A PIC NIC. 71 



at Mrs. Eglantine," said our hostess. " How lovely she is ! 

 Whose appearance but hers could stand it in that deep, deep 

 mourning ? How kindly she forces her spirits and strength to 

 aid to make our little projtt agreeable ! I never can be suffici- 

 ently grateful ! '' Mrs. Eglantine did indeed seem to justify 

 these praises, and merit this gratitude. There she sat, in weeds ; 

 weeds of grace indeed ! Acid who, if that were mourning, could 

 ever regret to see the loveliest of that sex in the garb of grief ? it 

 looked so like joy. Sweet is the weeping willow, when all its 

 long, graceful leaves are laughing and dancing in the brisk and 

 buxom breeze, and, in their turn, stooping to sweep into dimples 

 the river that flows by. Sweet the sunbeam that glimmers and 

 sports through the glades of the cypress grove ; and sweet the 

 window of the privileged Jarrin*, where, during the hours of 

 divine service, or the season of a more general mourning than 

 that of Mrs. Eglantine, between the half-closed shutters, symbols 

 at once of interdicted traffic, or of decent woe, is seen the wonted 

 display of gewgaws and of sweets — the confectionary, the flowers, 

 the alabaster, the mirror, and the plateau. So the widow ; for 

 here and there, through a smiling crevice of the sober black, 

 might yet be spied the lurking locket and the glittering gem, 

 memorials, haply, of him she mourns, but yet which, blending in 

 kindest union with some recent tribute from the hand of living 

 friendship, say, or seem to say, that bosom is not yet a desert in 

 the midst of a world which its mistress is born to enjoy and to 

 adorn. 



There she sat, " as ladies wish to be who love their lords,'^ 

 placed between two of them, and ministering to each with a 

 pretty equal grace ; although I fancied I could read a meaning 

 in the glance she, not rarely, cast upon the younger of the two, 

 amid his attentions to her inseparable Adelaide AUington. 



To be concluded in the next number. 



* To whom is the shop of Jarrin, prince of confectioners, New Bond Street, 

 and to whom are the comely dimensions of Madame Jarrin, at whom a man 

 once fired a pistol, through pure love and a pane of glass, unknown ? Of all 

 the confectionary wonders ever presented to the eye, the most admirable ever 

 seen was that which attracted crowds to Jarrin's window all last winter. A 

 billowy sea of sugar, which it scared the stoutest heart to look upon, and a 

 boat, and a lighthouse, and a rock, whereupon stood " the noblest work of God, 

 an honest man," rather larger than the lighthouse, which I suppose was right, 

 but much larger than the boat which brought him there, which I think was 

 wrong. 



