crossed in love in his youth, and lived alone in his little tenement, with no other companions than his wig-blocks and a tame starling, ("pretty company" he used to call them); but destitute as he was of worldly goods, and although people loved to talk of him with a kind of gentle pity, I have always considered him as one of the happiest persons of my acquaintance; one "who suffered all as suffering nothing;" a philosopher rather of temperament than of reason; the only man in the parish, as mine host of the Swan used to observe, "who was foolish enough to take a drink of small-beer as thankfully as a draught of double ale."

in the rectory, a little, thin, bald-headed person, as sharp as a needle, who shaved himself and wore no wigs, took such a disgust at certain small irregularities, such as marking the evening lessons instead of the morning, forgetting to say Amen in the proper place, and other mistakes committed in his trepidation by the clerk-deputy when the new incumbent came to read in, that, instead of the translation to a higher post, which poor Will anticipated, he was within an ace of losing his sextonship, which he was only permitted to retain, on condition of never raising his voice again in a stave so long as he lived; the rector, a musical amateur, having been so excruciated by Will's singing, as to be fain to stop his ears. Thus ended all his hopes of church preferment.

After this disaster, the world began to go ill with him. People learnt to shave themselves, that was a great evil; they took to wearing their own hair, that was a greater; and when the French revolution and cropped heads came into fashion, and powder and hairdressing went out, such was the defalcation of his customers, and the desolate state of his trade, that poor Will, in spite of the smallness of his wants, and the equanimity of his spirit, found himself nearly at his wit's end. In this dilemma he resolved to turn his hand to other employments; and living in the neighbourhood of a famous trout stream, and becoming possessed of a tattered copy of Izaak Walton's Complete Angler, he applied himself to the construction of artificial flies; in which delicate manufacture, facilitated doubtless by his dexterity in wig-weaving, he soon became deservedly eminent.

His fortunes had, at one time, assumed a more flourishing aspect. Our little insignificant town was one of the richest livings in England, and had been held by the Bishop of in conjunction with his very poor see. He resided nearly half the year at Cranley Rectory, and was the strenuous friend and patron of our friend Will. A most orthodox person at all points was the bishop, portly, comely, and important; one who had won his way to the Bench by learning and merit, and was rather more finical about his episcopal decorations, and more jealous of his episcopal dignity, than a man early accustomed to artificial distinctions is apt to be. He omitted no opportunity of rustling and bustling in a silk apron; assumed the lawn sleeves whenever it was possible to introduce those inconvenient but pleasant appendages to the clerical costume; and was so precise in the article of perukes, as to have had one constructed in London on the exact model of the caxon worn by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, which our orthodox divine appears to have consider- This occupation he usually followed in his ed as a sort of regulation wig. Now this territory, the church-yard, as pleasant a place magnificent cauliflower, (for such it was), had to be buried in as heart could desire, occupynever been frosted to his Lordship's satisfac-ing a gentle eminence by the side of Cranley tion until it came under the hands of Will Skinner, who was immediately appointed his shaver, wig-dresser, and wig-maker in ordinary, and recommended by him to all the beards and caxons in the neighbourhood. Nor did the kindness of his right reverend patron end here. Pleased with his barber's simplicity and decency of demeanour, as well as with the zealous manner in which he led the psalmody at church, quivering forth in a high thin voice the strains of Hopkins and Sternhold, the good Bishop determined to promote him in that line; appointed him to the sextonship which happened to fall vacant; and caused him to officiate as deputy to David Hunt, the parish-clerk-a man of eighty, worn out in the service, and now bed-ridden with the rheumatism-with a complete understanding that he should succeed to the post, as soon as David was fairly deposited in the church-yard. These were comfortable prospects. But, alas! the Bishop, a hale man of sixty, happened to die first; and his successor

Down, on which the cricketers of that cricketing country used to muster two elevens for practice, almost every fine evening, from Easter to Michaelmas. Thither Will, who had been a cricketer himself in his youth, and still loved the wind of a ball, used to resort on summer afternoons; perching himself on a large square raised monument, whose very inscription was worn away, a spreading limetree above his head, Izaak Walton before him, and his implements of trade at his side. I never read that delicious book without remembering how Will Skinner used to study it. Skipping the fine pastoral poetry, and still more poetical prose of the dialogues, and poring over the notes, as a housekeeper pores over the receipts in the Cook's Oracle, or a journeyman apothecary applies himself to the London Pharmacopeia. Curious directions of a truth they were, and curiously followed. The very list of materials had in it something striking and outlandish; camel's hair, badger's hair, hog's wool, seal's fur, cock's hackles, a

heron's neck, a starling's wing, a mallard's tail, and the crest of a peacock!

66

These and a thousand such knick-knacks, a wilderness of fur and feather, were ranged beside him, with real nicety, but seeming confusion; and mingled with flies, finished or in progress, and with homelier and more familiar tools, hooks, bristles, shoemaker's-wax, needles, scissors, marking-silk of all colours, and "barge sail for dubbing." And there he sate, now manufacturing a cannon-fly, "dubbing it with black wool, and Isabella-coloured mohair, and bright brownish bear's hair, warped on with yellow silk, shaping the wings of the feather of a woodcock's wing, and working the head of an ash colour," and now watching Tom Taylor's unparagoned bowling, or throwing away the half-dubbed cannon-fly, in admiration of Jem Willis's hits.

On this spot our intimacy commenced. A spoilt child and an only child, it was my delight to escape from my nurse and nursery, and all the restraint of female management, and to follow everywhere the dear papa, my chief spoiler, who so fully returned my partiality, as to have a little pad constructed on which I used to accompany him in his excursions on horseback.

Perhaps there might be a little self-defence in this last-mentioned kindness; the picking to pieces of flowers and making of daisy-beds being, as Will well knew, the most efficacious means of hindering me from picking to pieces his oak-flies or May-flies; or, which was still worse, of constructing others after my own fashion out of his materials; which, with a spirit of imitation as innocently mischievous as a monkey, I used to purloin for the purpose the moment his back was turned, mixing marten's fur and otter's fur, and dipping my little fingers amongst brown and red hackles, with an audacity that would have tried the patience of Job. How Will's held out I cannot imagine! but he never got farther than a very earnest supplication that I would give over helping him, a deprecation of my assistance, a pray don't, dear Miss!" that on remembering the provocation seems to me a forbearance surpassing that of Grisildis. What is the desertion of a good-for-nothing husband, and even the cooking his second wedding dinner, (so I believe the story runs,) compared to seeing an elf of four years old mixing and oversetting the thousand and one materials of fly-making! Old Chaucer hath made the most of it, but in point of patience Grisildis was nothing to Will Skinner.

The only place at which his fondness ever allowed him to think my presence burthen- And yet to do myself justice, my intentions some was the cricket-ground, to which I used towards my friend the fly-maker, were perfectly regularly to follow him in spite of all remon-friendly. Mischievous as I undoubtedly was, strance and precaution, causing him no small I did not intend to do mischief. If I filched perplexity, as to how to bestow me in safety from him, I filched for him; courted the cook during the game. Will and the monument for pheasant and partridge feathers; begged seemed to offer exactly the desired refuge, the old jays and black-birds which were hung and our good neighbour readily consented to up in terrorem in the cherry-trees from the fill the post of deputy nursery-maid for the gardener, dragged a great bit of Turkey carpet time, assisted in the superintendence by a to the church-yard because I had heard him very beautiful and sagacious black Newfound- say that it made good dubbing; got into a land dog, called Coe, who partly from a sense demélé with a peacock in the neighbourhood of duty, and partly from personal affection, from seizing a piece of his tail to form the used when out to take me under his particular bodies of Will's dragon-flies; and had an care, and mounted guard over the monument affair with a pig, in an attempt to procure that as well as Will Skinner, who assuredly re-staple commodity, hog's down. N. B. the hog quired all the aid that could be mustered to cope with my vagaries.

had the better of that battle; and but for the intervention of my friend Coe, who seeing the animal in chase of me, ran to the rescue, and pulled him back by the tail, I might have rued my attack upon those pig's ears (for behind them grows the commodity in question,) to this very hour.

Besides the torment that I unconsciously gave him, poor Will had not always reason to congratulate himself on the acquaintance of my faithful follower, Coe. He was, as I have said, a dog of great accomplishment and sagacity, and possessed in perfection all the tricks, which boys and servants love so well to teach to this docile and noble race.

Poor dear old man, what a life I led him! -now playing at bo-peep on one side of the great monument, and now on the other; now crawling away amongst the green graves; now starting up between two head-stones; now shouting in triumph with my small childish voice, from the low church-yard wall; now gliding round before him, and laughing up in his face as he sate. Poor dear old man! with what undeviating good-humour did he endure my naughtiness! How he would catch me away from the very shadow of danger, if a ball came near! and how often did he interrupt his own labours to forward my amuse-it so happened that our barber, in the general ment, sliding from his perch to gather lime branches to stick in Coe's collar, or to collect daisies, buttercups, or ragged-robbins to make what I used to call daisy-beds for my doll.

Now

defalcation of wig-wearers at Cranley, retained one constant customer, a wealthy grocer, who had been churchwarden ever since the Bishop's time, and still emulated that regretted prelate

in the magnificence of his peruke; wearing a caxon such as I have seldom seen on any head, except that of Mr. Fawcett on the stage, and of Dr. Parr off.

Mr. Samuel Saunders, such was the name of our churchwarden, having had the calamity to lose a wife whom he had wedded some forty years before, was, as the talk went, paying his addresses to pretty Jenny Wren, the bar-maid at the Swan. Samuel was a thick, short, burly person, with a red nose, a red waistcoat, and a cinnamon-coloured coat, altogether a very proper wearer of the buzz wig. If all the men in Cranley could have been ranged in a row, the wig would have been assigned to him, in right of look and demeanour, just as the hats in one corner of Hogarth's print, The Election Ball, can be put each on the proper head without difficulty. The man and the wig matched each other. Now Jenny Wren was no match for either. She was a pretty, airy, jaunty girl, with a merry hazel eye, a ready smile, and a nimble tongue, the arrantest flirt in Cranley, talking to every beau in the parish, but listening only to tall Thomas, our handsome groom.

Samuel Saunders' noddle, snatched off the other wig, and deposited both his trophies at Jenny's feet!-a catastrophe, which was followed in less than a month by the marriage of the handsome groom and the pretty bar-maid; for the churchwarden, who had withstood all other rebuffs, was driven for ever from the field by the peals of laughter, which, after the first surprise was over, burst inexpressibly from both the lovers. In less than a month they were married; and Will Skinner and Coe, who had hitherto avoided each other by mutual consent, met as guests at the weddingdinner; and through the good offices of the bridegroom, were completely and permanently reconciled; Coe's consciousness being far more difficult to conquer than the shortlived anger of the most placable of barbers.

HAY-CARRYING.

AT one of the cluster of cottages and cottage-like houses, which formed the little street An ill match for Samuel Saunders at sixty, of Hilton cross-a pretty but secluded vilor for Samuel Saunders' wig, was the pretty lage, a few miles to the south, stood the coquette Jenny Wren at eighteen! The dis- shop of Judith Kent, widow, "Licensed ". parity was painful to think of. But it was as the legend imported, "to vend tea, coffee, the old story. Samuel was wealthy and Jenny tobacco, and snuff." Tea, coffee, tobacco, poor; and uncles, aunts, friends and cousins and snuff, formed, however, but a small part coaxed and remonstrated; and poor Jenny of the multifarious merchandise of Mrs. pouted and cried, and vowed fifty times a day that she would not marry him if he were fifty times as rich; till at length, worn out by importunity, exhausted by the violence of her own opposition, offended by the supineness of her favourite lover, and perhaps a little moved by the splendour of the churchwarden's presents, she began to relent, and finally consented to the union.

The match was now talked of as certain by all the gossips in Cranley,-some had even gone so far as to fix the wedding-day; when one evening our handsome groom, tall Thomas, poor Jenny's favourite beau, passing by Will Skinner's shop, followed by Coe, saw a new wig of Samuel Saunders' pattern, doubtless the identical wedding wig, reposing in full friz on one of the battered wooden blocks. "High, Coe!" said Thomas, making a sign with his hand; and in an instant Coe had sprung over the half-hatch, into the vacant shop, had seized the well-powdered perriwig, and in another instant returned with it into the street, and followed Thomas, wig in mouth, into the little bar at the Swan, where sate Mr. Samuel Saunders, making love to Jenny Wren.

Kent; whose shop, the only repository of the hamlet, might have seemed an epitome of the wants and luxuries of humble life. In her window, candles, bacon, sugar, mustard, and soap, flourished amidst calicoes, oranges, dolls, ribbons, and gingerbread. Crockeryware was piled on one side of her door-way, Dutch cheese and Irish butter encumbered the other; brooms and brushes rested against the wall; and ropes of onions and bunches of red herrings hung from the ceiling. She sold bread, butcher's meat, and garden-stuff, on commission; and engrossed, at a word, the whole trade of Hilton Cross.

Notwithstanding this monopoly, the world went ill with poor Judith. She was a mild, pleasant-looking, middle-aged woman, with a heart too soft for her calling. She could not say, no! to the poor creatures who came to her on a Saturday night, to seek bread for their children, however deep they might already be in her debt, or however certain it was, that their husbands were, at that moment, spending, at the Checquers or the Four Horse-shoes, the money that should have supported their wives and families; for in this village, as in others, there were two flourishing ale-houses, although but one illaccustomed shop-" but one half-pennyworth of bread to this intolerable deal of sack!"

The sudden apparition of his wig borne in so unexpected a manner, wholly discomfited the unlucky suitor and even dumfounded his fair mistress. 66 High, Coe! high!" repeated Thomas, and, at the word, Coe, letting drop She could not say, no! as a prudent woman the first caxon, sprang upon that living block,might have said; and, accordingly, half the

amusement within doors, and a constant plea- | chalk-pit; a solemn and ghastly-looking place, sure without. The enjoyment of a country blackened in one part by an old lime-kiln, walk is much enhanced when the checkered fritillary or the tinted wood anemone are to be sought, and found, and gathered, and made our own; and the dear domestic spots haunted by

"Retired leisure..

Who in trim gardens takes his pleasure,"

are doubly gardens when the dahlias and chinaasters, after flourishing there for their little day, are to re-blossom on paper. Then it supplies such pretty keepsakes, the uncostly remembrances which are so pleasant to give and to take; and, above all, it fosters and sharpens the habit of observation and the love of truth. How much of what is excellent in art, in literature, in conversation, and in conduct, is comprised in that little word! |

Ellen had great delight in comparing our Sylvan Flora with the minute and fairy blossoms of the South Downs, where she had passed the greater part of her life. She could not but admit the superior luxuriance and variety of our woodland plants, and yet she had a good deal to say in favour of the delicate, flowery carpet, which clothes the green hills of Sussex; and in fact was on that point of honour a little jealous—a little, a very little, the least in the world, touchy. She loved her former abode, the abode of childhood, with enthusiasm; the downs; the sea, whose sound, as she said seemed to follow her to her inland home, to dwell within her as it does in the folds of the sea-shell; and, above all, she loved her old neighbours, high and low. I do not know whether Mrs. Mansfield or her daughters returned oftenest to the "simple annals of the Susser poor." It was a subject of which they never wearied; and we to whom they came, liked them the more for their clinging and lingering affection for those whom they had left. We received it as a pledge of what they would feel for us when we became better acquainted,-a pledge which has been amply redeemed. I flatter myself that Aberleigh now almost rivals their dear old parish; only that Clara, who has been here three years, and is now eighteen, says, very gravely, that "people as they grow old, cannot be expected to form the very strong local attachments which they did when they were young." I wonder how old Clara will think herself when she comes to be eight-and-twenty?

Between Ellen's stories and her mother's there is usually a characteristic difference; those of the one being merry, those of the other grave. One occurrence, however, was equally impressed on the mind of either. I, shall try to tell it as shortly and simply as it was told to me; but it will want the charm of Mrs. Mansfield's touching voice, and of Ellen's glistening eyes.

Toward the bottom of one of the green hills of the parish of Lanton, was a large deserted

whose ruinous fragments still remained, and i in others mossy and weather-stained, and tinted with every variety of colour-green, yellow, and brown. The excavation extended far within the sides of the hill, and the edges were fringed by briar and bramble and ivy, contrasting strongly with the smooth, level verdure of the turf above, whilst plants of a ranker growth, nettles, docks, and fumatory, sprang up beneath, adding to the wildness and desolation of the scene. The road that led by the pit was little frequented. The place had an evil name; none cared to pass it even in the glare of the noon-day sun; and the villagers would rather go a mile about than catch a glimpse of it when the pale moonlight brought into full relief those cavernous white walls, and the dark briars and ivy waved fitfully in the night wind. It was a vague and shuddering feeling. None knew why he feared, or what; but the awe and the avoidance were general, and the owls and the bats remained in undisturbed possession of Lanton chalk-pit.

One October day, the lively work of ploughing, and wheat-sowing, and harrowing, was going on all at once in a great field just beyond i the dreaded spot: a pretty and an interesting scene, especially on sloping ground, and under a gleaming sun throwing an ever-shifting play of light and shadow over the landscape. Towards noon, however, the clouds began to ga ther, and one of the tremendous pelting showers, peculiar to the coast, came suddenly on. Seedsmen, ploughmen, and earters, hastened home with their team, leaving the boys to follow; and they, five in number, set cut at their fullest speed. The storm increased apare; and it was evident that their thin jackets and old smock-frocks would be drenched through and through long before they could reach Lanton Great Farm. In this dilemma, James Goddard, a stout lad of fifteen, the big rest and boldest of the party, proposed to tike shelter, in the chalk-pit. Boys are naturally thoughtless and fearless; the real inconvenience was more than enough to counterbalance the imaginary danger, and they all willingly adopted the plan, except one timid child, eight years old, who shrunk and hung back.

Harry Lee was a widow's son. His father. a fisherman, had perished at sen, a few mixuths after the birth of this only child; and his mol ther, a fond and delicate woman, had reared him delicately and fondly, beyond her apparent means. Night and day had she laboured fir her poor Harry; and nothing but a long liess and the known kindness of the farmer in whose service he was placed, had induced her to part with him at so early an age.

Harry was, indeed, a sweet and gracias boy, noticed by every stranger for his gentis ness and beauty. He had a fair, box mar