glittering blue eyes, and her light agile form, | Even that point she might have compassed, when in some cold windy morning that re- had not her features and voice stood in her minded her of Orkney, she would bound across way-a lurking slyness in her smile and eye, the garden, with her hat in her hand, and her and a sort of falsetto tone in her speech. But brown curling hair about her shoulders, for- she did no harm, and meant none. She drove getting in the momentary enjoyment, where straight to her objects, but she took care not she was and all around her. That blessed to overset the passers-by. Charlotte, the next oblivion could not last long; and then came sister, was not content with this negative the unconquerable misery of shame and fear merit; she had all the address of her elderand shyness, a physical want of liberty and born, and made a more generous use of it; fresh air, and a passionate and hopeless long- got praises and prizes for herself, and pardons ing for her early home. She pined and with- and holidays for all the world. Hers was ered away like a wild bird in a cage, or a real popularity-nobody could help loving hardy mountain plant in a hot-house; and Charlotte. She was like Catharine, too; but without any definite complaint, was literally it was such a pretty likeness, with her laughdying under the united influence of confine- ing gipsy face, and her irresistible power of ment, and smoke, and the French grammar.- amusing. She was a most successful and They carried her into the country, first to Rich- daring mimic, made no scruple of taking peomond, then to Windsor Forest; but trees and ple off to their faces, and would march out of quiet waters had no power over her associa- the room after Mrs. S***, or poor Madame, tions. They talked of a journey to Italy, with the most perfect and ludicrous imitation that was worse still; she loathed the "sweet of the slow measured step of the one, and the breath of the south." At last they were wiser; mincing trip of the other, the very moment they took her home: and the sweet Anne, re- after she had coaxed them out of some favour. stored to her old habits and her own dear Nevertheless, we all loved Charlotte; besides island, recovered. Nothing else could have her delightful good humour, she used her insaved her. fluence so kindly, and was sure to take the A complete contrast to these fair Zetlanders weaker side. We all loved Charlotte. Jane, might be found in another triad of sisters, old la cadette, more resembled Catharine, only her settlers in H. P.,-short, dark, lively girls, ambition was of a lower flight. She was a who knew the school as men are sometimes cautious diplomatist, and aimed less at success said to know the town, and knew nothing else; than at safety, had a small quiet party amongst were clever there and there only. Their fa- the younger fry, was the pet of the housether, a widower and a man of business, sent maids, and won her way by little attentions, them from home mere infants, and, providing by mending gloves, making pincushions, kindly and carefully for their improvement and comfort, seldom sought to be pleased or troubled with their company. This was no hardship to these stirring spirits, who loved the busy stage on which they played such capital parts, foremost everywhere, especially in mischief, first to be praised and last to be found out. They were as nearly alike in age and stature, as three sisters born at three different times, well could be,—any two of them might have passed for twins; and having in common a certain readiness of apprehension, a quickness of memory, and an extraordinary pliability of temper, as well as the brown complexion, the trim small figure and quick black eye, they usually passed for fac-similes of one another in mind and person. There were differences, however, in both. Catharine, the eldest, was by far the most perfect specimen of school craft. She was a mancuvrer such as it did one good to see; got places and prizes nobody knew how; escaped by a miracle from all scrapes; was a favourite at once with the French teacher and the English; was idle, yet cited for industry; naughty, yet held up as a pattern of good conduct; thoroughly selfish, and yet not disliked. She was, in short, a perfect stateswoman; wound the whole school round her finger; and wanted nothing of art but the art to conceal it.

drawing patterns, and running on errands, in which last accomplishment she had an alertness so surprising, that Madame used to say she dazzled her eyes. In spite of her obligingness, nobody thought of loving Miss Jane; but she got on astonishingly well without it, and managed her wisers and betters by falling in with their ways.

All our sisters were not so much alike. One pair was strikingly different. The eldest, the favourite of a very silly mother, was a beauty, poor child, and subject to all the discipline which growing beauties are fated to endure. Oh the lacing, the bracing, the bonneting, the veiling, the gloving, the staying within for fear of sun or wind or frost or fog! Her mamma would fain have had her wear a mask to preserve her complexion, and so much dreaded the sweet touch of the air, that her poor victim seldom got out of doors, and had little other exercise than dancing and the dumb-bells. I am sure she would have given "all the worlds that people ever have to give,' to be plain. Morally speaking, perhaps it was well for her that beauty should come in the shape of so disagreeable a consciousness; it effectually preserved her from vanity. She was a most genuine, kind-hearted, natural girl, thoroughly free from conceit or pretension of any kind. Her sister Julia had enough

for both. Miss Julia was the pet of a father, who was, though in a different line, quite as silly as his wife; and having a tolerable memory, a plodding spirit of application, and an unbounded appetite for applause, was in training for a learned lady, a blue stocking in embryo. What an insufferable little pedant it was, with its studies and its masters, more in number than the instructors of the bourgeois gentilhomme, its dictionaries of arts and sciences, and its languages without end! Words! words! words! nothing but words! One idea would have put her out. It was a pity, too, for she was a good-natured and well-meaning person, only so grave and dull and formal. However precious her learning might have been, she would have bought it dearly, for it cost her her youthfulness, at thirteen she was old. Neither did this incessant diligence tell as one might have expected with her masters; they praised her of course, and held her up as an example to the clever and the idle; but I don't think they would have been much charmed to have had many such pupils. Certainly she was the least in the world of a goose; always troublesome in asking stupid questions, and more troublesome still in not understanding the answers. Once, indeed, she made a grand display of science and erudition. Mr. Walker came to give us a course of lectures, and Miss Julia pulled out a little square red book, and made notes-notes in a sort of hieroglyphic, which she was pleased to call short-hand; incomprehensible notes-notes that may sometimes have been paralleled since at the Royal Institution, but which nobody had ever dreamed of in our school. Oh! the glory of those pot-hooks and hangers! As if purposely to enhance her reputation, one of her class-fellows, who was in a careless idle way something of a rival to Miss Julia, happened to be an egregious coward, hated guns and gunpowder, squibs and crackers, and all those iniquitous shocks and noises which are at once sudden and unexpected. She had sitten out, with grief and pain, by help of ducking her head, shutting her eyes, and putting her fingers in her ears, two or three popgun lectures on chemistry and mechanics: but when the electricity came, she could bear it no longer she fairly ran away, escaped unperceived in the melée, and esconced herself under her own bed, where she might have remained undetected till doomsday, had not the unforeseen vigour of a cleanly housemaid, fresh from the country, fairly unearthed her, actually swept her out. Think, what a contrast! What a triumph! Courage, and short-hand notes of lectures, on the one side; cowardice, ignorance, and running away on the other! Miss Julia was never so tall in her life. The éclat of the little square book even consoled her, when, in the week after this adventure, a prize, for which she had been trying all the halfyear, was wrested from her by the runaway.

Besides the usual complement of languid East Indians, and ardent Creoles, we had our full share of foreigners. Of one charming Italian girl, much older than myself, I remember little but the sweet sighing voice, the graceful motions, and the fine air of the head. I always think of her when I look at the Cartoons;-Raphael must have studied from such women. She left school shortly after my arrival there, and was succeeded by an exquisitely pretty Anglo-Portuguese, whom, from her name, her aversion to roast pig-strange antipathy!—and her regularly spending Saturday at home, we suspected (for it was not avowed) to be a Jewess. Be that as it may, she was the most splendid piece of natural colouring that ever I beheld. An ivory complexion, with cheeks and lips like damask roses, black laughing eyes with long silky lashes, and rich clusters of black curls parting on her white brow. She was beauty itself. She soon went away too; and then came the daughter of a crack-brained Austrian Baron, straight from Vienna. There was nothing remarkable in her face or person, except the tender expression of her large blue eyes: yet she was peculiar from her foreign dress and manner, and her ignorance of all languages save her native German, and so much Italian as might help her through the most ordinary wants and duties of the day. Above all, she was interesting from her gentleness, her melancholy, and her early and disastrous fate. She died suddenly during the summer holidays. How many young hearts grieved for her, even amid the joys of home; and how we missed her sweet patient looks, her few words

all words of kindness, it seemed as if she could learn no other-when we returned! We were not wise to grieve; her short life had been a life of sorrow, and the grave was her best resting-place. It is not wise- but still, after a lapse of twenty years, it saddens me to think of her death. And there is another, and a far dearer school-fellow, a foreigner, too, of whom I think almost as sadly; for we are parted by such distance, that even now as I write I know not if she be alive or dead. I speak of the young countess C., sent from Russia for the advantage of an English education, began under a private governess, and concluded with us. She resembled the Greek drama in her pure and harmonious beauty; and the gentle dignity of her manner sustained the impression. Every body admired her, though only one dared to love her; and the repaying that love by the most constant and cordial affection allowed not much intercourse beyond a general kindness and good-will with the rest of our little world. In truth, she had no time for intimacies; she had a hunger and a thirst for knowledge, such as I have never seen equalled; knowledge of all sorts and degrees, from the most trifling womanly occupations-making gum-seals,

WALKS IN THE COUNTRY.

THE WOOD.

barked beech, every twig swelling with the brown buds, and yet not quite stripped of the tawny foliage of Autumn; tall hollies and hawthorn beneath, with their crisp brilliant leaves mixed with the white blossoms of the sloe, and woven together with garlands of woodbines and wild briars; what a fairy

APRIL 20th.-Spring is actually come now, with the fulness and almost the suddenness of a northern summer. To-day is completely April;-clouds and sunshine, wind and show-land! ers; blossoms on the trees, grass in the fields, Primroses, cowslips, pansies, and the reswallows by the ponds, snakes in the hedge- gular open-eyed white blossom of the wood rows, nightingales in the thickets, and cuckoos anemone (or to use the more elegant Hampevery where. My young friend Ellen G. is shire name, the windflower) were set under going with me this evening to gather wood our feet as thick as daisies in a meadow; but sorrel. She never saw that most elegant plant, the pretty weed we came to seek was coyer; and is so delicate an artist that the introduc- and Ellen began to fear that we had mistaken tion will be a mutual benefit; Ellen will gain the place or the season.-At last she had her a subject worthy of her pencil, and the pretty self the pleasure of finding it under a brake of weed will live;-no small favour to a flower, holly" Oh look! look! I am sure that this almost as transitory as the gum cistus; dura- is the wood-sorrel! Look at the pendent white tion is the only charm which it wants, and flower, shaped like a snow-drop and veined that Ellen will give it. The weather is, to with purple streaks, and the beautiful trefoil be sure, a little threatening, but we are not leaves folded like a heart,-some, the young people to mind the weather when we have an ones, so vividly yet tenderly green that the object in view; we shall certainly go in quest foliage of the elm and the hawthorn would of the wood-sorrel, and will take May, pro- show dully at their side,-others of a deeper vided we can escape May's follower; for, tint, and lined, as it were, with a rich and since the adventure of the lamb, Saladin has changeful purple!-Don't you see them?" had an affair with a gander, furious in de- pursued my dear young friend, who is a defence of his goslings, in which rencontre the lightful piece of life and sunshine, and was gander came off conqueror; and as geese half inclined to scold me for the calmness abound in the wood to which we are going with which, amused by her enthusiasm, I (called by the country people the Pinge,) and stood listening to her ardent exclamationsthe victory may not always incline to the right" Don't you see them? Oh how beautiful! side, I should be very sorry to lead the Soldan to fight his battles over again. We will take nobody but May.

So saying, we proceeded on our way through winding lanes, between hedge-rows tenderly green, till we reached the hatch-gate, with the white cottage beside it embosomed in fruittrees, which forms the entrance to the Pinge, and in a moment the whole scene was before our eyes.

"Is not this beautiful, Ellen?" The answer could hardly be other than a glowing rapid "Yes!"-A wood is generally a pretty place; but this wood-Imagine a smaller forest, full of glades and sheep-walks, surrounded by irregular cottages with their blooming orchards, a clear stream winding about the brakes, and a road intersecting it, and giving life and light to the picture; and you will have a faint idea of the Pinge. Every step was opening a new point of view, a fresh combination of glade and path and thicket. The accessories too were changing every moment. Ducks, geese, pigs, and children, giving way, as we advanced into the wood, to sheep and forest ponies; and they again disappearing as we became more entangled in its mazes, till we heard nothing but the song of the nightingale, and saw only the silent flowers.

What a piece of fairy land! The tall elms overhead just bursting into tender vivid leaf, with here and there a hoary oak or a silver

Here

and in what quantity! what profusion! See
how the dark shade of the holly sets off the
light and delicate colouring of the flower!-
And see that other bed of them springing
from the rich moss in the roots of that old
beech tree! Pray let us gather some.
are baskets." So quickly and carefully wẹ
began gathering, leaves, blossoms, roots and
all, for the plant is so fragile that it will not
brook separation!-quickly and carefully we
gathered, encountering divers petty misfor-
tunes in spite of all our care, now caught by
the veil in a holly bush, now hitching our
shawls in a bramble, still gathering on, in
spite of scratched fingers, till we had nearly
filled our baskets and began to talk of our de-
parture:-
:-

"But where is May May! May! No going home without her. May! Here she comes galloping, the beauty!"-(Ellen is almost as fond of May as I am.)-"What has she got in her mouth? that rough, round, brown substance which she touches so tenderly? What can it be? A bird's nest? Naughty May!"

"No! as I live, a hedgehog! Look, Ellen, how it has coiled itself into a thorny ball! Off with it May! Don't bring it to me!"And May, somewhat reluctant to part with her prickly prize, however troublesome of carriage, whose change of shape seemed to me to have puzzled her sagacity more than any

How

event I ever witnessed, for in general she has man thrown as he gave the final stroke round perfectly the air of understanding all that is the root; and how wonderful is the effect of going forward-May at last dropt the hedge- that supple and apparently powerless saw, hog; continuing however to pat it with her bending like a riband, and yet overmastering delicate cat-like paw, cautiously and daintily that giant of the woods, conquering and overapplied, and caught back suddenly and rapid- throwing that thing of life! Now it has passed ly after every touch, as if her poor captive had half through the trunk, and the woodman has been a red-hot coal. Finding that these pats begun to calculate which way the tree will entirely failed in solving the riddle, (for the fall; he drives a wedge to direct its course; hedgehog shammed dead, like the lamb the-now a few more movements of the noiseless other day, and appeared entirely motionless), saw; and then a larger wedge. See how the she gave him so spirited a nudge with her branches tremble! Hark how the trunk begins pretty black nose, that she not only turned to crack? Another stroke of the huge hammer him over, but sent him rolling some little way on the wedge, and the tree quivers, as with a along the turfy path,-an operation which mortal agony, shakes, reels, and falls. that sagacious quadruped endured with the slow and solemn and awful it is! How like most perfect passiveness, the most admirable to death, to human death in its grandest form! non-resistance. No wonder that May's dis- Cæsar in the Capitol, Seneca in the bath, cernment was at fault: I myself, if I had not could not fall more sublimely than that oak. been aware of the trick, should have said that the ugly rough thing which she was trundling along, like a bowl or a cricket-ball, was an inanimate substance, something devoid of sensation and of will. At last my poor pet thoroughly perplexed and tired out, fairly relinquished the contest, and came slowly away, turning back once or twice to look at the object of her curiosity, as if half inclined to return and try the event of another shove. The sudden flight of a wood-pigeon effectually diverted her attention; and Ellen amused herself by fancying how the hedgehog was scuttling away, till our notice was also attracted by a very different object.

We had nearly threaded the wood, and were approaching an open grove of magnificent oaks on the other side, when sounds other than of nightingales burst on our ear, the deep and frequent strokes of the woodman's axe, and emerging from the Pinge we discover the havoc which that axe had committed. About

twenty of the finest trees lay stretched on the velvet turf. There they lay in every shape and form of devastation: some, bare trunks stripped ready for the timber carriage, with the bark built up in long piles at the side; some with the spoilers busy about them, stripping, hacking, hewing; others with their Doble branches, their brown and fragrant shoots all fresh as if they were alive-majestic corses, the slain of to-day! The grove was like a field of battle. The young lads who were stripping the bark, the very children who were picking up the chips, seemed awed and silent, as if conscious that death was around them. The nightingales sang faintly and interruptedly-a few low frightened notes like a requiem.

Ah! here we are at the very scene of murder, the very tree that they are felling; they have just hewn round the trunk with those slaughtering axes, and are about to saw it asunder. After all it is a fine and thrilling operation, as the work of death usually is. Into how grand an attitude was that young

Even the heavens seem to sympathise with the devastation. The clouds have gathered into one thick low canopy, dark and vapoury as the smoke which overhangs London; the setting sun just gleaming underneath with a dim and bloody glare, and the crimson rays spreading upwards with a lurid and portentous grandeur, a subdued and dusky glow, like the light reflected on the sky from some vast conflagration. The deep flush fades away, and the rain begins to descend; and we hurry homeward rapidly yet sadly, forgetful alike of the flowers, the hedgehog, and the wetting, thinking and talking only of the fallen tree.

THE VICAR'S MAID.

ABOUT three years ago, our neighbouring village, the little hamlet of Aberleigh, receivbefall a country parish, in the shape of an ed one of the greatest blessings which can active, pious, and benevolent Vicar. Chaucer shall describe him for me, for I prefer the real words of the old poet, to the more elaborate and ornamented version of Dryden :

"A good man ther was of religioun

That was a poure parsone of a toun;
But riche he was of holy thought, and werk;
He was also a lerned man, a clerk,
That Cristes gospel trewely wolde prech;
His parishens devoutly wolde he teche;
Benigne he was and wonder diligent
And in adversite ful patient;

And swiche he was yproved often sithes
Ful loth were him to cursen for his tithes,
But rather wolde he geven out of doute
Unto his poure parishens aboute
Of his offring, and eke of his substance;
He coude in litel thing have suffisance.
Wide was his parish, and houses fer asonder,
But he ne left nought for no rain ne thonder
In sikeness and in mischief to visite
The feuest in his parish moche, and lite
Upon his fete, and in his hand a staff:
This noble ensample to his shepe he yaf,