afford, as I believe they do, the surest and safest indications of character, we could have no hesitation in pronouncing upon the amiable qualities of M. Choynowski.

In person he was tall and graceful, and very noble-looking. His head was particularly intellectual, and there was a calm sweetness about the mouth that was singularly prepossessing. Helen had likened him to a hero of romance. In my eyes he bore much more plainly the stamp of a man of fashion—of that very highest fashion which is too refined for finery, too full of self-respect for affectation. Simple, natural, mild, and gracious, the gentle reserve of his manner added, under the circumstances, to the interest which he inspired. Somewhat of that reserve continued even after our acquaintance had ripened into intimacy.

He never spoke of his own past history, or future prospects, shunned all political discourse, and was with difficulty drawn into conversation upon the scenery and manners of the North of Europe. He seemed afraid of the subject.

Upon general topics, whether of literature or art, he was remarkably open and candid. He possessed in an eminent degree the talent of acquiring languages for which his countrymen are distinguished, and had made the best use of those keys of knowledge. I have never met with any person whose mind was more richly cultivated, or who was more calculated to adorn the highest station. And here he was wasting life in a secluded village in a foreign country! What would become of him after his present apparently slender resources should be exhausted, was painful to imagine. The more painful, that the accidental discovery of the direction of a letter had disclosed his former rank. It was part of an envelope addressed, "A Monsieur Monsieur le Comte Choynowski," and left as a mark in a book, all except the name being torn off. But the fact needed no confirmation. All his habits and ways of thinking bore marks of high station. What would become of him?

It was but too evident that another calamity was impending over the unfortunate exile. Although most discreet in word and guarded in manner, every action bespoke his devotion to his lovely fellow inmate. Her wishes were his law. His attentions to her little boy were such as young men rarely show to infants except for love of the mother; and the garden, that garden abandoned since the memory of man, (for the Court, previous to the arrival of the present tenant, had been for years uninhabited,) was, under his exertions and superintendence, rapidly assuming an aspect of luxuriance and order. It was not impossible but Helen might realise her playful vaunt, and beat me in my own art after all.

John (our gardening lad) was as near being jealous as possible, and, considering the estimation in which John is known to hold our doings in the flower way, such jealousy must be accepted as the most flattering testimony to his rival's success. To go beyond our garden was, in John's opinion, to be great indeed!

Every thought of the Count Choynowski was engrossed by the fair Helen; and we saw with some anxiety that she in her turn was but too sensible of his attentions, and that everything belonging to his country assumed in her eyes an absorbing importance. She sent to London for all the books that could be obtained respecting Poland; ordered all the journals that interested themselves in that interesting though apparently hopeless cause; turned liberal,—she who had been reared in the lap of conservatism, and whom my father used laughingly to call the little Tory;—turned Radical, turned Republican,—for she far out-soared the moderate doctrines of whiggism in her political flights; denounced the Emperor Nicholas as a tyrant; spoke of the Russians as a nation of savages; and in spite of the evident uneasiness with which the Polish exile listened to any allusion to the wrongs of his country, for he never mingled in such discussions, omitted no opportunity of proving her sympathy by declaiming with an animation and vehemence, as becoming as anything so like