Spain, but feeling myself, both in heart and conscience, bound to dissent from the doctrine inculcated in the original, I affiliated English words upon the parent tune, (changing at the same time the sex of the vocalist,)—and for having so done, I now most penitently pray the forgiveness of both the British and Spanish gens de lyrique.

LA CACHUCHA.-P. 144.

The preceding remarks on the subject of "No quiero Casarme," extend their applicability to the above-named song, and its AngloIberian parody" The Silver Mandoline."

NOTE TO PREFACE.

PAGE viii.

"If by the bye an old maid has a heart."

There is nothing-no, not even the promised entree into Mahomet's seventh heaven, (dearly as I love blue or black-eyed houris,) that could tempt me to think, much less write, slightingly of ALL elderly spinsters;-forbid the thought, ye sister-nine; forbid it, I say, ye novenary muses-ye whose humble henchman I am, and whose livery it is my loftiest boast to wear-" a poet's soul should bear a richer fruitage," and I revel in the hope that woman's image (whether in the likeness of maid, wife, or widow,) is carved too deeply on my heart, to admit of the possibility of my intentionally paining her.

In the free spirit of candour, it is however worth my while to

confess, that a mixed agency governs my mind, with respect to those unhappy ladies, so disadvantageously known to the world, as well as to themselves, by the distressing appellation of " old maids.”

After long and gravely considering the question, it seems to me a measure of justice, to class them under two distinct heads; the first class consisting of volens, or voluntary old maids, and the second of nolens volens, or involuntary-ditto.

Now as regards the latter, (the involuntary ones,) I should hold myself to be a traitor to beauty, as well as to truth, were I not sorrowingly to admit that many, full many a gentle and lovely being is immolated at the shrine of celibacy, whose warm and generous heart sickens at her anti-social dooma thousand causes are in operation to force upon her the blighting veil of virginhood, to condemn her in the very bosom of society, to the accursed loneliness of a vestal life: and what are those thousand causes ?

Count me first the stars of the night, or the pebbles of the sea shore, and we shall then be better able to compute them; a few however of the impedimenta will answer our present purpose.

Beauty, with nine men out of ten, is the sine qua non of matrimony; without which, no girl's credentials can be "favourably received ;" she may be "as love-sick as a dove at mating time," she may be the very paragon of maiden excellence, in whose faultless soul every moral charm hath its abiding place; but lacking the visual spell, she is coldly overlooked for some mindless Circe, whose only passport to the altar is a pretty face or a set of well-turned limbs. Again, what chance (except a very bad one) has a girl of marry

ing, who does not come recommended to the prudent notice of her suitor, with a few thousands, either of acres or pounds.

A snug (unmortgaged) estate, a good round sum in the four per cents, or a reversionary interest in a very old uncle, or grandmother's will, are trump cards in a young lady's hand, and holding them she need not finesse very long for a partner; but the game of matrimony is a very serious and difficult one to play well, and many a woman who has thought herself sure of winning, (her husband's heart being the stake,) would, long before the rubber was ended, have joyfully paid the penalty of a revoke.

Thus then it appears (to me at least) that without owning the talisman of either beauty or riches, (or perhaps both,) the prospects of a girl's marrying are far from encouraging; and when to the absence of these desiderata is tacked the infinitesimal caveats entered by parents, relations, guardians, trustees, &c., against their daugh ter, kinswoman, or ward's espousal, it really ceases to be matter of wonderment that so many amiable creatures are eventually visited with the pains and penalties of old maid-ism.

It may be urged that I have looked at my subject through a sheet of ice, and that this is only a prejudiced estimate, a mere hypothetic picture of female endurings-Plút à Dieu, that such were substantially the fact, and that the sketch now rough-drawn, was an imaginative one; but unfortunately, very unfortunately, such is not the case; fancy has nothing to do with it—it is " a study,” and a most painful one too, and many a bright-minded, warm-soul'd woman is virtually sitting for her portrait, while I trace these hurried lines; but I grow prolix, and appear to be forgetting that