tain herself and her children in their own comfortable home. There was no visible change; she and the little girls were as neat as ever; the house had still within and without the same sunshiny cleanliness, and the garden was still famous over all other gardens for its cloves, and stocks, and double wallflowers. But the sweetest flower of the garden, the joy and pride of her mother's heart, was her daughter Hannah. Well might she be proud of her! At sixteen Hannah Wilson was, beyond doubt, the prettiest girl in the village, and the best. Her beauty was quite in a different style from the common country rosebud-far more choice and rare. Its chief characteristic was modesty. A light youthful figure, exquisitely graceful and rapid in all its movements; springy, elastic, and buoyant as a bird, and almost as shy; a fair innocent face with downcast blue eyes, and smiles and blushes coming and going almost with her thoughts; a low soft voice, sweet even in its monosyllables; a dress remarkable for neatness and propriety, and borrowing from her delicate beauty an air of superiority not its own;-such was the outward woman of Hannah. Her mind was very like her person; modest, graceful, gentle, affectionate, grateful, and generous above all. The generosity of the poor is always a very real and fine thing; they give what they want; and Hannah was of all poor people the most generous. She loved to give; it was her pleasure, her luxury. Rosy-cheeked apples, plums with the bloom on them, nosegays of cloves and blossomed myrtle these were offerings which Hannah delighted to bring to those whom she loved, or those who had shown her kindness; whilst to such of her neighbours as needed other attentions than fruit and flowers, she would give her time, her assistance, her skill; for Hannah inherited her mother's dexterity in feminine employments, with something of her father's versatile power. Besides being an excellent laundress, she was accomplished in all the arts of the needle, millinery, dressmaking, and plain work; a capital cutter-out, an incomparable mender, and endowed with a gift of altering, which made old things better than new. She had no rival at a rifacimento, as half the turned gowns on the common can witness. As a dairy-woman, and a rearer of pigs and poultry, she was equally successful: none of her ducks and turkeys ever died of neglect or carelessness, or, to use the phrase of the poultry-yard on such occasions, of "ill luck." Hannah's fowls never dreamed of sliding out of the world in such an ignoble way; they all lived to be killed, to make a noise at their deaths, as chickens should do. She was also a famous "scholar;" kept accounts, wrote bills, read letters, and answered them; was a trusty accomptant, and a safe confidante. There was no end to Hannah's usefulness or Hannah's kindness; and her prudence was equal to either. Except to be kind or useful, she never left home; attended no fairs, or revels, or Mayings; went no where but to church; and seldom made a nearer approach to rustic revelry than by standing at her own garden-gate on a Sunday evening, with her little sister in her hand, to look at the lads and lasses on the green. In short, our village beauty had fairly reached her twentieth year without a sweetheart, without the slightest suspicion of her having ever written a love-letter on her own account; when, all on a sudden, appearances changed. She was missing at the "accustomed gate;" and one had seen a young man go into Dame Wilson's; and another had descried a trim elastic figure walking, not unaccompanied, down the shady lane. Matters were quite clear. Hannah had gotten a lover; and, when poor little Susan, who deserted by her sister, ventured to peep rather nearer to the gay group, was laughingly questioned on the subject, the hesitating No, and the half Yes, of the smiling child, were equally conclusive. Since the new marriage act, we, who belong to country magistrates, have gained a priority over the rest of the parish in matrimonial news. We (the privileged) see on a work-day the names which the sabbath announces to the generality. Many a blushing awkward pair hath our little lame clerk (a sorry Cupid) ushered in between dark and light to stammer and hacker, to bow and curtsey, to sign or make a mark, as it pleases Heaven. One Saturday, at the usual hour, the limping clerk made his appearance; and, walking through our little hall, I saw a fine athletic young man, the very image of health and vigour, mental and bodily, holding the hand of a young woman, who, with her head half buried in a geranium in the window, was turning bashfully away, listening, and yet not seeming to listen, to his tender whispers. The shrinking grace of that bending figure was not to be mistaken. "Hannah!" and she walked aside with me, and a rapid series of questions and answers conveyed the story of the courtship. "William was," said Hannah, “a journeyman hatter in B. He had walked over one Sunday evening to see the cricketing, and then he came again. Her mother liked him. Every body liked her William-and she had promised-she was going. -was it wrong?" "Oh no!-and where are you to live ?"-" William has got a room in B. He works for Mr. Smith, the rich hatter in the market-place, and Mr. Smith speaks of him-oh, so well! But William will not tell me where our room is. I suppose in some narrow street or lane, which he is afraid I shall not like, as our common is so *It is almost unnecessary to observe that this little story was written during the short life of that whimsical experiment in legislation. 66 pleasant. He little thinks-any where." "Oh no! Hannah loves her husband too She stopped suddenly; but her blush and her well. Any where with him!" clasped hands finished the sentence, any And I was right. Hannah has survived where with him!"-" And when is the happy the shock. She is returned to B., and I have day?"—"On Monday fortnight, Madam," been to call on her. I never saw any thing said the bridegroom elect, advancing with the so delicate and bride-like as she looked in her little clerk to summon Hannah to the parlour, white gown and her lace mob, in a room light "the earliest day possible." He drew her and simple, and tasteful and elegant, with arm through his, and we parted. nothing fine except some beautiful greenhouse plants. Her reception was a charming mixture of sweetness and modesty, a little more respectful than usual, and far more shamefaced! Poor thing! her cheeks must have pained her! But this was the only dif ference. In every thing else she is still the same Hannah, and has lost none of her old habits of kindness and gratitude. She was making a handsome matronly cap, evidently for her mother; and spoke, even with tears, of her new father's goodness to her and to Susan. She would fetch the cake and wine herself, and would gather, in spite of all remonstrance, some of her choicest flowers as a parting nosegay. She did, indeed, just hint at her troubles with visiters and servantshow strange and sad it was! seemed distressed at ringing the bell, and visibly shrank from the sound of a double knock. But, in spite of these calamities, Hannah is a happy woman. The double rap was her husband's, and the glow on her cheek, and the smile of her lips and eyes when he appeared, spoke more plainly than ever, "Any where with him!" The Monday fortnight was a glorious morning; one of those rare November days when the sky and the air are soft and bright as in April. What a beautiful day for Hannah!" was the first exclamation of the breakfast table. "Did she tell you where they should dine ?"—" No, Ma'am; I forgot to ask.""I can tell you," said the master of the house, with somewhat of good-humoured importance in his air, somewhat of the look of a man who, having kept a secret as long as it was necessary, is not sorry to get rid of the burthen.I can tell you: in London."-"In London!"-"Yes. Your little favourite has been in high luck. She has married the only I son of one of the best and richest men in B., Mr. Smith, the great hatter. It is quite a romance," continued he: "William Smith walked over one Sunday evening to see a match at cricket. He saw our pretty Hannah, and forgot to look at the cricketers. After having gazed his fill, he approached to address her, and the little damsel was off like a bird. William did not like her the less for that, and thought of her the more. He came again and again; and at last contrived to tame this wild dove, and even to get the entrée of the cottage. Hearing Hannah talk, is not the way to fall out of love with her. So William, at last finding his case serious, laid the matter I before his father, and requested his consent to the marriage. Mr. Smith was at first a little startled; but William is an only son, and an excellent son; and, after talking with me, and looking at Hannah, (I believe her sweet face was the more eloquent advocate of the two,) he relented; and having a spice of his son's romance, finding that he had not mentioned his situation in life, he made a point of its being kept secret till the wedding-day. We have managed the business of settlements; and William, having discovered that his fair bride has some curiosity to see London (a curiosity, by the by, which I suspect she owes to you or poor Lucy), intends taking her thither for a fortnight. He will then bring her home to one of the best houses in B., a fine garden, fine furniture, fine clothes, fine servants, and more money than she will know what to do with. Really the surprise of Lord E.'s farmer's daughter, when, thinking she had married his steward, he brought her to Burleigh, and installed her as its mistress, could hardly have been greater. I hope the shock will not kill Hannah though, as is said to have been the case with that poor lady." WALKS IN THE COUNTRY. FROST. JANUARY 23d. At noon to-day, I and my white greyhound, May-flower, set out for a walk into a very beautiful world,. a sort of silent fairy land,—a creation of that matchless magician the hoar-frost. There had been just snow enough to cover the earth and all its colours with one sheet of pure and uniform white, and just time enough since the snow had fallen to allow the hedges to be freed of their fleecy load, and clothed with a delicate coating of rime. The atmosphere was deliciously calm; soft, even mild, in spite of the thermometer; no perceptible air, but a stillness that might almost be felt; the sky, rather grey than blue, throwing out in bold relief the snow-covered roofs of our village, and the rimy trees that rise above them, and the sun shining dimly as through a veil, giving a pale fair light, like the moon, only brighter. There was a silence, too, that might become the moon, as we stood at our little gate looking up the quiet street; a sabbath-like pause of work and play, rare on a work-day; nothing was audible but the pleasant hum of frost, that low monotonous sound, which is perhaps the nearest approach that life and nature can make to absolute silence. The very wagons, as they come down the hill along the beaten track of crisp yellowish frost-dust, glide along like shadows; even May's bounding footsteps, at her height of glee and of speed, fall like snow upon snow. steadying himself by the shoulder of the next in the file, which unlucky follower, thus unexpectedly checked in his career, fell plump backwards, knocking down the rest of the line like a nest of card-houses. There is no harm done; but there they lie roaring, kicking, sprawling, in every attitude of comic distress, whilst Jack Rapley and May-flower, sole authors of this calamity, stand apart from the throng, fondling, and coquetting, and complimenting each other, and very visibly laughing, May in her black eyes, Jack in his wide close-shut mouth, and his whole monkey-face, at their comrades' mischances. I think, Miss May, you may as well come up again, and leave Master Rapley to fight your battles. He'll get out of the scrape. He is a rustic wit-a sort of Robin Goodfellow-the sauciest, idlest, cleverest, best-natured boy in the parish; always foremost in mischief, and always ready to do a good turn. The sages of our village predict sad things of Jack Rapley, so that I am sometimes a little ashamed to confess, before wise people, that I have a lurking predilection for him, (in common with other naughty ones), and that I like to hear him talk to May almost as well as she does. a bird. The road is gay now; carts and postchaises, and girls in red cloaks, and, afar off, looking almost like a toy, the coach. It meets us fast and soon. How much happier the walkers look than the riders-especially the frost-bitten gentleman, and the shivering lady with the invisible face, sole passengers of that commodious machine! Hooded, veiled, and bonneted as she is, one sees from her attitude how miserable she would look uncovered. But we shall have noise enough presently: May has stopped at Lizzy's door: and Lizzy, as she sate on the window-sill, with her bright rosy face laughing through the casement, has seen her and disappeared. She is coming. No! The key is turning in the door, and sounds of evil omen issue through the key-hole sturdy let-me-outs,' and I will gos,' mixed with shrill cries on May and on me from Lizzy, piercing through a low continuous harangue, of which the prominent parts are apologies, chilblains, sliding, broken bones, lollypops, rods, and gingerbread, from Lizzy's careful mother. Don't scratch the door, May! Don't roar so, my Lizzy! We'll call for you, as we come back.'I'll go now! Let me out! I will go!' are the last words of Miss Lizzy. Mem.-Not to spoil that child-if I can help it. But I do think her mother might have let the poor little soul walk with us to-day. Nothing worse for chil-Come, May!' and up she springs as light as dren than coddling. Nothing better for chilblains than exercise. Besides, I don't believe she has any and as to breaking her bones in sliding, I don't suppose there's a slide on the common. These murmuring cogitations have brought us up the hill, and half-way across the light and airy common, with its bright expanse of snow and its clusters of cottages, whose turf fires send such wreaths of smoke sailing up the air, and diffuse such aromatic fragrance around. And now comes the delightful sound of childish voices, ringing with glee and merriment almost from beneath our feet. Ah, Lizzy, your mother was right! They are shouting from that deep irregular pool, all glass now, where, on two long, smooth, liny slides, half a dozen ragged urchins are slipping along in tottering triumph. Half a dozen steps bring us to the bank right above them. May can hardly resist the temptation of joining her friends, for most of the varlets are of her acquaintance, especially the rogue who leads the slide- he with the brimless hat, whose bronzed complexion and white flaxen hair, reversing the usual lights and shadows of the human countenance, give so strange and foreign a look to his flat and comic features. This hobgoblin, Jack Rapley by name, is May's great crony; and she stands on the brink of the steep irregular descent, her black eyes fixed full upon him, as if she intended him the favour of jumping on his head. She does: she is down and upon him; but Jack Rapley is not easily to be knocked off his feet. He saw her coming, and in the moment of her leap sprang dexterously off the slide on the rough ice, Another pond, and another noise of children. More sliding? Oh! no. This is a sport of higher pretension. Our good neighbour, the lieutenant, skating, and his own pretty little boys, and two or three other fouryear-old elves, standing on the brink in an ecstasy of joy and wonder! Oh! what happy spectators! And what a happy performer! They admiring, he admired, with an ardour and sincerity never excited by all the quadrilles and the spread-eagles of the Seine and the Serpentine. He really skates well though, and I am glad I came this way; for, with all the father's feelings sitting gaily at his heart, it must still gratify the pride of skill to have one spectator at that solitary pond who has seen skating before. Now we have reached the trees,-the beautiful trees! never so beautiful as to-day. Imagine the effect of a straight and regular double avenue of oaks, nearly a mile long, arching over head, and closing into perspective like the roof and columns of a cathedral, every tree and branch encrusted with the bright and delicate congelation of hoar-frost, white and pure as snow, delicate and defined as carved ivory. How beautiful it is, how THAW. uniform, how various, how filling, how sa- | fellow of a blackbird-a sad glutton, he would tiating to the eye and to the mind-above all, clear the board in two minutes,-used to tap how melancholy! There is a thrilling awful- his yellow bill against the window for more. ness, an intense feeling of simple power in How we loved the fearless confidence of that that naked and colourless beauty, which falls fine, frank-hearted creature! And surely he on the heart like the thought of death-death loved us. I wonder the practice is not more pure, and glorious, and smiling, but still general. -"May! May! naughty May!" death. Sculpture has always the same effect She has frightened away the kingfisher; and on my imagination, and painting never. Co- now, in her coaxing penitence, she is covering lour is life. We are now at the end of this me with snow. "Come, pretty May! it is magnificent avenue, and at the top of a steep time to go home!" eminence commanding a wide view over four counties-a landscape of snow. A deep lane leads abruptly down the hill; a mere narrow January 28th.-We have had rain, and cart-track, sinking between high banks clothed snow, and frost, and rain again; four days of with fern and furze and low broom, crowned absolute confinement. Now it is a thaw and with luxuriant hedgerows, and famous for a flood; but our light gravelly soil, and countheir summer smell of thyme. How lovely try boots, and country hardihood, will carry these banks are now-the tall weeds and the us through. What a dripping, comfortless gorse fixed and stiffened in the hoar frost, day it is! just like the last days of Novemwhich fringes round the bright prickly holly, ber: no sun, no sky, grey or blue; one low, the pendent foliage of the bramble, and the overhanging, dark, dismal cloud, like London deep orange leaves of the pollard oaks! Oh, smoke: Mayflower is out coursing too, and this is rime in its loveliest form! And there Lizzy gone to school. Never mind. Up the is still a berry here and there on the holly, hill again! Walk we must. Oh what a wa"blashing in its natural coral" through the tery world to look back upon! Thames, Kendelicate tracery, still a stray hip or haw for net, Loddon-all overflowed; our famous town, the birds who abound here always. The poor inland once, turned into a sort of Venice; C. birds, how tame they are, how sadly tame! park converted into an island; and the long There is the beautiful and rare crested wren, range of meadows from B. to W. one huge "that shadow of a bird," as White of Sel- unnatural lake, with trees growing out of it! borne calls it, perched in the middle of the Oh what a watery world!—I will look at it hedge, nestling as it were amongst the cold no longer. I will walk on. The road is alive bare boughs, seeking, poor pretty thing, for again. Noise is reborn. Wagons creak, horses the warmth it will not find. And there, far-plash, carts rattle, and pattens paddle through ther on, just under the bank, by the slender the dirt with more than their usual clink. The runlet, which still trickles between its trans-common has its old fine tints of green and parent fantastic margin of thin ice, as if it were a thing of life, there, with a swift, seudding motion, flits, in short low flights, the gorgeous kingfisher, its magnificent plumage of scarlet and blue flashing in the sun, like the glories of some tropical bird. He is come for water to this little spring by the hill side, -water which even his long bill and slender head can hardly reach, so nearly do the fantastic forms of those garland-like icy margins meet over the tiny stream beneath. It is rarely that one sees the shy beauty so close or so long; and it is pleasant to see him in the grace and beauty of his natural liberty, the only way to look at a bird. We used, before we lived in a street, to fix a little board out- EARLY in the present century there lived in side the parlour-window, and cover it with the ancient town of B. two complete and rebread-erums in the hard weather. It was markable specimens of the ladies of eighty ¡quite delightful to see the pretty things come years ago. -ladies cased inwardly and outand feed, to conquer their shyness, and do wardly in Addison and whalebone. How away their mistrust. First came the more they had been preserved in this entireness, social tribes, "the robin red-breast and the amidst the collision and ridicule of a country wren," cautiously, suspiciously, picking up a town, seemed as puzzling a question as the crum on the wing, with the little keen bright preservation of bees in amber, or mummies in eye fixed on the window; then they would pyramids, or any other riddle that serves to stop for two pecks; then stay till they were amuse the naturalist or the antiquarian. But satisfied. The shyer birds, tamed by their so it was. They were old maids and sisters, example, came next; and at last one saucy and so alike in their difference from all other brown, and its old variety of inhabitants,horses, cows, sheep, pigs, and donkeys. The ponds are unfrozen, except where some melancholy piece of melting ice floats sullenly upon the water; and cackling geese and gabbling ducks have replaced the lieutenant and Jack Rapley. The avenue is chill and dark, the hedges are dripping, the lanes knee-deep, and all nature is in a state of "dissolution and thaw." MODERN ANTIQUES. women, that they may be best described together; any little non-resemblance may be noted afterwards; it was no more than nature, prodigal of variety, would make in two leaves from the same oak-tree. Both, then, were as short as women well could be without being entitled to the name of dwarf, or carried about to fairs for a show; -both were made considerably shorter by the highest of all high heels, and the tallest of all tall caps, each of which artificial elevations was as ostentatiously conspicuous as the legs and cover of a pipkin, and served equally to add to the squatness of the real machine: both were lean, wrinkled, withered, and old; both enveloped their aged persons in the richest silks, displayed over large hoops, and stays the tightest and stiffest that ever pinched in a beauty of George the Second's reign. The gown was of that make formerly, I believe, called a sacque, and of a pattern so enormous, that one flower with its stalk and leaves, would nearly cover the three quarters of a yard in length, of which the tail might, at a moderate computation, consist. Over this they wore a gorgeously figured apron, whose flourishing white embroidery vied in size with the plants on the robe; a snowy muslin neckerchief, rigidly pinned down: and over that a black lace tippet of the same shape, parting at the middle, to display a grey breast-knot. The riband of which this last decoration was composed, was generally of the same hue with that which adorned the towering lappeted cap, a sort of poppy colour, which they called Pompadour. The sleeves were cut off below the elbows with triple ruffles of portentous length. Brown leather mittens, with peaks turned back, and lined with blue satin, and a variety of tall rings in an odd, out-of-fashion variety of enamelling, and figures of hair, I completed the decoration of their hands and arms. The carriage of these useful members was at least equally singular; they had adapted themselves in a very remarkable manner to the little taper wasp-like point in which the waist ended, to which the elbows, ruffle and all, adhered as closely as if they had been glued, whilst the ringed and mittened hands, when not employed in knitting, were crossed saltier-wise, in front of the apron. The other termination of their figure was adorned with black stuff shoes, very peaked, with points upwards, and massive silver buckles. Their walking costume was, in winter, a black silk cloak, lined with rabbit-skins, with holes for | the arms; in summer, another tippet and a calash, no bonnet could hold the turreted cap. Their motion out of doors was indescribable; it most nearly resembled sailing. They seemed influenced by the wind in a way incidental to no moving thing, except a ship or a shuttlecock; and, indeed, one boisterous blowing night, about the equinox, when standing on some high stone steps, waiting for a carriage to take her home from a party, the wind did catch one of them, and, but for the intervention of a tall footman, who seized her as one would seize a fly-away umbrella, and held her down by main force, the poor little lady would have been carried up like an airballoon. Her feelings must have been pretty much similar to those of Gulliver in Brobdignag, when flown away with by the eagle. Half a minute later, and she was gone. So far they were exact counterparts. The chief variation lay in the face. Amidst the general hue of age and wrinkles, you could just distinguish that Mrs. Theodosia had been brown, and Mrs. Frances fair. There was a yellow shine here and there amongst the white hairs, curiously rolled over a cushion high above the forehead, that told of Fanny's golden locks; whilst the purely grey rouleau of Mrs. Theodosia showed its mixture of black and white still plainer. Mrs. Frances, too, had the blue eye, with a laughing light, which so often retains its flash to extreme age; whilst Mrs. Theodosia's orbs, bright no longer, had once been hazel. Mrs. Theodosia's aquiline nose, and long sociable chin, evinced that disposition to meet which is commonly known by the name of a pair of nut-crackers; Mrs. Frances' features, on the other hand, were rather terse and sharp. Still there was in spite of these material differences, that look of kindred, that inexplicable and indefinable family likeness, which is so frequently found in sisters; greatly increased in the present case by a similarity in the voice that was quite startling. Both tongues were quick and clear, and high and rattling, to a degree that seemed rather to belong to machinery than to human articulation; and when welcomes and how-d'ye dos were pouring both at once on either side, a stranger was apt to gaze in ludicrous perplexity, as if beset by a ventriloquist, or haunted by strange echoes. When the immediate cackle subsided, they were easily distinguished. Mrs. Theodosia was good, and kind, and hospitable, and social; Mrs. Frances was all that, and was besides shrewd, and clever, and literary, to a degree not very common in her day, though not approaching to the pitch of a blue-stocking lady of the present. Aecident was partly the cause of this unusual love of letters. They had known Richardson; had been admitted amongst his flower-garden of young ladies; and still talked familiarly of Miss Highmore, Miss Fielding, Miss Collier, and Miss Mulso, they had never learned to call her Mrs. Chapone. Latterly the taste had been renewed and quickened, by their having the honour of a distant relationship to one of the most amiable and unfortunate of modern poets. So Mrs. Frances studied novels and poetry, in addition to her sister's sermons and cookery books; though (as she used to boast) without doing a stitch the less knitting, or playing a |