[Julian - disguised] Oh, jealousy is but A shadow cast from vanity, which lain Would take the shape of love to hide its own Selfish deformity ! - Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Mrs. Burgoyne passed the last twenty years of her life in a large, solemn-looking house at Kensington ; it is now a mad-house. How curiously do these changes in dwelling places, once cheerful and familiar, bring the mutability of our existence home ! It would be an eventful chronicle, the history of even a few of the old-fashioned houses in the vicinity of London. You ascended a flight of steps, with a balustrade and two indescribable birds on either side, and a large hall, which, strange to say, was more cheerful in winter than in summer. In summer the narrow windows, the black wood with which it was panelled, seemed heavy and dull ; but in winter the huge fire gave its own gladness, and had besides the association with old English hospitality which a blazing grate always brings. You passed next through two long drawing-rooms, whose white wainscoting was almost covered with family portraits. There cannot be much said for the taste of Queen Anne's time downwards — bagged, wigged, and hooped ; there was not a picture of which the African's question might not have been asked, "Pray tell me, white woman, if this is all you?”

The history of most fictions would be far stranger than the fictions themselves ; but it would be a dark and sad chronicle.

It is not him, not the bold enemy
That rushes fiercely on the healthful breast.
For such I have no fear. ’Tis this dull jail
That makes the hero and the coward one !