open countenance, large, mild, blue eyes, thousand times did he crave pardon of that which seemed to ask kindness in every glance; distracted mother, for the peril-the death of and a quantity of shining, light hair, curling her son; for James felt that there could be no in ringlets round his neck. He was the best hope for the helpless child, and tears, such as reader in Mrs. Mansfield's Sunday-school; and no personal calamity could have drawn from only the day before, Miss Clara had given him the strong-hearted lad, fell fast for his fate. a dinner to carry home to his mother, in reward Hour after hour the men of Lanton laboured, of his proficiency: indeed, although they tried and all was in vain. The mass seemed imto conceal it, Harry was the decided favourite penetrable, inexhaustible. Toward sunset one of both the young ladies. James Goddard, boy appeared, crushed and dead; another, who under whom he worked, and to whose care he showed some slight signs of life, and who had been tearfully committed by the widow still lives, a cripple; a third dead; and then, Lee, was equally fond of him, in a rougher last of all, Harry Lee. Alas! only by his way; and in the present instance, seeing the raiment could that fond mother know her delicate boy shivering between cold and fear child! His death must have been instantaat the outside of the pit, (for the same consti- neous. She did not linger long. The three tutional timidity which prevented his entering, boys were interred together in Lanton churchhindered him from going home by himself,) yard on the succeeding Sabbath; and before he caught him up in his arms, brought him in, the end of the year, the widow Lee was laid and deposited him in the snuggest recess, on by her son. a heap of dry chalk. "Well, Harry, is not this better than standing in the wet?" said he kindly, sitting down by his protegé, and sharing with him a huge luncheon of bread and cheese; and the poor child smiled in his face, thanked him, and kissed him as he had been used to kiss his mother. Half an hour had passed away in boyish talk, and still the storm continued. At last James Goddard thought that he heard a strange and unaccustomed sound, as of bursting or cracking an awful and indescribable soundlow, and yet distinctly audible, although the wind and rain were raging, and the boys loud in mirth and laughter. He seemed to feel the sound, as he said afterwards; and was just about to question his companions if they too heard that unearthly noise; when a horseman passed along the road, making signs to them and shouting. His words were drowned in the tempest; James rushed out to inquire his meaning, and in that moment the side of the chalk-pit fell in! He heard a crash and a scream-the death scream!-felt his back grazed by the descending mass; and turning round, saw the hill rent, as by an earthquake, and the excavation which had sheltered them, filled, piled, heaped up, by the still quivering and gigantic fragments-no vestige left to tell where it was, or where his wretched companions lay buried! WHITSUN-EVE. THE pride of my heart and the delight of my eyes is my garden. Our house, which is in dimensions very much like a bird-cage, and might, with almost equal convenience, be laid on a shelf, or hung up in a tree, would be utterly unbearable in warm weather, were it not that we have a retreat out of doors,-and a very pleasant retreat it is. To make my readers fully comprehend it, I must describe our whole territories. Fancy a small plot of ground, with a pretty low irregular cottage at one end; a large granary, divided from the dwelling by a little court running along one side; and a long thatched shed open towards the garden, and supported by wooden pillars on the other. The bottom is bounded, half by an old wall, and half by an old paling, over which we see a pretty distance of woody hills. The house, granary, wall and paling, are covered with vines, cherrytrees, roses, honeysuckles, and jessamines, with great clusters of tall hollyhocks running up between them; a large elder overhanging the little gate, and a magnificent bay-tree, such a tree as shall scarcely be matched in these parts, breaking with its beautiful conical form the horizontal lines of the buildings. This is my garden; and the long pillared shed, the sort of rustic arcade which runs along one side, parted from the flower-beds by a row of rich geraniums, is our out-of-door drawing-room. "Harry! Harry! the child! the child!" was his first thought and his first exclamation; "Help! instant help!" was the next, and, assisted by the stranger horseman, whose speed had been stayed by the awful catastrophe, the village of Lanton was quickly alarmed, and its inhabitants assembled on the I know nothing so pleasant as to sit there spot. Who may describe that scene? Fathers, on a summer afternoon, with the western sun brothers, kinsmen, friends, digging literally flickering through the great elder-tree, and for life! every nerve quivering with exertion, lighting up our gay parterres, where flowers and yet all exertion felt to be unavailing. Mo- and flowering shrubs are set as thick as grass thers and sisters looking on in agony; and the in a field, a wilderness of blossom, interpoor widow Lee, and poor, poor, James God- woven, intertwined, wreathy, garlandy, prodard, the self-accuser! A thousand and a fuse beyond all profusion, where we may guess - on Monday, not played by the men, who, since a certain misadventure with the Beechhillers, are, I am sorry to say, rather chapfallen, but by the boys, who, zealous for the honour of their parish, and headed by their bold leader, Ben Kirby, marched in a body to our antagonists' ground the Sunday after our melancholy defeat, challenged the boys of that proud hamlet, and beat them out and out on the spot. Never was a more signal victory. Our boys enjoyed this triumph with so little moderation that it had like to have produced a very tragical catastrophe. The captain of the Beech-hill youngsters, a capital bowler, by name Amos Stone, enraged past all bearing by the crowing of his adversaries, flung the ball at Ben Kirby with so true an aim, that if that sagacious leader had not warily ducked his head when he saw it coming, there would probably have been a coroner's inquest on the case, and Amos Stone would have been tried for manslaughter. He let fly with such vengeance, that the cricketball was found embedded in a bank of clay one hundred yards off, as if it had been a cannot-shot. Tom Coper and Farmer Thackum, the umpires, both say that they never saw so tremendous a ball. If Amos Stone live to be a man, (I mean to say if he be not hanged first,) he'll be a pretty player. He that there is such a thing as mould, but never see it. I know nothing so pleasant as to sit in the shade of that dark bower, with the eye resting on that bright piece of colour, lighted so gloriously by the evening sun, now catching a glimpse of the little birds as they fly rapidly in and out of their nests - for there are always two or three birds'-nests in the thick tapestry of cherry-trees, honeysuckles, and China-roses, which cover our walls-now tracing the gay gambols of the common butterflies as they sport around the dahlias; now watching that rarer moth, which the country people, fertile in pretty names, call the beebird; that bird-like insect, which flutters in the hottest days over the sweetest flowers, inserting its long proboscis into the small tube of the jessamine, and hovering over the scarlet blossoms of the geranium, whose bright colour seems reflected on its own feathery breast; that insect which seems so thoroughly a creature of the air, never at rest; always, even when feeding, self-poised, and self-supported, and whose wings, in their ceaseless motion, have a sound so deep, so full, so lulling, so musical. Nothing so pleasant as to sit amid that mixture of the flower and the leaf, watching the bee-bird! Nothing so pretty to look at as my garden! It is quite a picture; only unluckily it resembles a picture in more qualities than one, it is coming here on Monday with his party to is fit for nothing but to look at. One might as well think of walking in a bit of framed canvass. There are walks to be sure-tiny paths of smooth gravel, by courtesy called such-but they are so overhung by roses and lilies, and such gay encroachers so overrun by convolvulus, and heart's-ease, and mignionette, and other sweet stragglers, that, except to edge through them occasionally, for the purposes of planting, or weeding, or watering, there might as well be no paths at all. Nobody thinks of walking in my garden. Even May glides along with a delicate and trackless step, like a swan through the water; and we, its two-footed denizens, are fain to treat it as if it were really a saloon, and go out for a walk towards sun-set, just as if we had not been sitting in the open air all day. play the return match, the umpires having respectively engaged Farmer Thackum that Amos shall keep the peace, Tom Coper that Ben shall give no unnecessary or wanton provocation - a nicely-worded and lawyer-like clause, and one that proves that Tom Coper hath his doubts of the young gentleman's discretion; and, of a truth, so have I. I would not be Ben Kirby's surety, cautiously as the security is worded, no! not for a white double dahlia, the present object of my ambition. This village of ours is swarming to-night like a hive of bees, and all the church-bells round are pouring out their merriest peals, as if to call them together. I must try to give some notion of the various figures. First there is a group suited to Teniers, a What a contrast from the quiet garden to cluster of out-of-door customers of the Rose, the lively street! Saturday night is always a old benchers of the inn, who sit round a table time of stir and bustle in our Village, and smoking and drinking in high solemnity to this is Whitsun-Eve, the pleasantest Saturday the sound of Timothy's fiddle. Next, a mass of all the year, when London journeymen of eager boys, the combatants of Monday, and servant lads and lasses snatch a short who are surrounding the shoemaker's shop, holiday to visit their families. A short and where an invisible hole in their ball is mended precious holiday, the happiest and liveliest by Master Keep himself, under the joint suof any; for even the gambols and merry-perintendence of Ben Kirby and Tom Coper. makings of Christmas offer but a poor enjoyment, compared with the rural diversions, the Mayings, revels, and cricket-matches of Whitsuntide. We ourselves are to have a cricket-match *Sphynx ligustri, privet hawk-moth. Ben showing much verbal respect and outward deference for his umpire's judgment and experience, but managing to get the ball done his own way after all; whilst outside the shop, the rest of the eleven, the lesstrusted commons, are shouting and bawling round Joel Brent, who is twisting the waxed twine round the handles of the bats-the poor bats, which please nobody, which the taller youths are despising as too little and too light, and the smaller are abusing as too heavy and too large. Happy critics! winning their match can hardly be a greater delight-even if to win it they be doomed! Farther down the street is the pretty black-eyed girl, Sally Wheeler, come home for a holiday from B., escorted by a tall footman in a dashing livery, whom she is trying to curtsy off before her deaf grandmother sees him. I wonder whether she will succeed! happiness, which makes her almost as enviable as they; and we pursue our walk amidst the moonshine and the nightingales, with Jacob Frost's cart looming in the distance, and the merry sounds of Whitsun-tide, the shout, the laugh, and the song echoing all around us, like "noises of the air." JESSY LUCAS. end, and have the charge of a few colts and heifers, that run in the orchard and an adjoining meadow; while the vacant rooms are tenanted by a widow in humble circumstances, and her young family. Ascending the hill are two couples of a dif- ABOUT the centre of a deep, winding, and ferent description. Daniel Tubb and his fair woody lane, in our neighbouring village of Valentine, walking boldly along like licensed Aberleigh, stands an old farm-house, whose lovers; they have been asked twice in church, stables, out-buildings, and ample barn-yard, and are to be married on Tuesday; and closely have a peculiarly forlorn and deserted appearfollowing that happy pair, near each other, ance; they can, in fact, scarcely be said to but not together, come Jem Tanner and Mabel be occupied; the person who rents the land, Green, the poor culprits of the wheat-hoeing. preferring to live at a large farm about a mile Ah! the little clerk hath not relented! The distant, leaving this lonely house to the care course of true-love doth not yet run smooth of a labourer and his wife, who reside in one in that quarter. Jem dodges along, whistling "cherry-ripe," pretending to walk by himself, and to be thinking of nobody; but every now and then he pauses in his negligent saunter, and turns round outright to steal a glance at Mabel, who, on her part, is making believe to walk with poor Olive Hathaway, the lame mantua-maker, and even affecting to talk and to listen to that gentle, humble creature, as she points to the wild flowers on the common, and the lambs and children disporting amongst the gorse, but whose thoughts and eyes are evidently fixed on Jem Tanner, as she meets his backward glance with a blushing smile, and half springs forward to meet him; whilst Olive has broken off the conversation as soon as she perceived the pre-occupation of her companion, and begun humming, perhaps unconsciously, two or three lines of Burns, whose "Whistle and I'll come to thee, my love," and "Gi'e me a glance of thy bonnie black ee," were never better exemplified than in the couple before her.. Really it is curious to watch them, and to see how gradually the attraction of this tantalizing vicinity becomes irresistible, and the rustic lover rushes to his pretty mistress like the needle to the magnet. On they go, trusting to the deepening twilight, to the little clerk's absence, to the good-humour of the happy lads and lasses, who are passing and repassing on all sides-or rather, perhaps, in a happy oblivion of the cross uncle, the kind villagers, the squinting lover, and the whole world. On they trip, linked arm-inarm, he trying to catch a glimpse of her glowing face under her bonnet, and she hanging down her head and avoiding his gaze with a mixture of modesty and coquetry, which well becomes the rural beauty. On they go, with a reality and intensity of affection, which must overcome all obstacles; and poor Olive follows with an evident sympathy in their The house is beautifully situated; deep, as I have said, in a narrow woody lane, which winds between high banks, now feathered with hazel, now studded with pollards and forest trees; until opposite Kibe's farm, it widens sufficiently to admit a large clear pond, round which the hedge, closely and regularly set, with a row of tall elms, sweeps in a graceful curve, forming for that bright mirror, a rich leafy frame. A little way farther on, the lane widens, and makes an abrupt winding, as it is crossed by a broad shallow stream, a branch of the Loddon, which comes meandering along from a chain of beautiful meadows, then turns in a narrower channel, by the side of the road, and finally spreads itself into a large piece of water, almost a lakelet, amidst the rushes and willows of Hartley Moor. A foot-bridge is flung over the stream, where it crosses the lane, which, with a giant oak growing on the bank, and throwing its broad branches far on the opposite side, forms, in every season, a pretty rural picture. Kibe's farm is as picturesque as its situation; very old, very irregular, with gable-ends, clustered chimneys, casement windows, a large porch, and a sort of square wing, jutting out even with the porch, and covered with a luxuriant vine, which has quite the effect, especially when seen by moon-light, of an ivymantled tower. On one side, extend the ample, but disused farm-buildings, on the other, the old orchard, whose trees are so wild, so hoary, and so huge, as to convey the idea of a fruit forest. Behind the house is an ample kitchen garden, and before, a neat flower-court, the exclusive demesne of Mrs. Lucas and her 188 family, to whom indeed, the labourer, John | no less charming, although in a very different Mrs. Lucas had known far better days; her husband had been an officer, and died fighting bravely in one of the great victories of the last war, leaving her with three children, one lovely boy, and two delicate girls, to struggle through the world, as best she might. She was an accomplished woman, and at first settled in a great town, and endeavoured to improve her small income by teaching music and languages. But she was country-bred; her children too had been born in the country, amidst the sweetest recesses of the New Forest, and pining herself for liberty, and solitude, and green fields, and fresh air, she soon began to fancy that her children were visibly deteriorating in health and appearance, and pining for them also; and finding that her old servant, Dinah Miles, was settled with her husband in this deserted farm-house, she applied to his master, to rent, for a few months, the untenanted apartments, came to Aberleigh, and fixed there apparently for life. We lived in different parishes, and she declined company, so that I seldom met Mrs. Lucas, and had lost sight of her for some time, retaining merely a general recollection of the mild, placid, elegant mother, surrounded by three rosy, romping, bright-eyed children, when the arrival of an intimate friend at Aberleigh vicarage, caused me frequently to pass the lonely farm-house, and threw this interesting family again under my observation. The first time that I saw them, was on a bright summer evening, when the nightingale was yet in the coppice, the briar-rose blossoming in the hedge, and the sweet scent of the bean-fields perfuming the air. Mrs. Lucas, still lovely and elegant, though somewhat faded and care-worn, was walking pensively up and down the grass-path of the pretty flower-court: her eldest daughter, a rosy bright brunette, with her dark hair floating in all directions, was darting about like a bird: now tying up the pinks, now watering the geraniums; now collecting the fallen rose-leaves into the straw bonnet, which dangled from her arm; and now feeding a brood of bantams from a little barley measure, which that sagacious and active colony seemed to recognise as if by instinct, coming, long before she called them, at their swiftest pace, between a run and a fly, to await with their usual noisy and bustling patience, the showers of grain, which she flung to them across the paling. It was a beautiful picture of youth, and health, and happiness; and her clear, gay voice, and brilliant smile, accorded well with her shape and motion, as light as a butterfly, and as wild as the wind. A beautiful picture was that rosy lass of fifteen, in her unconscious loveliness, and I might have continued gazing upon her longer, had I not been attracted by an object way. It was a slight elegant girl, apparently about a year younger than the pretty romp of the flower-garden, not unlike her in form and feature, but totally distinct in colouring and expression. She sate in the old porch, wreathed with jessamine and honeysuckle, with the western sun floating round her like a glory, and displaying the singular beauty of her chestnut hair, brown, with a golden light, and the exceeding delicacy of her smooth and finelygrained complexion, so pale, and yet so healthful. Her whole face and form had a bending and statue-like grace, increased by the adjustment of her splendid hair, which was parted Her eyeon her white forehead, and gathered up behind in a large knot, a natural coronet. brows, and long eye-lashes, were a few shades darker than her hair, and singularly rich and beautiful. She was plaiting straw, rapidly, and skilfully, and bent over her work with a mild and placid attention, a sedate pensiveness that did not belong to her age, and which contrasted strangely and sadly with the gaiety of her laughing and brilliant sister, who at this moment darted up to her with a handful of pinks and some groundsel. Jessy received them with a smile: such a smile! spoke a few sweet words, in a sweet sighing voice; put the flowers in her bosom, and the groundsel in the cage of a linnet that hung near her; and then resumed her seat, and her work, imitating, better than I have ever heard them imitated, the various notes of a nightingale, who was singing in the opposite hedge, whilst I, ashamed of loitering longer, passed on. The next time I saw her, my interest in this lovely creature was increased tenfold, for I then knew that Jessy was blind; a misfortune always so touching, especially in early youth, and in her case rendered peculiar affecting by the personal character of the individual. We soon became acquainted, and even intimate, under the benign auspices of the kind mistress of the vicarage, and every interview served to increase the interest excited by the whole family, and most of all, by the sweet blind girl. Never was any human being more gentle, generous and grateful, or more unfeignedly resigned to her great calamity; the pensiveness that marked her character arose, as I soon perceived, from a different source. Her blindness had been of recent occurrence, arising from inflammation, unskilfully treated, and was pronounced incurable; but from coming on so lately, it admitted of several alleviations, "She could of which she was accustomed to speak with a devout and tender gratitude. work," she said, "as well as ever; and cut out, and write, and dress herself, and keep the keys, and run errands in the house she knew so well, without making any mistake or confusion. Reading, to be sure, she had been Jessy Lucas. William spoke of improved For half an hour after the first hearing of these letters, Jessy was happy; till the peril of a winter voyage, for it was deep January, crossed her imagination, and checked her joy. At length, long before they were expected, another letter arrived, dated Portsmouth. They had sailed by the next vessel to that which conveyed their previous despatches, and might be expected hourly at Kibe's farm. The voyage was past, safely past, and the weight seemed now really taken from Jessy's heart. She raised her sweet face, and smiled; yet still it was a fearful and trembling joy, and somewhat of fear was mingled even with the very intensity of her hope. forced to give up, and drawing, and some day or other she would show me, only that it seemed so vain, some verses which her brother William had written upon a group of wild flowers which she had begun before her misfortune. Oh! it was almost worth while to be blind, to be the subject of such verse, and the object of such affection. Her dear mamma was very good to her, and so was Emma, but William! oh she wished that I knew William! no one could be so kind as he! oh it was impossible! He read to her, he talked to her, he walked with her, he taught her to feel confidence in walking alone; he had made for her the wooden steps up the high bank which led to Kibe's meadow. He had put the hand-rail on the old bridge, so that now she could get across without danger, even when the brook was flooded. He had tamed her linnet; he had constructed the wooden frame, by the aid of which she could write so comfortably and evenly; could write letters to him, and say her own self, all that she felt of love and gratitude; and that," she continued with a deep sigh, "was her chief comfort now, for William was gone, and they should never meet again; never alive, that she was sure of, she knew it." "But why, Jessy?" "Oh because William was so much too good for this world, there was nobody like William! and he was gone for a soldier. Old General Lucas, her father's uncle, had sent for him abroad, had given him a commission in his regiment, and he would never come home, at least they should never meet again, of that she was sure- - she knew it!" It had been a time of wind and rain, and This persuasion was evidently the master the Loddon, the beautiful Loddon, always so grief of poor Jessy's life; the cause, which affluent in water, had overflowed its boundafar more than her blindness, faded her cheek,ries, and swelled the smaller streams which and saddened her spirit. How it had arisen, it fed into torrents. The brook which crossed no one knew, partly perhaps from some lurk- Kibe's lane, had washed away part of the ing superstition, some idle word, or idler omen foot-bridge, destroying poor William's railing, which had taken root in her mind, nourished and was still foaming and dashing, like a by the calamity which, in other respects, she cataract. Now this was the nearest way; bore so calmly, but which left her so often in and if William should insist on coming that darkness and loneliness, to brood over her way! To be sure, the carriage-road was own gloomy forebodings; partly from her round by Grazeley Green, but to cross the trembling sensibility, and partly from the road would save half a mile; and William, delicacy of frame and of habit, which had dear William, would never think of danger, always characterized the object of her love, to get to those whom he loved. These were a slender youth, whose ardent spirit was but Jessy's thoughts; the fear seemed impossitoo apt to overtask his body. ble, for no postilion would think of breasting that roaring stream; but the fond sister's heart was fluttering like a new-caught bird, and she feared she knew not what. However it found admittance, there the presentiment was, hanging like a dark cloud over the sun-shine of Jessy's young life. Reasoning was useless; they know little of the passions who seek to argue with that most intractable of them all, the fear that is born of love. So Mrs. Lucas and Emma tried to amuse away these sad thoughts, trusting to time, to William's letters, and above all, to William's return to eradicate the evil. The letters came punctually and gaily; letters that might have quieted the heart of any sister in England, except the fluttering heart of All day she paced the little court, and stopped and listened, and listened and stopped. About sun-set, with the nice sense of sound, which seemed to come with her fearful calamity, and that fine sense quickened by anxiety, expectation, and love, she heard, she thought she heard, she was sure she heard the sound of a carriage rapidly advancing on the other side of the stream. "It is only the noise of the rushing waters," cried Emma. "I hear |