Mr. Claude, you must know, is behaving a little bit better;
He and Papa are great friends; but he really is too shilly-shally,—­
So unlike George!  Yet I hope that the matter is going on fairly. 
I shall, however, get George, before he goes, to say something. 
Dearest Louisa, how delightful, to bring young people together!

* * * * *

Is it to Florence we follow, or are we to tarry yet longer,
E’en amid clamor of arms, here in the city of old,
Seeking from clamor of arms in the Past and the Arts to be hidden,
Vainly ’mid Arts and the Past seeking our life to forget?

Ah, fair shadow, scarce seen, go forth! for anon he shall follow,—­
He that beheld thee, anon, whither thou leadest, must go! 
Go, and the wise, loving Muse, she also will follow and find thee! 
She, should she linger in Rome, were not dissevered from thee!

[To be continued.]

A WELSH MUSICAL FESTIVAL.

I had been knocking about London, as the phrase goes, for more months than I choose to mention, when, my purse presenting unmistakable symptoms of a coming state of collapse, I began seriously to look about me for the means of replenishing it.  Luckily, I had not to wait long for an opportunity.  One morning, as I sat in the box of a coffee-room in Holborn, running my eye over the advertisement columns of the “Times,” I met with one which promised novelty, at least; I had had too much experience in such matters to anticipate from it any very great pecuniary compensation.  The said advertisement was to the effect, that a gentleman who combined literary tastes with business habits was required to edit a paper published in a town in South Wales; and it went on to state, that application, personally or by letter, might be made to the proprietor of the said journal at M——.

That I possessed some taste for literature I was well enough assured; but as for my “business habits,” perhaps the least said about them, the better.  This condition of candidateship, however, I quietly shirked, while counting over my few remaining coins, scarcely more than sufficient, after paying my landlady, to defray my expenses to M——­, some one hundred and sixty miles distant.  Determining, then, to assume a commercial virtue, though I had it not, I quitted the metropolis, and in due time reached the land of leeks, with a light heart, and seven and sixpence sterling in my pocket.

A queer little Welsh town was M——­, with an androgynous population,—­or so it seemed to me, who had never before beheld women wearing men’s hats and coats, and men with head-coverings and other articles of apparel of a very ambiguous description.  It chanced to be market-day when I arrived, so that I had a capital opportunity of observing the population for whose edification my “literary tastes” were, I hoped, to be