to abandon the effort until a more favourable occasion. When I commenced again, my Louisa looked so much as though I were teasing her, and so strong an inclination to cry was expressed in her face, that I again broke down, leaving my feelings only fragmentarily expressed. On the next opportunity I declared myself as suddenly and thoroughly as I could. Louisa said simply, "I'll tell Ma!" and hurried away. I could hardly decide whether that observation was to be interpreted as an acceptance or a rebuke; whether she was about to invoke a mother's blessing or a mother's vengeance. I was soon relieved, however, if it could be called relief, by Mrs. Lippesley's falling heavily upon me, and fainting in my arms, with the words murmuring on her lips, "Take her. Bless you you cruel creature. Oh, how could you? Be happy. O my own sweet darling pet-my treasure-my dear, dear Louey," &c. &c.

Of course, after that event, my Louisa and myself were formally considered as engaged, and people seemed to me to do all they could to force this fact continually upon our attention, to thoroughly impress and imbue us—not to say bully us-with it, and make our lives a burden to us in consequence. I know I always felt somehow as though I were branded like a felon, and the word "engaged" stamped upon my forehead; and I did not feel nearly so comfortable as I had expected. Certainly I had a good deal of my Louisa's society—perhaps, indeed, rather too much of it. The family made quite a business of bringing us together. The back drawing-room was especially devoted to the tenancy of the "engaged couple," as every body seemed determined to call us. There we were expected to sit and talk and make ourselves agreeable to each other for hours together. With every desire to be charmed with my Louisa, I began to discover eventually that her strong point was decidedly not conversation. In fact, after one had got through, and knew by heart, and exhausted thoroughly the witcheries of her blue eyes, her amber tresses, her delicate complexion, and her red button-hole mouth, there was not much else of my Louisa that was worth dwelling upon. These advantages were quite unexceptionable; but I felt after a time that perhaps there was something more required. I had all the sensations of having dined off a soufflet, very pretty and delicate and nice, but dreadfully deficient in substantiality. It would have been as well, undoubtedly, if I had discovered all this before I thought of avowing my love for Louisa; and of course I could not breathe a syllable of my ideas on the subject to any one, and meanwhile the family seemed to be doing all they could to persecute the unhappy young creatures who had made such a dreadful mistake about their feelings. "There's nothing like people knowing each other thoroughly before they marry," Mrs. Lippesley would say; "it saves ever so much trouble afterwards. Bless you, Louey, darling! Bless you, my dear son!" and so she drove us together to sit for hours in the back drawing-room, wondering what we ought to say to each other, and what we ought to do to pass the time. How my Louisa yawned during those interviews! and I'm sure I was very often

on the verge of sleep. I had always to sit next to her at dinner, at tea, at church. If I accompanied the Lippesleys to an evening party, I was chained to my Louisa's side all the evening. "Of course you must not think of dancing with any body else!"-so Jane-Ann, Charlotte, and Amelia Lippesley in turn exclaimed to me. "You must not think of

such a thing, or Louey will be so angry!" and I believe poor Louey was threatened by them with my displeasure if she ventured to solace herself with the society of others. So we were together all the evening, dumb and sulky and wretched; pointed at by every body as an "engaged couple," and giggled at by young people accordingly, and jested at freely by elderly folks who had too thoroughly enjoyed their suppers; and in an entirely false position, and ashamed. The love we had imagined lasting as an edifice of stone seemed to be melting away like a snow image, and my Louisa and myself grew to be very sick indeed of each other.

my

Of course this is looking at the thing in its worst light possible. There were times when we were rather less bent upon being so mutually disagreeable. There must now and then be a sort of pleasure in being in the company of a young and pretty creature such as my Louisa, even though she had mental deficiencies and an inclination to be peevish. I did, I confess, often enjoy the fact of walking about Highbury with Louisa on my arm,-the white-chip bonnet, with its lining of amber ringlets, close to my shoulder, and the button-hole mouth cooing pleasant nothings, merely "Noes" and "Yeses" as a rule,-trying to believe that I adored passionately, and was so fortunate as to be about to marry eventually, the woman of my choice. Still this was quite in what I may call the honeymoon of my engagement. There were after-moons very much less luscious in quality.

In time too I began to understand better Flukewood's observation, to the effect that I should save him some trouble. He did not pay nearly so many visits at his aunt's house after as he had paid before my engagement to Lousia. "The fact is," he said, laughing, "my aunt wants rather too much attention." I knew in the end too well what this meant. "You're quite one of the family now, you know, my blessed boy," Mrs. Lippesley said to me once; "we shall not treat you as a stranger, we shall not indeed." At first I felt rather flattered by such a cordial abandonment of all formality; but I soon found it was not quite so agreeable a thing to be regarded wholly as a male member of Mrs. Lippesley's family as I had been anticipating. I don't know how the late Mr. Lippesley might have been viewed, but I found myself considered in the light of a superior servant to the family, out of livery, and unrecompensed by wages. I was perpetually required to be in attendance on Mrs. Lippesley. Wherever she desired to go, my presence was invariably insisted upon, by way of escort; I was always loaded with shawls, wrappers, muffs, parcels, and umbrellas. I was shivering outside theatre-doors at midnight, struggling to get cabs for Mrs. and the Misses Lippesley; I was compelled at all hours in the morning to see the Lippesleys home to

Highbury from evening parties in all quarters of the town before I could be permitted to journey home to sleep at my lodgings at Pimlico. I was once, I remember, running all night about Islington in the vain hope of obtaining change for a sovereign, in order to pay the cabman who had driven Mrs. Lippesley home from an entertainment at the house of a dear friend of hers residing at Peckham. For one serious drawback on the pleasure of accompanying the Lippesleys in their pursuit of pleasure was, that I had invariably to pay the cab-fares; and it was this I found that made my friend Flukewood so much less solicitous for the society of his aunt than had formerly been the case. "She's let me in awful, she has, taking her to evening parties; it's your turn now, old boy!" so he addressed me. "Take her to Turnham Green next week; all right; go in, and win!" But the fact was, it was going in and losing; and that was what I complained of. For my allowance, in the way of pocket-money, was not very liberal, and of course I was bound to make my Louisa a trifling offering now and then,—a silver thimble, a work-box, Moore's Melodies bound in whole calf, a Scotch-pebble brooch, bog-wood and Irish-diamond bracelets, &c.; and really I could not afford to maintain this ruinous expenditure in respect of cab-hire without leaving myself positively penniless. It was all very well for my friends in the country to say that they could not understand my expenses being so enormous, and to decline sending any further remittances until the next quarter-day, Michaelmas-day. What was I to do in the mean while? How was Mrs. Lippesley's cab-hire to be paid? and here she was proposing that we should all go to Ramsgate for a month, and would doubtless leave me to pay the steamboat fare for the whole party there and back, to say nothing of disbursements for donkeys on the sands, hackney-coaches, bathing-machines, &c.

How was all this to end? I am afraid I must confess that my visits at Mrs. Lippesley's house became at last less frequent; perhaps I was haunted by the fear of liabilities for cab-hire I should be unable to meet; perhaps also it must be said by a strengthening conviction that my loveaffair had been a mistake. A sham sentiment had been passing current for real; it was time to detect and nail it to the counter. Like one of those puppies which look so pretty and thorough-bred in their extreme infancy, and eventually grow up into very decidedly ugly mongrel curs, the loves of my Louisa and myself, deemed to be so genuine in the beginning, were found in the end to be simply most unreal and mistaken. The charm of our passion was in its youthfulness; that gone, only absurdity remained.

My Louisa went out of town; she was to spend a month with some relations at Portsmouth. We made some show of keeping up a correspondence. Poor creatures! we deemed that we were bound to interchange hollow, flaccid, feeble letters; but these dwindled and dawdled. A month passed-two months, three months, and for a long time I had heard nothing of Louisa, and I had not even been to call upon Mrs. Lippesley:

VOL. IV.

EE

certainly my passion had very much evaporated. Suddenly I met Mrs. Lippesley, with Amelia; they had been at a morning concert at the Hanover Square Rooms.

"It's not been my doing-indeed it has not," Mrs. Lippesley declaimed violently.

"What is it the matter?" I asked.

"You've not heard, then! Ah, I must break it to you. My poor Louisa-she's engaged to be married - Major, of the Bombay Artillery-a dreadful man! promise me you will not seek to injure him."

Fervently I gave my word I would attempt nothing of the kind.

"She's a coquette-I say it, though I am her mother. My poor boy, I pity you from my heart-indeed I do. I can imagine your feelings; but time will alleviate them. Ah, the tears will come, my blessed boy!" I besought her not to distress herself.

"You forgive her, then? generous heart, I see you do. Bless you!" (then, after a pause) "Will you see me into a cab? Thank you! Have you any silver?" &c.

I parted with Louisa's mother: my engagement was broken off. I don't think Louisa ever regretted it; I am sure I did not.

Is it necessary to say that I did not challenge the Major?

It was all an imprudent business, and it was very fortunate that we discovered in good time how much we had changed our minds.

England's "Broad Stone of Honour."

AT present, when ships instead of warriors are clad in coats of mail, and when a distance of one or two miles of sea and a dangerous rocky coast presents no greater obstacle to the destruction of land defences than a few yards of moat might have done during the middle ages, the English Channel has to Great Britain much the same value and importance as a frontier that the Rhine had to Germany a century ago. The Prussians, as we all know, took advantage of the picturesque rocky height opposite the mouth of the Moselle, scarped its sides, strengthened its weak places by forts, adapted it to resist, attack, and detain an advancing army, and regard it as a sacred place-an Ehrenbreitstein. The young Burschen, proud of their stronghold, have since learnt to sing over their wine-cups with great satisfaction, fancifully addressing their French neighbours, "Sie sollen ihn nicht haben,

Du schöne Teutsche Rhein,"

and regard as peculiarly sacred this bulwark of their country.

Stirred in like manner by a conviction of the importance of keeping possession of that little group of islands in the British Channel of which Alderney is the advanced guard, England's military authority of the day, the great Duke of Wellington, suggested and strongly urged, many years ago, that Alderney should be taken advantage of. It was not then a very promising place either for usefulness or defence. Although small, it is large enough to have about five miles of coast sufficiently approachable to permit a bold enemy, successful for the time at sea, to land troops and artillery; and although not without so-called harbours, these were nothing but open bays, very small and with very poor anchorage. The island, it is true, is tolerably defended by a vast army of dangerous rocks, some just concealed and some just exposed at all times of tide, by the great strength of the tidal current around all parts of its shores, and by the indraught that is produced, luring ships to destruction; but all these difficulties had often been overcome, and the numerous passages threaded by our own craft with skilful pilotage. It is well known that the French are deficient neither in skill nor courage, and possess a good knowledge of these waters so near their own shore.

Agreeably to the advice then given, two departments of our administration took Alderney in hand. The Board of Ordnance undertook to strengthen the coast; the Lords of the Admiralty undertook to consider, in their fashion, the question of harbour accommodation. It will be well to explain briefly the means adopted to carry out the former object, and a few words will, unfortunately, put the reader in possession of what has been done to attain the latter. One result is, that for many years there has been an enormous expenditure, often the subject of serious remonstrance in Parliament, and estimated to have amounted in all to eight