the pale of all female society. It has been remarked,
and justly, there is nothing so dangerous to the peace
of the human heart as solitude. It is in solitude, our
thoughts, taking their colouring from our feelings, invest
themselves with the power of multiplying ideal beauty,
until we become in a measure tenants of a world of our
own creation, from which we never descend, without loathing
and disgust, into the dull and matter-of-fact routine of
actual existence. Hence the misery of the imaginative
man!--hence his little sympathy with the mass, who, tame
and soulless, look upon life and the things of life, not
through the refining medium of ideality, but through the
grossly magnifying optics of mere sense and materialism.

But, though we could, and perhaps may, at some future
period, write volumes on this subject, we return for the
present from a digression into which we have been insensibly
led by the temporary excitement of our own feelings.

Whatever were the impressions of the young baronet, and
however he might have been inclined to suffer the fair
image of the gentle Clara, such as he was perhaps wont
to paint it, to exercise its spell upon his fancy, certain
it is, he never expressed to her brother more than that
esteem and interest which it was but natural he should
accord to the sister of his friend. Neither had Charles
de Haldimar, even amid all his warmth of commendation,
ever made the slightest allusion to his sister, that
could be construed into a desire she should awaken any
unusual or extraordinary sentiment of preference. Much