THE SCHOOLMISTRESS.

BY W. H. HARRISON, ESQ.

THAT there is nothing certain in this uncertain world, is a proverb to be found in all languages; philosophers have said and poets have sung it, in every age, from the beginning of time. It is, nevertheless, a maxim of which I am compelled to deny the truth, and to reckon among the certainties of life the melancholy fact, that I shall never see five and thirty again. It is, therefore, some years ago, and when I was probably no more than half the age of the young gentleman or lady upon whose leisure I have taken the liberty to intrude, that I went to my first school; a circumstance which is fresh in my memory, while many later, and perhaps more important, events of my life may long since have been forgotten. It was a day-school-in more modern and refined language, a preparatory seminary: it is well that it was not called so then, for the governess would never have been able to pronounce, nor the village sign-painter to spell, the words. It was situated in one of the prettiest little hamlets in all England, within a mile of the sea. I have wandered far and wide since I last

saw it, but have never met with so quiet and lovely a spot. They tell me, however, that it has been greatly altered-improved, I think the term is-since I quitted it. The lanes have become streets, and the green sunny banks, terraces. The meadow, where I was wont to gather wild sorrel, and cowslips, and hen-and-chicken, and tottergrass, has been built upon; not a square foot of the velvet green-sward, upon which I have so often flung myself after a game at cricket or prisonbase, is remaining; Nature having given place to Mr. Macadam, and buttercups to paving-stones. The village church, too, whose walls, I remember, were arrayed in a venerable garment of lichen, has been pulled down, and another erected in the gothic taste-forming one of those numerous edifices which modern architects have designed to puzzle posterity. It has, I am told, a magnificent spire and a splendid peal of bells; but I am sure they cannot ring so sweetly as the former ones, whose melody would come sweeping over the river, through the open casement of my chamber, on a summer evening, rising and falling with the fitful breeze, and beguiling me into repose. They have built a prison too: alas! the only prison of which I wot in the village was the parish pound.

My schoolmistress-I beg pardon for using so obsolete a word, governess I should have said —was rather an ancient dame. Now, there was nothing, to my juvenile feelings, in any way disagreeable in an old woman; on the contrary, my grandmother and she was very old indeed-was a prodigious favourite with me; for she was the first who gave me a taste for letters, by presenting me with the whole six and twenty fairly stamped in gingerbread; and I remember I contrived to get through a great many with my teeth, before I could manage half a one with my tongue. Dear and regretted old gentlewoman! I think I behold her now, with her silver hair straggling out from beneath her somewhat formal cap: it was the only thing formal about her; for though age had made her eye dim and her step feeble, it had left her heart as warm and as generous as ever. I see her now in fancy, as I did then, every morning and evening, in reality, with her large spectacles on her nose, and the family Bible spread open before her; it was the oldest and worst bound book in the library, but she told me it was the best. May you, my young readers, and I—when the pleasures, innocent haply though they be, which now delight us, shall have lost their

charm; when the nightingale shall pour her song for us in vain; and when our eye shall not perceive the flower that springs up in our path-find in that blessed volume the consolation and support which she did!

There was one point in my grandmother's behaviour towards me, which I remember was particularly agreeable to my childish feelings; she never called in the rod to the assistance of the gingerbread in teaching me my letters, and therein she differed widely from my governess, Mrs. Birch, -very properly was she named, for she was a trimmer,—who never gave me any gingerbread, while of the rod I had enough at her hands, and, in my opinion, to spare. She was, indeed, a very cross old woman, and possessed the three characteristics of a scold; namely, a sharp nose, a sharp elbow, and a sharp tongue. Her cottage, though small, was one of the prettiest in the village. It was built of large flint stones, and was bricked at the four corners. The end, or gable, was towards the road; while, in front, was a little plot of grass, bordered by flowers and shrubs. The climbing rose and the honeysuckle spread over the cottage in such profusion, that you could not put your head out of the window without being saluted by