of foolish persons who accompanied the deputations and accepted the honour of knighthood on the occasion. Amongst these simple personages were two aldermen of Belford, a brewer and a banker, whose daughters, emulous of their fathers' wisdom, were rash enough, at the next monthly assembly, to take place above the daughters of the high sheriff, and the county members, and half the landed gentry of the neighbourhood. The young country ladies behaved with great discretion; they put a stop to the remonstrances of their partners, walked in a mass to the Iother end of the room, formed their own set there, and left the daughters of the new-made knights to go down the dance by themselves. But the result was the establishment of subscription balls, under the direction of a county committee, and a complete exclusion, for the time, at least, of the female inhabitants of Belford.

By some means or other, the gentlemen contrived to creep in as partners, though not much to their own comfort or advantage. The county balls at Belford were amongst the scenes of King Harwood's most notable disappointments; and a story was in circulation (for the truth of which, however, I will not venture to vouch) that our young diplomatist, who, from the day he first entered Oxford to that in which he left it, had been a tuft-hunter by profession, was actually so deceived, by her being on a visit to a noble family in the neighbourhood, as to request the hand of a young lady for the first two dances, who turned out to be nothing better than the sister of the curate of his own parish, who came the very next week to keep her brother's house, a house of six rooms little better than closets, in Belford, who had not the apology of beauty, and , whose surname was Brown!

It follows, from this state of things, that, in tracing the annals of beauty in the Belford ball-room, in our subsequent pages, our portraits must be chiefly drawn from the young ladies of the neighbourhood, the fair damsels of the town (for of many a fair damsel the town could boast) having been driven to other scenes for the display of their attractions. I am not sure that they lost many admirers by the exclusion; for a pretty girl is a pretty girl, even if she chance to live amongst houses and brick walls, instead of trees and green fields, -and, somehow or other, young men will make the discovery. And a pair of bright eyes will do as much execution at a concert, or a lecture, or a horticultural show, or even -with all reverence be it spoken. -at a missionary meeting, as if threading the mazes of the old-fashioned country dance, or dos-à-dosing in the most fashionable quadrille. Nothing breaks down artificial distinctions so certainly as beauty; and so, or I mistake, our Belford lasses have found.

THE OLD EMIGRE. THE town of Belford is, like many of our ancient English boroughs, full of monastic remains, which give an air at once venerable and picturesque to the irregular streets and suburban gardens of the place. Besides the great ruins of the abbey extending over many acres, and the deep and beautiful arched gateway forming part of an old romantic house, which, although erected many centuries later, is now falling to decay, whilst the massive structure of the arch remains firm and vigorous as a rock,*-besides that graceful and shadowy gateway which, with the majestic elms that front it, has formed the subject of almost Cathedral-besides these venerable remains, as many paintings and drawings as Durham every corner of the town presents some relic of "hoar antiquity" to the eye of the curious traveller. Here, a stack of chimneys,-there, a bit of garden wall,-in this place, a stone porch with the date 1172,-in that, an oakenraftered granary of still earlier erection - all give token of the solid architecture of the days when the mitred abbots of the great lodged and kings been buried, (as witness the monastery of Belford, where princes have stone coffins not long since disinterred in the ruined chapel,) were the munificent patrons and absolute suzerains of the good burghers! and their borough town. Even where no such traces exist, the very names of the different localities indicate their connexion with these Street, the Oriel, the Holy Brook, the Abbey powerful Benedictines. Friar Street, Minster Mills,-names which have long outlived, not only the individual monks, but even the proud still attest the extensive influence of the lord foundation by which they were bestowed,abbot. If it be true, according to Lord Byron, that "words are things," still more truly may we say, that names are histories.

Nor were these remains confined to the town. The granges and parks belonging to the widespreading abbey lands, their manors and fisheries, extended for many miles around; and more than one yeoman, in the remoter villages, claims to be descended of the tenants who held farms under the church; whilst many a mouldering parchment indicates the assumption of the abbey property by the crown, or its bestowal on some favourite noble of the court. And, amidst these relics of ecclesiastical pomp and wealth, be it not forgotten, that better things were mingled,-almshouses for the old, hospitals for the sick, and crosses and chapels at which the pilgrim or the way

* It was not, I believe, at this gateway, but at one the very remains of which are now swept away, that the abbot and two of his monks were hanged at the time of the Reformation: a most causeless piece of cruelty, since no resistance was offered by the helpless Benedictines.

farer might offer up his prayers. One of the latter, dedicated to "Our Ladye," was singularly situated on the centre pier of the old bridge at Upton, where, indeed, the original basement, surmounted by a more modern dwelling-house, still continues.

By far the most beautiful ruin in Belford is, however, the east end of an old Friary, situate at the entrance of the town from the pleasant village of Upton above-mentioned, from which it is divided by about half a mile of green meadows sloping down to the great river, with its long straggling bridge, sliding, as it were, into an irregular street of cottages, trees, and gardens, terminated by the old church, embosomed in wood, and crowned by the great chalk-pit, and the high range of Oxfordshire hills.

The end of the old Friary forming the angle between two of the streets of Belford, and being, itself, the last building of the town, commands this pretty pastoral prospect. It is placed in about half an acre of ground, partly cultivated as a garden, partly planted with old orchard trees, standing back from the street on the one side, and the road on the other, apart and divided from every meaner building, except a small white cottage, which is erected against the lower part, and which it surmounts in all the pride of its venerable beauty, retaining almost exactly that form of a pointed arch, to which the groined roof was fitted; almost, but not quite, since, on one side, part of the stones are crumbling away into a picturesque irregularity, whilst the other is overgrown by large masses of ivy, and the snapdragon and the wallflower have contributed to break the outline. The east window, however, is perfect-as perfect as if finished yesterday. And the delicate tracery of that window, the rich fretwork of its Gothic carving, clear as point-lace, regular as the quaint cutting of an Indian fan, have to me especially when the summer sky is seen through those fantastic mouldings, and the ash and elder saplings, which have sprung from the fallen masses below, mingle their fresh and vivid tints with the hoary apple trees of the orchard, and the fine mellow hue of the weather-stained grey stone-a truer combination of that which the mind seeks in ruins, the union of the beautiful and the sad, than any similar scene with which I am acquainted, however aided by silence and solitude, by majestic woods and mighty wa

ters.

ducing the half-unconscious melancholy that steals over the thoughts.

Nothing could be less melancholy than my first recollections of that dwelling, when, a happy school-girl at home for the holidays, I used to open the small wicket, and run up the garden-path, and enter the ever-open door to purchase Mrs. Duval's famous brioches and marangles.

Mrs. Duval had not always lived in the cottage by the Friary. Fifteen years before, she had been a trim black-eyed maiden, the only daughter and heiress of old Anthony Richards, an eminent confectioner in Queen Street. There she had presided over turtle-soup and tartlets, ices and jellies-in short, over the whole business of the counter, with much discretion, her mother being dead, and Anthony keeping close to his territory-the oven. With admirable discretion had Miss Fanny Richards conducted the business of the shop; smiling, civil, and attentive to every body, and yet contriving,-in spite of her gay and pleasant manner, the evident light-heartedness which danced in her sparkling eyes, and her airy steps, and her arch yet innocent speech, a light-heartedness which charmed even the gravest-to avoid any the slightest approach to allurement or coquetry. The most practised recruiting officer that ever lounged in a country town could not strike up a flirtation with Fanny Richards; nor could the more genuine admiration of the raw boy just come from Eton and not yet gone to Oxford, extort the slenderest encouragement from the prudent and right-minded maiden. She returned their presents and laughed at their poetry, and had raised for herself such a reputation for civility and propriety, that, when the French man-cook of a neighbouring nobleman, an artiste of the first water, made his proposals, and her good father, after a little John Bullish demur, on the score of language and country, was won, imitating the example related of some of the old painters to bestow on him his daughter's hand, in reward of the consummate skill of his productions, (a magnificent Pâté de Périgord is said to have been the chef-d'œuvre which gained the fair prize,) not a family in the town or neighbourhood but wished well to the young nymph of the counter, and resolved to do every thing that their protection and patronage could compass for her advantage and comfort.

The excellent character and excellent confectionary of the adroit and agreeable Frenchman completely justified Fanny's choice; and her fond father, from the hour that he chucklingly iced her wedding-cake, and changed his old, homely, black and white inscription of

66

it; indeed, if it had been Arabic, it could hardly have been more unintelligible,) of "Anthony Richards and Louis Duval, man-cooks and restorers," which required the contents of the aforesaid window to explain its meaning to English eyes,-from that triumphant hour to the time of his death, some three years afterwards, never once saw cause to repent that he had intrusted his daughter's fortune and happiness to a foreigner. So completely was his prejudice surmounted, that, when a boy was born, and it was proposed to give him the name of his grandfather, the old man positively refused. Let him be such another Louis Duval as you have been," said he, "and I shall be satisfied."

All prospered in Queen-street, and all deserved to prosper. From the noblemen and gentlemen, at whose houses, on days of high festival, Louis Duval officiated as chef de cuisine, down to the urchins of the street, halfpenny customers whose object it was to get most sweets for their money, all agreed that the cookery and the cakery, the soufflés and the buns, were inimitable. Perhaps the ready and smiling civility, the free and genuine kindness, which looked out and weighed a pennyworth of sugar-plums with an attention as real and as good-natured as that with which an order was taken for a winter dessert, had something to do with this universal popularity. Be that as it may, all prospered, and all deserved to prosper, in Queen-street; and, until the old man died, it would have been difficult, in the town or the country, to fix on a more united, or a happier family. That event, by bringing an accession of property and power to Louis Duval, introduced into his mind a spirit of speculation, an ambition, (if one may apply so grand a word to the projects of a confectioner,) which became as fatal to his fortunes as it has often proved to those of greater men. He became weary of his paltry profits and his provincial success-weary even of the want of competition,- for poor old Mrs. Thomas, the pastry-cook in the market-place, an inert and lumpish personage of astounding dimensions, whose fame, such it was, rested on huge plum-cakes almost as big round as herself, and little better than bread with a few currants interspersed, wherewith, under the plea of wholesomeness, poor children were crammed at school and at home,-poor old Mrs. Thomas could never be regarded as his rival;-these motives, together with the wish to try a wider field, and an unlucky suggestion from his old master, the Earl, that he and his wife would be the very persons for a London hotel, induced him to call in his debts, dispose of his house and business in Queen-street, embark in a large concern in the West-end, and leave Belford altogether.

taking, a great hotel, and with a capital which, though considerable in itself, was yet inadequate to a speculation of such magnitude,

poor Monsieur and Madame Duval (for they had assumed all the Frenchifications possible on setting up in the great city) were tricked, and cheated, and laughed at by her countrymen and by his, and in the course of four years were completely ruined; whilst he, who might always have procured a decent livelihood by going about to different houses as a professor of the culinary art, (for though Louis had lost every thing else, he had not, as he used to observe, and it was a comfort to him, poor fellow! lost his professional reputation,) caught cold by overheating himself in cooking a great dinner, fell into a consumption, and died; leaving his young wife and her little boy friendless and penniless in the wide world.

Under these miserable circumstances, poor Fanny naturally returned to her native town, with some expectation, perhaps, that the patrons and acquaintances of her father and her husband might re-establish her in her old business, for which, having been brought up in the trade, and having retained all the receipts which had made their shop so celebrated, she was peculiarly qualified. But, although surrounded by well-wishers and persons ready to assist her to a certain small extent, Mrs. Duval soon found how difficult it is for any one, especially a woman, to obtain money without security, and without any certainty of repayment. That she had failed once, was reason enough to render people fearful that she might fail again. Besides, her old rival, Mrs. Thomas, was also dead, and had been succeeded by a Quaker couple, so alert, so intelligent, so accurately and delicately clean in all their looks, and ways, and wares, that the very sight of their bright counter, and its simple but tempting cates, gave their customers an appetite. They were the fashion, too, unluckily. Nothing could go down for luncheon in any family of gentility, but Mrs. Purdy's biscuits; and poor Mrs. Duval found her more various and richer confectionary comparatively disregarded. most that her friends could do for her was to place her in the Friary Cottage, where, besides carrying on a small trade with the few old customers who still adhered to herself and her tartlets, she could have the advantage of letting a small bed-chamber and a pleasant little parlour to any lodger desirous of uniting good air, and a close vicinity to a large town, with a situation peculiarly secluded and romantic.

The

Englishwoman that ever made drinkable coffee,) and in the old associations of the precincts ("piece of a cloister") around which the venerable memorials of the ancient faith still lingered even in decay. He might have said, with Antonio, in one of the finest scenes ever conceived by a poet's imagination, that in which the Echo answers from the murdered woman's grave,―

"I do love these ancient ruins; We never tread upon them but we set Our foot upon some reverend history; And, questionless, here in this open court (Which now lies open to the injuries Of stormy weather) some do lie interr'd, Loved the church so well, and gave so largely to 't, They thought it should have canopied their bones Till doomsday: but all things have their end: Churches and cities (which have diseases like to men)

Must have like death that we have."

WEBSTER-Duchess of Malfy.

If such were the inducements that first attracted M. l'Abbé Villaret, he soon found others in the pleasing manners and amiable temper of Mrs. Duval, whose cheerfulness and kindness of heart had not abandoned her in her change of fortune; and in the attaching character of her charming little boy, who singularly tall of his age, and framed with the mixture of strength and delicacy, of pliancy and uprightness, which characterizes the ideal forms of the Greek marbles, and the reality of the human figure amongst the aborigines of North America,* and a countenance dark, sallow, and colourless, but sparkling with expression as that of the natives of the South of Europe, the eye all laughter, the smile all intelligence,-was as unlike in mind as in person to the chubby, ruddy, noisy urchins by whom he was surrounded. Quick, gentle, docile, and graceful to a point of elegance rarely seen even amongst the most carefully-educated children, he might have been placed at court as the page of a fair young queen, and have been the plaything and pet of the maids of honour. The pet of M. l'Abbé he became almost as soon as he saw him; and to that pleasant distinction was speedily added the invaluable advantage of being his pupil.

L'Abbé Villaret had been a cadet of one of the oldest families in France, destined to the church as the birthright of a younger son, but attached to his profession with a seriousness and earnestness not common amongst the gay noblesse of the ancien régime, who too often assumed the petit collet as the badge of one sort of frivolity, just as their elder brothers wielded the sword, and served a campaign or two, by way of excuse for an idleness and dissipation of a different kind. This devotion had of course been greatly increased

* My readers will remember West's exclamation on the first sight of the Apollo," A young Mohawk Indian, by Heaven!"

by the persecution of the church which distinguished the commencement of the Revolu tion. The good Abbé had been marked as one of the earliest victims, and had escaped, through the gratitude of an old servant, from the fate which swept off sisters and brothers, and almost every individual, except himself, of a large and flourishing family. Penniless and solitary, he made his way to England, and found an asylum in the town of Belford, at first assisted by the pittance allowed by our government to those unfortunate foreigners, and subsequently supported by his own exertions as assistant to the priest of the Catholic Chapel in Belford, and as a teacher of the French language in the town and neighbour hood; and so complete had been the ravages of the Revolution in his own family, and so entirely had he established himself in the esteem of his English friends, that when the short peace of Amiens restored so many of his brother émigrés to their native land, he refused to quit the country of his adoption, and remained the contented inhabitant of the Friary Cottage.

The contented and most beloved inhabitant, not only of that small cottage, but of the town to which it belonged, was the good Abbé. Every body loved the kind and placid old man, whose resignation was so real and so cheerful, who had such a talent for making the best of things, whose moral alchymy could extract some good out of every evil, and who seemed only the more indulgent to the faults and follies of others because he had so little cause to require indulgence for his own. One prejudice he had-a lurking predilection in favour of good blood and long descent; the Duke de St. Simon himself would hardly have felt a stronger partiality for the Montmorencies or the Mortemars; and yet so well was this prejudice governed, so closely veiled from all offensive display, that not only la belle et bonne bourgeoise Madame Lane, as he used to call the excellent wife of that great radical leader, but even le gros bourgeois son époux, desperate whig as he was, were amongst the best friends and sincerest well-wishers of our courteous old Frenchman. He was their customer for the little meat that) his economy and his appetite required; and they were his for as many French lessons as their rosy, laughing daughters could be coaxed into taking during the very short interval that elapsed between their respectively leaving school and getting married. How the Miss Lanes came to learn French at all, a piece of finery rather inconsistent with the substantial plainness of their general education, I could not comprehend, until I found that the daughters of Mrs. Green, the grocer, their opposite neighbour, between whom and dear Mrs. Lane there existed a little friendly rivalry, (for, good woman as she was, even Margaret Lane had something of the ordinary frailties of hu