That first he wrought and afterward he taught;
Out of the gospel he the wordes caught.—
And though he holy were, and vertuous,
He was to sinful men not dispitous;
Ne of his speche dangerous ne digne,
But in his teching discrete and benigne.
To drawen folk to heven with fairnesse,
By good ensample was his businesse;
But if were any persone obstinat,
What so he were of highe or low estat,
Him wolde he snibben sharply for the nones.
A better preest I trowe that no wher non is,
He waited after no pompe ne reverence,
Ne maked him no spiced conscience;
But Cristes lore and his apostles twelve
He taught, but first he folwed it himselve."

Prologue to the CANTERBURY TALES.

| leading up to the church, a short avenue of magnificent oaks; and behind the avenue, and divided from a lane by a considerable space, partly lawn, partly court, and partly flowergarden, stands the vicarage.

fish; a tall yew-hedge, fencing off the kitchen
garden, and a sun-dial rising from the green
turf opposite the house, that voiceless moni-
tor, whose silence is so eloquent, and whose
gliding finger realizes, and perhaps suggested
the sublime personification of Wordsworth-
"Time the Shadow."

The house is a low irregular building, covered to the very roof with creeping shrubs, roses, woodbine, jessamine, clematis, and myrtles, flowering into the very chamber windows, -such myrtles as were never before seen in this part of England. One of them died in the hard winter, twelve years ago, and a chair and a stool were made of the wood. It took no polish, but still it had a pretty look and a pretty name; that English myrtle, it almost Such was Mr. Mansfield. And he brought sounded like a contradiction. The garden is to Aberleigh a still greater blessing than the just suited to the house; large squares of fine Roman Catholic Priest of Chaucer could do, turf with beds and borders of flowers divided (although, by the way, the old bard was a by low box hedges, so thick and broad and follower of Wickliffe, the herald of the Re-level, that you might walk on them two formation) in a wife, as good as himself: two abreast; with a long piece of water, in one lively promising girls; and a rosy, frank- compartment, stocked with gold and silver hearted boy, quite worthy of such parents. One shall seldom see together a finer family, for our "gode parsone" was not only "lite of foot," a man in the prime of life, full of vigour and activity, but united the intellectual countenance of the scholar, to the elegance and polish of a gentleman. Mrs. Mansfield was remarkably pretty; and the young people had about them all the glow and the brightness of their fresh and happy age. But the beauty of the vicarage, the beauty of the parish, was a female servant who accompanied them, their maid Mary. She was five or six and twenty, and looked as much; of middle height, and middle size, rather inclining to the fullness and luxuriance of womanhood; fair, blooming, smiling, and bright-eyed, yet with an expression so chastised, so perfected by modesty, that no one could look on her without being sure that she was as good as she was lovely. Her voice, and dress, and manner too, were all in keeping with her sweet face, gentle, quiet, and retiring. In short she had not been a week in the village, before all the neighbours were asking each other-" Have you seen the vicar's pretty maid?"

The home which received this delightful family was every way worthy of its inhabitants. A country parsonage is generally in itself and its associations a happy mixture of the unpretending and the comfortable; and of all parsonages Aberleigh is the most beautiful. It stands amidst a labyrinth of green lanes, running through a hilly and richlywooded country, whose valleys are threaded by the silver Loddon. On one side is the magnificent wreck of a grand, but deserted mansion-house, built with porch and pinnacle, and rich gothic windows, in the style of Elizabeth's day: on the other the old village church; its tower fancifully ornamented with brick-work, and the church-yard planted with broad flowering limes, and funeral yew-trees;

The Mansfields were exceedingly struck with their new habitation. They had hitherto resided on the coast of Sussex, the South Downs; so that accustomed to those green hills, and the fertile but unsheltered plains beyond them, the absolute nakedness of the land, and the vast and bare expanse of the ocean, they were almost as much unaccustomed to trees as a negro to snow, and first wondered at, then complained of, and at last admired our richly-wooded valleys, and the remains of old chases, and bits of wild forest scenery in which we abound. The artlessness with which these feelings were confessed, added a fresh charm to this interesting family. There is always something very attractive in the ignorance of any particular subject which we sometimes meet with amongst clever and cultivated people. Their questions are so intelligent, so poignant, so (to use a bold phrase) full of answers. They instruct our knowledge, and make us feel far more sensibly that which we teach. It was the pleasantest thing in the world, to walk through Aberleigh Wood with Clara Mansfield and Evelyn's Sylva, showing her, by the help of that delightful book, the differences of form and growth, and bark and foliage; sometimes half puzzled myself by some freak of nature, or oftener forgetting our avowed object in admiration of the pictorial beauty, the varied colouring, the play of light and shadow, and the magical perspective of that delightful spot.

The young people caught my enthusiasm, and became almost as completely foresters as the half-wild ponies, who owned the name,

and his actions have all the same tendency— full of fun, with a dash of mischief. But Ben is a privileged person, an universal favourite; and Mary, never dreaming of such a catastrophe as his falling in love, used to contemplate his tricks from afar, with something of the same amusement which she might have felt

or the still wilder donkies, whom we used to meet in the recesses of the wood, and whose picturesque forms and grouping, added the interest of life and motion to the landscape. All the family became denizens of Aberleigh wood, except Mary, who continued a perfect Nereide, constant to the coast to a degree that rendered her quite unjust to our in-in watching a kitten or a monkey. For a long land scenery. She languished under the reverse disease of a Calenture, pined for the water, and was literally, in a new sense of the word, sea-sick. To solace her malady, she would sometimes walk across the park to the Loddon, especially at sun-set; for to hear Mary, any one would have thought that that bright luminary never did make a set worth talking of, except when he could look at himself in a watery mirror; and then, when she reached the Loddon, provoked at the insufficiency of the spectacle, she would turn back without vouchsafing a second glance, although it is but justice to that poetical river to declare, that at Aberleigh bridge it is as broad, as glassy, and as beautiful a stream as ever the sun showed his face in, with much of the character of a lake; but Ullswater, or Winandermere, would have fared equally ill with Mary; nothing but the salt sea could content her.

It was soon obvious that our inland beaux were no better suited to her taste than our inland scenery. Half the young men in the village offered her suit and service. First, George Ellis the farrier, a comely youth, and well to do in the world, who kept an apprentice, and a journeyman, a horse and cart, two greyhounds, three spaniels, and one pointer, being indeed, by many degrees, the keenest sportsman in these parts;-George Ellis proffered to make her mistress of himself, his household, his equipage, and his stud; but was civilly rejected. The next candidate who presented himself was Ben Appleton, the son of a neighbouring farmer; Ben Appleton is a wag, and has a face and figure proper to the Vocation: a shape tall, stout, and square, that looks stiff and is active; with a prodigious power of putting himself into all manner of out-of-the-way attitudes, and of varying and sustaining this pantomime to an extent that really seems inexhaustible. The manner in which he can, so to say, transpose that sturdy form of his, put his legs where his arms should be, and his arms in the place of his legs, walk on his hands, stand on his head, tumble, hop, and roll, might raise some envy in Grimaldi himself. His features are under the same command. Originally I suspect him to have been good-looking; but who can ever say that he has seen Ben Appleton's real face? He has such a roll of the eye, such a twist of the nose, such a power of drawing to either ear that broad mouth, filled with strong white teeth. His very talk is more like a piece of a laugh, than the speech of an ordinary man;

time he made his addresses with impunity; unsuspected and unrepelled; no one believed him in earnest. At last, however, Ben and his case became serious, and then Mary became serious too: he received a firm though gentle dismissal, and looked grave for a whole week. Next came Aaron Keep the shoemaker, the wisest man in the parish, noted all over the country for his knowledge of the stars, and judgment in the weather, and almost as notorious for his aversion to matrimony and his contempt for women. Aaron was said to have been jilted in his youth, which soured a kindly temper and put mistrust into his heart. Him, even him, did Mary's beauty and Mary's modesty vanquish. He who had been abusing the sex for the last forty years actually made her an offer. I suppose the happiest moment in his life must have been that in which she refused him. One can fancy him trembling over the narrowness of his escape, like the man who did not fall over Dover Cliff-but the offer was made.

The cause of all this obduracy at last appeared. A young sailor arrived at the vicarage, whom the most graphical of our poets shall assist me in describing:

"Fresh were his features, his attire was new;
Clean was his linen, and his jacket blue;
Of finest jean his trowsers, tight and trim,
Brushed the large buckle at the silver rim."
CRABBE.

He arrived at the vicarage towards the end of
winter, and was introduced by Mary to mine
hostess of the Eight Bells as her half-brother;
although Mary was so little used to telling
fibs, that her blushes, and downcast looks and
smiles between, in short, the whole pervading
consciousness would have betrayed her, as
Mrs. Jones, the landlady, observed, to any one
who had but half an eye; to say nothing of
Miss Clara's arch look as she passed them.
Never was half-brother so welcomed; and in
good truth he was well worthy of his wel-
come.

Thomas Clere was an exceedingly fine young man, of six or seven and twenty, with a head of curly black hair, a sun-burnt complexion, a merry, open countenance, and a bluff hearty voice that always sounded as if transmitted through a speaking-trumpet. He established himself at the Eight Bells, and soon became very popular in that respectable hostelry. Besides his good humour, his liberality, and his sea jokes, next to Irish jokes always the most delightful to rustic ears, perhaps because next to Irish, the least intelligi

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ble-your country bumpkin loves a conundrum, and laughs heartiest at what he does not understand; besides these professional qualifications, Thomas was eminently obliging and tolerably handy; offered his assistance in every emergency, and did more good, and less harm than most amateur helpers, who, generally speaking, are the greatest hindrances under the sun. Thomas was really useful. To be sure, when engaged in aiding Mary, a few casualties did occur from pre-occupation; once, for instance, they contrived to let down a whole line of clothes which he had been assisting to hang out. Neither party could imagine how the accident happened, but the washing was forced to be done over again. Another time, they, between them, overset the milkbucket, and the very same day so over-heated the oven, that a whole batch of bread, and three apple-pies were scorched to a cinder. But Thomas was more fortunate with other coadjutors. He planted a whole patch of cabbages in a manner perfectly satisfactory, and even made a very decent cucumber-bed in mine host's garden. He churned Mrs. Jones's butter as well as Mary herself could have done it. He shaped bats, and cut wickets for the great boys, plaited wicker baskets for the younger ones, and even dug a grave for the sextoness, an old woman of eighty, the widow of a former sexton who held that office (corruptly, as our village radicals were wont to say) in conjunction with that of the pew-opener, and used to keep the children in order by one nod of her grey head, and to compound for the vicar every Sunday a nosegay of the choicest flowers of the season. Thomas, although not very fond of the job, dug a grave, to save sixpence for poor Alice. Afterwards this kindness was thought ominous.

No wonder that our seaman was popular. The only time he got into a scrape at Aberleigh, was with two itinerant showmen, who called themselves sailors, but who were, Thomas was sure, "nothing but land-lubbers," and who were driving about an unhappy porpoise in a wheelbarrow, and showing it at two-pence a head, under the name of a sea pig. Thomas had compassion on the creature of his own element, who was kept half alive by constant watering, and threatened to fight both the fellows unless they promised to drive it instantly back to the sea; which promise was made and broken, as he might have expected, if a breach of promise could ever enter into a sailor's conception. Our sailor was too frank even to maintain his Mary's maidenly artifice, and had so many confidants, that before Mr. Mansfield published the banns of marriage between Thomas Clere and Mary Howell, all the parish knew that they were lovers.

At last the wedding-day came. Aaron Keep left his work to take a peep at the bride, and Ben Appleton paid her the high compliment of playing no trick either on her or the bride

groom. How beautiful she looked in her neat and delicate dress, her blushes and her smiles! The young ladies of the vicarage, with whose family she had lived from childhood, went to church with her, and every body cried as usual on such occasions. been at a wedding before, had resolved against Clara, who had never crying; but tears are contagious things, and poor Clara's flowed, she did not well know why. This too was afterwards thought an ill omen.

week in a neighbouring town, after which she Thomas and Mary had hired a room for a was to return for a while to her good master and mistress; and he was to go to sea again in the good merchant-ship, the Fair Star. To go to sea again for one last voyage, and then to return rich, quite rich for their simple wishes, (Thomas's savings already yielded an income of twelve shillings a week) set up in some little trade, and live together all the rest of their lives-such were their humble plans. They found their short honeymoon, passed in a strange place, and in idleness, a little long, I fancy, in spite of true love, as greater people have done before them. Yet Mary would willingly have remained even under the sad penalty of want of occupation, rather than part with Thomas for the sea, which now first began to appear formidable in her eyes. But Thomas had promised, and must go on this one last voyage to Canada; he should be home in six months, six months would be soon gone, and then they would never part again. And so he soothed, and comforted, and finally brought her back to the vicarage, and left her there; and she, when the trial came, behaved as well as possible. Her eyes were red, to be sure, for a week or two, and she would by land or by water," but still she was calm, turn pale when praying for "those who travel and cheerful, and apparently happy.

ration, first disturbed her tranquillity. She An accident about six weeks after their sepacontrived, in cutting a stick to tie up a tree carnation belonging to her dear Miss Clara, to lacerate very considerably the third finger of her left hand. The injury was so serious, the surgeon insisted on the necessity of sawing off the ring, the wedding-ring! She refused. The hurt grew worse and worse. Still Mary continued obstinate, in spite of Mrs. Mansfield's urgent remonstrances; at length it came to the point of sawing off the ring or the finger, and then, and not till then, not till Mr. Mansfield had called to aid all the authority of a master, did she submit-evidently with more reluctance and more pain than she would have felt at an amputation. The finger got well, and her kind mistress gave her her of the severed one, but it would not do; a own mother's wedding-ring to supply the place superstitious feeling had seized her, a strange vague remorse; she spoke of her compliance as sinful; as if by divesting herself of the

and bent, and squalid, like one who comes Hitherto these expectations had been disapfrom a devouring shipwreck or a long captivity, who but Mary could have recognised Thomas Clere? Her heart knew him on the instant, and with a piercing cry of joy and thankfulness, she rushed into his arms. The cry alarmed the whole family. They hastened to share the joy and the surprise, and to relieve poor Thomas of his fainting burden. Both had sunk together on the snowy ground; and when loosened from his long embrace, the happy wife was dead!-the shock of joy had been fatal!