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222 the sumptuous wealth and lavish bloodshed, that thrilled the boyhood of Mr. Wright have, I greatly fear, been refined out of existence. There is an occasional promise of this sort of thing, but never any adequate fulfillment. I once hoped much from the opening paragraph of a tale describing the virtuous heroine's wicked husband in language which seemed to me full of bright auspices for his future:—

"The speaker was a fair, well-dressed man, in appearance about three-and-thirty. A yellow mustache increased the languid, insouciant expression of his long, well-cut features, which were handsome, but, despite their delicacy, had a singular animal resemblance in them,—God's image in the possession of a cool, unprincipled fiend, which now and then peered out of the pale blue eyes, half veiled by the yellow lashes."

Yet, with all his advantages of physiognomy, the utmost this pale-eyed person achieves is to hang around in his wife's way until she shoots him,—accidentally, of course,—and secures herself from any further annoyance.

In a taste for aristocracy, however, and a splendid contempt for trade, and "the city,"