What you say about Bony's marriage was the very thought that occurred to myself, and it was just the turn of a pin whether Mary Anne was n't at this moment Empress of France! Well, who knows what's coming, Molly! There's many a one, now in a private station, and mighty hard up for means, that will maybe turn out a King or a Grand-Duke before long. At any rate, no elevation to rank or dignity will ever make me forget my old friends, and yourself, the first of them. And with this, I subscribe myself,

Yours ever affectionately,

Jemima Dodd McCarthy.

P. S. I 'll make one of the girls write to you next week, for I know I 'll be so much overcome by my feelings when K. I. arrives, that I 'll be quite incapable to take up my pen.

I sometimes think that I 'll take to my bed, and be "given over." against the day of his coming; for you see there 's nothing gives such solemnity and weight to one's reproaches as their being last words. You can say such bitter things, Molly, when you are supposed to be too weak to bear a reply. But I 've done this once or twice before, and K. I. is a hardened creature.

Lord G. says: "Treat him as if it were nothing at all, as if you saw him yesterday: don't give him the importance of having irritated you. Be a regular woman of fashion." If my temper would permit, perhaps this would be best of all; but have I a right to acquit a "great public malefactor"? That's a "case of conscience," Molly, that perhaps only the Church could resolve. The saints direct me!

[!-- H2 anchor --]

LETTER XXVIII. JAMES DODD TO ROBERT DOOLAN, ESQUIRE, TRINITY COLLEGE,

DUBLIN.

My dear Bob,—It is quite true, I am a shameful correspondent, and your last three letters now before me, unanswered, comprise a tremendous indictment against me; but reflect for a moment, and you will see that in all complaints of this kind there is a certain amount of injustice, since it is hardly possible ever to find two people whose tastes, habite, and present circumstances place them on such terms of perfect equality that the interchange of letters is as easy for one as the other. Think over this for a moment, and you will perceive that sitting down at your quiet desk, in "No. 2, Old Square," is a different process from snatching a hurried moment amidst the din, the crash, and the conflict of life at Baden; and if your thoughts flow on calmly, tinctured with the solemn influences around you, mine as necessarily reflect an existence checkered by every rainbow hue of good or evil fortune.