young and beautiful women. Perhaps it is its rarity that constitutes its charm; for nothing is more rare, notwithstanding the wellacted rôles of friendship we continually see got up in society between women who entertain a mutual detestation. The unstable basis of such ephemeral fancies is selfishness; hence, it is not to be wondered at that the fragile superstructures soon totter and fall to the ground. A share in an opera-box, similarity of pursuits, a knowledge of each other's liaisons, which - precludes embarrassment in those quartettos that invariably occur wherever these female Pylades and Orestes appear, are the motives of half the friendships existing among ladies of fashion. They herd continually together, address each other by the most loving epithetspour into the ears of their admirers a thousand secrets of the concealed personal and moral defects, and the numberless artifices of their dear friends, to which they have recourse, in order to supply the want of beauty. It is thus we learn that poor Lady so and so, or Mrs. so and so, would be the most delightful person in the world, only that she happens to have every physical and almost every moral fault that ever fell to the lot of woman; but, the greater part of which, owing to the blindness or stupidity of the world, are left to be discovered by the discriminating eyes of her dear friend, who relates them with such professions of regret at their existence. Of how many women, whose complexions I have praised, have I not been told by their supposed devoted friends, and not without a smile at my ignorance, that they wore rouge; until I almost began to doubt whether such a thing as a real rosy cheek, proceeding from pure bright blood circulating within the epidermis, were a desideratum possible to be found. Every very fair woman I saw, was, as the sincere friends of each informed me, indebted, not to nature, but art, for that delicate tint. In short, their frank and explicit confessions brought me to consider every handsome woman as a sort of modern Thisbe, peeping behind a wall of white and red. But this was not all. The jetty locks I admired were, I was informed, the properties of the ladies they adorned, only because they had bought them; the pearly teeth I praised, were chefs d'œuvre from some fashionable dentist; the dark eye-brows that struck my fancy, owed, I was told, their rich black to the newly invented die; and even the red lips, emulating the hue of coral, had been tinged, as my informant stated, by a chemical preparation. Such being the disclosures made by friends in fashionable life, it is not much to be wondered at that I am incredulous as to the sincerity of the sentiment of friendship between fine ladies. I have hitherto only believed it to exist in the mind of an acknowledged beauty towards some remarkably plain but well-bred woman, who served as a foil to her, and did not hate her for her own inferiority. I am, however, no longer a sceptic as to female friendship. Lady Delaward, young and beautiful, feels it, in the utmost signification of the term, for Lady Annandale. Hers are not the praises that artful women, women, themselves handsome, think it prudent to bestow on any other beauty named in their presence; cunningly selecting her defects for their exaggerated eulogiums, and leaving unnoticed, in their panegyrics, the charms that would have justified them. No; Lady Delaward, when I extolled the personal fascinations of Lady Annandale, simply answered, "Yes, she is the most lovely person I ever saw." But, when I said that she appeared very amiable, her countenance sparkled with animation, and her cheeks became tinged with a brighter hue; her whole face, while under the glowing effects of her warm affection for her friend, reminding me of one of those fine alabaster vases, with a light in it, that displays even more its own spotless purity, than it illumines the objects around it. "You should have known Augusta," she said, as I have done, since her infancy, to be able to appreciate all the admirable qualities she possesses; qualities which not even the undue indulgence of her doting father and mother has been able to obscure." "I do not like her friend, Miss Montressor," observed I. |