have “killed the flock of all affections else.”  The morning came; and at the Star and Garter, Richmond—­the place appointed for the breakfasting—­accompanied with one English friend, he impatiently awaited what reinforcements the bride should bring to grace the ceremony.  A rich muster she had made.  They came in six coaches—­the whole corps du ballet—­French, Italian, men and women.  Monsieur de B., the famous pirouetter of the day, led his fair spouse, but craggy, from the banks of the Seine.  The Prima Donna had sent her excuse.  But the first and second Buffa were there; and Signor Sc——­, and Signora Ch——­, and Madame V——­, with a countless cavalcade besides of chorusers, figurantes, at the sight of whom Merry afterwards declared, that “then for the first time it struck him seriously, that he was about to marry—­a dancer.”  But there was no help for it.  Besides, it was her day; these were, in fact, her friends and kinsfolk.  The assemblage, though whimsical, was all very natural.  But when the bride—­handing out of the last coach a still more extraordinary figure than the rest—­presented to him as her father—­the gentleman that was to give her away—­no less a person than Signor Delpini himself—­with a sort of pride, as much as to say, See what I have brought to do us honour!—­the thought of so extraordinary a paternity quite overcame him; and slipping away under some pretence from the bride and her motley adherents, poor Merry took horse from the back yard to the nearest sea-coast, from which, shipping himself to America, he shortly after consoled himself with a more congenial match in the person of Miss Brunton; relieved from his intended clown father, and a bevy of painted Buffas for bridemaids.

XIV.—­THAT WE SHOULD RISE WITH THE LARK

At what precise minute that little airy musician doffs his night gear, and prepares to tune up his unseasonable matins, we are not naturalists enough to determine.  But for a mere human gentleman—­that has no orchestra business to call him from his warm bed to such preposterous exercises—­We take ten, or half after ten (eleven, of course, during this Christmas solstice), to be the very earliest hour, at which he can begin to think of abandoning his pillow.  To think of it, we say; for to do it in earnest, requires another half hour’s good consideration.  Not but there are pretty sun-risings, as we are told, and such like gawds, abroad in the world, in summer time especially, some hours before what we have assigned; which a gentleman may see, as they say, only for getting up.  But, having been tempted once or twice, in earlier life, to assist at those ceremonies, we confess our curiosity abated.  We are no longer ambitious of being the sun’s courtiers, to attend at his morning levees.  We hold the good hours of the dawn too sacred to waste them upon such observances; which have in them, besides, something Pagan and Persic.