desert?" inquired Edgar, in a tone almost too gay to be quite natural.

"You gentlemen are very unreasonable sometimes," she replied, with a light laugh; "when did you ever hear a lady confess to one beau her badinage with another? Alas! for the empire of beauty, if we did. However, I think I may allow cousin Martindale to be very agreeable, very good-natured, and-and-I suppose I must not say very handsome, before two young gentlemen, must I ?”

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'Why, I think you may," said her brother; "We shall understand that you do not mean so very handsome as ourselves. But he is really an excellent fellow, is he not, father?"

"3, 4, 5, 6, £679. 10s. 8d. sterling," murmured an elderly gentleman in spectacles, who, seated at a side-table with a large ledger before him, had hitherto borne no part in the conversa"that will not balance now. Did you

tion ;

speak to me, Frank?"

"I merely asked if you did not think Martindale an excellent fellow ?"

'Very. He gave me a hint of the tottering

of the silk merchant at Moorshedabad, and I got my money before he failed."

"Fie, fie!" cried Clara; "we speak of his gentlemanly manners-his wit-his knowledge of music-"

"Ah! that is the worst piece of folly in him," interrupted Mr. Aimwell; "he would have been a first-rate man of business if he had not bestowed so much time upon trash."

"Now, my dear papa," said Clara; "how can you couple such a word with the name of music? Its pleasures may not be so vivid and intoxicating as those which we derive from some other sources but surely they are among the I purest and the holiest which we can know. cannot imagine a state in which the human mind approaches nearer to the angelic, than that in which music leaves it; with all its finest chords vibrating; with all its best and noblest sympathies awakened; and yet with a tranquillity so sweet, so dreamy, so hallowing, that it seems to have no affinity with anything that belongs to earth."

"These are some of your wild fancies, silly

girl," said Mr. Aimwell; "where did you ever find one of your musical geniuses a man of sense, -one who could keep a set of books, or tell a manifest from a charter party?

music is a mere drug in the

Don't tell me;

market.

But

enough of it. I always like to talk of things that are edifying and interesting to every one. Captain Arlington, what is your opinion of indigo? Is it true that it is looking up, think you?"

"If I must confess my ignorance," said Edgar, "I never heard that it had looked down."

"Well," said Mr. Aimwell, resuming his pen, which had dropped from his hand during the musical discussion, and carefully examining the nib to see if it had been injured by the fall; "you must excuse me- -I have an intricate account here, which I find I cannot settle without reference to some invoice files: I must take it into the counting-house. I assure you, as Clara says, you will find Martindale an excellent young man. I recollect the last time he was here, one of my clerks had taken no less

D

than four fianos which were deficient in weight, and he got them exchanged for me without the loss of a single pice. A most excellent young man, indeed."

CHAPTER V.

"Why dost thou shake thy brows with that stern look ? Speak."

LEE.

WE are greatly indebted to contrast. By the knowledge and comparison of opposites, we form those general ideas which store our minds with moral and intellectual treasures. We look on the deformity of vice, and turn to adore with deeper admiration the loveliness of virtue; we rise from the bed of sickness to feel for the first time in its truth and its fulness the blessing of health; we behold the extremes of parsimony and extravagance, of arrogance and sycophancy, of cowardice and rashness, of superstition and scepticism, and learn that what is truly estimable

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