"Bravo!" cries Mr. Hooper.

"Very fair!" exclaims mamma, observing that it has had a drowsy effect upon her fat fondling.

"Quite admissible!" says Mrs. Quiggles condescendingly, who is a stickler for the French compositions. She adores Auber; and thinks Halvéy a second Mozart.

"Consummate !" drawls Bluette. The delivery of the word occupies at least thirty seconds, and almost overpowers him.

When Ada resumes her seat, Bluette, who has been reading his aunt's common-place book, strolls off into a strain as to what we are indebted to accident, and contends that Pythagoras owed the invention of music to the sound of a blacksmith's hammer.

"Are there many balls talked of in New-York next season ?" inquired Ada.

"I've not heard of but ten, and two of those are to be masqué." "How delightful!"

"I shall go as a nobleman of the court of Louis XIV." "And I as a débardeur, changing to a sister of charity. I like the lights and shadows in a ball-room."

"I shant't change-it's such a bore."

Ada is pretty and piquant, without being decidedly beautiful. She is always bien chaussée, coiffée, and that is saying considerable for girls in America. It is evident that Bluette is somewhat captivated, for he just dropped a "love-tinged" remark in a low tone, which of course we shall not be so inconsiderate as to repeat.

Miss Quiggles and Mr. Hooper are still talking of music, . though the gentleman does not know a flat from a sharp, except he were severely tested in a business capacity. Mrs. Quiggles, without a musical education, has been twice to Paris, and attended the opera in various parts of the world, because it was fashionable to do so. She has a vague notion that the French composers are the authors of every great work produced; and

consequently talks freely of Auber's "Norma;" hopes that Grisar will live to write another opera as clever as his "Somnambula;" builds great expectation in Halévy, as he was the author of the "Prophète ;" and regrets that Adolph Adam does not endeavour to rival his own efforts in another "Don Gio vanni." Mr. Hooper knowing little out of his Pactolian sanctum, listens to all these errors in blissful ignorance, and quite agrees with Mrs. Q. in all of her views, operatic and otherwise.

Mrs. Dadley is holding forth on the shades of several pieces of ribbon she has purchased to adorn her pet's neck, and expressing herself very disrespectfully of one William Shakspeare, because he said "Physic to the dogs!" it being her opinion that calomel and curs were never intended for each other.

Bluette dawdling from the bal masqué costumes, next touches on Byron, and thinks that Childe Harold, Manfred, and the various heroes he created, were all very well, but that a single remark he made in one of his letters surpasses anything he ever said or did.

"What was that, Bluette ?" inquires Ada.

"He thought Walter Scott a vewy gweat cweature, and longed to get tight' with him."

II.

The people that we are constrained to call the "second classers" will feel themselves highly provoked at the classification; but as there is no help for it, we must endure their anger, and allons. We are forced to rank them thus, because with their aristocratic pretensions, there is still that absence of severe exclusiveness that draws the line creating the division. Newport, and Niagara, are all famous in their way. done beyond dancing, dining, bathing, and dressing. here at least there is a tacit understanding that such is the case for recreation and quietude. Of recreation, human nature seems to differ. What is one man's bane is another's beatitude.

Saratoga,

Little is People go

We are inclined to regard the American watering places as social conventions, where people from all parts of the country unite to kill time in whatever mode may most agree with the temper of the parties in question.

Newport is the ne plus ultra of the second order of fashionables. It is looked forward to and talked of by the beauties all winter. "Our next season at Newport" is a consolatory phrase calculated to allay griefs and banish sorrow. The last part of June-when the opera managers are announcing their last nights, and gay young gentlemen are seen in white paletots in the parks finds the pleasure-seekers on the wing. The "Ocean House" is a scene of confusion from morning till night. Stout old gentleman with wife and three daughters in travelling dresses, worn out with the heat, come tumbling into the great hall, met by a black servant who pokes a register under the aforesaid old gentleman's nose before he has yet got off his gloves. Now arrives a knot of young bloods from New-York city, the major portion of whom are walking canes and hair-not forgetting the omnipresent seal rings. Ah! don't they intend to play hob with the hearts of the belles, provided they have any hearts to be tortured. Sombre bachelors, dashing widows, regular Lady Gay Spankers, buxom and buoyant, marriageable daughters, and just married daughters-for honey-moons are spent here by impulsive couples who wish to plunge into a whirl from the mo- ment the knot is tied-all converse and become acquainted, or move in cliques to frown down on their neighbours, just as it happens.

The attempt to keep up a fashionable character and appearpearance of ton does not only last for a few days and then gradually evaporate. They do not arrive with a frown and depart with a giggle. The ladies from the first look well to their toilettes. European travellers call them phantoms of Paris; but let the Yankee aristocracy alone for getting up appearances when the humor strikes them. They may not have as many

fringes as a high-bred dame of the Rue de la Paix, or assume as much lace as a Neapolitan songstress. Neither will the hair be as artistically dressed as if done by a Boulevard hair-dresser, or as many velvet knicknackeries about the skirt as a London belle would contrive to attach; yet with these absent adorn-` ments we can bespeak for them a "goodlie presence."

The bathing periods of the day at the American watering place present rather a novel feature. The beach for perhaps a mile is skirted with small ill-shapen dressing-houses used during the season, and standing all winter like a row of bleak, gloomy sentinels as forlorn as Savoyard packmen. At eleven o'clock in the morning, a number of sunburnt women in crumpled old bonnets and careless costume, are hurrying from one house to another with baskets of towels and armloads of bathing-dresses, which they distribute with surprising celerity. Soon after, groups of most fancifully dressed people will be seen emerging and plunging into the white foam of the surf, disporting with the billows, and kicking the waves head-over-heels in a manner enough to make old Neptune, or Venus, or a select committee of Amphitrites, rise from their dripping mansion, and politely request that such vagaries with the water be instantly discontinued.

The spectacle is really a curious one. There are five hundred bathers dressed in every shade and variety of color-blue tunics over yellow trowsers, crimson coats with mulberry overhauls, moon-tinted pantaloons with jackets of purple. No carnival ever presented so wild and grotesque a medley. Rome! abandon thy laurels; and Venice! hide with shame in thy own gondolas; for ye never produced so bewildering a saturnalia of costume! Keeping, consistency and harmony are sacrificed The very fishes must waggle their little speckled tails in curious admiration, and the sun, "the great orb itself," seems to wonder what is going on, that man (and-woman) kind have thrown off the garb of common sense to revel in the motley habiliments of agonized fancy.

To see long troops of fifty and a hundred bathers all plunge in the boiling surf hand in hand is an exciting picture. The waves dash over their bright dresses, and the next moment they appear dripping like sea deities after an elemental Waterloo. This hydro-frolic is immense fun for the young people, especially when a timid companion shows a weak point in the water. How they shriek when their mouths fill with brine, or leap to the rescue if the strong waves should carry one from his feet! Some one's hat is floating yonder on the waters, one moment dancing on the topmost wave, anon sinking into an abyss of spray. Now for a race among the juveniles away they go like a band of young otters, plunging, plashing, and shrieking in the wildness of the excitement, much to the horror of matrons and governesses on the sands, who are in momentary dread lest they get beyond their depth, to never more be sent to bed on terra firma.

The lapse of two hours sees this gay assembly of bathers seated in full toilette at the grand table d'hôte. What a change! White neckerchiefs and dress coats instead of Mandarin pea-jackets and Joseph's garment of many colours. The ladies have laid aside their oil-skin head-gear, and braided and curled their locks in the most bewitching of fashions. Saucy little Cupids are pointing their arrows with mischievous grace in every direction. A regiment of black waiters in the snowiest of "chokers," and the wooliest of caputs, are on active duty to bear off the "courses"-as a matter of course. Knives and forks are up and doing; plates undergo changes; epergnes crowded with camellias and chrysanthemums prevent smiles from being seen; napkins are unfolded, and magnums of Amantillado and Bordeaux lead to rosy pools in brilliant goblets, much to the satisfaction of contented bon vivants. Joyous young gentlemen slyly ogle plump misses on 'tother side of table, and sigh for a flirtation in that quarter, and mince a volau-vent simultaneously. Brown of New-York espies Jones of