as little scathed by time as himself; her slight and graceful figure indeed gave her almost the appearance of youth; and though her delicate face had lost its bloom, there was enough of beauty left to render her still a very lovely woman.

Charles Mowbray junior, the hero of the day, was, in vulgar but expressive phrase, as fine a young fellow as ever the sun shone upon. His mind, too, was in excellent accordance with the frame it inhabited,—powerful, elastic, unwearying, and almost majestic in its unbroken vigour and still-increasing power.

"Aux cœurs heureux les vertus sont faciles," says the proverb; and as Charles Mowbray was certainly as happy as it was well possible for a man to be, he must not be overpraised for the fine qualities that warmed his heart and brightened his eye. Nevertheless, it is only justice to declare, that few human beings ever passed through twenty-one years of life with less of evil and more of good feeling than Charles Mowbray.

Helen, his eldest sister, was a fair creature of nineteen, whose history had hitherto been, and was probably ever doomed to be, dependant upon her affections. As yet, these had been wholly made up of warm and well-requited attachment to her own family; but few people capable of loving heartily are without the capacity of suffering heartily also, if occasion calls for it, and this strength of feeling rarely leaves its possessor long in the enjoyment of such pure and unmixed felicity as that which shone in Helen's hazel eye as she threw her arms around her brother's neck, and wished him a thousand and a thousand times joy!

Fanny Mowbray, the youngest of the family, wanted three months of sixteen. Poets have often likened young creatures of this age to an opening rose-bud, and it was doubtless just such a being as Fanny Mowbray that first suggested the simile. Any thing more bright, more delicate, more attractive in present loveliness, or more full of promise for loveliness more perfect still, was never seen.

In addition to this surprising beauty of form and feature, she possessed many of those qualities of mind which are attributed to genius. Meditative and imaginative in no common degree, with thoughts occasionally both soaring and profound, she passed many hours of her existence in a manner but little understood by her family—sometimes devouring with unwearying ardour the miscellaneous contents of the large library, and sometimes indulging in the new delight of pouring forth her own wild, rambling thoughts in prose or rhyme. Unfortunately, the excellent governess who had attended the