Now that I have come to the love part of my story, I am suddenly conscious of dingy common colors on the palette with which I have been painting.

I wish I had some brilliant dyes.

I wish, with all my heart, I could take you back to that "Once upon a time" in which the souls of our grandmothers delighted,--the time which Dr.Johnson sat up all night to read about in "Evelina,"-- the time when all the celestial virtues, all the earthly graces were revealed in a condensed state to man through the blue eyes and sumptuous linens of some Belinda Portman or Lord Mortimer.

None of your good-hearted, sorely-tempted villains then! It made your hair stand on end only to read of them,--going about perpetually seeking innocent maidens and unsophisticated old men to devour.

That was the time for holding up virtue and vice; no trouble then in seeing which were sheep and which were goats! A person could write a story with a moral to it, then, I should hope! People that were born in those days had no fancy for going through the world with half-and-half characters, such as we put up with; so Nature turned out complete specimens of each class, with all the appendages of dress, fortune, et cetera, chording decently.