chills her when he soars away into the clouds, I wonder if I shall ever have a lover who will hit the happy mean?
This first of September has come upon us in kingly state, with mantle of azure and broad level sunbeams, with soft wooing breath and dew-spangled grass and leaf, and as I lean out of my window in the still early freshness of the morning, and look abroad at the beauty of hill and valley, land and sea, I marvel to myself whether the pretty brown birds are up and about, preening themselves in the sunshine, tasting of the gleaming dew, as happy and careless and ignorant to-day as they have been all through their short, merry, pleasant young lives.
Breakfast is early this morning, to suit the sportsmen, and when I go downstairs I find it well begun. The men are eating with a healthy vigour, that nothing short of some prospective slaughter of bird or beast ever inspires in their manly breasts. They all look intensely awake, and upon their countenances is that satisfied, all-is-well expression, that nothing on earth, save the first of September, ever brings there. Shorn of their nether garments, and clad in knickerbockers, they stand confessed—stalwart men of flesh and muscle, or weakly miserable creatures, whose legs look as though a touch would break them. Fane, Charles Lovelace, Sir George Vestris, and Paul Vasher stand the test well; but the others—ah, what a falling off was there!
The conversation is not particularly interesting; it is of "covers" and "coveys," "bags" and "beats," with many other phrases that convey small meaning to our ears, and once there is an indistinct murmur of "luncheon and ladies." Yes, ladies come last of all! For this is that day of days when women, with a certain sinking of the heart, or a sore smarting of their vanity, are forced to confess that they possess but a divided empire over the hearts of men, and that fairer than all the charms of his mistress, yea, sweeter even than the breath of her
