the above, there are many in that same island who have undertaken the important task of education; and this is one great reason why the ladies of the present age are so particularly noted for solid and useful acquirements, and why they consider the art of making a rheticule, to be far superior to that of making a shirt.

In Switzerland, however, at the time when this history sets out, they managed matters differently. The qualifications of the mind were then taken into the account, and the plus or minus of moral virtue was ascertained. It may however happen, that even in Switzerland, a person may be deceived-nor that it is meant hereby to infer, that the abbess was deceived in the person whom she selected as the governess for the beau'tiful Adeline; for in all respects but one, (and it is left to the sagacity and penetration of the fair sex, to discover that one point, knowing from woeful experience, that they are sufficiently lynx-eyed to discover what would baffle and confound the greatest metaphysician, which the united kingdom ever 'produced,) I say, in all respects but one, the governess Mademoiselle Schlaffenhausen, ci-devant novitiate in the convent of my Lady St. Roch, was a passive character, or in another acceptation of the phraseshe was a good sort of a woman. It was, however, rumoured (but of what will rumour not be guilty) that, from a yielding disposition, and a Constitution teeming with the milk of human

kindness, Mademoiselle Schlaffenhausen acted in a double capacity, that is, she attended more to the ease and comfort of the father, than to the mental improvement of the daughter.

In England, and "wherever English minds and manners dwell," there is a certain epoch in life, at which a lady either with a positive or a feigned disgust to the appellation, drops the title of Miss, and assumes the more expressive and matronly one of Mistress. Some indeed there are, who, from a particular motive, cling very close to the title of Miss, not being very willing to part with it on the score of antiquity, but very willing, indeed to part with it before antiquity reaches them. Mademoiselle Schlaffenhausen was a kind of happy medium between the giddy age of twenty and the more sober one of forty; in other words, she was about thirty years of age-well made-very plump, as if she had been fed with the puppy broth of the Turksvery lively-very conceited-and very vain. Now the giddiness of twenty, well amalgamated with the sobriety of forty, ought certainly to form just that particular sort of character fitted for a governess; but it is a query not very difficult of solution, whether a female of the age of thirty,. taken from the confinement of a convent, and ushered on a sudden into the motley scenes of social life, can possibly possess any experience in the world, and consequently, whether she be not likely to fall, her whole length, over the first

stumbling-block which chance or design may throw in her way. Now, whether Mademoiselle Schlaffenhausen ever did fall prostrate in the manner above alluded to, no positive data are to be formed, nor are any records existing, by which it can be known whether the said Lady had ever been under the influence of the tender passion, although in a marginal note to one of the papers, from which this history is extracted, there is an illusion to a detected amour, between a novitiate and a monk, and the female delinquent is certainly said to bear the name of Schlaffenhausen; but there are many Jones's in Wales, many Campbell's in Scotland-and many Smiths in England, ergo, there may be many Schlaffenhausens in Switzerland, and it may have happened that our acquaintance, the governess, had added to the number; but let calumny continue to spit its venom on her spotless character, and all that shall be here said upon the subject is, that there was certainly something in her make, and in the penetrating glances of a keen black eye, which shewed, that a convent, where love dwindles and degenerates like an exotic transplanted from a genial clime to the frozen shores of Lapland, was not a place in which Mademoiselle Schlaffenhausen would wish to spend the whole of her life.

Every family has its secrets and its peculiarities, and it cannot be supposed that the family of the Lindamores proved an exception to that

rule; on the contrary, it had some very striking peculiarities; one of which was, that whenever the good old Count retired to refresh himself by a siesto, it was generally the custom of Frederic to send for the governess to enliven his dreary hours by-the perusal of a romauce! and let no cold-blooded, fastidious old maid, attach any other sense to the last expression, than what is actually set down; there may be some who will wink the eye-give a most wise and significant nod, and whisper that there is more meant in this perusal of a romance than is openly expressed-but the jaundiced eye gives a yellowish hue to every object, and the depraved heart will attach a crime even to an angel's kiss.

Whenever this perusal of a romance took place, Adeline was sent to play upon the lawn before the castle or to visit the venerable abbess of St. Roch. This circumstance, which many attempts have been made to erase from the annals of the noble family of the Lindamores, and which appears like the bar of bastardy in the escutcheons of the English nobility, would not have been thus enlarged upon, had it not had a particular influence on the happiness and mental improvement of our heroine. An apparent evil is often productive of permanent good, and from seeming confusion a general order oft ensues; and although Rupert, the old Seneschal, shook his grey locks whenever Adeline was dispatched to the convent, yet had he been in possession of

the clue of Ariadne to guide him through the labyrinth of the scenes of life, and thereby expose to him the secret tracks, which, though for a time enveloped in darkness, yet on a sudden open to views of the purest bliss, he would have discovered that those days were the happiest of Adeline's life, and on her own memory they shone at a future period, like a few bright stars in the firmament, when all the rest are clouded,

The amiable disposition, and growing virtues of Adeline, gained her in a particular degree, the affection and esteem of the worthy abbess. The latter soon discovered that the mind of her young favorite was like a spot of fertile ground, which only required cultivation, to produce the most luxuriant fruit, and as it was too evident that in her father's house that attention was not paid to it, which it so imperiously demanded, she resolved to repair the neglect, and become herself the preceptress of Adeline in every branch of useful knowledge. She grew up in loveliness and virtue, and at the age of sixteen, she was. one of Nature's fairest works. Her bosom was. the seat of maiden purity, her heart the throne of every virtue. Like a solitary rose-bud in a desolate spot, she bloomed unheeded; the world she knew not, nor from the tales which she heard at the convent, how man in society is the enemy of man, did she wish to know it. Her wishes never strayed beyond the mouutains which bordered her prospect; her sphere of action was