The silvery sound of its bell often reminded her of the flight of Time, and her _caro sposo_ of the effects of it on his inconstant heart, long before her mirror told her of the ravages of the tyrant.

The _flacon_ so tastefully ornamented, has been held to delicate nostrils when the megrim--that malady peculiar to refined organisations and susceptible nerves--has assailed its fair owner; and the heart-shaped pincushion of crimson velvet, inclosed in its golden case and stuck with pins, has been likened by the giver to his own heart, pierced by the darts of Love--a simile that probably displeased not the fair creature to whom it was addressed.
Here are the expensive and tasteful gifts, the _gages d'amour_, not often disinterested, as bright and beautiful as when they left the hands of the jeweller; but the givers and the receivers where are they?
Mouldered in the grave long, long years ago! Through how many hands may these objects not have passed since Death snatched away the persons for whom they were originally designed! And here they are in the ignoble custody of some avaricious vender, who having obtained them at the sale of some departed amateur for less than half their first cost, now expects to extort more than double.
He takes them up in his unwashed fingers, turns them--oh, profanation!--round and round, in order to display their various merits, descants on the delicacy of the workmanship, the sharpness of the chiseling, the pure water of the brilliants, and the fine taste displayed in the form; tells a hundred lies about the sum he gave for them, the offers he has refused, the persons to whom they once belonged, and those who wish to purchase them! The _flacon_ of some defunct prude is placed side by side with the _vinaigrette_ of some _jolie danseuse_ who was any thing but prudish.
How shocked would the original owner of the _flacon_ feel at the friction! The fan of some _grande dame de la cour_ touches the diamond-mounted _etui_ of the wife of some _financier_, who would have given half her diamonds to enter the circle in which she who once owned this fan found more _ennui_ than amusement.

The cane of a deceased philosopher is in close contact with the golden-hilted sword of a _petit maitre de l'ancien regime_, and the sparkling _tabatiere_ of a _Marquis Musque_, the partaker if not the cause of half his _succes dans le monde_, is placed by the _chapelet_ of a _religieuse de haute naissance_, who often perhaps dropped a tear on the beads as she counted them in saying her Ave Marias, when some unbidden thought of the world she had resigned usurped the place of her aspirations for a brighter and more enduring world.
"And so 't will be when I am gone," as Moore's beautiful song says; the rare and beautiful _bijouterie_ which I have collected with such pains, and looked on with such pleasure, will probably be scattered abroad, and find their resting places not in gilded _salons_, but in the dingy coffers of the wily _brocanteur_, whose exorbitant demands will preclude their finding purchasers.

Even these inanimate and puerile objects have their moral, if people would but seek it; but what has not, to a reflecting mind ?--complained bitterly to-day, of having been attacked by an anonymous scribbler.

I was surprised to see a man accounted clever and sensible, so much annoyed by what I consider so wholly beneath his notice.