Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 | Page 8

Frances Seymour's hands. She
comprehended enough of Major Elliott's character to see that all was
over. But for the unfortunate jest they had practised on him, an
explanation would necessarily have ensued the moment he mentioned
Vincent's name to her; but that unlucky deception had complicated the
mischief beyond repair. It was too late now to tell him that she did not
love Vincent; he would only think her false or fickle. A woman who
could act as she had done, or as she appeared to have done, was no wife
for Henry Elliott.
There is no saying, but it is just possible, that an entire confidence
placed in Mr Gaskoin might have led to a happier issue; but her own
conviction that her position was irrecoverable, her hopelessness and her
pride, closed her lips. Her friends saw that there was something wrong;
and when a few lines from Major Elliott announced his immediate

departure for Paris, they concluded that some strange mystery had
divided the lovers, and clouded the hopeful future that for a short
period had promised so brightly.
Vincent Dunbar was not a man to break his heart at the disappointment
which, it is needless to say, awaited him. Long years afterwards, when
Sir Henry Elliott was not only married, but had daughters coming out
in the world, he, one day at a dinner-party, sat next a pale-faced,
middle-aged lady, whose still beautiful features, combined with the
quiet, almost grave elegance of her toilet, had already attracted his
attention in the drawing-room. It was a countenance of perfect serenity;
but no observing eye could look at it without feeling that that was a
serenity not born of joy, but of sadness--a calm that had succeeded a
storm--a peace won by a great battle. Sir Henry felt pleased when he
saw that the fortunes of the dinner-table had placed him beside this lady,
and they had not been long seated before he took an opportunity of
addressing her. Her eyelids fell as she turned to answer him; but there
was a sweet, mournful smile on her lip--a smile that awoke strange
recollections, and made his heart for a moment stand still. For some
minutes he did not speak again, nor she either; when he did, it was to
ask her, in a low, gentle voice, to take wine with him. The lady's hand
shook visibly as she raised her glass; but, after a short interval, the
surprise and the pang passed away, and they conversed calmly on
general subjects, like other people in society.
When Sir Henry returned to the drawing-room, the pale-faced lady was
gone; and, a few days afterwards, the Morning Post announced among
its departures that Miss Seymour had left London for the continent.

THE CONTINENTAL 'BRADSHAW' IN 1852.
Bradshaw's Continental Railway Guide--the square, pale-yellow,
compact, brochure which makes its appearance once a month, and
which has doubled its thickness in its brief existence of five years--is
suggestive of a multitude of thoughts concerning the silent revolution
now passing over Europe. Presidents may have coups d'état; kings may

put down parliaments, and emperors abrogate constitutions; Legitimists
may dream of the past, and Communists of the future; but the railways
are marking out a path for themselves in Europe which will tend to
obliterate, or at least to soften, the rugged social barriers which separate
nation from nation. This will not be effected all at once, and many
enthusiasts are disappointed that the cosmopolitanism advances so
slowly; but the result is not the less certain in being slow.
Our facetious contemporary Punch once gave a railway map of
England, in which the face of the land was covered with intersecting
lines at mutual distances of only a mile or two. A railway map of
Europe has certainly not yet assumed such a labyrinthine character; still,
the lines of civilisation (for so we may well term them) are becoming
closer and closer every year. The outposts of Europe, where the
Scandinavian, the Sclavonian, the Italian, and the Spaniard respectively
rule, are scanty in their exhibition of such lines; but as we gradually
approach the scenes of commercial activity, there do railways appear in
greater and greater proximity. France strikingly exemplifies its own
theory, that 'Paris is France,' by shewing how all its important railways
spring from the metropolis in six directions. Belgium exhibits its
compact net-work of railways, by which nearly all its principal towns
are accommodated. The phlegmatic Dutchman has as yet placed the
locomotive only in that portion of Holland which lies between the
Rhine and the Zuiderzee. Rhineland, from Bâle to Wiesbaden, is under
railway dominion. North Germany, within a circle of which Magdeburg
may be taken as a centre, is railed pretty thickly; and Vienna has
become a point from which lines of great