pool the fewer in the course of the year. Their usual occupations were those of other useful old ladies; superintending the endowed girls' school of the town with a vigilance and a jealousy of abuses that might have done honour to Mr. Hume; taking an active part is the more private charities, donations of flannel petticoats, or the loan of baby-things; visiting in a quiet way; and going to church whenever the church-door was open. the holidays, to be admitted as a supernumerary; at first out of compliment to mamma; latterly I stood on my own merits. I was found to be a quiet little girl; an excellent hander of muffins and cakes; a connoisseur in green tea; an amateur of quadrille - the most entertaining of all games to a lookeron; and, lastly and chiefly, a great lover and admirer of certain books, which filled two little shelves at cross-corners with the chimney—namely, that volume of Cowper's Poems which contained John Gilpin, and the whole seven volumes of Sir Charles Grandison. With what delight I used to take down those dear books! It was an old edition; perhaps that very first edition which, as Mrs. Barbauld says, the fine ladies used to hold up to one another at Ranelagh, and adorned with prints not certainly of the highest merit as works of art, but which served exceedingly to realise the story, and to make us, as it were, personally acquainted with the characters. The costume was pretty much that of my worthy hostesses, especially that of the two Miss Selbys; there was even in Miss Nancy's face a certain likeness to Mrs. Frances. I remember I used to wonder whether she carried her elbows in the same way. How I read and believed, and believed and read; and liked lady G. though I thought her naughty; and gave all my wishes to Harriet, though I thought her silly; and loved Emily with my whole heart! Clementina I did not quite understand; nor (I am half afraid to say so) do I now; and Sir Charles I positively disliked. He was the only thing in the book that I disbelieved. Those bowings seemed incredible. At last, however, I extended my faith even to him; partly influenced by the irresistibility of the author, partly by the appearance of a real living beau, who in the matter of bowing might almost have competed with Sir Charles himself. This beau was no other than the town member, who, with his brother, was, when in the country, the constant attendant at these chosen parties. Their abode was a dwelling ancient and respectable, like themselves, that looked as if it had never undergone the slightest variation, inside or out, since they had been born in it. The rooms were many, low, and small; fall of little windows with little panes, and chimneys stuck perversely in the corners. The furniture was exactly to correspond; little patches of carpets in the middle of the slippery, dry-rubbed floors; tables and chairs of mahogany, black with age, but exceedingly neat and bright; and Japan cabinets and old China, which Mr. Beckford might have envied-treasures which had either never gone out of fashion, or had come in again. The garden was beautiful, and beautifully placed; a series of terraces descending to rich and finely timbered meadows, through which the slow magnificent Thames rolled under the chalky hills of the pretty village of C. It was bounded on one side by the remains of an old friary, the end wall of a chapel with a Gothic window of open tracery in high preservation, as rich as point lace. It was full too of oldfashioned durable flowers, jessamine, honeysuckle, and the high-scented fraxinella; I never saw that delicious plant in such profusion. The garden walks were almost as smooth as the floors, thanks to the two assiduous serving maidens (nothing like a manservant ever entered this maidenly abode) who attended it. One, the under damsel, was a stout strapping country wench, changed from time to time as it happened; the other was as much a fixture as her mistresses. She had lived with them for forty years, and, except being twice as big and twice as tall, might Our member was a man of seventy, or have passed for another sister. She wore their thereabout, but wonderfully young-looking, gowns, (the two just made her one,) caps, and well-preserved. It was said, indeed, that ruffles, and aprons; talked with their voices no fading belle was better versed in cosmetic and their phrases; followed them to church, secrets, or more arduously devoted to the and school, and market; scolded the school- duties of the toilet. Fresh, upright, unwrinmistress; heard the children their catechism; kled, pearly-teethed, and point-device in his cut out flannel petticoats, and knit stockings accoutrements, he might have passed for fifty, to give away. Never was so complete anand doubtless often did pass for such when instance of assimilation! She had even become like them in face. Having a brother who resided at a beautiful seat in the neighbourhood, and being to all intents and purposes of the patrician order, their visiters were very select, and rather more from the country than the town. Six formed the general number,- one table-a rubber or a pool-seldom more. As the only child of a very favourite friend, I used, during apart from his old-looking younger brother, who, tall, lanky, shambling, long-visaged, and loosely dressed, gave a very vivid idea of Don Quixote when stripped of his armour. Never was so consummate a courtier as our member! Of good family and small fortune, he had early in life been seized with the desire of representing the town in which he resided; and canvassing, sheer canvassing, without eloquence, without talent, without A GREAT FARM-HOUSE. bribery, had brought him in and kept him in. pointment; the powerless anger; the relentThere his ambition stopped. To be a mem-ing; the forgiveness; and then again, that inber of parliament was with him not the means terest, kinder, truer, more unchanging than but the end of advancement. For forty years friendship, that lingering woman's love- Oh he represented an independent borough, and, how can I jest over such feelings! They are though regularly voting with every successive passed away. for she is gone, and he-but ministry, was, at the end of his career, as they clung by her to the last, and ceased only poor as when he began. He never sold him- in death. self, or stood suspected of selling himself— perhaps he might sometimes give himself away. But that he could not help. It was almost impossible for him to say No to any body, quite so to a minister, or a constituent, or a constituent's wife or daughter. So he passed bowing and smiling through the world, THESE are bad times for farmers. I am the most disinterested of courtiers, the most sorry for it. Independently of all questions subservient of upright men, with little other of policy, as a mere matter of taste and of old annoyance than a septennial alarm-for some- association, it was a fine thing to witness the times an opposition was threatened, and some- hearty hospitality, and to think of the social times it came; but then he went through a happiness of a great farm-house. No situadouble course of smirks and hand-shakings, tion in life seemed so richly privileged; none and all was well again. The great grievance had so much power for good and so little for of his life must have been the limitation in evil; it seemed a place where pride could not the number of franks. His apologies, when live, and poverty could not enter. These he happened to be full, were such as a man thoughts pressed on my mind the other day, would make for a great fault; his lamenta- in passing the green sheltered lane, overhung tions, such as might become a great misfor- with trees like an avenue, that leads to the tune. Of course there was something ludi- great farm at M., where ten or twelve years crous in his courtliness, but it was not con- ago, I used to spend so many pleasant days. temptible; it only wanted to be obviously dis- I could not help advancing a few paces up the interested to become respectable. The ex-lane, and then turning to lean over the gate, pression might be exaggerated; but the feel- seemingly gazing on the rich undulating valing was real. He was always ready to show ley, crowned with woody hills, which, as I kindness, to the utmost of his power, to any stood under the dark and shady arch, lay human being. He would have been just as bathed in the sunshine before me, but really civil and supple if he had not been M. P. It absorbed in thoughts of other times, in recolwas his vocation. He could not help it. lections of the old delights of that delightful place, and of the admirable qualities of its owners. How often I had opened that gate, and how gaily-certain of meeting a smiling welcome—and what a picture of comfort it was! This excellent person was an old bachelor; and there was a rumour, some forty or fifty years old, that in the days of their bloom, there had been a little love affair, an attachment, some even said an engagement, how broken none could tell, between him and Mrs. Frances. Certain it is, that there were symptoms of flirtation still. His courtesy, always gallant to every female, had something more real and more tender towards "Fanny," as he was wont to call her; and Fanny, on her side, was as conscious as heart could desire. She blushed and bridled; fidgeted with her mittens or her apron; flirted a fan nearly as tall as herself, and held her head on one side with that peculiar air which I have noted in the shyer birds, and ladies in love. She mancuvred to get him next her at the tea-table; liked to be his partner at whist; loved to talk of him in his absence; knew to an hour the time of his return; and did not dislike a little gentle raillery on the subject-even I-But, traitress to my sex, how can I jest with such feelings? Rather let me sigh over the world of woe, that in fifty years of hopeless constancy must have passed through that maiden heart! The timid hope; the sickening suspense; the slow, slow fear; the bitter disap Passing up the lane, we used first to encounter a thick solid suburb of ricks, of all sorts, shapes, and dimensions. Then came the farm, like a town; a magnificent series of buildings, stables, cart-houses, cow-houses, granaries and barns, that might hold half the corn of the parish, placed at angles towards each other, and mixed with smaller habitations for pigs, dogs, and poultry. They formed, together with the old substantial farmhouse, a sort of amphitheatre, looking over a beautiful meadow, which swept greenly and abruptly down into fertile enclosures, richly set with hedge-row timber, oak, and ash, and elm. Both the meadow and the farm-yard swarmed with inhabitants of the earth and of the air; horses, oxen, cows, calves, heifers, sheep, and pigs; beautiful greyhounds, all manner of poultry, a tame goat, and a pet donkey. The master of this land of plenty was well fitted to preside over it; a thick, stout man, of middle height, and middle age, with a healthy, ruddy, square face, all alive with intelligence and good-humour. There was a lurking jest in his eye, and a smile about the corners of his firmly-closed lips, that gave assurance of good-fellowship. His voice was loud enough to have hailed a ship at sea, without the assistance of a speaking-trumpet, wonderfully rich and round in its tones, and harmonizing admirably with his bluff, jovial visage. He wore his dark shining hair combed straight over his forehead, and had a trick, when particularly merry, of stroking it down with his hand. The moment his right hand approached his head, out flew a jest. Besides his own great farm, the business of which seemed to go on like machinery, always regular, prosperous, and unfailing-besides this and two or three constant stewardships, and a perpetual succession of arbitrations, in which, such was the influence of his acuteness, his temper, and his sturdy justice, that he was often named by both parties, and left to decide alone,-in addition to these occupations, he was a sort of standing overseer and churchwarden; he ruled his own hamlet like a despotic monarch, and took a prime minister's share in the government of the large parish to which it was attached; and one of the gentlemen, whose estates he managed, being the independent member for an independent borough, he had every now and then a contested election on his shoulders. Even that did not discompose him. He had always leisure to receive his friends at home, or to visit them abroad; to take journeys to London, or make excursions to the sea-side; was as punctual in pleasure as in business, and thought being happy and making happy as much the purpose of his life as getting rich. His great amusement was coursing. He kept several brace of capital greyhounds, so high-blooded, that I remember when five of them were confined in five different kennels on account of their ferocity. The greatest of living painters once called a greyhound, "the line of beauty in perpetual motion." Our friend's large dogs were a fine illustration of this remark. His old dog, Hector, for instance, for which he refused a hundred guineas, what a superb dog was Hector! a model of grace and symmetry, necked and crested like an Arabian, and bearing himself with a stateliness and gallantry that showed some "conscience of his worth." He was the largest dog I ever saw; but so finely proportioned, that the most determined faultfinder could call him neither too long nor too heavy. There was not an inch too much of him. His colour was the purest white, entirely unspotted, except that his head was very regularly and richly marked with black. Hector was certainly a perfect beauty. But the little bitches, on which his master piqued himself still more, were not, in my poor judgment, so admirable. They were pretty little round, graceful things, sleek and glossy, and for the most part milk-white, with the smallest heads, and the most dove-like eyes that were ever seen. There was a peculiar sort of innocent beauty about them, like that of a roly-poly child. They were as gentle as lambs too: all the evil spirit of the family evaporated in the gentlemen. But, to my thinking, these pretty creatures were fitter for the parlour than the field. They were strong, certainly, excellently loined, cat-footed, and chested like a war-horse; but there was a want of length about them- a want of room, as the coursers say; something a little, a very little inclining to the clumsy; a dumpiness, a pointer-look. They went off like an arrow from the bow; for the first hundred yards nothing could stand against them; then they began to flag, to find their weight too much for their speed, and to lose ground from the shortness of the stroke. Up-hill, however, they were capital. There their compactness told. They turned with the hare, and lost neither wind nor way in the sharpest ascent. I shall never forget one single-handed course of our good friend's favourite little bitch Helen, on W. hill. All the coursers were in the valley below, looking up to the hill-side as on a moving picture. I suppose she turned the hare twenty times on a piece of greensward not much bigger than an acre, and as steep as the roof of a house. It was an old hare, a famous hare, one that had baffled half the dogs in the county; but she killed him; and then, though almost as large as herself, took it up in her mouth, brought it to her master, and laid it down at his feet. Oh how pleased he was! and what a pleasure it was to see his triumph! He did not always find W. hill so fortunate. It is a high steep hill, of a conical shape, encircled by a mountain road winding up to the summit like a corkscrew, -a deep road dug out of the chalk, and fenced by high mounds on either side. The hares always make for this hollow way, as it is called, because it is too wide for a leap, and the dogs lose much time in mounting and descending the sharp acclivities. Very eager dogs, however, will sometimes dare the leap, and two of our good friend's favourite greyhounds perished in the attempt in two following years. They were found dead in the hollow way. After this he took a dislike to distant coursing meetings, and sported chiefly on his own beautiful farm. His wife was like her husband, with a difference, as they say in heraldry. Like him in looks, only thinner and paler; like him in voice and phrase, only not so loud; like him in merriment and good-humour; like him in her talent of welcoming and making happy, and being kind; like him in cherishing an abundance of pets, and in getting through with marvellous facility an astounding quantity of business and pleasure. Perhaps the quality great taste in every way, and seem often to select for beauty as much as for flavour. They have a better eye for colour than the florist. The butterfly is also a dilettante. Rover though he be, he generally prefers the blossoms that become him best. What a pretty picture it is, in a sunshiny autumn day, to see a bright spotted butterfly, made up of gold and purple and splendid brown, swinging on the rich flower of the china aster! in which they resembled each other most common flowers for their use, and literally completely, was the happy ease and serenity" redolent of sweets." Bees are insects of of behaviour, so seldom found amongst people of the middle rank, who have usually a best manner and a worst, and whose best (that is, the studied, the company manner) is so very much the worst. She was frankness itself; entirely free from prickly defiance, or bristling self-love. She never took offence or gave it; never thought of herself or of what others would think of her; had never been afflicted with the besetting sins of her station, a dread of the vulgar, or an aspiration after the genteel. Those "words of fear" had never disturbed her delightful heartiness. Her pets were her cows, her poultry, her bees, and her flowers; chiefly her poultry, almost as numerous as the bees, and as various as the flowers. The farm-yard swarmed with peacocks, turkeys, geese, tame and wild-ducks, fowls, guinea-hens, and pigeons; besides a brood or two of favourite bantams in the green court before the door, with a little ridiculous strutter of a cock at their head, who imitated the magnificent demeanour of the great Tom of the barn-yard, just as Tom in his turn copied the fierce bearing of that warlike and terrible biped the he-turkey. I am the least in the world afraid of a turkey-cock, and used to steer clear of the turkery as often as I could. Commend me to the peaceable vanity of that jewel of a bird the peacock, sweeping his gorgeous tail along the grass, or dropping it gracefully from some low-boughed tree, whilst he turns round his crested head with the air of a birth-day belle, to see who admires him. What a glorious creature it is! How thoroughly content with himself and with all the world! Next to her poultry our good farmer's wife loved her flower-garden; and indeed it was of the very first water, the only thing about the place that was fine. She was a real genuine florist; valued pinks, tulips, and auriculas, for certain qualities of shape and colour, with which beauty had nothing to do; preferred black ranunculuses, and gave into all those obliquities of a tripled refined taste by which the professed florist contrives to keep pace with the vagaries of the bibliomaniac. Of all odd fashions, that of dark, gloomy, dingy flowers, appears to me the oddest. Your true connoisseur now, shall prefer a deep puce hollyhock, to the gay pink blossoms which cluster around that splendid plant like a pyramid of roses. So did she. The nomenclature of her garden was more distressing still. One is never thoroughly sociable with flowers till they are naturalized as it were, christened, provided with decent, homely, well-wearing English names. Now her plants had all sorts of heathenish appellations, which,-no offence to her learning, always sounded wrong. I liked the bees' garden best; the plot of ground immediately round their hives, filled with To come back to our farm. Within doors every thing went as well as without. There were no fine misses sitting before the piano, and mixing the alloy of their new-fangled tinsel with the old sterling metal; nothing but an only son excellently brought up, a fair slim youth, whose extraordinary and somewhat pensive elegance of mind and manner was thrown into fine relief by his father's loud hilarity, and harmonized delightfully with the smiling kindness of his mother. His Spensers and Thomsons, too, looked well amongst the hyacinths and geraniums that filled the windows of the little snug room in which they usually sate; a sort of afterthought, built at an angle from the house, and looking into the farm-yard. It was closely packed with favourite arm-chairs, favourite sofas, favourite tables, and a side-board decorated with the prize-cups and collars of the greyhounds, and generally loaded with substantial work-baskets, jars of flowers, great pyramids of home-made cakes, and sparkling bottles of gooseberry-wine, famous all over the country. The walls were covered with portraits of half a dozen greyhounds, a brace of spaniels, as large as life, an old pony, and the master and mistress of the house in halflength. She as unlike as possible, prim, mincing, delicate, in lace and satin; he so staringly and ridiculously like, that when the picture fixed its good-humoured eyes upon you as you entered the room, you were almost tempted to say-how d'ye do?- Alas! the portraits are now gone, and the originals. Death and distance have despoiled that pleasant home. The garden has lost its smiling mistress; the greyhounds their kind master; and new people, new manners, and new cares, have taken possession of the old abode of peace and plenty-the great farm-house. LUCY. ABOUT a twelvemonth ago we had the misfortune to lose a very faithful and favourite female servant; one who has spoiled us for all others. Nobody can expect to meet with two Lucies. We all loved Lucy-poor Lucy! She did not die-she only married; but we were so sorry to part with her, that her wed 1 ding, which was kept at our house, was almost as tragical as a funeral; and from pure regret and affection we sum up her merits, and bemoan our loss, just as if she had really departed this life. Lucy's praise is a most fertile theme: she united the pleasant and amusing qualities of a French soubrette, with the solid excellence of an English woman of the old school, and was good by contraries. In the first place, she was exceedingly agreeable to look at; remarkably pretty. She lived in our family eleven years; but, having come to us very young, was still under thirty, just in full bloom, and a very brilliant bloom it was. Her figure was rather tall, and rather large, with delicate hands and feet, and a remarkable ease and vigour in her motions: I never saw any woman walk so fast or so well. Her face was round and dimpled, with sparkling grey eyes, black eye-brows and eye-lashes, a profusion of dark hair, very red lips, very white teeth, and a complexion that entirely took away the look of vulgarity which the breadth and flatness of her face might otherwise have given. Such a complexion, so pure, so finely grained, so healthily fair, with such a sweet rosiness, brightening and varying like her dancing eyes whenever she spoke or smiled! When silent, she was almost pale; but, to confess the truth, she was not often silent. Lucy liked talking, and every body liked to hear her talk. There is always great freshness and originality in an uneducated and quick-witted person, who surprises one continually by unsuspected knowledge or amusing ignorance; and Lucy had a real talent for conversation. Her light and pleasant temper, her cleverness, her universal kindness, and the admirable address, or rather the excellent feeling, with which she contrived to unite the most perfect respect with the most cordial and affectionate interest, gave a singular charm to her prattle. No confidence or indulgence and she was well tried with both ever made her forget herself for a moment. All our friends used to loiter at the door or in the hall to speak to Lucy, and they miss her, and ask for her, as if she were really one of the family. She was not less liked by her equals. Her constant simplicity and rightmindedness kept her always in her place with them as with us; and her gaiety and good humour made her a most welcome visiter in every shop and cottage round. She had another qualification for village society-she was an incomparable gossip, had a rare genius for picking up news, and great liberality in its diffusion. Births, deaths, marriages, casualties, quarrels, battles, scandal-nothing came amiss to her. She could have furnished a weekly paper from her own stores of facts, without once resorting for assistance to the courts of law or the two houses of parliament. She was a very charitable reporter too; threw her own sunshine into the shady places, and would hope and doubt as long as either was possible. Her fertility of intelligence was wonderful; and so early! Her news had always the bloom on it; there was no being beforehand with Lucy. It was a little mortifying when one came prepared with something very recent and surprising, something that should have made her start with astonishment, to find her fully acquainted with the story, and able to furnish you with twenty particulars that you never heard of. But this evil had its peculiar compensation. By Lucy's aid I passed with every body, but Lucy herself, for a woman of great information, an excellent authority, an undoubted reference in all matters of gossipry. Now I lag miserably behind the time; I never hear of a death till after the funeral, nor of a wedding till I read it in the papers; and, when people talk of reports and rumours, they undo me. I should be obliged to run away from the tea-tables, if I had not taken the resolution to look wise and say nothing, and live on my old reputation. Indeed, even now Lucy's fund is not entirely exhausted; things have not quite done happening. I know nothing new; but my knowledge of by-gone passages is absolute; I can prophesy past events like a gipsy. Scattered amongst her great merits Lucy had a few small faults, as all persons should have. She had occasionally an aptness to take offence where none was intended, and then the whole house bore audible testimony to her displeasure: she used to scour through half-a-dozen doors in a minute for the mere purpose of banging them after her. She had rather more fears than were quite convenient of ghosts and witches, and thunder, and earwigs, and various other real and unreal sights and sounds, and thought nothing of rousing half the family in the middle of the night at the first symptom of a thunder-storm or an apparition. She had a terrible genius for music, and a tremendously powerful shrill high voice. Oh! her door-clapping was nothing to her singing! it rang through one's head like the screams of a peacock. Lastly, she was a sad flirt; she had about twenty lovers whilst she lived with us, probably more, but upwards of twenty she acknowledged. Her master, who watched with great amusement this uninterrupted and intricate succession of favourites, had the habit of calling her by the name of the reigning beau― Mrs. Charles, Mrs. John, Mrs. Robert; so that she has answered in her time to as many masculine appellations as would serve to supply a large family with a "commodity of good names. Once he departed from this custom, and called her "Jenny Dennison." On her inquiring the reason, we showed her "Old Mortality," and asked if she could not guess. "Dear me," said she, "why Jenny Dennison had only two!" Amongst Lucy's twenty |