and fortune would have spoiled if they could. She is one of those striking women whom a stranger cannot pass without turning to look again: tall and finely proportioned, with a bold Roman contour of figure and feature, a delicate English complexion, and an air of distinction altogether her own. Her beauty is duchess-like. She seems born to wear feathers and diamonds, and to form the grace and

human voice; ambitious of no other musical fame than such as belongs to the playing of quadrilles and waltzes for their little dances, in which she is indefatigable: she neither caricatures the face of man nor of nature under pretence of drawing figures or landscapes; but she ornaments the reticules, bell-ropes, ottomans, and chair-covers of all her acquaintance, with flowers as rich and luxuriant as her own beauty. She draws patterns for the ig-ornament of a court; and the noble frankness norant, and works flounces, frills, and babylinen, for the idle; she reads aloud to the sick, plays at cards with the old, and loses at chess to the unhappy. Her gift in gossiping, too, is extraordinary; she is a gentle newsmonger, and turns her scandal on the sunny side. But she is an old maid still; and certain small peculiarities hang about her. She is a thorough hoarder; whatever fashion comes up, she is sure to have something of the sort by heror, at least, something thereunto convertible. She is a little superstitious; sees strangers in her tea-cup, gifts in her finger-nails, letters and winding-sheets in the candle, and purses and coffins in the fire; would not spill the salt "for all the worlds that one ever has to give ;" and looks with dismay on a crossed knife and fork. Moreover, she is orderly to fidgetiness; -that is her greatest calamity!-for young ladies now-a-days are not quite so tidy as they should be,-and ladies' maids are much worse; and drawers are tumbled, and drawing-rooms in a litter. Happy she to whom a disarranged drawer can be a misery! Dear and happy Aunt Martha !

WALKS IN THE COUNTRY.

THE VISIT.

and simplicity of her countenance and manner
confirm the impression. Destiny has however
dealt more kindly by her. She is the wife of
a rich country gentleman of high descent and
higher attainments, to whom she is most de-
votedly attached,-the mother of a fine little
girl as lovely as herself, and the delight of all
who have the happiness of her acquaintance,
to whom she is endeared not merely by her
remarkable sweetness of temper and kindness
of heart, but by the singular ingenuousness
and openness of character which communicate
an indescribable charm to her conversation.
She is as transparent as water.
You may see
every colour, every shade of a mind as lofty
and beautiful as her person. Talking with
her is like being in the Palace of Truth, de-
scribed by Madame de Genlis; and yet so
kindly are her feelings, so great the indul-
gence to the little failings and foibles of our
common nature, so intense her sympathy with
the wants, the wishes, the sorrows, and the
happiness of her fellow-creatures, that with
all her frank-speaking, I never knew her to
make an enemy or lose a friend.

But we must get on. What would she say if she knew I was putting her into print? We must get on up the hill. Ah! that is precisely what we are not likely to do! This horse, this beautiful and high-bred horse, well fed, and fat and glossy, who stood prancing at our gate like an Arabian, has suddenly turned sulOCTOBER 27th.-A lovely autumnal day; ky. He does not indeed stand quite still, but the air soft, balmy, genial; the sky of that his way of moving is little better-the slowest softened and delicate blue upon which the eye and most sullen of all walks. Even they who loves to rest, the blue which gives such re-ply the hearse at funerals, sad-looking beasts, lief to the rich beauty of the earth, all around who totter under black feathers, go faster. It glowing in the ripe and mellow tints of the is of no use to admonish him by whip or rein, most gorgeous of the seasons. Really such or word. The rogue has found out that it is an autumn may well compensate our English a weak and tender hand that guides him now. climate for the fine spring of the south, that Oh for one pull, one stroke of his old driver, spring of which the poets talk, but which we the groom! How he would fly! But there so seldom enjoy. Such an autumn glows upon is the groom half-a-mile before us, out of earus like a splendid evening; it is the very sun- shot, clearing the ground at a capital rate, set of the year and I have been tempted beating us hollow. He has just turned the top forth into a wider range of enjoyment than of the hill;-and in a moment-ay, now he is usual. This walk (if I may use the Irish out of sight, and will undoubtedly so continue figure of speech called a bull) will be a ride. till he meets us at the lawn gate. Well! there A very dear friend has beguiled me into ac- is no great harm. It is only prolonging the companying her in her pretty equipage to her pleasure of enjoying together this charming beautiful home, four miles off; and having sent forward in the style of a running footman the servant who had driven her, she assumes the reins, and off we set.

My fair companion is a person whom nature

scenery in this fine weather. If once we make up our minds not to care how slowly our steed goes, not to fret ourselves by vain exertions, it is no matter what his pace may be. There is little doubt of his getting home by sunset,

and that will content us. He is, after all, a fine noble animal; and perhaps when he finds that we are determined to give him his way, he may relent and give us ours. All his sex are sticklers for dominion, though when it is undisputed, some of them are generous enough to abandon it. Two or three of the most discreet wives of my acquaintance contrive to manage their husbands sufficiently with no better secret than this seeming submission; and in our case the example has the more weight since we have no possible way of helping ourselves.

Thus philosophising, we reached the top of the hill, and viewed with "reverted eyes" the beautiful prospect that lay bathed in golden sunshine behind us. Cowper says, with that boldness of expressing in poetry the commonest and simplest feelings, which is perhaps one great secret of his originality,

its past and future glories; for, alas! cricket is over for the season. Ah! it is Ben Kirby, next brother to Joe, king of the youngsters, and probably his successor-for this Michaelmas has cost us Joe. He is promoted from the farm to the mansion-house, two miles off: there he cleans shoes, rubs knives, and runs upon errands, and is, as his mother expresses it, "a sort of 'prentice to the footman."-I should not wonder if Joe, some day or other, should overtop the footman, and rise to be butler; and his splendid prospects must be our consolation for the loss of this great favourite. In the mean time we have Ben.

Ben Kirby is a year younger than Joe, and the schoolfellow and rival of Jem Eusden. To be sure his abilities lie in rather a different line: Jem is a scholar; Ben is a wag: Jem is great in figures and writing; Ben in faces and mischief. His master says of him, that, if there were two such in the school, he must resign his office: and, as far as my observation goes, the worthy pedagogue is right. Ben is, it must be confessed, a great corrupter of gravity. He hath an exceeding aversion to authority and decorum, and a wonderful boldness and dexterity in overthrowing the one and puzzling the other. His contortions of visage are astounding. His " power over his own muscles and those of other people,"

"Scenes must be beautiful, which, daily seen, Please daily, and whose novelty survives Long knowledge and the scrutiny of years." Every day I walk up this hill-every day I pause at the top to admire the broad winding road with the green waste on each side, uniting it with the thickly timbered hedgerows; the two pretty cottages at unequal distances, placed so as to mark the bends; the village beyond, with its mass of roofs and clustered is almost equal to that of Liston: and indeed chimneys peeping through the trees; and the original face, flat and square and Chinese the rich distance, where cottages, mansions, in its shape, of a fine tan complexion, with a churches, towns, seem embowered in some snub nose, and a slit for a mouth, is nearly as wide forest, and shut in by blue shadowy bills. comical as that matchless performer's. When Every day I admire this most beautiful land-aided by Ben's singular mobility of feature, scape; yet never did it seem to me so fine or so glowing as now. All the tints of the glorious autumn, orange, tawny, yellow, red, are poured in profusion amongst the bright greens of the meadows and turnip fields, till the eye is satiated with colour; and then before us we have the common with its picturesque roughness of surface, tufted with cottages, dappled with water, edging off on one side into fields and farms and orchards, and terminated on the other by the princely oak avenue. What a richness and variety the wild broken ground gives to the luxuriant cultivation of the rest of the landscape! Cowper has described it How perpetually, as we walk in the country, his vivid pictures recur to the memory! Here is his common and mine!

for me.

"The common overgrown with fern, and rough With prickly gorse, that, shapeless and deform'd And dangerous to the touch, has yet its bloom, And decks itself with ornaments of gold ;there the turf Smells fresh, and, rich in odoriferous herbs And fungous fruits of earth, regales the sense With luxury of unexpected sweets." The description is exact. There, too, to the left is my cricket-ground; (Cowper's common wanted that finishing grace;) and there stands one solitary urchin, as if in contemplation of

his knowing winks and grins and shrugs and nods, together with a certain dry shrewdness, a habit of saying sharp things, and a marvelous gift of impudence, it forms as fine a specimen as possible of a humorous country boy, an oddity in embryo. Every body likes Ben, except his butts; (which may comprise half his acquaintance;) and of them no one so thoroughly hates and dreads him as our parish school-master, a most worthy King Log, whom Ben dumfounds twenty times a day. He is a great ornament of the cricket-ground, has a real genius for the game, and displays it after a very original manner, under the disguise of awkwardness-as the clown shows off his agility in a pantomime. Nothing comes amiss to him.-By the by, he would have been the very lad for us in our present dilemma; not a horse in England could master Ben Kirby. But we are too far from him now-and perhaps it is as well that we are so. I believe that the rogue has a kindness for me in remembrance of certain apples and nuts, which my usual companion, who delights in his wit, is accustomed to dole out to him. But it is a Robin Goodfellow, nevertheless, a perfect Puck that loves nothing on earth so well as mischief. Perhaps the horse may be the safer conductor of the two.

The avenue is quite alive to-day. Old women are picking up twigs and acorns, and pigs of all sizes doing their utmost to spare them the latter part of the trouble; boys and girls groping for beech-nuts under yonder clump; and a group of young elves collecting as many dead leaves as they can find to feed the bonfire which is smoking away so briskly amongst the trees, a sort of rehearsal of the grand bonfire nine days hence; of the loyal conflagration of the arch traitor Guy Fawkes, which is annually solemnized in the avenue, accompanied by as much squibbery and crackery as our boys can beg or borrow-not to say steal. Ben Kirby is a great man on the 5th of November. All the savings of a month, the hoarded halfpence, the new farthings, the very luck-penny go off in fumo on that night. For my part, I like this daylight mockery better. There is no gunpowder-odious gunpowder! no noise but the merry shouts of the small fry, so shrill and happy, and the cawing of the rooks who are wheeling in large circles overhead, and wondering what is going forward in their territory-seeming in their loud clamour to ask what that light smoke may mean that curls so prettily amongst their old oaks, towering as if to meet the clouds. There is something very intelligent in the ways of that black people the rooks, particularly in their wonder. I suppose it results from their numbers and unity of purpose, a sort of collective and corporate wisdom. Yet geese congregate also; and geese never by any chance look wise. But then geese are a domestic fowl; we have spoiled them; and rooks are free commoners of nature, who use the habitations we provide for them, tenant our groves and our avenues, and never dream of becoming our subjects.

wagon, with its load of flour, and its four fat horses. I wonder whether our horse will have the decency to get out of the way. If he does not, I am sure we cannot make him; and that enormous ship upon wheels, that ark on dry land, would roll over us like the car of Juggernaut. Really-Oh no! there is no danger now. I should have remembered that it is my friend Samuel Long who drives the millteam. He will take care of us. "Thank you, Samuel!" And Samuel has put us on our way, steered us safely past his wagon, escorted us over the bridge; and now, having seen us through our immediate difficulties, has parted from us with a very civil bow and good-humoured smile, as one who is always civil and good-humoured, but with a certain triumphant masterful look in his eyes, which I have noted in men, even the best of them, when a woman gets into straits by attempting manly employments. He has done us great good though, and may be allowed his little feeling of superiority. The parting salute he bestowed on our steed, in the shape of an astounding crack of his huge whip, has put that refractory animal on his mettle. On we go fast! past the glazier's pretty house, with its porch and its filbert walk; along the narrow lane bordered with elms, whose fallen leaves have made the road one yellow; past that little farm-house with the horse-chesnut trees before, glowing like oranges; past the whitewashed school on the other side, gay with October roses; past the park, and the lodge, and the mansion, where once dwelt the great earl of Clarendon; -and now the rascal has begun to discover that Samuel Long and his whip are a mile off, and that his mistress is driving him, and he slackens his pace accordWhat a labyrinth of a road this is! I do ingly. Perhaps he feels the beauty of the think there are four turnings in the short half- road just here, and goes slowly to enjoy it. mile between the avenue and the mill. And Very beautiful it certainly is. The park pal-what a pity, as my companion observes-not ing forms the boundary on one side, with fine that our good and jolly miller, the very repre- clumps of oak, and deer in all attitudes; the sentative of the old English yeomanry, should water, tufted with alders, flowing along on be so rich, but that one consequence of his the other. Another turn, and the water winds riches should be the pulling down of the pret-away, succeeded by a low hedge, and a sweep tiest old mill that ever looked at itself in the Loddon, with the picturesque low-browed irregular cottage, which stood with its lightpointed roof, its clustered chimneys, and its ever-open door, looking like the real abode of comfort and hospitality, to build this huge, staring, frightful, red-brick mill, as ugly as a manufactory, and this great square house, ugly and red to match, just behind. The old buildings always used to remind me of Wollett's beautiful engraving of a scene in the Maid of the Mill. It will be long before any artist will make a drawing of this. Only think of this redness in a picture! this boiled lobster of a house! Falstaff's description of Bardolph's nose would look pale in the compari

son.

Here is that monstrous machine of a tilted

of green meadows; whilst the park and its
paling are replaced by a steep bank, on which
stands a small, quiet, village ale-house; and
higher up, embosomed in wood, is the little
country church, with its sloping church-yard
and its low white steeple, peeping out from
amongst magnificent yew-trees:

Huge trunks! and each particular trunk a growth
Of intertwisted fibres serpentine
Up-coiling and invet'rately convolved."

WORDSWORTH.

No village-church was ever more happily placed. It is the very image of the peace and humbleness inculcated within its walls.

Ah! here is a higher hill rising before us, almost like a mountain. How grandly the view opens as we ascend over that wild bank, overgrown with fern, and heath, and gorse,

I

and between those tall hollies, glowing with tural beauty, developed and heightened by the their coral berries! What an expanse! But perfection of art. All this, indeed, was famiwe have little time to gaze at present; for that liar to me; the colouring only was new. piece of perversity, our horse, who has walked had been there in early spring, when the over so much level ground, has now, inspired, fragrant palms were on the willow, and the I presume, by a desire to revisit his stable, yellow tassels on the hazel, and every twig taken it into that unaccountable noddle of his was swelling with renewed life; and I had to trot up this, the very steepest hill in the been there again and again in the green leaficounty. Here we are on the top; and in five ness of midsummer; but never as now, when minutes we have reached the lawn gate, and the dark verdure of the fir-plantations, hanging are in the very midst of that beautiful piece over the picturesque and unequal paling, partof art or nature (I do not know to which class ly covered with moss and ivy, contrast so reit belongs,) the pleasure-ground of F. Hill. markably with the shining orange-leaves of Never was the "prophetic eye of taste" ex- the beech, already half fallen, the pale yellow erted with more magical skill than in these of the scattering elm, the deeper and richer plantations. Thirty years ago this place had tints of the oak, and the glossy stems of the no existence; it was a mere undistinguished "lady of the woods," the delicate weeping tract of field and meadow and common land; birch. The underwood is no less picturesque. now it is a mimic forest, delighting the eye The red-spotted leaves and redder berries of the with the finest combinations of trees and old thorns, the scarlet festoons of the bramble, shrubs, the rarest effects of form and foliage, the tall fern of every hue, seem to vie with and bewildering the mind with its green the brilliant mosaic of the ground, now coverglades, and impervious recesses, and appa- ed with dead leaves and strewn with fir-cones, rently interminable extent. It is the triumph now, where a little glade intervenes, gay with of landscape gardening, and never more beau- various mosses and splendid fungi. How tiful than in this autumn sunset, lighting up beautiful is this coppice to-day! especially the ruddy beech and the spotted sycamore, where the little spring, as clear as crystal, and gilding the shining fir-cones that hang so comes bubbling out from the "old fantastic" thickly amongst the dark pines. The robins beech root, and trickles over the grass, bright are singing around us, as if they too felt the and silent as the dew in a May morning. The magic of the hour. How gracefully the road wood pigeons (who are just returned from winds through the leafy labyrinth, leading their summer migration, and are cropping the imperceptibly to the more ornamented sweep. ivy berries) add their low cooings, the very Here we are at the door amidst geraniums, note of love, to the slight fluttering of the and carnations, and jasmines, still in flower. fallen leaves in the quiet air, giving a voice to Ah! here is a flower sweeter than all, a bird the sunshine and the beauty. This coppice is gayer than the robin, the little bird that chirps a place to live and die in. But we must go. to the tune of "mamma! mamma!" the And how fine is the ascent which leads us bright-faced fairy, whose tiny feet come pat- again into the world, past those cottages hidtering along, making a merry music, mam- den as in a pit, and by that hanging orchard ma's own Frances! And following her gui- and that rough heathy bank! The scenery in dance, here we are in the dear round room, this one spot has a wildness, an abruptness time enough to catch the last rays of the sun, of rise and fall, rare in any part of England, as they light the noble landscape which lies rare above all in this rich and lovely but molike a panorama around us, lingering longest notonous county. It is Switzerland in miniaon that long island of old thorns and stunted ture. oaks, the oasis of B. Heath, and then vanishing in a succession of gorgeous clouds.

October 28.-Another soft and brilliant morning. But the pleasures of to-day must be written in short-hand. I have left myself no room for notes of admiration.

And now we cross the hill to pay a morning visit to the family at the great house,-another fine place, commanding another fine sweep of country. The park studded with old trees and sinking gently into a valley, rich in wood and water, is in the best style of ornamental landscape, though more according to the common routine of gentlemen's seats than the singularly original place which we have just left. There is, however, one distinctive beauty in the grounds of the great house;-the magnificent firs which shade the terraces and sur

First we drove about the coppice; an extensive wood of oak, and elm, and beech, chiefly the former, which adjoins the park paling of F. Hill, of which demesne, indeed, it forms one of the most delightful parts. The roads through the coppice are studiously wild, so that they bave the appearance of mere cart-round the sweep, giving out in summer odours tracts; and the manner in which the ground really Sabæan, and now in this low autumn is tumbled about, the steep declivities, the sun producing an effect almost magical, as the sunny slopes, the sudden swells and falls, huge red trunks, garlanded with ivy, stand out now a close narrow valley, then a sharp as- from the deep shadows like an army of giants. cent to an eminence, commanding an immense In-doors-Oh I must not take my readers inextent of prospect, have a striking air of na-doors, or we shall never get away!-In-doors

the sunshine is brighter still; for there, in a court, and fairly to drive through the front lofty lightsome room, sits a damsel fair and garden, thereby destroying sundry curious arch and piquante, one whom Titian or Velas- stocks, carnations, and geraniums. It is a quez should be born again to paint, leaning mercy that the unruly steed was content with over an instrument* as sparkling and fanciful battering the wall; for the messuage itself as herself, singing pretty French romances, would come about our ears at the touch of a and Scottish Jacobite songs, and all sorts of finger, and really there is one little end pargraceful and airy drolleries picked up I know lour, an after-thought of the original builder, not where-(an English improvvisatrice! a which stands so temptingly in the way, that gayer Annot Lyle! whilst her sister, of a I wonder the sagacious quadruped missed it. higher order of beauty, and with an earnest There was quite din enough without that adkindness in her smile that deepens its power, dition. The three insides (ladies) squalling lends to the piano, as her father to the violin, from the interior of that commodious vehicle; an expression, a sensibility, a spirit, an elo- the outsides (gentlemen) swearing on the roof; quence, almost superhuman-almost divine! the coachman still half asleep, but unconsciousOh to hear these two instruments accompany-ly blowing his horn; we in the house screaming my dear companion (I forgot to say that ing and scolding; the passers-by shouting and she is a singer worthy to be so accompanied) hallooing; and May, who little brooked such in Haydn's exquisite canzonet, "She never an invasion of her territories, barking in her told her love," to hear her voice, with all its tremendous lion-note, and putting down the power, its sweetness, its gush of sound, so other noises like a clap of thunder. But passustained and assisted by modulations that ri- sengers, coachman, horses, and spectators, all valled its intensity of expression; to hear at righted at last; and there is no harm done but once such poetry, such music, such execution, to my flowers and to the wall. May, howis a pleasure never to be forgotten, or mixed ever, stands bewailing the ruins, for that low with meaner things. I seem to hear it still. wall was her favourite haunt; she used to parade backwards and forwards on the top of it, as if to show herself, just after the manner of a peacock on the top of a house; and would sit or lie for hours on the corner next the gate, basking in the sunshine like a marble statue. Really she has quite the air of one who laments the destruction of personal property; but the wall is to be rebuilt to-morrow, with old weather-stained bricks-no patch-work! and exactly in the same form; May herself will not find the difference; so that in the way of alteration this little misfortune will pass for nothing. Neither have we any improvements worth calling such. Except that the wheeler's green door hath been retouched, out of the same pot (as I judge from the tint) with

As in the bursting spring-time o'er the eye

Of one who haunts the fields fair visions creep
Beneath the closed lids (afore dull sleep
Dims the quick fancy) of sweet flowers that lie
On grassy banks, oxlip of orient dye,

And palest primrose and blue violet,
All in their fresh and dewy beauty set,
Pictur'd within the sense, and will not fly:
So in mine ear resounds and lives again

One mingled melody,-a voice, a pair
Of instruments most voice-like! Of the air
Rather than of the earth seems that high strain
A spirit's song, and worthy of the train

That sooth'd old Prospero with music rare.

A PARTING GLANCE AT OUR which he furbished up our new-old pony

VILLAGE.

chaise; that the shop-window of our neighbour, the universal dealer, hath been beautiIr is now eighteen months since our village fied, and his name and calling splendidly set first sat for its picture, and I cannot say fare- forth in yellow letters on a black ground; and well to my courteous readers, without giving that our landlord of the Rose hath hoisted a them some little intelligence of our goings on, new sign of unparalleled splendour; one side a sort of parting glance at us and our condi- consisting of a full-faced damask rose, of the tion. In outward appearance it hath, I sup- size and hue of a piony, the other of a maiden pose, undergone less alteration than any place blush in profile, which looks exactly like a of its inches in the kingdom. There it stands, carnation, so that both flowers are considerathe same long straggling street of pretty cot-bly indebted to the modesty of the "out-oftages, divided by pretty gardens, wholly unchanged in size or appearance, unincreased and undiminished by a single brick. To be sure, yesterday evening a slight misfortune happened to our goodly tenement, occasioned by the unlucky diligence mentioned in my first notice, which, under the conduct of a sleepy coachman, and a restive horse, contrived to knock down and demolish the wall of our

The dital harp.

door artist," who has warily written The Rose under each;-except these trifling ornaments, which nothing but the jealous eye of a lover could detect, the dear place is altogether unchanged.

The only real improvement with which we have been visited for our sins-(I hate all innovation, whether for better or worse, as if I was a furious Tory, or a woman of three-score and ten) the only misfortune of that sort which has befallen us, is underfoot. The road