Hell. Even our undoubting manager was posed. Fire seemed to our simple apprehensions a necessary element. The furies must have torches. No dispensing with that engine of horror. Accordingly we erected a sort of artificial rock-work, composed of tables, stools, and trunks of unequal height, over which was flung a large covering of canvass. Towards the centre of this machine we placed a saucer full of burning spirits of wine, emitting much such a flame as I have seen issue at Christmas from a minced-pie floated with burning brandy. Our orchestra was playing "The Soldier Tired;" the whole dramatis personæ, gods and mortals, Greeks and Scots, were assembled on the stage; Orpheus was casting his memorable look back on Eurydice; ! and the furies were lighting their torches at the blazing spirits-when the folding doors flew back, and Madame appeared in the opening, muffled in white drapery, motionless for a moment, and then glided gently in, like another Castle Spectre. One of the Furies, in astonishment at this apparition, dropped her torch, and set fire to the canvass-covering, just as Madame reached the rock-work. The flame caught her eye, and she dexterously whisked off her yellow slipper, and tapped out the fire with its slender heel. I still seem to hear the quick clear sound of those taps. She then gracefully resumed her shoe and her tripping motion, and glided up to Mrs. * with her usual mincing pace. So ended our ballet. We crowded round our dear old friend, and thought no more of Orpheus and Eurydice.

in my recollection. Hedge, ditch, meadow, field, even the very paths and highways, are set with them; but the chief habitat is a certain copse, about a mile off, where they are spread like a carpet, and where I go to visit them rather oftener than quite comports with the dignity of a lady of mature age. I am going thither this very afternoon, and May and her company are going too.

This Mayflower of mine is a strange animal. Instinct and imitation make in her an approach to reason which is sometimes almost startling. She mimics all that she sees us do, with the dexterity of a monkey and far more of gravity and apparent purpose; cracks nuts and eats them; gathers currants and severs them from the stalk with the most delicate nicety; filches and munches apples and pears, is as dangerous in an orchard as a school-boy; smells to flowers; smiles at meeting; answers in a pretty lively voice when spoken to, (sad pity that the language should be unknown!) and has greatly the advantage of us in a conversation, inasmuch as our meaning is certainly clear to her;-all this and a thousand amusing prettinesses, (to say nothing of her canine feat of bringing her game straight to her master's feet, and refusing to resign it to any hand but his) does my beautiful greyhound perform untaught, by the mere effect of imitation and sagacity. Well, May, at the end of the coursing season, having lost Brush, our old spaniel, her great friend, and the blue greyhound Mariette, her comrade and rival, both of which four-footed worthies were sent out to keep for the summer, began to find solitude a weary condition, and to look abroad for company. Now it so happened that the same suspension of sport which had reduced our little establishment from three dogs to one, had also dispersed the splendid kennel of a celebrated courser in our neighbourhood, three of whose finest young dogs APRIL 18th.-Sad wintry weather; a north- came home to "their walk" (as the sporting east wind; a sun that puts out one's eyes, phrase goes) at the collar-maker's in our vilwithout affording the slightest warmth; dry- lage. May, accordingly, on the first morning ness that chaps lips and hands like a frost in of her solitude (she had never taken the slightDecember; rain that comes chilling and ar- est notice of her neighbours before, although rowy like hail in January; nature at a dead they had sojourned in our street upwards of a pause; no seeds up in the garden; no leaves fortnight,) bethought herself of the timely reout in the hedge-rows; no cowslips swinging source offered to her by the vicinity of these their pretty bells in the fields; no nightingales canine beaux, and went up boldly and knocked in the dingles; no swallows skimming round at their stable door, which was already very the great pond; no cuckoos (that ever I should commodiously on the half-latch. The three miss that rascally sonnetteer!) in any part! dogs came out with much alertness and galNevertheless there is something of a charm lantry, and May, declining apparently to enter in this wintery spring, this putting-back of the their territories, brought them off to her own. seasons. If the flower-clock must stand still This manœuvre has been repeated every day, for a month or two, could it choose a better with one variation; of the three dogs, the first time than that of the primroses and violets? a brindle, the second a yellow, and the third I never remember (and for such gauds my a black, the two first only are now admitted memory, if not very good for aught of wise or to walk or consort with her, and the last, poor useful, may be trusted) such an affluence of fellow, for no fault that I can discover, except the one or such a duration of the other. Prim- May's caprice, is driven away, not only by rosy is the epithet which this year will retain the fair lady, but even by his old companions

WALKS IN THE COUNTRY.

THE COPSE.

So forth we set, May and I, and Saladin and the brindle; May and myself walking with the sedateness and decorum befitting our sex and age (she is five years old this grass, rising six)-the young things, for the soldan and the brindle are (not meaning any disrespect) little better than puppies, frisking and frolicking as best pleased them.

- is, so to say, sent to Coventry. Of her court-house, and was still a stately substantwo permitted followers, the yellow gentle- tial building, whose lofty halls and spacious man, Saladin by name, is decidedly the fa- chambers gave an air of grandeur to the comvourite. He is, indeed, May's shadow, and mon offices to which they were applied. will walk with me whether I choose or not. Traces of gilding might yet be seen on the It is quite impossible to get rid of him unless panels which covered the walls, and on the by discarding Miss May also;-and to accom- huge carved chimney-pieces, which rose alplish a walk in the country without her, would most to the ceilings; and the marble tables, be like an adventure of Don Quixote without and the inlaid oak staircase, still spoke of the his faithful 'squire Sancho. former grandeur of the court. Mrs. Sally corresponded well with the date of her mansion, although she troubled herself little with its dignity. She was thoroughly of the old school, and had a most comfortable contempt for the new; rose at four in winter and summer, breakfasted at six, dined at eleven in the forenoon, supped at five, and was regularly in bed before eight, except when the hay-time or the harvest imperiously required her to sit up till sunset,-a necessity to which she submitted with no very good grace. To a deviation from these hours, and to the modern iniquities of white aprons, cotton stockings, and muslin handkerchiefs, (Mrs. Sally herself always wore check, black worsted, and a sort of yellow compound which she was wont to call susy,) together with the invention of drill plough and threshing machines, and other agricultural novelties, she failed to attribute all the mishaps or misdoings of the whole parish. The last-mentioned discovery, especially, aroused her indignation. Oh to hear her descant on the merits of the flail, wielded by a stout right arm, such as she had known in her youth (for by her account there was as great a deterioration in bones and sinews as in the other implements of husbandry,) was enough to make the very inventor break his machine. She would even take up her favourite instrument, and thresh the air herself, by way of illustrating her argument, and, to say truth, few men in these degenerate days, could have matched the stout brawny muscular limb which Mrs. Sally displayed at sixty-five.

Our route lay for the first part along the sheltered quiet lanes which led to our old habitation; a way never trodden by me without peculiar and home-like feelings, full of the recollections, the pains, and pleasures of other days. But we are not to talk sentiment now; -even May would not understand that maudlin language. We must go on. What a wintery hedge-row this is for the eighteenth of April! Primrosy to be sure, abundantly spangled with those stars of the earth,—but so bare, so leafless, so cold! The wind whistles through the brown boughs as in winter. Even the early elder shoots, which do make an approach to springiness, look brown, and the small leaves of the woodbine, which have also ventured to peep forth, are of a sad purple, frost-bitten, like a dairy-maid's elbows on a snowy morning. The very birds in this season of pairing and building, look chilly and uncomfortable, and their nests!- "Oh Saladin! come away from the hedge! Don't you see that what puzzles you and makes you leap up in the air is a redbreast's nest? Don't you see the pretty speckled eggs? Don't you hear the poor hen calling as it were for help? Come here this moment, sir!" And by good luck Saladin (who for a paynim has tolerable qualities) comes, before he has touched the nest, or before his playmate the brindle, the less manageable of the two, has espied it.

Now we go round the corner and cross the bridge, where the common, with its clear stream winding between clumps of elms, assumes so park-like an appearance. Who is this approaching so slowly and majestically, this square bundle of petticoat and cloak, this road-wagon of a woman? It is, it must be, Mrs. Sally Mearing, the completest specimen within my knowledge of farmeresses (may I be allowed that innovation in language?) as they were. It can be nobody else.

In spite of this contumacious rejection of all agricultural improvements, the world went well with her at Court-farm. A good landlord, an easy rent, incessant labour and unremitting frugality, and excellent times, insured a regular though moderate profit; and she lived on, grumbling and prospering, flourishing and complaining, till two misfortunes befell her at once-her father died, and her lease expired. The loss of her father, although a bedridden man, turned of ninety, who could not in the course of nature, have been expected to live long, was a terrible shock to a daughter, who was not so much younger as to be without fears for her own life, and who had besides been so used to nursing the good Mrs. Sally Mearing, when I first became old man, and looking to his little comforts, acquainted with her, occupied, together with that she missed him as a mother would miss her father (a superannuated man of ninety,) a an ailing child. The expiration of the lease large farm very near our former habitation. It was a grievance and a puzzle of a different had been anciently a great manor-farm, or nature. Her landlord would have willingly

retained his excellent tenant, but not on the
terms on which she then held the land, which
had not varied for fifty years: so poor Mrs.
Sally had the misfortune to find rent rising
and prices sinking both at the same moment
a terrible solecism in political economy. Even
this, however, I believe she would have en-
dured rather than have quitted the house
where she was born, and to which all her
ways and notions were adapted, had not a
priggish steward, as much addicted to improve-
ment and reform, as she was to precedent and
established usages, insisted on binding her by
lease to spread a certain number of loads of
chalk on every field. This tremendous inno-
vation, for never had that novelty in manure
whitened the crofts and pightels of Court-
Farm, decided her at once. She threw the
proposals into the fire, and left the place in a
week.

lived-here she is, with the hood of her red cloak pulled over her close black bonnet of that silk which once (it may be presumed) was fashionable, since it is still called mode, and her whole stout figure huddled up in a miscellaneous and most substantial covering of thick petticoats, gowns, aprons, shawls, and cloaks-a weight which it requires the strength of a thresher to walk under-here she is with her square honest visage and her loud frank voice; and we hold a pleasant disjointed chat of rheumatisms and early chickens, bad weather, and hats with feathers in them;

the last exceedingly sore subject being introduced by poor Jane Davies, (a cousin of Mrs. Sally,) who, passing us in a beaver bonnet on her road from school, stopped to drop her little curtsy, and was soundly scolded for her civility. Jane, who is a gentle, humble, smiling lass, about twelve years old, receives Her choice of a habitation occasioned some so many rebukes from her worthy relative, wonder and much amusement in our village and bears them so meekly, that I should not world. To be sure, upon the verge of seventy, wonder if they were to be followed by a an old maid may be permitted to dispense with legacy: I sincerely wish they may. Well, the more rigid punctilio of her class, but Mrs. at last we said good-bye; when, on inquiring Sally had always been so tenacious on the my destination, and hearing that I was bent score of character, so very a prude, so deter- to the ten-acre copse, (part of the farm which mined an avoider of the "men folk," (as she she ruled so long,) she stopped me to tell a was wont contemptuously to call them,) that dismal story of two sheep-stealers who sixty we were all conscious of something like years ago were found hidden in that copse, astonishment, on finding that she and her little and only taken after great difficulty and rehandmaid had taken up their abode in the one sistance, and the maiming of a peace-officer. end of a spacious farm-house belonging to the" Pray don't go there, Miss! For mercy's bluff old bachelor, George Robinson, of the sake don't be so venturesome! Think if they Lea. Now farmer Robinson was quite as no- should kill you!" were the last words of Mrs. torious for his aversion to petticoated things, Sally. as Mrs. Sally for her hatred to the unfeathered Many thanks for her care and kindness! bipeds who wear doublet and hose, so that But without being at all fool-hardy in general, there was a little astonishment in that quarter I have no great fear of the sheep-stealers of too, and plenty of jests, which the honest far-sixty years ago. Even if they escaped hangmer speedily silenced, by telling all who ing for that exploit, I should greatly doubt joked on the subject that he had given his lodger fair warning, that, let people say what they would, he was quite determined not to marry her; so that if she had any views that way, it would be better for her to go elsewhere. This declaration, which must be admitted to have been more remarkable for frankness than civility, made, however, no ill impression on Mrs. Sally. To the farmer's she went, and at his house she still lives, with her little maid, her tabby cat, a decrepit sheepdog, and much of the lumber of Court-Farm, which she could not find in her heart to part from. There she follows her old ways and her old hours, untempted by matrimony, and unassailed (as far as I hear) by love or scandal, with no other grievance than an occasional dearth of employment for herself and her young lass, (even pewter dishes do not always want scouring,) and now and then a twinge of the rheumatism.

Here she is, that good relique of the olden time-for, in spite of her whims and prejudices, a better and a kinder woman never

their being in case to attempt another. So on we go: down the short shady lane, and out on the pretty retired green, shut in by fields and hedge-rows, which we must cross to reach the copse. How lively this green nook is today, half covered with cows and horses and sheep! And how glad these frolicsome greyhounds are to exchange the hard gravel of the high road for this pleasant short turf, which seems made for their gambols! How beautifully they are at play, chasing each other round and round in lessening circles, darting off at all kinds of angles, crossing and recrossing May, and trying to win her sedateness into a game at romps, turning round on each other with gay defiance, pursuing the cows and the colts, leaping up as if to catch the crows in their flight;-all in their harmless and innocent-"Ah wretches! villains! rascals! four-footed mischiefs! canine plagues! Saladin! Brindle!"-They are after the sheep

"Saladin, I say!"-They have actually singled out that pretty spotted lamb-"Brutes, if I catch you! Saladin, Brindle !"-We shall

then three governesses; then two writingmasters; then one music mistress; then a whole school. On leaving school, affronts multiplied of course; and she has been in a constant miff with servants, tradespeople, relations and friends ever since; so that although really pretty (at least she would be so if it were not for a standing frown and a certain watchful defying look in her eyes,) decidedly clever and accomplished, and particularly charitable, as far as giving money goes, (your ill-tempered woman has often that redeeming grace,) she is known only by her one absorbing quality of touchiness, and is dreaded and hated accordingly by every one who has the honour of her acquaintance.

sume to praise Jeanie Deans; thus cutting off his Majesty's lieges from the most approved topic of discussion among civilized people, a neutral ground as open and varions as the weather, and far more delightful. But what did I say? The very weather is with her no prudent word. She pretends to skill in that science of guesses commonly called weatherwisdom, and a fog, or a shower, or a thunderstorm, or the blessed sun himself, may have been rash enough to contradict her bodements, and put her out of humour for the day.

Her own name has all her life long been a fertile source of misery to this unfortunate lady. Her maiden name was Smythe, Anne Smythe. Now Smythe, although perfectly Paying her a visit is one of the most for- genteel and unexceptionable to look at, a patmidable things that can be imagined, one of tern appellation on paper, was in speaking, the trials which in a small way demand the no way distinguishable from the thousands of greatest resolution. It is so difficult to find common Smiths who cumber the world. She what to say. You must make up your mind never heard that "word of fear," especially to the affair as you do when going into a when introduced to a new acquaintance, withshower bath. Differing from her is obviously out looking as if she longed to spell it. Anne pulling the string; and agreeing with her too was bad enough; people had housemaids of often or too pointedly is nearly as bad: she that name, as if to make a confusion; and her then suspects you of suspecting her infirmity, grandmamma insisted on her omitting the final of which she has herself a glimmering con- e, in which important vowel was seated all it sciousness, and treats you with a sharp touch could boast of elegance or dignity; and once of it accordingly. But what is there that she a brother of fifteen, the identical brother Harwill not suspect? Admire the colours of a ry, an Etonian, a pickle, one of that order of new carpet, and she thinks you are looking at clever boys who seem born for the torment of some invisible hole; praise the pattern of a their female relatives, "foredoomed their sismorning cap, and she accuses you of thinking ter's soul to cross," actually went so far as to it too gay. She has an ingenuity of perverse- call her Nancy! She did not box his ears, ness which brings all subjects nearly to a although how near her tingling fingers' ends level. The mention of her neighbours is evi- approached to that consummation, it is not my dently taboo, since it is at least twenty to one business to tell. Having suffered so much but she is in a state of affront with nine-tenths from the perplexity of her equivocal maiden of them; her own family are also taboo for the name, she thought herself most lucky in pitchsame reason. Books are particularly unsafe. ing on the thoroughly well-looking and wellShe stands vibrating on the pinnacle where sounding appellation of Morley for the rest of two fears meet, ready to be suspected of blue- her life. Mrs. Morley-nothing could be betstockingism on the one hand, or of ignorance ter. For once there was a word that did not and frivolity on the other, just as the work affront her. The first alloy to this satisfaction you may chance to name happens to be recon- was her perceiving on the bridal cards, Mr. dite or popular; nay sometimes the same pro- and Mrs. B. Morley, and hearing that close to duction shall excite both feelings. "Have their future residence lived a rich bachelor you read Hajji Baba," said I to her one day last uncle, till whose death that fearful diminution winter, "Hajji Baba the Persian". "Real- of her consequence, the Mrs. B. must be enly, Ma'am, I am no orientalist.". Hajji dured. Mrs. B.! The brow began to wrinBaba the clever Persian tale?" continued kle-but it was the night before the wedding, I, determined not be daunted. "I believe, the uncle had made some compensation for Miss M." rejoined she, "that you think I the crime of being born thirty years before his have nothing better to do than to read novels." nephew in the shape of a superb set of emerAnd so she snip-snaps to the end of the visit. alds, and by a fortunate mistake, she had taken Even the Scotch novels, which she does own it into her head that B. in the present case, to reading, are no resource in her desperate stood for Basil, so that the loss of dignity case. There we are shipwrecked on the rocks being compensated by an increase of elegance, of taste. A difference there is fatal. She she bore the shock pretty well. It was not takes to those delicious books as personal pro- till the next morning during the ceremony, perty, and spreads over them the prickly shield of her protection in the same spirit with which she appropriates her husband and her children; is huffy if you prefer Guy Mannering to the Antiquary, and quite jealous if you pre

that the full extent of her misery burst upon her, and she found that B. stood not for Basil, but for Benjamin. Then the veil fell off; then the full horror of her situation, the affront of being a Mrs. Benjamin, stared her full in