COLONEL MORLEY.--"That depends upon whether you are merely the artistic spectator of the landscape, or the disappointed proprietor of the soil." "Admirable!" said Darrell; "you have disposed of Lady Adela. So ho! so ho!" Darrell's horse (his old high-nettled horse, freshly sent to him from Fawley, and in spite of the five years that had added to its age, of spirit made friskier by long repose) here put down its ears lashed out-- and indulged in a bound which would have unseated many a London rider. A young Amazon, followed hard by some two or three young gentlemen and their grooms, shot by, swift and reckless as a hero at Balaclava. But With equal suddenness, as she caught sight of Darrell--whose hand and voice had already soothed the excited nerves of his steed--the Amazon wheeled round and gained his side. Throwing up her veil, she revealed a face so prettily arch, so perversely gay--with eye of radiant hazel, and fair locks half loosened from their formal braid--that it would have beguiled resentment from the most insensible--reconciled to danger the most timid. And yet there was really a grace of humility in the apologies she tendered for her discourtesy and thoughtlessness. As the girl reined her light palfrey by Darrell's side-turning from the young companions who had now joined her, their hackneys in a foam-and devoting to his ear all her lively overflow of happy spirits, not untempered by a certain deference, but still apparently free from dissimulation-- Daxrell's grand face lighted up--his mellow laugh, unrestrained, though low, echoed her sportive tones; her youth, her joyousness were irresistibly contagious. Alban Morley watched observant, while interchanging talk with her attendant comrades, young men of high ton, but who belonged to that /jeunesse doree/ with which the surface of life patrician is fretted over--young men with few ideas, fewer duties--but with plenty of leisure--plenty of health--plenty of money in their pockets--plenty of debts to their tradesmen--daring at Melton--scheming at T'attersall's--pride to maiden aunts--plague to thrifty fathers-- fickle lovers, but solid matches--in brief, fast livers, who get through their youth betimes, and who, for the most part, are middle-aged before they are thirty--tamed by wedlock--sobered by the responsibilities that come with the cares of property and the dignities of rank--undergo abrupt metamorphosis into chairmen of quarter sessions, county members, or decorous peers;--their ideas enriched as their duties grow--their opinions, once loose as willows to the wind, stiffening into the palisades of fenced propriety--valuable, busy men, changed as Henry V., when coming into the cares of state, he said to the Chief Justice, "There is my hand;" and to Sir John Falstaff, "I know thee not, old roan; Fall to thy prayers!"