'Oh yes! where shall I begin? Oh! there is Penhurst Lane, girls, you remember?'

'The raven?' said Bertha.

'No,' said Fanny, 'that is Mr. Rawdon. Penhurst Lane is an idealist.'

'A very idealist, just so,' returned Harry. 'Well, the way I've been a martyr to that man's caprice is perfectly heart-rending. He came of some gorgeous family in the middle of Pennsylvania, where all the tribes, like leaning towers, incline toward Germany. To be sure, you'd never dream it from his looks, for he is a perfect Mark Antony in that respect. You needn't laugh. Didn't he have bonnes fortunes as well as Alcibiades? Not that Penhurst had bonnes fortunes, or ever dreamed of such things; but he always had such a proclivity toward any one who would listen to his harangues; and I must say, just inter nos (the only bit of Latin I know, Lenox, I got it from the English 'Don Giovanni'), that I have quite a talent for listening well. But I'd as lief encounter a West India hurricane or a simoom. I used to feel him coming an hour beforehand. Then I would read a little in Blair, take a peep at Sir Charles Grandison, swallow half a page of Cowper's 'Task,' and look over the Grecian and Roman heroes; then I was fortified. 'Why didn't I take Shelley?' Oh my! why, he couldn't endure Shelley, said he was a poor, weak creature, all gone to imagination! Then I would assume a Sontag and thick boots, if the weather was cold, to appear sensible, you know, and await his coming; that is, if I didn't become exasperated before that stage, and rush in to see Lil Brennan to avoid him. And his opinions, such an unfolding! You never caught him looking with admiration, oh no! I might have laid a wilderness of charms on the floor, at his very feet, and he would have brushed them all away with indifference. His mind revolved around a weightier theme than any 'lady of fashion;' like a newly discovered moon, he flew around the earth, and with miraculous speed. He stopped in China to say 'Confucius;' in India, to say 'Brahma;' in Persia, to say 'Ormuzd;' and so on around. My dear Lenox, if you had asked him whether Ormuzd was at peace with all the world, he would have retired into himself, for he hadn't the faintest idea. As for music, or any fine art, he never approached it but once, when he led me to the piano, begging for some native American melody, and not a German romance. Well, I played him 'God save the Queen,' with extravagant variations, which he took for 'Yankee Doodle.' No matter! I made a mistake when I spoke of his opinions; he hadn't any. He was what some call 'well read,' that is, he had a distant desire to 'improve his mind,' but his magnificent self so filled his little vision, that his great desire was obscured and distorted. Like my beloved Jean Paul, he had once said to himself, Ich bin ein Ich (I am a ME), and the noble consciousness overwhelmed him, and excluded all after thoughts on any minor subject. He never heard Grisi, never saw Rachel; they were triflers, 'life was too grave, too short;' but he escorted me occasionally to lectures and orations. I remember two or three of these. A lecture on the 'Fossils of Humanity and Primeval Formations,' which was unintelligible, consequently to him 'sublime;' one on 'the Exalted,' that soared out of sight and beyond the empire of gravity, and one on 'Architecture,' by Dr. Vinton, a splendid production, the fruit and evidence of years of study and rare talent, that sent me home with longings and unaccustomed reverence for the Great in every form, and with grief that my own ignorance rendered it only a half-enjoyed pleasure to me; while Penhurst talked as if it were only the echo of his own thoughts; pretended to say it was very 'sensible!' But you've had enough of Mr. Lane, who was never known to laugh except at his own wit, who patronized me because I was a 'solid' young lady, and not given to flights. You may readily imagine that our interviews were generally tête-à-têtes, for general society was to him a thing 'stale, flat, and unprofitable.' Of course you know I only endured his visits because among the girls it was considered a compliment to receive them, and they were all dying of envy. Besides and principally, it is neither politic nor pleasant to offend any one, and I could not have denied myself to him, without doing this; so'—

'But, Harry, he is married now.'

'Ah me! yes. He saw me in a cap and bells once with you, Lenox, and not many weeks afterward married a damsel who reveres him as a Solon, this man, who said:

——'The wanderings
Of this most intricate Universe
Teach me the nothingness of things.
Yet could not all creation pierce
Beyond the bottom of his eye.'

'Are you done, Harry?'

'Yes, Lenox.'

'Then sing us Béranger's Grace à la fêve, je suis roi.'