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 108 wonder at anybody's partiality for the tale, when we learn that "one of the sweetest smiles that ever animated the face of mortal man now diffused itself over the countenance of Lord St. Orville, as he fell at the feet of Julia in a death-like swoon." Mr. Howells would doubtless tell us that this is not a true and accurate delineation of real life, and that what Lord St. Orville should have done was to have simply wiped the perspiration off his forehead, after the unvarnished fashion of Mr. Mavering, in April Hopes. But Macaulay, who could mop his own brow whenever he felt so disposed, and who recognized his utter inability to faint with a sweet smile at a lady's feet, naturally delighted in Mrs. Cuthbertson's singularly accomplished hero. Swooning is now, I fear, sadly out of date. In society we no longer look upon it as a pleasing evidence of feminine propriety, and in the modern novel nothing sufficiently exciting to bring about such a result is ever permitted to happen. But in the good old impossible stories of the past it formed a very important element, and some of Mrs. Radcliffe's heroines can easily achieve twenty-seven