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ROMANCE AND REALITY.

or a single gentleman—what part can she have in the airy empire of caprice, the Parthian-arrow-guarded world of fashion? Why does not she live in the country, roast whole oxen on her wedding-day, keep open house at an election, shake her acquaintance heartily by the hand, and drive in a coach-and-four with outriders every Sunday to church? Her idea of taste (the ocean whence Fashion springs) is like the pupil's idea of Helen, to whom Apelles said, 'Not being able to make her beautiful, you have made her splendid.'"

"Strange," said Mr. Delawarr, "the influence of opinion! We know people to be fools—individually we should disdain their judgment; yet, taken in a mass, no sacrifice seems too great to secure their suffrage. The desire of notoriety, and the love of fame, differ but little; yet one is the meanest, the other the noblest feeling in our nature: the one looks to the present, and is a mixture of the selfish and the common-place—the other dwells upon the future, and is the generous and the exalted."

"Lady Walsingham's is a very beautiful place," observed Emily, from the mere desire of saying something. It is curious, that when we feel in ourselves the most inclined to silence,