THE CONTRAST.

IT would be a famous House of Peers if a majority of them could write Contrasts. By what happy accident is it that we have a Sound Peer who might be mistaken for a Commoner of genius ? How has he been rescued from the realms of' apathy ? Where has lie got his varied experience? It would be utterly impossible for such a man to vote against the Reform Bill. Contrast is the history of a matrimonial experiment. A noble- man, feeling the great uncertainty of getting a decent wife in his own class, tries another;—one of the lower classes, as they are called; and transplants a rustic beauty from a farm-house to fashionable life. Discomfort ensues necessarily : he might as well have brought up a milk-pail, and made a chimneypiece ornament of it. It would of course be laughed (it, be very awkward in its position, .and probably tumble down and be broken to pieces. This is the fate of the unfortunate heroine of .Contrast,—only novelists have their own way of bringing about terminations. The Datum' results of absurd conduct or rash proceedings, showing themselves in long and protracted discomfort, do not answer their purpose. They have, however, the elements at command; they can call lightning from heaven, they can even summon an earth- quake, and a storm is an affair of a few pages. Lord MULGRAVE would feel as if but scant justice were dealt out to him, if he, as he sails to Jamaica, were despatched with as little ceremony as his heroine : he is absolutely compelled to drown her in a yacht, to get her out of the fashionable world !—But let its be a little more methodical : we have begun at the death, which is the wrong end of a novel; it is like a savage's attempt at shooting with a gun by putting the barrel to the shoulder, to speak of the fatalities of a history at the very beginning of a notice. Contrast opens with the description of a country-seat and its owner. Sir North Saunders is the son of a man who made a large fortune by "contracting with Government : he is himself an old political hack, a regular Treasury hound, a maker of a house and all that—rewarded by an odd job and a favour when lie asks for it. His fancy, at the period when the novel commences, is, inviting fashionables to his picturesque abode of Hornscliffe Abbey, and playing the part of convenient friend to all persons of unblemished reputation who wish to carry on flirtations to any concealed ex- tent. He is a character admirably drawn : the scenery of his place, bought from the executors of a suicide and ruined noble- man, is beautiful on paper, and we guess it is pretty nearly as perfect in reality. In what county Hornscliffe lies, we are not informed, but we fancy that Morden Bay is not very far from Mul- grave Castle. At this seat the hero of the novel is " summering " and flirting ; when, having been somewhat unreasonably disgusted and disappointed, he determines upon a bold measure! In one of the picturesque wanderings of the party visiting at Horns- cliffe Abbey, a young creature of great beauty and simplicity is encountered, who greatly attracts the attention of Lord Cast!e- ton—the person to whom we have alluded as the hero. The rest of the fashionables have as little taste for beauty in a peasant as in a landscape; their talk is upon other subjects, in spite of the affected and blundering enthusiasm of their entertainer, and the guidance of the picturesque-pursuing curate Mr. Turner: even in the wilds of Yorkshire, if Yorkshire it be, their fleas oscillate between Downing Street and Grosvenor Square. The newspaper —the despised newspaper—is their daily food; and if it tells them of the death of a friend or a partisan, "ample food for conversation is found, not in lamenting his loss, but in discussing the various pretensions of the probable claimants for his government, his garter, his regiment, and his sinecure." The young nobleman cares for none of these things : his anxiety is to get a wife who will love him neither for his garter nor his gt. vernment. He fancies, not improbably, that in procuring the consent of a young lady to share his fortune and adopt his title, he may not be altogether certain that said title and fortune may not have had more to do with the matter than his own agreeable per- son. This is a morbid fancy ; but we do not see why a novelist should not take up a morbid fancy, not unlikely to be entertained, and work it in all its practical details. This Lord MULGRAVE has done. His youth, jealous of his own wealth and rank, determines to try what he is, stripped of his externals, according to the old conundrum about majesty. He doffs his title, assumes false hair and a false name, pretends to get his living by painting, and, by the aid of all this falsehood, hopes to succeed in the discovery of some delicious morsel of perfect truth. The fairy little farmer's daughter, whom he had met with while picturesque-hunting, and who had made a deep impression upon him even in the midst of his flirtation with a lady of forty, on the verge, occurs to him as a fair subject for his moral experiment; and down he goes in a back chaise, with his new wig on, to win the virgin love of Lucy Darnell, the only daughter of the lonely farmer, dwelling near the sea-side, on a romantic coast, and having no neighbour within ten or twelve miles. This will be allowed to be as fair a prospect as needs be for a fastidious lord, disgusted with fashion and frivolity, luxury and iniquity. But alas! Lucy had got a lover already a sailor youth, her cousin, a fine vigorous lad, had made a huge inroad upon her affections; so that the romantic Peer's busi- ness is more than doubled,—he has to eradicate one feeling before he plants another. The existence of this youth has been deemed necessary by the author to work his plot with : it is no part of the moral experiment of transplanting a female from a rank of natural manners to one essentially artificial, that she should previously have had an attachment to overcome, and that her subse- quent life should be entangled and shackled by the come. quences of it. This is a defect, unhappily consequent • on the necessity of pampering the vulgar taste for incident and intri, -cacy. We should have much preferred the story purified from the young smuggler, who is nothing more nor less than a stain upon the book as well as his family ; without denying that his portraiture, and the transactions in w hiell he takes a part, are ad- mirably depicted. The farmer's family, in which the future Countess has been most unconsciously nurtured, is small, but the features of the individuals who form it are exceedingly well drawn.

The farmer himself is a plain homely fellow, not very different from most individuals of his class ; the only surprising tiling about him is, that he should be the procreator of so fair and fine a crea- ture as his daughter. She is not, however, more unlike her father than her mother ; who is a pretty specimen of plaguiness—a pers. feet trial of Job : though all under the smooth surface of decorum and dulness. Where on earth has our Peer had an opportunity of studying such persons ? Has he, too, been making love in a farm- house ? has he, laying aside the sounding title of NOR4ANBY, been trying the force of his personal charms as plain Mr. PHipps? However, let him have picked up his notions of character how and where he may, they are just, and often indicative of minute and careful study. " Mis.Darnell was a most worthy \roman, correct in all her intentions, exem- plary in the discharge of all her duties, from the religious down to the domestic ; but she was a person of an unfortunately minute mind, with a sort of clock-work regularity of sensations : with her, each duty, of every degree, was, in its allotted succession, of equal importance ; and, undisturbed by any deviation into feeling, she not only observed them herself, but, like the dial, pointed them out to a about her. Any omission of the due decorum of any rule, she treasured up, not till it had been obliterated by subsequent punctuality, but till it was such ceeded by some fresh deficiency ; by which means she contrived that she should never be without a grievance : not that she was ever in consequence loud or angry ; this she would have thought wrong ; but she put on a most provoking appearance of patient endurance, which was exactly the sort of look her husband could least bear, and which inducing, in consequence, occasional violent ebulli- tions on his part, gave her the reputation, amongst those who knew little of both, of suffering meekly under Isis violence, whilst the many more frequent occasions in which he had yielded at length, for the sake of repurchasing a smiling face at his domestic hearth, were unnoticed, because unknown."

Lucy, the heroine, is a person of great sweetness and beauty; by no means a sickly and sentimental prodigy, all refinement and education, in a condition of life where these things would be as un- suitable as they were unprocurable. Neither would this have an- swered the author's purpose. It was as desirable that she should be awkward and ignorant, as that she should be amiable, attme tire, and beautiful. Her dialect is that of the country, and her graMmar is altogether arbitrary. Even after being transplanted into the relined atmosphere of the metropolis, she is but slow in gaining grammar; and while looking the Countess to the admira- tion of all beholders, she but too often puts the experimentalist on the rack by forgetting her English. The name Lord Castletoa assumes is Churchill. George (Lucy's cousin), the sailor, not only rivals him in his love, but in a fit of irritability nearly deprives him of life. The refined and fashionable Castleton is all but killed, and summarily buried, in his assumed character of a forlorn painter, by this young smuggler and his comrades. He is, however, ulti- mately taken. out to sea in an insensible state ; and as the body of Churchill is no more heard of or seen, the smugglers are tried for the murder. Out of this springs the wilder and more romantic part of the story, but not that which is the most pleasing to our tastes. George, the smuggler, is tried for his life, for the murder of a gen. tleman who is sitting in court by the side of the judge ; and is ac- quitted, not because of the presence and vitality of the coypus delicli, but because the said corpus was nowhere to be found. The young smuggler is, after his acquittal, content to be sent out of the way ; and Castleton, in his own name and character, carries off the prize. No man was so likely to make a wild experiment of this nature, and none perhaps so little calculated to make it succeed, as this ima- ginary nobleman. Lord Castleton is a person of exceeding sensitive- ness; alive to the slightest breath of the world's displeasure, and looking to success in society as a main end of his being,—dependent too greatly on his wife, not merely for the heart's sympathy, but looking to find her the companion of his studies and the sharer of his tastes. The poor girl whom lie dooms to the sacrifice to gratify a morbid whim, is filled with love and almost veneration for her lordly husband: she is tender, affectionate, beautiful : but she is vulgar, and liable to exposure in society, with respect to points of manners, language, and connexions; and these defects, which he must have been thoroughly blind not to have expected, do not dis.. gust him with his bride, but they make him miserable, and together with the resuscitation of an old flame for a fascinating personage of his own rank, end in filling him with bitter repentance. Granted that a man could have acted so foolishly as this Lord Castleton, the situations of the different parties, and their feelings in them, are described with wonderful truth and nature. By acting fool- ishly, we do not refer to the folly of a lord marrying a small farmer's daughter,—it may not be wisdom, generally speaking ; bUt it was the height of absurdity to marry her, and expect by that act to metamorphose her into a person of elegance and refinemenL The more so, that had his Lordship had patience and common sense, he might have seen that a young creature of Lucy's talents and turn of mind might with labour and time have been gradually formed to any thing. Perhaps the infernal provincial twang could never have been wholly eradicated; but alt the acquirements of .manner, knowledge, and taste, demanded simoly some gentleness and some time. Unluckily, however, Lord Castleton, ashamed of the connexion, requires secresy, insists upon all allusion to her connexions being sunk, and brings her straight from Morden Bay to Grosvenor Square, and throws her into fashionable society as if she had dropped from the clouds. This is the situation of the bride, and bridegroom during the honeymoon, which is spent at one of his seats.

Castleton was by nature affectionate ; but he must have been insensible in- deed, if he had not shared with more fervour, and almost equal freshness, every feeling of one so beautiful and so gracious, so tender and so devoted, as his gentle bride. Besides, he had another security against her fondness palling upon pos- session, if such a thing could otherwisehave been possible. It was an original experiment he had attempted, so far successful, whose future progress he had to watch ; and this blended occupation with his enjoyment. And there was cer- tainly ix:caption enough in explaining many rudiments of conduct in her pre- sent sphere, of which Lucy was completely ignorant. Anxious as she was to learn, and eager as she was to adopt, any suggestion of his, in spite of her natural quickness, he sometimes found it difficult to make her comprehend his meaning, from some ideas being perfectly new to her, which were so interwoven with his early nature that he could not recollect and identify their first impression. Castleton being, himself, a person of very cultivated mind, and having been Much in a society famed for ready memory and apt illustration, had adopted,

perhaps more than any one else, a sort of short-hand turn of conversation, a compiehensive cipher, known only to the initiated ; in which a half-hinted allusion, or trite quotation, was often meant to awaken a whole train of ideas : such an inclination lie was, of course, obliged to check in all his communications with Lucy. • This made his instructions often much inure circumlocutory, and consequently protracted, than they would otherwise have been ; and though it was impossible to imagine a more gentle tutor or a more docile pupil, yet even blended as it was with the soft dalliance of those first days of exclusive devotion, there was something irksome to both parties in the perpetual recurrence of such topics. Instruction, however mildly conveyed, infallibly destroys that feeling of equality, in exact proportion to which confidence is generally found to exist. Every day Castleton felt inure and more how impossible it would he to ask Lucy's opinion on any of those subjects on which she was profoundly ignorant ; and every day Lucy became more aware of her deficiencies, and more anxious therefore to conceal them from him ; and that she could only do by acquiescing in her ignorance, for there was no one else from whom she could seek informa- tion. There were some points on which she would even have endeavoured to extract knowledge from the servants; but dreading, from her former habits, nothing so much as too great a familiarity in this respect, Castleton had made it ens of his first desires to, her, that she would confine her communications with them, to asking for what she wanted. To this, as to every other desire of his, ehe yielded, as far as she could, implicit obedience ; but it was often a great exertion on her part to do so. Of her own maid she had felt from the first a considerable awe ; and to such a degree did this continue, that she could not conceive any fatigue from labour equal to the burthen of her assistance. Being naturally tits disposition both active and obliging, it was quite new to her to have any thing done for her which she could do for herself. For some time she had as great a horror of touching a bell-rope, as others have in touching the !string of a shower-bath; and when servieeswere obtruded on her by the do- ineStusi as a matter of course, she had much difficulty in checking the exuberance `of her gratitude. Ac matte, asig Betsey, mentioned above as the maid of all work, never consi- dered as any part of her multitudinous duties the waiting on Miss Lucy, who blue not only said " mought moind herself," but sometimes called to her, almost iiithoritatively, to " lend a lumping haund." It was, probably, in consequence of thehabit thus engendered, that Lady Castleton was one day caught "lending a helping hand" to an overloaded under laundry-maid, who had been sent by her superior with a wicker-hound snowy freight of her Ladyship's own superfine linen. But of all the irksome feelings caused by Lucy's new position, there was none front which she suffered nurse than waiting to be waited on. And it was hinted in the hall, that when my Lord was not in the room, my Lady got up to help herself to what she wantedfrom the sideboard ! ! And it was whispered in the female conclave of the housekeeper's room, that her Ladyship seemed even to like to—lace her own stays ! !

This is very good and very natural ; and what follows is perhaps equally natural, and is amusing where it is not painful, but the interview ought not to have occurred. Poor Lucy was no more fit to receive visitors in her new position, than she was to play on the piano; or do any thing else she had never learnt.

: It had been a real spring-day ; by which we mean one not often realized, but such a spring-day as even smoke-dried poets fancy. Lucy was seated in herown pretty boudoir, which Castleton had su ranged for her with infinite taste. She was making up and combining with great care a nosegay of choicest flowers, which she had gathered from the neighbouring conservatory, into which on one side her apartment opened ; with this she was decorating a beautiful marble vase, presented to her by her husband, which always stood on the table beside hsr.. .Castleton had been absent that morning on a distant ride, on business connected with his property. She had previously been interrupted, and was n Inv anxious, before his return, to finish this trivial, but to her interesting oc- cupation; for the vase never met her husband's eye, studded with its varied scents and gaily-diversified colours, without eliciting the observation, " No one emid arrange these half so prettily as you." And it required to be aware, as site was, of her manifold deficiencies, to feel the peculiar pleasure derived in hsaring the repetition of these words from the lips she loved. She was still t ids engaged, when Castleton entered ; and throwing himself on the sofa beside hm, interrupted her task by taking one of her hands in his, pressing his palm Against hers; then tenderly parting her fingers, by entwining his own between Clem ; whilst, passing his other arm round her waist, lie drew her towards him, aid looking fondly in her face, said to himself, " They must, at any rate, have th night her very beautiful."

The origin this reflection was, that on coming home by the high-road, he hal met his nearest neighbour, Mrs. Eresby, with her two daughters, returning from a visit they had during that morning volunteered to the bride. On per- ceiving him, Mrs. Eresby had stopped the carriage for a moment, and after ex- pressing regrets at missing him, had said, " Charmed with Lady Castleton—so very natural and perfectly unaffected."

. In bowing, the only possible reply to this compliment, he thought he had in- t Tcepted the telegraph of a smile between Miss Eresby and her sister Arabella, w'm vat opposite to each other on the side of the carriage into which he was hating. " Very natural and perfectly unaffected !" he thought, as he rode hum! ; - " what has she been thing?" Certainly, if there was any quality

which must have most sought to secure by such means as he had re-

sorted• to in theschnirx of a wife, it must have been that she should be naimal and Unaffected." And yet it is true, that this testimony of the first person who hail seen her, to the success of his pursuit, gave him any thing but pleasure: " So you have had visitors this morning, Lucy. How did you amuse them ?" .

" Oh ! they seemed to amuse each other very well. There were three of them."

" How do you mean, amuse themselves ? They did not, surely, talk to each other much before you?" " Her the others called mother didn't."

" My dear Lucy, sure they never called her mother." " Well then, mamma perhaps it was.. I will remember, my den Lori, what you told me, never to say mother."

" And did they make many inquiries of you—ask many questions?" " Oh, such a many !" " So many, dearest love, you mean to say ?" • " Well, so I do, thank you ; and then the mamma asked me, as she had never seen MC before, if I had not been touch abroad ; and I said, never at all till I monied; and then she said, What ! had I been to Paris since?' and I find she meant foreign parts bylthroad. And she told me that we ought to go to London soon ; that the season was advanced, and that the Pasta would come out soon this spring. What is the Pasta—a plant?" " A plant ! no love. Pasta is a singer's name : you could not be expected to know that ; but I hope you didn't say any thing to show theta your ignorance?"

" Oh no ! you told toe, whenever was completely puzzled, that silence was best; so I said nothing. Pasta's the name of a singer then ! Oh, that accounts ; fur a moment after she the mamma said that her daughter Arabella sang delight- fully, and asked me if I. would sing with her. So 1 said, No, I'd much rather listen. That was right, wasn't it ? You see I knew you'd ask me all about it, so I recollected it for you. Arabella then asked me if I would accompany her? So I said, Wherever she liked : where did she want to go? But I suppose she altered her mind ; for she sat down to thegrand instrument you had brought here for me to begin my lessons upon ; and then she sang such an extraordinary song—all coming from her throat. And the sister asked me if I understood German ? And I answered, No, nor French neither."

" That was an unnecessary addition, my love."

" Well, so it was. Then the youngest sister explained to me, that it was a song a Swiss peasant girl sang whilst she was milking her cow ; and I said that most be very difficult, to sing while milking a cow. And then the mamma asked how I knew ; and I said I had tried, very often." " How could you, dear Lucy, volunteer such an avowal ?"

" I thought you would be afraid of that : but it all did very well ; for the mother said I cos so amusing, had so much natural wit, and they all tried to persuade me I had said something clever." " Well, go on—and what then?"

" And then the lady took time aside, and began saying so much in praise of you ; and when she once got me on that subject, I was ready and glib enough, I warrant you. But somehow, though I then found it so much easier to speak, I find it more difficult to recollect exactly what I said. Is not that strange? And then she said that my happiness would excite so much envy in the great world ; that you had been admired, courted, nay, even loved by rich, noble, clever ladies. Why was all this? and how could you ever think to leave all these, to seek out from her quiet home your poor little Lucy ?" " Oh, that's a story of bygone days. These were follies of my youth, which I thought I had lived to repent.

" Nor knew, till seated by thy side. My heart in all save hope the same."

" Why save hope, my dear Lord ? What may you not only hope, but trust, from my constant devotion ?"

" I did not mean to tie myself precisely to every word I uttered. It was only a quotation." " And what is a quotation?" " A quotation is the vehicle in which Imagination posts forward, when she only hires her Pegasus front memory. Or sometimes it is only a quit-rent, which the intellectual cultivator, who farms an idea; pays to the original pro- prietor ; or rather," (seeing that he was not making the matter more intelligible by his explauation,) "or rather, it is when we convey our own thoughts by the means of the more perfect expressions of some favourite author."

" But then, surely you need not be driven to borrow, whose own words al- ways sound to me like a book. As for poor me, I wish I could talk in (imita- tions for ever ; then I need not fear to make these mistakes, which, as it is,.I am afraid I am always like to do."

There was so much modesty, so lively a sense of her own deficiencies, with so anxious a desire to remedy them, that Castleton could not, upon the whole, derive other than a pleasant impression from the result of this interview.

It is the poor.girl's excessive innocence and simplicity—the very qualities she has been chiefly chosen for—that render the experi- ment, as far as her introduction to society is a part of it, a failure. A little vulgar art, and less true pastoral gentility, would have prevented any of these humiliating confessions. The recurrence of many of these awkwardnesses, but more, we think, the un- lucky and indeed unfair contrast presented by. a pheenik of a woman of fashion, to whom Castleton had been attached, com- pletely weans him from his unfortunate wife : he still is attached to her, and yet is evidently tired of her, and, the reader sees, wants to get her out of the way. The author kindly accommodates him.. Poor Lucy has been promised a visit to her home; and on her hurried return thence, a storm is got up for the occasion, and she is drowned. There are few things in fiction more touching than the poor Countess's revisit to the place of her youth and happiness.

As the men had returned, and again taken their stations in the boat, he pro- posed to depart, and bidding her tenderly farewell, said, " Here, then, I now leave you, Lncy." As he uttered these words, a melancholy presentiment vi- brated through him. Here had been Ids first meeting—here might be his last parting ; and as lie returned to the yacht, his own words seemed to cling to him, as he mentally repeated, " Here, then, I now leave you, Lucy." He marked her mounting up the steep path which led to her father's house, with slow and unsteady steps, for she was still feeble ; and be compared her present appearance with the light elastic gait with which he had seen her bound up that slime path. Who but himself had produced this sail change? With bitter repentance he thought how completely his experiment had failed ; and the notions, which had induced him to attempt it, now appeared to him in all the naked deformity of selfishness, stripped of that disguise of assumed diffidence and self-distrust in which habitual sophistry had hitherto concealed them from his own penetra- tion. He had gradually been convinced how almost impwsibleit was to fir her to perform, with comfort to herself and credit to him, her part in that' iphere to which be had so abruptly transferred her. . And yet, on the other hand, after the attempts that lie had for many months made to eradicate all early impressions, did she on this melancholy occasion re- turn the same, to the home of her childhood ? Was it likely that she would now be able as naturally and efficiently to fulfil all those filial offices...which had formerly been her delight? He asked himself the question, how had he repaid Answer the question as he ought ; but he looked on the wide waste of waters before bun, as if to lose himself and his reflections on that indefinite horizon, rather than own, by a glance in au opposite direction, that his thoughts turned towards Sandford, and the possible prospect he thought there was of his there meeting Lady Gayland. But let its not make him out worse than he was : it was no deliberate inten- tion of this kind which had made him originate the plan ; but perhaps the casual mention, ' by that lady, of Lord Stayinmore's yacht being at the watering- aplace, to which she might be tempted to go in the course of the autumn, had rst suggested to Castleton the idea of asking for the loan of the vessel. • Lucy had by this tone, with much effort, half ascended the cliff, and she now stopped to rest at an angle of the path, in an arbour which had been constructed by herselfand her cousin George, in the days of their childhood ; and as she prepared to seat herself within it, she clung for support to those own sturdy houghs, which, as tendrils, she had formerly moulded to her will ; and as her maid, on whom she had leant for assistance in the ascent, was a person in whom she could not confide, she sat here for a while in silence' reflecting on past times. She drew her sable-lined cloak more closely about her ; for in spite of the cheerfulness of the scene around, she felt the morbid chilliness of lingering debility and shattered nerves ; ills which, on that spot, she bad certainly never suffered from beluga; but now she sat and shivered in the sunshine. And even thus she was marked from near by one who longed to offer assist- ance, yet dared not. George, at the first seeing her from' the garden above, as she landed from the boat, had rushed downwards ; but his courage had failed him as he approached ; and he who had braved dangers in every shape, and in every clinic, now, on this well-known spot, feared to encounter the playmate of his infancy, the confidant of his childhood ; and as she neared the spot at which he had hesitated and stopped, he hid himself, crouching in the copse behind the arbour, to mark her more closely before presenting himself to her notice. He had known her front a distance ; that is, having heard that she was shortly expected, and to arrive by sea, although the day had not been fixed, he felt assured that this must lie her. Yet, upon beholding. her nearer, so such was she changed, that he felt disposed to doubt her identity. Site had grown much thinner, and this effect was increased by her mourning attire. He had never before seen her in the garb of wo, through all the long years which they had passed together. Custom in her case would not have required her to as- sume it for a distant relative, nor had sad necessity obliged her to wear it for any one whom she would have really lamented. And if (thought he) she should be as much altered in inward feeling as in outward appearance—if even now, sitting alone in that arbour, where we have together so often lingered, there is a constraint in her manners, who knows whether that constraint would be removed, or would assume only a more chilling coldness, at .again suddenly beholding the companion of her youth ? This fear pressed so strongly upon his mind, that he stirred not from his concealment, but suffered her to pass on un- disturbed.

She again commenced languidly ascending the remaining part of the cliff, leaning on her maid, whose patience was very muck exhausted, and who could not help at last exclaiming, " Well, to be sure, my lady, this is the most hor- Ablest outlandish place I ever seed ; I wonder that you, who knowed afore how bad it was, ever thought of returning to it again; it would have been different if you had been brought to it unsight unseen."

" Such as it is," replied Lady Castleton, "there is no carpeted ball where I have wandered, since last I was here, which I have trodden with half the plea- sure that I feel as I again climb this rugged ascent."

Contrast is a work that makes you like the author : the reader seems to understand that he has intercourse with a noble nature; the absence of effort implies manliness and power ; the good sense and the enlightened opinions gratify as well as satisfy. There is no- • thing in Contrast, nor indeed in either of Lord MULGRAVE'S pre- 'ceding works, that any man might not be glad to be the author of.