Henry Dunbar

of the limp morocco-covered volume, I almost wonder at my wasted labour; - the random notes, jotted down now and then, sometimes wit

ch cost me two shillings; that I dined tête-à-tête with my mother, and finished the third volume of Carlyle's 'French Revolution' in the course of the evening. Is there any use in such a journal as mine? Will the celebrated New Zealander, that is to be, discover the volumes amidst the ruins of Clapham? and shall I be quoted as the Pepys of the nineteenth cent

spoiled. Just now, however, I have something more than cab-drives, lost omnibuses, and the perusal of a favourite book to jot dow

has been newly imported from Sydney, where my sister Marian and her husband have been settled for the last twelve years. Miss Elizabeth Lester became a member of our family upon the first of July, and has since that time continued to make herself quite at home with my mother and myself. She is rather a pretty little girl, with very auburn plaits hanging in loops at the ba

e six weeks' interval between my last record and that which I begin to-day, has become almost as familiar as the oldest friends of my youth. 'Non più mesta'- I hear my niece strummi

e wanted parasols and hair-brushes, frilled and furbelowed mysteries of muslin and lace, copybooks, penholders, and pomatum, a backboard and a pair of gloves, drawing-pencils, dumb-bells, geological specimens for the illustration of her studies, and a hundred other items, whose very names are as a strange language to my masculine comprehension; and, last of all, she wanted a musical governess. The little girl was supposed to be very to

dies who declared themselves proficients in the art of music, that I was confused and embarrassed by the wealth of my resources: but I t

; others were young and frivolous; some of them were uncertain as to the distribution of the letter h. One young lady declared that she was fonder of music than anything in the world. Some were a great deal too enthusiastic, and were prepared to adore my little niece at a moment's notice. Many

catechizing the fair advertisers as to their qualifications, and went out on this particular evening for a solitary ramble amongst the quiet Surrey suburbs, in any lonely lanes or scraps of common-land where the speculating builder had not yet set his hateful foot. It was a lovely evening; and I, who am so much a Cockney as to believe that a London sunset is one of the grandest spectacles in the universe, set m

nd yet, looking back now, I wonder what I thought of, and what image there was in my mind that could make my fancies pleasant to me. I kno

are of a sombre brown, yet in which there is, nevertheless, so much light and warmth. The lights were beginning to twinkle here and there in the windows; and upon this Ju

evening? and how was it that I did

derate terms. The word 'very' was underscored. I thought it had a pitiful look somehow, that underscoring of the adverb, and seemed almost an appeal for employment. The inscription on the card was in a woman's hand, and a very pretty hand - elegant but not illegible, firm and yet feminine. I was in a very idle frame of mind, ready to be driven by any cha

d shut in by wooden palings. I opened the low gate before the third cottage, and went into the garden - a primly-kept little garden, with a grass-plat and miniature gravel-walks, and with a grotto of shells and moss and craggy blocks of stone in a corner. Under a laburnum-tree there was a green rustic bench; and here I found a young lady sittin

in the High Street, and as I am searching for an instructress for my little niece, I took

entured to intrude at abnormal hours. I fear that I was weak enough to feel bewildered by the pensive lovelines

r the New Zealander, when the best description must fall so far below the bright reality, and when the very act of reducing her beauty into hard commonplace words seems in some manner a sacrilege against the sanctity of that beauty? Yes, I will describe her; not for the sake of the New Zealander, who may have new and extraordinary ideas as to female loveliness, and may require a blue nose or pea-green tresses in the lady he elects as the

they have a mournful earnestness in their look, a pensive gravity that seems to tell of a life in which there has been much shadow. The hair, parted above the most beautiful brow I ever looked upon, is of exactly the same colour as the eyes, and has a natural ripple in it. For the rest of the features I must refer my New Zealander to the pictures o

ust have been intoxicated by her presence, as by some subtle and mysterious influence, stronger than the fumes of opium, or the juice of lotus flowers. I only know that after ten minutes' conversation, during which she was

at she was coming the following morning at eleven o'clock to give her first lesson. But I was somewhat embarrassed when my mother asked

hat I had engaged her because her eyes were hazel, and her hair of the same colour; nor could I declare that I had judged of her proficiency as a teacher of the piano by the exquisite line of her pencilled eyebrows. So, in this dilemma, I had

hat I was a dear clever boy, and such a judge of character, and that she would rather confide

ind was far less occupied with the business events of the day than with abstruse speculations at to the probabilities with regard to that young lad

you'll be charmed with her, Clem'-(I'm afraid I blushed as my mother said this; had I not been charmed with her already?)-'when you hear her play, for she has expression as well as brilliancy. She is passionately fond of music, I know; not because she went into any ridiculous sentime

erms, mothe

Clem, always thinking of

it to me that this hazel-eyed girl was engaged to teach my little niece 'Non più mesta'? what was it to me that my breast sho

aid, presently. 'There's only one thing that's at all inconvenient, th

ection. Was there some cold chill of di

and she has to waste a good deal of time in going backwards and forwards; so the only time she can possibly give Lizzie is either very early in the morning or rather late in the e

nd hypocrisy which had been developed in my nature since the previous evening, it was as much as I could do to

erally, you know, C

urse, if I found the musi

through a region of brightness and splendour. The sunlit suburban roads were enchanted glades; and I think I should have been scarcely surprised to see Aladdin's jewelled fruit hanging on the trees in the villa gardens, o

? - was I, who had railed at the foolish passion -(I have one of Miss Carpenter's long tresses in the desk on which I am writing, sealed in a sheet of letter-paper, with Swift's savage inscription, 'Only a woman's hair,' on the cover)- was I caught at last by a pair of hazel eyes and a Raffaellesque profile? Were the wings that had fluttered in so many flames burnt and maimed by the first breath of this new fire? I was ashamed o

ue until half-past seven. My niece was all in a flutter of expectation, and ran out of the drawing-room window every now and then to see if the new governess was coming. She need not have had that trouble, poor child, had I been inclined to give her information; since, from the chair in which I had seated myself to read the evening papers, I could see

Wentworth - pretty voice explaining the importance of a steady position of the wrist, or the dexterous turning over or under of a thumb, or something equally interesting. And then, when the lesson is concluded, my mother rouses herself from her after-dinner nap, and asks Margaret to take a cup of tea, and even insists on her accepting that feminine hospitality. And then we sit talking in the tender summer dusk, or in the subdued light of a shaded lamp on the piano. We talk of books; and

om her friends call 'gushing;' and she called Byron a 'love,' and Shelley an 'angel:' but if you tried her with a stanza that hasn't been done to death in 'Gems of Verse,' or 'Strings of Poetic Pearls,' or 'Drawing-room Table Lyrics,' she couldn't tell whether you were quoting Byron or Ben Jonson. But with Margaret - Margaret - sweet name! If it were not that I live in perpetual terror of the day when the dilettante New Zealander will edit this manuscript, I think I should wri

or her past history. Now and then she has spoken of her father; always tenderly, but always wi

o so. She is accustomed to go about by herself, she says, after dark, as well as in the daytime. She seems as fear