with other writers, am in the agreeable danger of being ruined by flattery, without any assignable risk of condemnation. Is it not wonderful that those who are enjoying the one should be so eager to rush upon the other?

I am, &c.,

F. R.

LETTER IV.

Female Beauty-Falling in Love-Narrative of an Incident of this kind-The Drawing-Room, a Poem.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

As I was yesterday sauntering along a narrow rural lane, fenced with rich hawthorn hedges, and elms hanging over them, an abrupt turn of the road brought me into almost close contact with a fine blooming girl, apparently not out of her teens. There was a little embarrassment on both sides at this unexpected rencounter. I endeavoured to make way for her, and she doing the same for me, we were once more on the point of collision. To prevent it, I was under the necessity of gently grasping her arm, and, with a suitable apology for the circumstance, I passed on, but not before I had gazed with deep admiration on a face lovely in every feature, but rendered a thousand times more so by an enchanting confusion of smiles and blushes; nor till I had heard the tones of a voice soft and musical as Apollo's lute, replying to my apology with a

grace and sweetness wholly indescribable. She left in my heart one of those " pangs more dear than pleasure" which are not easily got quit of. I was forcibly reminded of those exquisite lines of the poet, which surely every mind of sensibility must have verified hundreds of times. She was exactly such a one as he so finely describes :

"One of those forms which flit by us, when we Are young, and fix our eyes on every face; And oh the loveliness at times we see

In momentary gliding, the soft grace,

The youth, the bloom, the beauty, which agree
In many a nameless being we retrace,

Whose course and home we know not nor shall know,
Like the lost Pleiad seen no more below."

I am, as you know, rather too old for falling in love at first sight, but this sweet countenance made a more than usual impression on me, by forcibly suggesting the circumstances of my first boyish passion. It is a strange phenomenon, this said falling in love, and, I believe, no definition or analysis can throw any light upon it. In the course of my desultory attempts at composition, I was once struck with the idea of writing an essay or analytical treatise on the subject, but soon abandoned it as too fugitive

D

and impalpable; not, however, without some strenuous efforts to accomplish my purpose.

I fixed myself several times at my desk, and began scrutinizing and analyzing with all my might. I set out, perhaps, with some profound reflection, but directly the image of Miss S started up in my mind, with a thousand accompanying recollections of the scenes where we had been together, the conversations we had enjoyed, the little incidents in a growing attachment, so fascinating and so indescribable. When I was recalled from these reveries by the sound of the clock, I found the ink dry in my pen, the first sentence of my treatise standing solitary at the top of the clean white sheet, and myself full two hours nearer the end of my life without being aware how I had got so far. It was a sad waste of time, and I gave the matter up. It would have been a curious work, you may rest assured, and, perhaps, some time or other, in one of my fits of extraordinary expansion of heart, I may show you the fragments, which I have religiously preserved, and which, when I happen to encounter them in looking over my papers, always afford me a hearty laugh. A narrative of an actual event of this

sort is, however, worth a whole library of formal treatises, and I have a great mind, for want of a better subject, to give you a history of my first exploit in this way. To be sure, there will be a sort of egotism in it, but what is there more interesting than egotism on such a topic? It will be exposing one's weakness, too. The wise, the grave, the learned, the philosophical, may not plead guilty to the degradation of being captivated by a lovely woman, but, for my own part, I have none of this high bearing. One of our poets confesses

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Fearless, a soul that does not always think."

And I am equally fearless in avowing a heart that is not always proof against the fascination of female charms. Why should a man be ashamed of some of the most interesting feelings belonging to his nature? Here, then, is the whole narrative. It was soon after I had quitted the mansion of my kind preceptor for the paternal roof, that I was invited to spend some months with a relation of my father's, who resided at a considerable distance. The evening preceding my departure, I went to