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58 down. Some time after dinner was begun, Lady ———— came in. The hostess began to regret, hoped nothing had happened, etc.

"'Non, madame, c'est que je n'avais pas faint,' was the refined and graceful reply.

At a dinner party we were talking of Niebuhr, Varnhagen von Ense's article, etc. They spoke of his arrogance and caprice, which they said he had in common with all Holsteiners. He was much disliked by the Germans at Rome, partly for these qualities, partly for his parsimony and want of hospitality.

"Herr von Raumer said: 'I went to his house one evening, and we nearly succeeded in boiling some hot water for tea, but not quite.' Niebuhr told him that it was a serious thing to associate with Amati the Roman archæologist, because he frequented a certain wine-house called the Sabina, where the wine was dear. Amati was keeper of the Chigi Library, and held a post in the Vatican. His learning and judgment were universally acknowledged. He was particularly well known for his transcription and collation of codices, and a man whom any one might be proud to know.

"When the late king was at Rome, Niebuhr did the honors so badly that the king was quite impatient. He showed him little fragments of things in which he could take no interest, and none of the great objects. One day Niebuhr spoke of Palestrina. 'What is that?' said the king. 'What, your Majesty does not know that?' exclaimed Niebuhr in a tone of astonishment. The king was extremely annoyed, and turning round to some one, said, 'Stuff and nonsense; it's bad enough never to have learnt anything, without having it proclaimed aloud.'

"Niebuhr's ideas about his own importance, and his excessive cowardice were such, said B———, that at the time of the Carbonari affairs, he actually wrote home to the Prussian government that the whole of this conspiracy was directed against himself.

In the steamer from Mainz to Bonn was — inter alios — an individual of the genus Rath. He sat opposite to us at dinner on the deck, and first attracted my attention by the following reply to his neighbor, a man who appeared to entertain the profoundest admiration for him. 'Oh, yes, there are lots of theorists in the world, only too many. I represent den gesunden Menschenverstand (sound common sense).' Delighted at this declaration, I raised my eyes and saw a face beaming with the most undoubting self-complacency. He went on to detail certain schemes of his for the good of his country — Oldenburg, as it seemed. My husband began to interrogate him about Oldenburg, and I said all I knew of it was from Justus Möser. The worthy Rath looked at me amazed, and said this was the first time he ever heard Justus Möser mentioned by a lady. I said so much the worse, there is an infinity of good sense in his writings. Yes, but he never expected to hear of his being read by a lady, and that I was evidently the second representative of sound common sense in the world, 'worthy to be my disciple,' added he with emphasis."

 

 From The Cornhill Magazine.

suppose that every month in the year has its own peculiar physiognomy, by which the true lover of nature would at once recognize it were he dropped from the clouds in a balloon after a prolonged absence in some other planet. Months melt into one another imperceptibly, of course; but such a one would know that the middle of July was not the middle of June, or the middle of August the middle of July. And this not by the weather, or the temperature, or by any agricultural operation which might betray the truth, but by the peculiar expression which nature wears at different seasons of the year. In July she is still young, still soft and fresh, with cooling showers and fickle skies, and clouds and sunshine rapidly chasing each other away. And for the full and perfect beauty of ordinary English scenery there is no period of the year to compare with the six weeks which separate the end of June from the middle of August. In August comes a slight change, we know not what, something to be felt rather than described. Perhaps it is that the face of nature begins then to wear rather a more set look, to show the first signs of middle age, and that lines of thought became visible in her still lovely countenance. But with the ensuing month the change is very apparent, and it is on the manner in which the expression of nature during an English September affects both the heart and the imagination that it is proposed to dwell in this article. A September landscape is familiar to the majority of Englishmen; but still there is a numerous class of men, 