sparkle in its defence, and glisten in its praise, and ruby lips pronounce it divine, delicious, 'quelle sublimité dans les descriptions, quelle force dans les caractères! quelle âme! quel feu! quelle chaleur! quelle verve! quelle originalité! quelle passion!' &c. "'Vous n'avez pas lu le Solitaire?' said Madame M. yesterday; 'eh mon dieu! est-il donc possible! vous? mais, ma chère, vous êtes perdue de reputation, et pour jamais!' "To retrieve my lost reputation, I sat down to read Le Solitaire, and as I read, my amazement grew, and I did in 'gaping wonderment abound,' to think that fashion, like the insane root of old, had power to drive a whole city mad with nonsense; for such a tissue of abominable absurdities, bombast, and blasphemy, bad taste and bad language, was never surely indited by any madman, in or out of Bedlam: not Maturin himself, that king of fustian,