The Adventures Of Don Pasquale.

zealous attentions . Madame Allegri had no doubt much to recommend her to so staid and dignified a personage as Don Balthazar . She was still not much beyond her " quaraiitaine , " and Nature had endowed her with many gifts of form and mind ; and when you add to these that she was courteous and complaisant , chatty and easy to get on with , knowing and matter-of-fact , ( as some widows are , ) hi the highest degree , you may agree with the writer when he says that Don Balthazar , in looking after Madame Allegrimight have " gone further and fared worse . " Not that that excellent woman

, showed any improper haste agabi to change her name or forget the husband of her youth . On the contrary , she was always most reserved and dignified , though most kindly and gentle . Perhaps she was like the old Teuton who married ( improper Teuton as he was !) six weeks after his first wife ' s interment , and who said , in reply to an expostulation , " llimmel , I loved my treasure so moch , that I do not like to be widout someting that

resembles er . ' ' Perhaps she might think that , as " gregariousness" is the acme of existence , and solitude its destruction , so the companionship of early affection had fitted her for the charms of home rather than the " loneliness of isolation ; " or , again , she might take up the witty Frenchwoman ' s view , who declared that life was " too short not to demand the interchange of personal affection . " For any or all of these reasons combined , Madame Allegri may have fancied that she was not wrong when she found so safe and so jileasant aud so experienced a friend as Don Balthazar , if she determined to make another expedition into the often dangerous realm of matrimony . I don't blame her , the more so as she had always been the most devoted of wives

and best of women ; but I know there are many who think that " once a widow , always a widow , " and that such a state of things is the best for society and for us all . However , Madame Allegri thought differently , and so , though she was , as I before observed , neither forward nor free-and-easy , ( as some -widows are said to be ) , she did not object to attentions which wore clearly " empresses , '' and a pleasant companionship which was in itself most welcome to one who , many thought , was even more good-looking still than her charming and sunny daughters . Anna , who was

both merry and arch , was highly amused with this posture of aifairs . Whether such a course of events harmonised with her innermost thoughts who can say ? for woman is often most strangely reticent , sometimes unwisely so , in all that concerns her real feelings or actual intentions . It may well be—and indeed I have reason to believe —that such was the case : that Anna found Don Balthazar very pleasant , but that he was a " leetle" too old for her in ideas , in habits , and in mode of life . Oh , hapjiy

privilege of youth ! How often , amid the tinsel of worldly show , or the greatness of earthly wealth , would the old exchange all their possessions for a few years of reckless youth 1 How often in the battle of life we all have to fig ht—how often in the race of life we all have to run—are the old and wayworn vanquished in the distance by those who , exalting iu the strength and daring of youth , care little for the experience of manhood or the impressiveness of age ! And who can blame them ? I , for one , cannot , and do not ; and as I close this Seventh Chapter of my veracious story , if I do not and will not say , " Ah niihi pneteritos si referet Jupiter annos , " I will add . that I often sigh , yet sigh amid the winter of old age , for the warmth of summer , the privileges of Youth !

The Late Prince Consort.

THE LATE PRINCE CONSORT .

THE two first volumes of this most interesting and seasonable work were very striking in themselves , and demanded alike from all perusal and thought both attentive and severe ; and this third volume comes before the public with no diminution either of the