also in letters, learning, art, science), have given to this "local habitation" a name which will probably be far more lasting than the habitation itself. The name of Addison would have secured for Holland House a reverential regard, not only in the mind of every Englishman, but of every traveller who speaks the Saxon tongue. But the Fox family have given to it a political import, and a wider historical association. Around its walls now hang the mute representatives of that congregation of heirs to fame whose learning, or eloquence, or art, distinguished the close and first quarter of the present century. Some still linger upon the scene! A fewfew-can recall the days when Byron "looked so beautiful sitting there" (as Lady Holland said); when Lord Holland gathered about him such friends as Lansdowne, Russell, Mackintosh, Erskine, Romilly, Talleyrand, Macartney, Rogers, Luttrell, Tierney, Horner, Sydney Smith, Macaulay, Scott, Moore, and the long list of political associates and friends of his uncle, Charles James Fox, whom to name would be to write a political catalogue of the reign of George III. "It is a brave old house," said Horace Walpole, but its bravery consists far more in the names which will be for ever associated with it, than in the decorations "of that bastard-Gothic of James the First's time," which Sir Walter Scott criticised.

but

very

Another chapter will present this place to us in possession of the Fox family, from 1762 to 1867. We can then wander through its rooms, and glance at its objects of interest, its pictures, statues, and books; its associations with Charles James Fox, and with his nephew, Henry Vassal Lord Holland; the names which, together with Addison's, will always rise before the memory when artist depicts, or when writer describes, Holland House.

Falling in Lobe.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE GENTLE LIFE."

"BIRTHS, Marriages, and Deaths," is a common enough heading in all newspapers; surely it should be Marriages, Births, and Deaths, for man is born to die-that is a natural consequence; and people are married that others should be born: therefore, as marriage, in the true relation of things, should always precede birth-being, it is said, made in heaven-so love should ever precede marriage. And thus we shortly reason out the second line of Emerson's quatrain from "Casella,"

"Test of the poet is knowledge of love,

For Eros is older than Saturn or Jove."

The concluding couplet I will not quote, although in fear of the critics, one of them having reminded me, when I had used half an epigram from Tauvenarges, that two lines were a couplet, not a quatrain. Acute critic! he was quite right; two and two do make four.

And as surely as two and two make four, and two couplets form a quatrain, so the first business in a man's life is to fall in love. It is a man's first duty, and he would be wise, if he undertook it right early in life, when he was wide awake to woman's faults, when he had ceased to look upon woman as a divinity, and began to regard her as a loving and loveable human creature-a being neither faultless nor too full of faults, but one whom it is his duty to love and caress, to guide and chide when she required such guidance and correction, but in a way which should exhibit on his part both art and heart. All this should take place, not when a man has the whole weight of the world upon him, when he is hampered in business, but when he has plenty of time to throw away, as if one of us ever had a moment to spare! Yes, sacrifice first to the divinity of Love. See while your eyes are clear, and your wisdom is strong upon you, that you choose your partner well; know as far as you can know, that the chief end of life is accomplished; that you have assured yourself true happiness in a wife; that the firm friend, the gentle consoler, the true adviser is yours; that a second Antæus, you have secured one, who, in your struggle with this Hercules, this brawny Society, will dower you with new strength every time you are thrown upon her bosom. For you may sport awhile with Fortune, and lose money, and yet recover it; you may coquet with Fame, write and rewrite, make a position and lose it; you may play even with

reputation, in spite of angry tongues and foolish sayings, and outlive the ashes of a mistake or a questionable name; but you never can coquet with Eros, King Love, eldest and most jealous of the gods, ready to wound even Aphrodite. Put off your love till Time has dowered you with a wrinkled brow and silvered locks, with a harsh voice and a hardened manner; with a cool judgment and a colder heart, and you think you have been wise, do you? You are not. You imagine you will get women to love you? I don't. Or that you can at least live without love? No, not if you were an oyster; or that a sensible woman will be honourable, good, true to you, give you her heart because you are a husband. There you deceive yourself. Think over the matter; love is a great science, too hard to master when one grows old, and it is not to be despised nor flouted, and indeed only to be dealt with like Greck, French pronunciation, Latin verse, and a few other things, by a very early acquaintance. "The science of love," wrote Cicero, "is the philosophy of the heart." So, moreover, the method of falling in love truly, wisely, properly, and with discretion, is the science of life. What a Paradise would this world have been if it had never witnessed an ill-sorted union nor an unhappy marriage. The question needs no further argument. This falling properly in love is the first question in life.

There has been a great deal said about boy-love and its stupidity, but there is something to be said in its favour. When a gentleman "gets on" in life, when his head-as the humorous Americans have it— "begins to grow through his hair," then, like Mr. Thackeray did, he may try to represent poor young Pendennis raving about the Fotheringay, and making a fool of himself. But when Mr. Arthur Pendennis, discreetly married to the woman who loved him, and whom he did not love, was set up in life, writing for the "Pall Mall Gazette" (Thackeray's original "Pall Mall Gazette," not the copy), he met the Fotheringay married to an old satyr-like nobleman-a my Lord Pan, who had discreetly covered his goat-legs with trousers, and who had a star on his breast and a leer in his eye. Who were the fools then? Pen was one, for all his brilliantly-spiteful reviews, so calculated to show his own cleverness; the Fotheringay, with her cold, sad look; my Lord Pan, with his piercing glance; and even Mrs. Pendennis, who had half of her husband: very sad fools these. The terrible calamity that might have followed on the awful mésalliance of an apothecary's son with a clever actress, the daughter of an Irish adventurer, seems to me to be little to the after exhibition of that terribly cold piece of

folly of which every one there had been guilty. And don't we see it every day? Messrs. Ay and Bee are capital fellows, who were as gay as birds when bachelors, but not such fools, you know, as to marry in haste and repent at leisure; they would sow their wild oats and make a fortune first. So these wise men of the East, Messrs. Ay and Bee, living in Russell Square, and going down to the City every day, reversed the proverb-they repented at leisure first, and married in haste afterwards; and when you are on a polite visit, how terribly coldly the ménage strikes you. Have you ever made a morning call just after the husband and wife have been having what is satirically known as a "jolly row?" Well, Messrs. Ay and Messrs. Bee appear always to have been just having that at home. No warmth, no cordiality, no loving look between husband and wife; none of that charming, teasing, insolent fondness not expressed, but always visible in a young married couple who have fallen in love wisely. As for boys, I think that they know best how to manage their own loves. Young men are much more critical than some think; up to about seventeen they are determined, like John Knox, to protest against the "monstrous regiment of women." It is only after they have been in love that they excuse the faults and follies of the whole sex (except those of their own sisters) for the sake of the dearly-loved one. A boy who really loves knows many secrets which a man of mature age, who is simply "going to marry," has forgotten, or knows nothing about. He knows what women chiefly desire, that love is only to be bought by himself, and will insist upon having the whole coin paid down-wings, feathers, bow and arrows and all. That given, and a man is safe for

ever.

"A lover," says M. Ernest Feydeau, in a novel not everybody should read, in spite of its cleverness, "a lover; what wife would ever think of a lover"-you will remember that we are for the moment in France-"if a husband would give her that which every lover gives, not only little politenesses, attentions, forethought, consideration, friendship, but a little, just a little of that balm which is the essence of all our life, a little love! That's just what people of l'age mur seldom know how to give at all."

It is in very elegant French that Madame de Puisieux has written this sentence, "If ever I had to choose a lover," the reader will remark the word in italics, "he should not be an ordinary mortal. A man just like every other man should never belong to me." A young lady to whom I lent the book has enhanced its value greatly in my eyes by a marginal note, such as indeed Mr. Mudie might

object to, but no one else. She has written, in a charming Italian hand, "Them's my sentiments," opposite the passage quoted; and them's everybody's sentiments, too. Happily for men, they can choose their lovers; unhappily for women, they only can accept those who offer. They would do much better than we if there were a rule passed, an act in the Universal Parliament of Man, that woman should exercise a continual leap-year privilege, and pick out her partner. "They can do all that men can do, and somewhat better," said a modern philosopher; "the only difference is, that their judgment is cooler, and they are more amiable." "And," ejaculated Madame de Pompadour, "I am half inclined to believe that philosopher." So am I. When we see a spooney fellow, to whom a nice girl is apparently tenderly attached, and who at his club-a great goose !-says openly that he is about to quit bachelor life and to marry-to be sacrificed, in fact-one can very truly swear that the man made the proposal, and that the girl, staunch and true as woman always is, is showing no white feather, but is persuading herself, perhaps even her own heart, that the man must be loved, and is quite different from any other man, that his follies are eccentricities, his selfishness is prudence, his hard judgment of others is wisdom. It would have been very different if she had had her choice, and he, if he had married young, would have gravitated like dust of steel to a magnet, to some iron thing which might have magnetized him too. But now! Well, the girl will do her best, you may be sure, and love this block, and endow him with many qualities, even as the Queen Titania twists flowers over the long ears and the hairy snout of Bottom in the ass's head. Very beautiful is it to remember all this, and to know how women idealize those whom they love, and thus heighten and raise noble natures to the very nobility which they first but imagined. "I do love you, dear, so much," said one, as she passed her arm round her lover's neck, and looked into his eyes. "You are so clever, so handsome, so true-and, oh, so much more than this, so generous, brave, so tender-hearted, so noble !"

The two lovers came to a full stop. There are periods in life when the heart stands still, whatever physiologists may say about that busy organ, and when the eyes, looking from the window of the soul, grow dim with love, and the body, feeble, leans against another body for support. And he who heard all this, knew that the woman's heart had touched her tongue with eloquence, and had placed at the windows of her eyes the finest coloured glass in the world, and that she