fabric promised to be at least an inch smaller than the pattern;-that point, however, had been by dint of great ingenuity satisfactorily adjusted, and I found the lady of the shears and the lady of the rod in the midst of a dispute on the question of buttons, which the tailoress insisted must be composed of metal or mother of pearl, or any thing but covered moles, inasmuch as there would be no stuff left to cover them; whilst Lucy on her side insisted that there was plenty, that any thing (as all the world knew) would suffice to cover buttons if people were clever and careful, and that certain most diminutive and irregular scraps, which she gathered from the table and under it, and displayed with great ostentation, were amply sufficient for the purpose. "If the pieces are not big enough," continued she, "you have nothing to do but to join them." And as Lucy had greatly the advantage both in loudness of voice and fluency of thought and word, over the itinerant seamstress, who was a woman of slow quiet speech, she carried her point in the argument most triumphantly, although whether the unlucky waistcoat-maker will succeed in stretching her materials so as to do the impossible, remains to be proved, the button question being still undecided when I left S. Her adversary being fairly silenced, Lucy laid aside her careful thoughts and busy looks; and leaving the poor woman to her sewing and stitching, and a little tidy lass (a sort of half-boarder, who acts half as servant, half as pupil,) to get all things ready for tea, she prepared to accompany me to a pleasant coppice in the neighbourhood, famous for wild lilies of the valley, to the love of which delicate flower, she, not perhaps quite unjustly, attributed my visit. Nothing could be more beautiful than the wood where they are found, which we reached by crossing first the open common, with its golden waves of furze, and then a clover-field intensely green, deliciously fresh and cool to the eye and the tread. The copse was just in its pleasantest state, having luckily been cut last year, and being too thinly clothed with timber to obstruct the view. It goes sloping down a hill, till it is lost in the green depths of P. Forest, with an abruptness of descent which resembles a series of terraces or rather ledges, so narrow that it is sometimes difficult to find a space on which to walk. The footing is the more precarious, as even the broader paths are intersected and broken by hollows and caves, where the ground has given way and been undermined by fox earths. On the steepest and highest of these banks, in a very dry unsheltered situation, the lily of the valley grows so profusely, that the plants almost cover the ground with their beautiful broad leaves, and the snowy white bells, which envelope the most delicate of odours. All around grow the fragile wind-flowers, pink as well as white; the coral blossoms of the whortle-berry; the graceful wood-sorrel; the pendent drops of the stately Solomon's seal, which hang like waxen tassels under the full and regular leaves; the bright wood-vetch; the unobtrusive woodroof, whose scent is like new hay, and which retains and communicates it when dried; and, lastly, those strange freaks of nature the orchises, where the portrait of an insect is so quaintly depicted in a flower. The bee orchis abounds also in the Maple-Durham woods-those woods where whilome flourished the two stately but unlovely flowers Martha and Teresa Blount of Popish fame, and which are still in the possession of their family. But, although it is found at Maple-Durham as well as in these copses of North-Hampshire, yet, in the little slip of Berks which divides Hants from Oxfordshire, I have never been able to discover it. The locality of flowers is a curious puzzle. The field tulip, for instance, through whose superb pendent blossoms checkered with puce and lilac the sun shines as gloriously as through stained glass, and which, blended with a still more elegant white variety, covers whole acres of the Kennet meadows, can by no process be coaxed into another habitation, however apparently similar in situation and soil. Treat them as you may, they pine and die and disappear. The duke of Marlborough only succeeded in naturalizing them at White-Knights by the magnificent operation of transplanting half an acre of meadow, grass and earth and all, to the depth of two feet! and even there they seem dwindling. The wood-sorrel, which I was ambitious of fixing in the shrubberies of our old place, served me the provoking trick of living a year or two, and bearing leaves, but never flowers; and that far rarer but less beautiful plant, the field-star of Bethlehem,- -a sort of large hyacinth of the hue of the misletoe, which, in its pale and shadowy stalk and blossom, has something to me awful, unearthly, ghastly, mystical, druidical,-used me still worse, not only refusing to grow in a corner of our orchard where I planted it, but vanishing from the spot where I procured the roots, although I left at least twenty times as many as I took. Nothing is so difficult to tame as a wild flower; and wisely so, for they generally lose much of their characteristic beauty by any change of soil or situation. That very woodsorrel now, which I coveted so much, I saw the other day in a green-house! By what chance my fellow amateur persuaded that swamp-loving, cold-braving, shade-seeking plant to blossom in the very region of light, and heat, and dryness, I cannot imagine: but there it was in full bloom, as ugly a little abortion as ever showed its poor face, smaller far than in its native woods, the flowers unveined and colourless, and bolt upright, the ple, and feel an unaffected interest in their master being on a coursing visit in Oxfordshire, health and comfort, can hardly help-my and May having been left behind as too much quackery, being mostly of the cautious, pre- fatigued with a recent hard day's work to stand ventive, safe side, common sense order, stands a long dirty journey, (note that a greyhound, no chance against the boldness and decision of besides being exceedingly susceptible of bad his all-promising ignorance. He says, Do! I weather and watery ways, is a worse traveller say, Do not! He deals in stimuli, I in seda- than any other dog that breathes; a miserable tives; I give medicine, he gives cordial waters. little pug, or a lady's lap-dog, would, in a proAlack! alack! when could a dose of rhubarb, gress of fifty miles, tire down the slayer of even although reinforced by a dole of good hares and outrunner of race-horses), - May broth, compete with a draught of peppermint, being, as I said, left behind slightly indisposed, a licensed dram? No! no! Doctor Tubb has the boy who has the care of her, no less a perno cause to fear my practice. son than the runaway Henry, came suddenly The only patient I ever won from the worthy into the parlour to tell me that she was dying. empiric was his own wife, who had languished Now May is not only my pet but the pet of under his prescriptions for three mortal years, the whole house, so that the news spread uniand at last stole down in the dusk of the even-versal consternation; there was a sudden rush ing, to hold a private consultation with me. I of the female world to the stable, and a genewas not very willing to invade the doctor's ral feeling that Henry was right, when poor territories in my own person, and really feared May was discovered stretched at full length to undertake a case which had proved so ob- in a stall, with no other sign of life than a stinate; I therefore offered her a ticket for the tremendous and visible pulsation of the arteries B. dispensary, an excellent charity, which has about her chest-you might almost hear the rescued many a victim from the clutches of poor heart beat, so violent was the action.our herbalist. But she said that her husband" Bleeding!" "She must be bled!" burst would never forgive such an affront to his skill, he having an especial aversion to the dispensary and its excellent medical staff, whom he was wont to call "book-doctor;" so that wise measure was perforce abandoned. My next suggestion was more to her taste; I counselled her to "throw physic to the dogs;" she did so, and by the end of the week she was another woman. I never saw such a cure. Her husband never made such a one in all the course of his practice. By the simple expedient of The doctor made his entry apparently with throwing away his decoctions, she is become considerable reluctance, enacting for the first as strong and hearty as I am. N. B. for fear and last time in his life the part of Le Medecin of misconstruction, it is proper to add, that I malgré lui. He held his razor in one hand do not in the least accuse or suspect the wor- and a shaving-brush in the other, whilst a barthy doctor of wishing to get rid of his wife- ber's apron was tied round the shabby, rusty, God forbid! He is a tolerable husband, as out-at-elbow, second-hand, black coat, renewed times go, and performs no murders but in the once in three years, and the still shabbier black way of his profession: indeed I think he is breeches, of which his costume usually conglad that his wife should be well again; yet sists. In spite of my seeming, as I really he cannot quite forgive the cause of the cure, was glad to see him, a compliment which and continues boldly to assert in all companies, from me had at least the charm of novelty,that it was a newly discovered fomentation of in spite of a very gracious reception, I never yarbs, applied to her by himself about a month saw the man of medicine look more completebefore, which produced this surprising re-ly astray. He has a pale, meagre, cadaverous covery; and I really believe that he thinks so; one secret of the implicit confidence which he inspires, is that triumphant reliance on his own infallibility with which he is possessedthe secret perhaps of all creators of enthusiasm, from Mahomet and Cromwell to the simultaneously from two of our corps; and immediately her body-servant the boy, who stood compromising his dignity by a very unmanly shower of tears, vanished and re-appeared in a few seconds, dragging Doctor Tubb by the skirts, who, as it was Saturday night, was exercising his tonsorial functions in the tap-room of the Rose, where he is accustomed to operate hebdomadally on half the beards of the parish. face at all times, and a long lank body that seems as if he fed upon his own physic (although it is well known that gin, sheer gin, of which he is by no means sparing, is the only distilled water that finds its way down his throat):-but on this night, between fright -for Henry had taken possession of him without even explaining his errand, - and shame to be dragged into my presence whilst As if to make some amends to this prescriber-bearing the insignia of the least dignified of general for the patient of whom I had deprived him, I was once induced to seek his services medically, or rather surgically, for one of my own family, for no less a person than May, poor pretty May! One November evening, her "Prevailing poet, whose undoubting mind Believed the magic wonders that he sang." his professions, his very wig, the identical brown scratch which he wears by way of looking professional, actually stood on end. He was followed by a miscellaneous procession of assistants, very kind, very curious, and THE BLACK VELVET BAG. very troublesome, from that noisy neighbour pertinents, flung the horse-ball on the dungof ours, the well-frequented Rose Inn. First hill, and the decoction into the pond, bled marched mine host, red-waistcoated and jolly poor May, and turned out the doctor; after as usual, bearing a huge foaming pewter pot which, it is almost needless to say that the of double X, a sovereign cure for all sublu- patient recovered. nary ills, and lighted by the limping hostler, who tried in vain to keep pace with the swift strides of his master, and held at arm's length before him a smoky horn lantern, which might well be called dark. Next tripped Miss Phoebe (this misadventure happened before the grand event of her marriage with the patten-maker), with a flaring candle in one hand and a glass of cherry-brandy, reserved by her mother for grand occasions, in the other-autre remède! Then followed the motley crew of the taproom, among whom figured my friend Joel, with a woman's apron tied round his neck, and his chin covered with lather, he having been the identical customer-the very shavee, whose beard happened to be under discussion when the unfortunate interruption occurred. After the bustle and alarm had in some measure subsided, the doctor marched up gravely to poor May, who had taken no sort of notice of the uproar. "She must be bled!" quoth I. "She must be fomented and physicked!" quoth the doctor; and he immediately produced from either pocket a huge bundle of dried herbs (perhaps the identical venomoussmelling spicer), which he gave to Miss Phoebe to make a decoction, secundem artem, and a huge horse-ball, which he proceeded to divide into boluses;-think of giving a horse-ball to my May! "She must be bled immediately!" said I. "She must not!" replied the doctor. 66 You shall bleed her!" cried Henry. "I won't!" rejoined the doctor. "She shall be fo"-mented he would have added; but her faithful attendant, thoroughly enraged, screamed out," She sha'n't” and a regular scolding match ensued, during which both parties entirely lost sight of the poor patient, and mine host of the Rose had nearly succeeded in administering his specific-the double X, which would doubtless have been as fatal as any prescription of licentiate or quack. The worthy landlord had actually forced open her jaws, and was about to pour in the liquor, when I luckily interposed in time to give the ale a more natural direction down his own throat, which was almost as well accustomed to such potations as that of Boniface. He was not at all offended at my rejection of his kindness, but drank to my health and May's recovery with equal good-will. In the mean time the tumult was ended by my friend, the cricketer, who, seeing the turn which things were taking, and quite regardless of his own plight, ran down the village to the lea, to fetch another friend of mine, an old gamekeeper, who set us all to rights in a moment, cleared the stable of the curious im HAVE any of my readers ever found great convenience in the loss, the real loss, of actual tangible property, and been exceedingly provoked and annoyed when such property was restored to them? If so, they can sympathize with a late unfortunate recovery, which has brought me to great shame and disgrace. There is no way of explaining my calamity but by telling the whole story. Last Friday fortnight was one of those anoImalies in weather with which we English people are visited for our sins; a day of intolerable wind, and insupportable dust; an equinoctial gale out of season; a piece of March unnaturally foisted into the very heart of May; just as, in the almost parallel misarrangement of the English counties, one sees (perhaps out of compliment to this peculiarity of climate, to keep the weather in countenance as it were) a bit of Wiltshire plumped down in the very middle of Berkshire, whilst a great island of the county palatine of Durham figures in the centre of canny Northumberland. Be this as it may, on that remarkable windy day did I set forth to the good town of B., on the feminine errand, called shopping. Every lady who lives far in the country, and seldom visits great towns, will understand the full force of that comprehensive word; and I had not been a shopping for a long time: I had a dread of the operation, arising from a consciousness of weakness. I am a true daughter of Eve, a dear lover of bargains and bright colours; and knowing this, have generally been wise enough to keep, as much as I can, out of the way of temptation. At last a sort of necessity arose for some slight purchases, in the shape of two new gowns from London, which cried aloud for making. Trimmings, ribands, sewing-silk, and lining, all were called for. The shopping was inevitable, and I undertook the whole concern at once, most heroically resolving to spend just so much, and no more; and half-comforting myself that I had a full morning's work of indispensable business, and should have no time for extraneous extravagance. There was, to be sure, a prodigious accumulation of errands and wants. The evening before, they had been set down in great form, on a slip of paper, headed thus-"things wanted."-To how many and various catalogues that title would apply, from the red bench of the peer, to the oaken settle of the tion. cottager-from him who wants a blue riband, to him who wants bread and cheese! My list was astounding. It was written in double columns, in an invisible hand; the long intractable words were brought into the ranks by the Procrustes mode-abbreviation; and, as we approached the bottom, two or three were crammed into one lot, clumped, as the bean-setters say, and designated by a sort of short-hand, a hieroglyphic of my own invenIn good open printing my list would have cut a respectable figure as a catalogue, too; for, as I had a given sum to carry to market, I amused myself with calculating the proper and probable cost of every article; in which process I most egregiously cheated the shopkeeper and myself, by copying, with the credulity of hope, from the puffs in the newspapers, and expecting to buy fine solid wearable goods at advertising prices. In this way I stretched my money a great deal farther than it would go, and swelled my catalogue; so that, at last, in spite of compression and shorthand, I had no room for another word, and was obliged to crowd several small but important articles, such as cotton, laces, pins, needles, shoe-strings, &c. into that very irregular and disorderly storehouse-that place where most things deposited are lost my memory, by courtesy so called. that might have vied with the inside leaves of a moss-rose. Then, in hunting after cheapness, I got into obscure shops, where, not finding what I asked for, I was fain to take something that they had, purely to make a proper compensation for the trouble of lugging out drawers, and answering questions.-Lastly, I was fairly coaxed into some articles by the irresistibility of the sellers,-by the demure and truth-telling look of a pretty Quaker, who could almost have persuaded the head off one's shoulders, and who did persuade me that ell-wide muslin would go as far as yard and a half: and by the fluent impudence of a lying shopman, who, under cover of a welldarkened window, affirmed, on his honour, that his brown satin was a perfect match to my green pattern, and forced the said satin down my throat accordingly. With these helps, my money melted all too fast: at half past five my purse was entirely empty; and, as shopping with an empty purse has by no means the relish and savour of shopping with a full one, I was quite willing and ready to go home to dinner, pleased as a child with my purchases, and wholly unsuspecting the sins of omission, the errands unperformed, which were the natural result of my unconsulted memoranda and my treacherous memory. Home I returned, a happy and proud woThe written list was safely consigned, with man, wise in my own conceit, a thrifty fashiona well-filled purse, to my usual repository, a monger, laden, like a pedlar, with huge packblack velvet bag; and, the next morning, I ages in stout brown holland, tied up with and my bag, with its nicely-balanced contents whipcord, and genteel little parcels, papered of wants and money, were safely conveyed in and packthreaded in shopmanlike style. At a little open carriage to the good town of B. last we were safely stowed in the pony-chaise, There I dismounted, and began to bargain which had much ado to hold us, my little most vigorously, visiting the cheapest shops, black bag lying, as usual, in my lap; when, cheapening the cheapest articles, yet wisely as we ascended the steep hill out of B., a sudbuying the strongest and the best; a little den puff of wind took at once my cottage-bonastonished at first, to find everything so much net and my large cloak, blew the bonnet off dearer than I had set it down, yet soon recon- my head, so that it hung behind me, suspendciled to this misfortune by the magical influ-ed by the riband, and fairly snapped the string ence which shopping possesses over a woman's fancy-all the sooner reconciled, as the monitory list lay unlooked at, and unthought of, in its grave receptacle, the black velvet bag. On I went, with an air of cheerful business, of happy importance, till my money began to wax small. Certain small aberrations had occurred, too, in my economy. One article that had happened, by rare accident, to be below my calculation, and, indeed, below any calculation, calico at ninepence, fine, thick, strong, wide calico at ninepence, (did ever man hear of anything so cheap?) absolutely enchanted me, and I took the whole piece: then, after buying for M. a gown, according to order, I saw one that I liked better, and bought that, too. Then I fell in love, was actually captivated by a sky-blue sash and handkerchief,-not the poor, thin, greeny colour which usually passes under that dishonoured name, but the rich, full tint of the noon-day sky; and a cap-riband, really pink, of the cloak, which flew away, much in the style of John Gilpin's, renowned in story.My companion pitying my plight, exerted himself manfully to regain the fly-away garments, shoved the head into the bonnet, or the bonnet over the head (I do not know which phrase best describes the manœuvre,) with one hand, and recovered the refractory cloak with the other. This last exploit was certainly the most difficult. It is wonderful what a tug he was forced to give, before that obstinate cloak could be brought round: it was swelled with the wind like a bladder, animated, so to say, like a living thing, and threatened to carry pony and chaise, and riders and packages, backwards down the hill, as if it had been a sail, and we a ship. At last the contumacious garment was mastered. We righted; and, by dint of sitting sideways, and turning my back on my kind comrade, I got home without any farther damage than the loss of my bag, which, though not missed before the chaise had been unloaded, had undoubtedly gone by the board in the gale; and I lamented my old and trusty companion, without in the least foreseeing the use it would probably be of to my reputation. who were naturally disposed to steal for stealing's sake;, so I went to bed in the comfortable assurance that it was gone for ever. But there is nothing certain in this world-not even a thief's dishonesty. Two old women, who had pounced at once on my valuable property, quarrelled about the plunder, and one of them, in a fit of resentment at being cheated in her share, went to the mayor of B. and informed against her companion. The mayor, an intelligent and active magistrate, imme tents, into his own possession; and as he is also a man of great politeness, he restored it as soon as possible to the right owner. The very first thing that saluted my eyes, when I awoke in the morning, was a note from Mr. Mayor, with a sealed packet. The fatal truth was visible; I had recovered my reticule, and lost my reputation.-There it lay, that identical black bag, with its name-tickets, its cambric handkerchief, its empty purse, its unconsulted list, its thirteen bills, and its two letters; one from a good sort of lady-farmer, inquiring the character of a cook, with half a sonnet written on the blank pages; the other from a literary friend, containing a critique on the plot of a play, advising me not to kill the king too soon, with other good counsel, such as might, if our mayor had not been a man of sagacity, have sent a poor authoress, in a Mademoiselle-Scuderi-mistake, to the Tower. That catastrophe would hardly have been worse than the real one. All my omissions have been found out. My price-list has been compared with the bills. I have forfeited my credit for bargaining. I am become a by-word for forgetting. Nobody trusts me to purchase a paper of pins, or to remember the cost of a penny riband. I am a lost woman. My bag is come back, but my fame is gone. Immediately after dinner (for in all cases, even when one has bargains to show, dinner must be discussed) I produced my purchases. They were much admired; and the quantity, when spread out in our little room, being altogether dazzling, and the quality satisfactory, the cheapness was never doubted. Every-diately took the disputed bag, and all its conbody thought the bargains were exactly such as I meant to get-for nobody calculated; and the bills being really lost in the lost bag, and the particular prices just as much lost in my memory (the ninepenny calico was the only article whose cost occurred to me,) I passed, without telling anything like a fib, merely by a discreet silence, for the best and thriftiest bargainer that ever went shopping. After some time spent very pleasantly, in admiration on one side, and display on the other, we were interrupted by the demand for some of the little articles which I had forgotten. "The sewing-silk, please ma'am, for my mistress's gown." "Sewing-silk! I don't know -look about." Ah, she might look long enough!-no sewing-silk was there." Very strange!" Presently came other inquiries "Where's the tape, Mary ?" "The tape!" Yes, my dear; and the needles, pins, cotton, stay-laces, boot-laces ;"-"the bobbin, the ferret, shirt-buttons, shoe-strings" quoth she of the sewing-silk, taking up the cry; and forthwith began a search as bustling, as active, and as vain, as that of our old spaniel, Brush, after a hare that has stolen away from her form. At last she suddenly desisted from her rummage "Without doubt, ma'am, they are in the reticule, and all lost," said she, in a very pathetic tone. "Really," cried I, a little conscience-stricken, “I don't recollect ;— perhaps I might forget." "Depend on it, my love, that Harriet's right," interrupted one whose injunctions are always kind; “those are just the little articles that people put in reticules, and you never could forget so many things; besides, you wrote them down." "I don't know-I am not sure."-But I was not listened to;-Harriet's conjecture had been metamorphosed into a certainty; all my sins of omission were stowed in the reticule; and, before bed-time, the little black bag held forgotten things enough to fill a sack. 66 Never was a reticule so lamented by all but its owner; a boy was immediately despatched to look for it, and on his return empty-handed, there was even a talk of having it cried. My care, on the other hand, was all directed to prevent its being found. I had the good luck to lose it in a suburb of B. renowned for filching, and I remembered that the street was, at that moment, full of people: the bag did actually contain more than enough to tempt those WALKS IN THE COUNTRY. THE DELL. MAY 2d. A delicious evening; bright sunshine; light summer air; a sky almost cloudless; and a fresh yet delicate verdure on the hedges and in the fields: an evening that seems made for a visit to my newly-discovered haunt, the mossy dell, one of the most beautiful spots in the neighbourhood, which, after passing times out of number the field which it terminates, we found out about two months ago, from the accident of May's killing a rabbit there. May has had a fancy for the place ever since; and so have I. Thither, accordingly, we bend our way; through the village-up the hill ;-along the common; past the avenue; — across the bridge; and by the mill. How deserted the |