OUR VILLAGE

By Mary Russell Mitford

1893 Macmillan and Co. Edition. 

CONTENTS

 INTRODUCTION COUNTRY PICTURES WALKS IN THE COUNTRY THE FIRST PRIMROSE VIOLETING THE COPSE THE WOOD THE DELL THE COWSLIP-BALL THE OLD HOUSE AT ABERLEIGH THE HARD SUMMER THE SHAW NUTTING THE VISIT HANNAH BINT THE FALL OF THE LEAF

Introduction by Anne Thackeray Ritchie

I. 

There is a great deal of admirable literature concerning Miss Mitford, so much of it indeed, that the writer of this little notice feels as ifshe almost owed an apology to those who remember, for having ventured towrite, on hearsay only, and without having ever known or ever seenthe author of 'Our Village. ' And yet, so vivid is the homely friendlypresence, so clear the sound of that voice 'like a chime of bells, ' withits hospitable cheery greeting, that she can scarcely realise that thisacquaintance exists only in the world of the might-have-beens. 

For people who are beginning to remember, rather than looking forwardany more, there certainly exists no more delightful reading than thememoirs and stories of heroes and heroines, many of whom we ourselvesmay have seen, and to whom we may have spoken. As we read on we are ledinto some happy bygone region, --such as that one described by Mr. DuMaurier in 'Peter Ibbetson, '--a region in which we ourselves, togetherwith all our friends and acquaintances, grow young again;--very young, very brisk, very hopeful. The people we love are there, along with thepeople we remember. Music begins to play, we are dancing, laughing, scampering over the country once more; our parents too are young andlaughing cheerily. Every now and then perhaps some old friend, alsovigorous and hopeful, bursts into the book, and begins to talk or towrite a letter; early sights and sounds return to us, we have NOW, andwe have THEN, in a pleasant harmony. To those of a certain literarygeneration who read Miss Mitford's memoirs, how many such familiarpresences and names must appear and reappear. Not least among themthat of her biographer, Mr. Harness himself, who was so valued by hisfriends. Mrs. Kemble, Mrs. Sartoris, Charles Allston Collins, alwaystalked of him with a great respect and tenderness. I used to think theyhad a special voice with which to speak his name. He was never amongour intimate friends, but how familiar to my recollection are thetwo figures, that of Mr. Harness and Miss Harness, his sister andhousekeeper, coming together along the busy Kensington roadway. Thebrother and sister were like characters out of some book, with theirkind faces, their simple spiritual ways; in touch with so much that wasinteresting and romantic, and in heart with so much that suffered. Iremember him with grey hair and a smile. He was not tall; he walkedrather lame; Miss Harness too was little, looking up at all the rest ofthe world with a kind round face and sparkling eyes fringed with thicklashes. Mary Mitford was indeed happy in her friends, as happy as shewas unfortunate in her nearer relations. 

With much that is sad, there is a great deal of beauty and enjoyment inMiss Mitford's life. For her the absence of material happiness was madeup for by the presence of warm-hearted sensibility, of enthusiasm, byher devotion to her parents. Her long endurance and filial piety arevery remarkable, her loving heart carried her safely to the end, and shefound comfort in her unreasoning life's devotion. She had none of therestlessness which is so apt to spoil much that might be harmonious;all the charm of a certain unity and simplicity of motive is hers, 'thesingle eye, ' of which Charles Kingsley wrote so sweetly. She lovedher home, her trees, her surrounding lanes and commons. She loved herfriends. Her books and flowers are real and important events in herlife, soothing and distracting her from the contemplation of itsconstant anxieties. 'I may truly say, ' she once writes to Miss Barrett, 'that ever since I was a very young girl, I have never (although forsome years living apparently in affluence) been without pecuniarycare, --the care that pressed upon my thoughts the last thing at night, and woke in the morning with a dreary sense of pain and pressure, ofsomething which weighed me to the earth. '

Mary Russell Mitford was born on the 16th of December 1787. She was theonly child of her parents, who were well connected; her mother was anheiress. Her father belonged to the Mitfords of the North. She describesherself as 'a puny child, with an affluence of curls which made her lookas if she were twin sister to her own great doll. ' She could read atthree years old; she learnt the Percy ballads by heart almost before shecould read. Long after, she used to describe how she first studied herbeloved ballads in the breakfast-room lined with books, warmly spreadwith its Turkey carpet, with its bright fire, easy chairs, and thewindows opening to a garden full of flowers, --stocks, honeysuckles, andpinks. It is touching to note how, all through her difficult life, her path was (literally) lined with flowers, and how the love of themcomforted and cheered her from the first to the very last. In hersaddest hours, the passing fragrance and beauty of her favouritegeraniums cheered and revived her. Even when her mother died she foundcomfort in the plants they had tended together, and at the very lastbreaks into delighted descriptions of them. 

She was sent to school in the year 1798 to No. 22 Hans Place, to a Mrs. St. Quintin's. It seems to have been an excellent establishment. Marylearnt the harp and astronomy; her taste for literature was encouraged. The young ladies, attired as shepherdesses, were also taught to skipthrough many mazy movements, but she never distinguished herself as ashepherdess. She had greater success in her literary efforts, and hercomposition 'on balloons' was much applauded. She returned to her homein 1802. 'Plain in figure and in face, she was never common-looking, 'says Mr. Harness. He gives a pretty description of her as 'no ordinarychild, her sweet smiles, her animated conversation, her keen enjoymentof life, and her gentle voice won the love and admiration of herfriends, whether young or old. ' Mr. Harness has chiefly told MissMitford's story in her own words by quotations from her letters, and, asone reads, one can almost follow her moods as they succeed each other, and these moods are her real history. The assiduity of childhood, thebright enthusiasm and gaiety of her early days, the growing anxiety ofher later life, the maturer judgments, the occasional despairingterrors which came to try her bright nature, but along with it all, thatinnocent and enduring hopefulness which never really deserted her. Herelastic spirit she owed to her father, that incorrigible old Skimpole. 'I am generally happy everywhere, ' she writes in her youth--and thenlater on: 'It is a great pleasure to me to love and to admire, this is afaculty which has survived many frosts and storms. ' It is true thatshe adds a query somewhere else, 'Did you ever remark how superior oldgaiety is to new?' she asks. 

Her handsome father, her plain and long-enduring mother, are bothunconsciously described in her correspondence. 'The Doctor's mannerswere easy, natural, cordial, and apparently extremely frank, ' says Mr. Harness, 'but he nevertheless met the world on its own terms, and wasprepared to allow himself any insincerity which seemed expedient. He wasnot only recklessly extravagant, but addicted to high play. His wife'slarge fortune, his daughter's, his own patrimony, all passed through hishands in an incredibly short space of time, but his wife and daughterwere never heard to complain of his conduct, nor appeared to admire himless. '

The story of Miss Mitford's 20, 000 pounds is unique among the adventuresof authoresses. Dr. Mitford, having spent all his wife's fortune, andhaving brought his family from a comfortable home, with flowers and aTurkey carpet, to a small lodging near Blackfriars Bridge, determined topresent his daughter with an expensive lottery ticket on the occasionof her tenth birthday. She had a fancy for No. 2224, of which the addednumbers came to 10. This number actually came out the first prize of20, 000 pounds, which money started the family once more in comparativeaffluence. Dr. Mitford immediately built a new square house, which hecalls Bertram House, on the site of a pretty old farmhouse which hecauses to be pulled down. He also orders a dessert-service painted withthe Mitford arms; Mrs. Mitford is supplied with a carriage, and shesubscribes to a circulating library. 

A list still exists of the books taken out by her for her daughter'suse; some fifty-five volumes a month, chiefly trash: 'Vicenza, ' 'ASailor's Friendship and Soldier's Love, ' 'Clarentina, ' 'Robert andAdela, ' 'The Count de Valmont, ' 'The Three Spaniards, ' 'De Clifford' (infour volumes) and so on. 

The next two or three years were brilliant enough; for the familymust have lived at the rate of three or four thousand a year. Theirhospitality was profuse, they had servants, carriages, they boughtpictures and furniture, they entertained. Cobbett was among theirintimate friends. The Doctor naturally enough invested in a good manymore lottery tickets, but without any further return. 

The ladies seem to take it as a matter of course that he shouldspeculate and gamble at cards, and indeed do anything and everything hefancied, but they beg him at least to keep to respectable clubs. He isconstantly away. His daughter tries to tempt him home with the bloom ofher hyacinths. 'How they long to see him again!' she says, 'how greatlyhave they been disappointed, when, every day, the journey to Reading hasbeen fruitless. The driver of the Reading coach is quite accustomedto being waylaid by their carriage. ' Then she tells him about theprimroses, but neither hyacinths nor primroses bring the Doctor awayfrom his cards. Finally, the rhododendrons and the azaleas are in bloom, but these also fail to attract him. 

Miss Mitford herself as she grows up is sent to London more thanonce, to the St. Quintin's and elsewhere. She goes to the play and toWestminster Hall, she sees her hero, Charles James Fox, and has thehappiness of watching him helped on to his horse. Mr. Romilly delightsher, but her greatest favourite of all is Mr. Whitbread. 'You know I amalways an enthusiast, ' she writes, 'but at present it is impossible todescribe the admiration I feel for this exalted character. ' She speaksof his voice 'which she could listen to with transport even if he spokein an unknown language!' she writes a sonnet to him, 'an impromptu, onhearing Mr. Whitbread declare in Westminster Hall that he fondly trustedhis name would descend to posterity. '

 'The hope of Fame thy noble bosom fires, Nor vain the hope thy ardent mind inspires; In British breasts whilst Purity remains, Whilst Liberty her blessed abode retains, Still shall the muse of History proclaim To future ages thy immortal name!'

There are many references to the celebrities of the time in herletters home, --every one agrees as to the extreme folly of Sheridan'sentertainments, Mrs. Opie is spoken of as a rising authoress, etc. Etc. Etc. 

Miss Austen used to go to 23 Hans Place, and Miss Mitford used to stayat No. 22, but not at the same time. Mrs. Mitford had known Miss Austenas a child. She may perhaps be forgiven for some prejudice and maternaljealousy, in her later impressions, but Mary Mitford admired Jane Austenalways with warmest enthusiasm. She writes to her mother at length fromLondon, describing everything, all the people and books and experiencesthat she comes across, --the elegant suppers at Brompton, the Grecianlamps, Mr. Barker's beauty, Mr. Plummer's plainness, and the destructionof her purple gown. 

Mrs. Mitford writes back in return describing Reading festivities, 'anagreeable dinner at Doctor Valpy's, where Mrs. Women and Miss Peacockare present and Mr. J. Simpson, M. P. ; the dinner very good, two fullcourses and one remove, the soup giving place to one quarter of lamb. 'Mrs. Mitford sends a menu of every dinner she goes to. 

In 1806 Dr. Mitford takes his daughter, who was then about nineteen, to the North to visit his relations; they are entertained by thegrandparents of the Trevelyans and the Swinburnes, the Ogles and theMitfords of the present day. They fish in Sir John Swinburne's lake, they visit at Alnwick Castle. Miss Mitford kept her front hair in paperstill she reached Alnwick, nor was her dress discomposed though she hadtravelled thirty miles. They sat down, sixty-five to dinner, which was'of course' (she somewhat magnificently says) entirely served on plate. Poor Mary's pleasure is very much dashed by the sudden disappearanceof her father, --Dr. Mitford was in the habit of doing anything he feltinclined to do at once and on the spot, quite irrespectively of theconvenience of others, --and although a party had been arranged onpurpose to meet him in the North, and his daughter was counting on hisescort to return home, (people posted in those days, they did not taketheir tickets direct from Newcastle to London), Dr. Mitford one morningleaves word that he has gone off to attend the Reading election, wherehis presence was not in the least required. For the first and apparentlyfor the only time in her life his daughter protests. 'Mr. Ogle isextremely offended; nothing but your immediate return can ever excuseyou to him! I IMPLORE you to return, I call upon Mamma's sense ofpropriety to send you here directly. Little did I suspect that myfather, my beloved father, would desert me at this distance from home!Every one is surprised. ' Dr. Mitford was finally persuaded to travelback to Northumberland to fetch his daughter. 

The constant companionship of Dr. Mitford must have given a curiouscolour to his good and upright daughter's views of life. Adoring herfather as she did, she must have soon accustomed herself to take hisfine speeches for fine actions, to accept his self-complacency in theplace of a conscience. She was a woman of warm impressions, with astrong sense of right. But it was not within her daily experience, poorsoul, that people who did not make grand professions were ready to dotheir duty all the same; nor did she always depend upon the uprightness, the courage, the self-denial of those who made no protestations. At thattime loud talking was still the fashion, and loud living was consideredromantic. They both exist among us, but they are less admired, andthere is a different language spoken now to that of Dr. Mitford and hisschool. * This must account for some of Miss Mitford's judgments of whatshe calls a 'cynical' generation, to which she did little justice. 

 *People nowadays are more ready to laugh than to admire when they hear the lions bray; for mewing and bleating, the taste, I fear, is on the increase. 

II. 

There is one penalty people pay for being authors, which is that fromcultivating vivid impressions and mental pictures they are apt to takefancies too seriously and to mistake them for reality. In story-tellingthis is well enough, and it interferes with nobody; but in real history, and in one's own history most of all, this faculty is apt to raiseup bogies and nightmares along one's path; and while one is fightingimaginary demons, the good things and true are passed by unnoticed, thebest realities of life are sometimes overlooked.... 

But after all, Mary Russell Mitford, who spent most of her timegathering figs off thistles and making the best of her difficultcircumstances, suffered less than many people do from the influence ofimaginary things. 

She was twenty-three years old when her first book of poems waspublished; so we read in her letters, in which she entreats her fathernot to curtail ANY of the verses addressed to him; there is noreason, she says, except his EXTREME MODESTY why the verses should besuppressed, --she speaks not only with the fondness of a daughter butwith the sensibility of a poet. Our young authoress is modest, althoughin print; she compares herself to Crabbe (as Jane Austen might havedone), and feels 'what she supposes a farthing candle would experiencewhen the sun rises in all its glory. ' Then comes the Publisher'sbill for 59 pounds; she is quite shocked at the bill, which is reallyexorbitant! In her next letter Miss Mitford reminds her father thatthe taxes are still unpaid, and a correspondence follows with somebodyasking for a choice of the Doctor's pictures in payment for the taxes. The Doctor is in London all the time, dining out and generally amusinghimself. Everybody is speculating whether Sir Francis Burdett will goto the Tower. * 'Oh, my darling, how I envy you at the fountain-head ofintelligence in these interesting times! How I envy Lady Burdett forthe fine opportunity she has to show the heroism of our sex!' writesthe daughter, who is only encountering angry tax-gatherers at home.... Somehow or other the bills are paid for the time, and the familyarrangements go on as before. 

*Here, in our little suburban garden at Wimbledon, are the remains ofan old hedgerow which used to grow in the kitchen garden of the Grangewhere Sir Francis Burdett then lived. The tradition is that he waswalking in the lane in his own kitchen garden when he was taken up andcarried off to honourable captivity. --A. T. R. 

Besides writing to the members of her own home, Miss Mitford startedanother correspondent very early in life; this was Sir William Elford, to whom she describes her outings and adventures, her visits toTavistock House, where her kind friends the Perrys receive her. Mr. Perry was the editor of the Morning Chronicle; he and his beautiful wifewere the friends of all the most interesting people of the day. Hereagain the present writer's own experiences can interpret the printedpage, for her own first sight of London people and of London societycame to her in a little house in Chesham Place, where her father's oldfriends, Mrs. Frederick Elliot and Miss Perry, the daughters of MissMitford's friends, lived with a very notable and interesting set ofpeople, making a social centre, by that kindly unconscious artwhich cannot be defined; that quick apprehension, that benevolentfastidiousness (I have to use rather far-fetched words) which are soessential to good hosts and hostesses. A different standard is lookedfor now, by the rising generations knocking at the doors, behind whichthe dignified past is lying as stark as King Duncan himself!

Among other entertainments Miss Mitford went to the fetes whichcelebrated the battle of Vittoria; she had also the happiness of gettinga good sight of Mme. De Stael, who was a great friend of the Perrys. 'She is almost as much followed in the gardens as the Princess, ' shesays, pouring out her wonders, her pleasures, her raptures. She beginsto read Burns with youthful delight, dilates upon his exhaustlessimagination, his versatility, and then she suggests a very justcriticism. 'Does it not appear' she says, 'that versatility is the trueand rare characteristic of that rare thing called genius--versatilityand playfulness;' then she goes on to speak of two highly-reputed novelsjust come out and ascribed to Lady Morley, 'Pride and Prejudice' and'Sense and Sensibility. '

She is still writing from Bertram House, but her pleasant gossipcontinually alternates with more urgent and less agreeable lettersaddressed to her father. Lawyers' clerks are again calling with noticesand warnings, tax-gatherers are troubling. Dr. Mitford has, as usual, left no address, so that she can only write to the 'Star Office, 'and trust to chance. 'Mamma joins in tenderest love, ' so the lettersinvariably conclude. 

Notwithstanding the adoration bestowed by the ladies of the family andtheir endearing adjectives, Mr. Harness is very outspoken on thesubject of the handsome Doctor! He disliked his manners, his morals, his self-sufficiency, his loud talk. 'The old brute never informed hisfriends of anything; all they knew of him or his affairs, or whateverfalse or true he intended them to believe, came out carelessly in hisloose, disjointed talk. '

In 1814 Miss Mitford is living on still with her parents at BertramHouse, but a change has come over their home; the servants are gone, the gravel turned to moss, the turf into pasture, the shrubberies tothickets, the house a sort of new 'ruin half inhabited, and a Chancerysuit is hanging over their heads. ' Meantime some news comes to cheerher from America. Two editions of her poems have been printed and sold. 'Narrative Poems on the Female Character' proved a real success. 'Allwho have hearts to feel and understandings to discriminate, must wishyou health and leisure to complete your plan, ' so write publishers inthose golden days, with complimentary copies of the work.... 

Great things are happening all this time; battles are being fought andwon, Napoleon is on his way to St. Helena; London is in a frenzy ofrejoicings, entertainings, illuminations. To Mary Mitford the appearanceof 'Waverley' seems as great an event as the return of the Bourbons;she is certain that 'Waverley' is written by Sir Walter Scott, but'Guy Mannering, ' she thinks, is by another hand: her mind is full of agenuine romantic devotion to books and belles lettres, and she is alsorejoicing, even more, in the spring-time of 1816. Dr. Mitford may beimpecunious and their affairs may be threadbare, but the lovely seasonscome out ever in fresh beauty and abundance. The coppices are carpetedwith primroses, with pansies and wild strawberry blossom, --the woods arespangled with the delicate flowers of the woodsorrel and wood anemone, the meadows enamelled with cowslips.... Certainly few human beingswere ever created more fit for this present world, and more capable ofadmiring and enjoying its beauties, than Miss Mitford, who only desiredto be beautiful herself, she somewhere says, to be perfectly contented. 

III. 

Most people's lives are divided into first, second and third volumes;and as we read Miss Mitford's history it forms no exception to therule. The early enthusiastic volume is there, with its hopes and wildjudgments, its quaint old-fashioned dress and phraseology; then comesthe second volume, full of actual work and serious responsibility, with those childish parents to provide for, whose lives, though soprotracted, never seem to reach beyond their nurseries. Miss Mitford'sthird volume is retrospective; her growing infirmities are courageouslyendured, there is the certainty of success well earned and welldeserved; we realise her legitimate hold upon the outer world of readersand writers, besides the reputation which she won upon the stage by hertragedies. 

The literary ladies of the early part of the century in some ways had avery good time of it. A copy of verses, a small volume of travels, a fewtea-parties, a harp in one corner of the room, and a hat and feathersworn rather on one side, seemed to be all that was wanted to establisha claim to fashion and inspiration. They had footstools to rest theirsatin shoes upon, they had admirers and panegyrists to their heart'scontent, and above all they possessed that peculiar complacency in which(with a few notable exceptions) our age is singularly deficient. We areearnest, we are audacious, we are original, but we are not complacent. THEY were dolls perhaps, and lived in dolls' houses; WE are ghostswithout houses at all; we come and go wrapped in sheets of newspaper, holding flickering lights in our hands, paraffin lamps, by the light ofwhich we are seeking our proper sphere. Poor vexed spirits! We do notbelong to the old world any more! The new world is not yet ready forus. Even Mr. Gladstone will not let us into the House of Commons; theGeographical Society rejects us, so does the Royal Academy; and yet whocould say that any of their standards rise too high! Some one or two arehappily safe, carried by the angels of the Press to little altars andpinnacles all their own; but the majority of hard-working, intelligentwomen, 'contented with little, yet ready for more, ' may they not inmoments of depression be allowed to picture to themselves what theirchances might have been had they only been born half a century earlier?

Miss Mitford, notwithstanding all her troubles (she has been knownto say she had rather be a washerwoman than a literary lady), hadopportunities such as few women can now obtain. One is lost inadmiration at the solidity of one's grandparents' taste, when oneattempts to read the tragedies they delighted in, and yet 'Rienzi' soldfour thousand copies and was acted forty-five times; and at one timeMiss Mitford had two tragedies rehearsed upon the boards together; oneat Covent Garden and one at Drury Lane, with Charles Kemble and Macreadydisputing for her work. Has not one also read similar descriptionsof the triumphs of Hannah More, or of Johanna Baillie; cheered byenthusiastic audiences, while men shed tears. *

*Mem. Hannah More, v. I. P. 124. 

'Julian' was the first of Miss Mitford's acted plays. It was brought outat Covent Garden in 1823, when she was thirty-six years old; Macreadyplayed the principal part. 'If the play do reach the ninth night, ' MissMitford writes to Macready, 'it will be a very complete refutation ofMr. Kemble's axiom that no single performer can fill the theatre; forexcept our pretty Alfonso (Miss Foote) there is only Julian, one andonly one. Let him imagine how deeply we feel his exertions and hiskindness. *... '

*In Macready's diary we find an entry which is not over gracious. '"Julian" acted March the 15th. Had but moderate success. The C. G. Company was no longer equal to the support of plays containing moralcharacters. The authoress in her dedication to me was profuse inher acknowledgments and compliments, but the performance made littleimpression, and was soon forgotten. '

'Julian' was stopped on the eighth night, to her great disappointment, but she is already engaged on another--on several more---tragedies; shewants the money badly; for the editor of her magazine has absconded, owing her 50 pounds. Some trying and bewildering quarrel then ensuesbetween Charles Kemble and Macready, which puts off her tragedies, and sadly affects poor Miss Mitford's nerves and profits. She has onesolace. Her father, partly instigated, she says, by the effect which theterrible feeling of responsibility and want of power has had upon herhealth and spirits, at last resolves to try if he can HIMSELF obtain anyemployment that may lighten the burthen of the home. It is a good thingthat Dr. Mitford has braced himself to this heroic determination. 'Theaddition of two or even one hundred a year to our little income, joinedto what I am, in a manner, sure of gaining by mere industry, would takea load from my heart of which I can scarcely give you an idea... Even"Julian" was written under a pressure of anxiety which left me not amoment's rest.... ' So she fondly dwells upon the delightful prospects. Then comes the next letter to Sir William Elford, and we read that herdear father, 'relying with a blessed sanguineness on my poor endeavours, has not, I believe, even inquired for a situation, and I do not pressthe matter, though I anxiously wish it; being willing to give one moretrial to the theatre. '

On one of the many occasions when Miss Mitford writes to her trusteeimploring him to sell out the small remaining fragment of her fortune, she says, 'My dear father has, years ago, been improvident, is stillirritable and difficult to live with, but he is a person of a thousandvirtues... There are very few half so good in this mixed world; it ismy fault that this money is needed, entirely my fault, and if it bewithheld, my dear father will be overthrown, mind and body, and I shallnever know another happy hour. '

No wonder Mr. Harness, who was behind the scenes, remonstrated againstthe filial infatuation which sacrificed health, sleep, peace of mind, to gratify every passing whim of the Doctor's. At a time when she wassitting up at night and slaving, hour after hour, to earn the necessarymeans of living, Dr. Mitford must needs have a cow, a stable, and dairyimplements procured for his amusement, and when he died he left 1, 000pounds of debts for the scrupulous woman to pay off. She is determinedto pay, if she sells her clothes to do so. Meanwhile, the Doctor isstill alive, and Miss Mitford is straining every nerve to keep him so. She is engaged (in strict confidence) on a grand historical subject, Charles and Cromwell, the finest episode in English history, she says. Here, too, fresh obstacles arise. This time it is the theatrical censorwho interferes. It would be dangerous for the country to touch upon suchtopics; Mr. George Colman dwells upon this theme, although he gives thelady full credit for no evil intentions; but for the present all herwork is again thrown away. While Miss Mitford is struggling on as bestshe can against this confusion of worries and difficulty (she eventuallyreceived 200 pounds for 'Julian' from a Surrey theatre), a new firm'Whittaker' undertakes to republish the 'village sketches' which hadbeen written for the absconding editor. The book is to be publishedunder the title of 'Our Village. '

IV. 

'Are your characters and descriptions true?' somebody once asked ourauthoress. 'Yes, yes, yes, as true, as true as is well possible, ' sheanswers. 'You, as a great landscape painter, know that in painting afavourite scene you do a little embellish and can't help it; you availyourself of happy accidents of atmosphere; if anything be ugly youstrike it out, or if anything be wanting, you put it in. But still thepicture is a likeness. '

So wrote Miss Mitford, but with all due respect for her and for SirWilliam Elford, the great landscape painter, I cannot help thinkingthat what is admirable in her book, are not her actual descriptionsand pictures of intelligent villagers and greyhounds, but the moreimaginative things; the sense of space and nature and progress which sheknows how to convey; the sweet and emotional chord she strikes with sotrue a touch. Take at hazard her description of the sunset. How simpleand yet how finely felt it is. Her genuine delight reaches us andcarries us along; it is not any embellishing of effects, or exaggerationof facts, but the reality of a true and very present feeling... 'Thenarrow line of clouds which a few minutes ago lay like long vapouringstreaks along the horizon, now lighted with a golden splendour, that theeye can scarcely endure; those still softer clouds which floated above, wreathing and curling into a thousand fantastic forms as thin andchangeful as summer smoke, defined and deepened into grandeur, andhedged with ineffable, insufferable light. Another minute and thebrilliant orb totally disappears and the sky above grows, every moment, more varied and more beautiful, as the dazzling golden lines are mixedwith glowing red and gorgeous purple, dappled with small dark specks, and mingled with such a blue as the egg of the hedge-sparrow.... Tolook up at that glorious sky, and then to see that magnificent picturereflected in the clear and lovely Loddon water, is a pleasure never tobe described, and never to be forgotten. My heart swells, and my eyesfill as I write of it, and think of the immeasurable majesty of natureand the unspeakable goodness of God, who has spread an enjoyment sopure, so peaceful, and so intense before the meanest and lowliest of Hiscreatures. '

But it is needless now to go on praising 'Our Village, ' or to recountwhat a success was in store for the little book. Certain books holdtheir own by individual right and might; they are part of everybody'slife as a matter of course. They are not always read, but they tacitlytake their place among us. The editions succeeded editions here and inAmerica; artists came down to illustrate the scenes. Miss Mitford, whowas so delighted with the drawings by Mr. Baxter, should have lived tosee the charming glimpses of rural life we owe to Mr. Thomson. 'I don'tmind 'em, ' says Lizzy to the cows, as they stand with spirited bovinegrace behind the stable door. 'Don't mind them indeed!'

I think the author would assuredly have enjoyed the picture of thebaker, the wheelwright and the shoemaker, each following his specialAlderney along the road to the village, or of the farmer driving his oldwife in the gig.... One design, that of the lady in her pattens, comeshome to the writer of these notes, who has perhaps the distinction ofbeing the only authoress now alive who has ever walked out inpattens. At the age of seven years she was provided with a pair by agreat-great-aunt, a kind old lady living at Fareham, in Hampshire, where they were still in use. How interesting the little circles lookedstamped upon the muddy road, and how nearly down upon one's nose one wasat every other step!

But even with all her success, Miss Mitford was not out of her troubles. She writes to Mr. Harness saying: 'You cannot imagine how perplexed Iam. There are points in my domestic situation too long and too painfulto write about; the terrible improvidence of one dear parent, thefailure of memory and decay of faculty in that other who is stilldearer, cast on me a weight of care and fear that I can hardly bear upagainst. ' Her difficulties were unending. The new publisher now stoppedpayment, so that even 'Our Village' brought in no return for the moment;Charles Kemble was unable to make any offer for 'Foscari. ' She went upto town in the greatest hurry to try and collect some of the money owingto her from her various publishers, but, as Mr. Harness says, receivedlittle from her debtors beyond invitations and compliments. Shemeditates a novel, she plans an opera, 'Cupid and Psyche. '

At last, better times began to dawn, and she receives 150 pounds downfor a new novel and ten guineas from Blackwood as a retaining fee. Thencomes a letter from Charles Kemble giving her new hope, for her tragedy, which was soon afterwards produced at Covent Garden. 

The tragedies are in tragic English, of course that language of theboards, but not without a simplicity and music of their own. In theintroduction to them, in some volumes published by Hurst and Blacket in1854, Miss Mitford describes 'the scene of indescribable chaos precedingthe performance, the vague sense of obscurity and confusion; tragedians, hatted and coated, skipping about, chatting and joking; the only verygrave person being Liston himself. Ballet-girls walking through theirquadrilles to the sound of a solitary fiddle, striking up as if of itsown accord, from amid the tall stools and music-desks of the orchestra, and piercing, one hardly knew how, through the din that was going onincessantly. Oh, that din! Voices from every part; above, below, around, and in every key. Heavy weights rolling here and falling there. Bells ringing, one could not tell why, and the ubiquitous call-boyeverywhere. '

She describes her astonishment when the play succeeds. 'Not that I hadnerve enough to attend the first representation of my tragedies. Isat still and trembling in some quiet apartment near, and thither somefriend flew to set my heart at ease. Generally the messenger of goodtidings was poor Haydon, whose quick and ardent spirit lent him wings onsuch an occasion. '

We have the letter to her mother about 'Foscari, ' from which I havequoted; and on the occasion of the production of 'Rienzi' at Drury Lane(two years later in October 1828), the letter to Sir William Elfordwhen the poor old mother was no longer here to rejoice in her daughter'ssuccess. 

Miss Mitford gratefully records the sympathy of her friends, thewarm-hearted muses of the day. Mrs. Trollope, Miss Landon, MissEdgeworth, Miss Porden, Mrs. Hofland, Mrs. Opie, who all appear withtheir congratulations. 

Miss Mitford says that Haydon, above all, sympathised with her love fora large canvas. The Classics, Spain, Italy, Mediaeval Rome, these areher favourite scenes and periods. Dukes and tribunes were her heroes;daggers, dungeons, and executioners her means of effects. 

She moralises very sensibly upon Dramatic success. 'It is not, ' shesays, 'so delicious, so glorious, so complete a gratification as, in oursecret longings, we all expect. It does not fill the heart, --it is anintoxication followed by a dismal reaction. ' She tells a friend thatnever in all her life was she so depressed and out of spirits as after'Rienzi, ' her first really successful venture. But there is alsoa passing allusion to her father's state of mind, to his mingledirritation and sulkiness, which partly explains things. Could it bethat the Doctor added petty jealousy and envy to his other inconvenientqualities? His intolerance for any author or actor, in short, for anyone not belonging to a county family, his violent annoyance at anyacquaintances such as those which she now necessarily made, wouldnaturally account for some want of spirits on the daughter's part;overwrought, over-taxed, for ever on the strain, her work was exhaustingindeed. The small pension she afterwards obtained from the Civil Listmust have been an unspeakable boon to the poor harassed woman. 

Tragedy seems to have resulted in a substantial pony and a basketcarriage for Miss Mitford, and in various invitations (from theTalfourds, among the rest) during which she is lionised right and left. It must have been on this occasion that Serjeant Talfourd complained sobitterly of a review of 'Ion' which appeared about that time. His guest, to soothe him, unwarily said, 'she should not have minded such a reviewof HER Tragedy. '

'YOUR "Rienzi, " indeed! I should think not, ' says the serjeant. '"Ion"is very different. ' The Talfourd household, as it is described by Mr. Lestrange, is a droll mixture of poetry and prose, of hospitality, ofuntidiness, of petulance, of most genuine kindness and most genuinehuman nature. 

There are also many mentions of Miss Mitford in the 'Life of Macready'by Sir F. Pollock. The great tragedian seems not to have liked herwith any cordiality; but he gives a pleasant account of a certainsupper-party in honour of 'Ion' at which she is present, and duringwhich she asks Macready if he will not now bring out her tragedy. Thetragedian does not answer, but Wordsworth, sitting by, says, 'Ay, keephim to it. '

V. 

Besides the 'Life of Miss Mitford' by Messrs. Harness and Lestrange, there is also a book of the 'Friendships of Mary Russell Mitford, 'consisting of the letters she received rather than of those which shewrote. It certainly occurs to one, as one looks through the printedcorrespondence of celebrated people, how different are written fromprinted letters. Your friend's voice sounds, your friend's eyes lookout, of the written page, even its blots and erasures remind you of yourhuman being. But the magnetism is gone out of these printer's lines withtheir even margins; in which everybody's handwriting is exactly alike;in which everybody uses the same type, the same expressions; in whichthe eye roams from page to page untouched, unconvinced. I can imaginethe pleasure each one of these letters may have given to Miss Mitfordto receive in turn. They come from well-known ladies, accustomed to beconsidered. Mrs. Trollope, Mrs. Hofland, Mrs. Howitt, Mrs. S. C. Hall, Miss Strickland, Mrs. Opie; there, too, are Miss Barrett and Mrs. Jamieson and Miss Sedgwick who writes from America; they are allinteresting people, but it must be confessed that the correspondence isnot very enlivening. Miss Barrett's is an exception, that is almost asgood as handwriting to read. But there is no doubt that complimentsto OTHER authoresses are much less amusing, than those one writes orreceives oneself; apologies also for not writing sooner, CAN pallupon one in print, however soothing they may be to the justly offendedrecipient, or to the conscience-stricken correspondent. 

'I must have seemed a thankless wretch, my dear Miss Mitford, ' etc. Etc. 'You, my dear friend, know too well what it is to have to finish a book, to blame my not attempting, ' etc. Etc. 'This is the thirty-ninth letterI have written since yesterday morning, ' says Harriet Martineau. 'Oh, I can scarcely hold the pen! I will not allow my shame for not havingwritten, to prevent me from writing now. ' All these people seem to havebeen just as busy as people are now, as amusing, as tiresome. They hadthe additional difficulty of having to procure franks, and of having tocover four pages instead of a post-card. OUR letters may be dull, but atall events they are not nearly so long. We come sooner to the point andavoid elegant circumlocutions. But one is struck, among other things, by the keener literary zest of those days, and by the immense numbersof MSS. And tragedies in circulation, all of which their authorsconfidingly send from one to another. There are also whole flights oftravelling poems flapping their wings and uttering their cries as theygo. 

An enthusiastic American critic who comes over to England emphasises thesituation. Mr. Willis's 'superlative admiration' seems to give pointto everything, and to all the enthusiasm. Miss Austen's Collins himselfcould not have been more appreciative, not even if Miss de Burgh hadtried her hand at a MS.... Could he--Mr. Willis--choose, he would havetragedy once a year from Miss Mitford's pen. 'WHAT an intoxicating lifeit is, ' he cries; 'I met Jane Porter and Miss Aikin and Tom Moore and atroop more beaux esprits at dinner yesterday! I never shall be contentelsewhere. '

Miss Mitford's own letters speak in a much more natural voice. 

'I never could understand what people could find to like in my letters, 'Miss Mitford writes, 'unless it be that they have a ROOT to them. ' Theroot was in her own kind heart. Miss Mitford may have been wanting alittle in discrimination, but she was never wanting in sympathy. Sheseems to have loved people for kindness's sake indiscriminately as ifthey were creations of her own brain: but to friendliness or to troubleof any sort she responds with fullest measure. Who shall complain ifsome rosy veil coloured the aspects of life for her?

'Among the many blessings I enjoy, --my dear father, my admirable mother, my tried and excellent friends, --there is nothing for which I ought tothank God so earnestly as for the constitutional buoyancy of spirits, the aptness to hope, the will to be happy WHICH I INHERIT FROM MYFATHER, ' she writes. Was ever filial piety so irritating as hers? It isdifficult to bear, with any patience, her praises of Dr. Mitford. Hisillusions were no less a part of his nature than his daughter's, the onea self-centred absolutely selfish existence, the other generous, humble, beautiful. She is hardly ever really angry except when some reports getabout concerning her marriage. There was an announcement that she wasengaged to one of her own clan, and the news spread among her friends. The romantic Mrs. Hofland had conjured up the suggestion, to MissMitford's extreme annoyance. It is said Mrs. Hofland also married offMiss Edgeworth in the same manner. 

Mary Mitford found her true romance in friendship, not in love. One dayMr. Kenyon came to see her while she was staying in London, and offeredto show her the Zoological Gardens, and on the way he proposed callingin Gloucester Place to take up a young lady, a connection of his own, Miss Barrett by name. It was thus that Miss Mitford first made theacquaintance of Mrs. Browning, whose friendship was one of the happiestevents of her whole life. A happy romance indeed, with that addedreality which must have given it endurance. And indeed to make a newfriend is like learning a new language. I myself have a friend who saysthat we have each one of us a chosen audience of our own to whom we turninstinctively, and before whom we rehearse that which is in our minds;whose opinion influences us, whose approval is our secret aim. All thisMrs. Browning seems to have been to Miss Mitford. 

'I sit and think of you and of the poems that you will write, and ofthat strange rainbow crown called fame, until the vision is beforeme.... My pride and my hopes seem altogether merged in you. At my timeof life and with so few to love, and with a tendency to body forthimages of gladness, you cannot think what joy it is to anticipate.... 'So wrote the elder woman to the younger with romantic devotion. WhatMiss Mitford once said of herself was true, hers was the instinct ofthe bee sucking honey from the hedge flower. Whatever sweetness andhappiness there was to find she turned to with unerring directness. 

It is to Miss Barrett that she sometimes complains. 'It will help you tounderstand how impossible it is for me to earn money as I ought todo, when I tell you that this very day I received your dear letter andsixteen others; then my father brought into my room the newspaper tohear the ten or twelve columns of news from India; then I dined andbreakfasted in one; then I got up, and by that time there were threeparties of people in the garden; eight others arrived soon after.... Iwas forced to leave, being engaged to call on Lady Madeline Palmer. Shetook me some six miles on foot in Mr. Palmer's beautiful plantations, insearch of that exquisite wild-flower the bog-bean, do you know it? mostbeautiful of flowers, either wild--or, as K. Puts it, --"tame. " Afterlong search we found the plant not yet in bloom. '

Dr. Mitford weeps over his daughters exhaustion, telling everybody thatshe is killing herself by her walks and drives. He would like hernever to go beyond the garden and beyond reach of the columns of hisnewspaper. She declares that it is only by getting out and afield thatshe can bear the strain and the constant alternation of enforcedwork and anxiety. Nature was, indeed, a second nature to her. CharlesKingsley himself could scarcely write better of the East wind.... 

'We have had nine weeks of drought and east wind, scarcely a flower tobe seen, no verdure in the meadows, no leaves in the hedgerows; if apoor violet or primrose did make its appearance it was scentless. I havenot once heard my aversion the cuckoo... And in this place, so evidentlythe rendezvous of swallows, that it takes its name from them, nota swallow has yet appeared. The only time that I have heard thenightingale, I drove, the one mild day we have had, to a wood where Iused to find the woodsorrel in beds; only two blossoms of that could befound, but a whole chorus of nightingales saluted me the moment I droveinto the wood. '

There is something of Madame de Sevigne in her vivid realisation ofnatural things. 

She nursed her father through a long and trying illness, and when hedied found herself alone in the world with impaired health and verylittle besides her pension from the Civil List to live upon. Dr. Mitfordleft 1000 pounds worth of debts, which this honourable woman then andthere set to work to try and pay. So much courage and devotion touchedthe hearts of her many friends and readers, and this sum was actuallysubscribed by them. Queens, archbishops, dukes, and marquises subscribeto the testimonial, so do the literary ladies, Mesdames Bailey, Edgeworth, Trollope; Mrs. Opie is determined to collect twenty pounds atleast, although she justly says she wishes it were for anything but topay the Doctor's debts. 

In 1844 it is delightful to read of a little ease at last in thisharassed life; of a school-feast with buns and flags organised by thekind lady, the children riding in waggons decked with laurel, MissMitford leading the way, followed by eight or ten neighbouringcarriages, and the whole party waiting in Swallowfield Lane to seethe Queen and Prince Albert returning from their visit to the Duke ofWellington. 'Our Duke went to no great expense, ' says Miss Mitford. (Dr. Mitford would have certainly disapproved had he been still alive. ) Onestrip of carpet the Duke did buy, the rest of the furniture he hiredin Reading for the week. The ringers, after being hard at work for fourhours, sent a can to the house to ask for some beer, and the can wassent back empty. 

It was towards the end of her life that Miss Mitford left Three MileCross and came to Swallowfield to stay altogether. 'The poor cottage wastumbling around us, and if we had stayed much longer we should havebeen buried in the ruins, ' she says; 'there I had toiled and striven andtasted as bitterly of bitter anxiety, of fear and hope, as often fallsto the lot of women. ' Then comes a charming description of the threemiles of straight and dusty road. 'I walked from one cottage to theother on an autumn evening when the vagrant birds, whose habit ofassembling there for their annual departure, gives, I suppose, itsname of Swallowfield to the village, were circling over my head, andI repeated to myself the pathetic lines of Hayley as he saw those samebirds gathering upon his roof during his last illness:--

 '"Ye gentle birds, that perch aloof, And smooth your pinions on my roof... 

 '"Prepare for your departure hence Ere winter's angry threats commence; Like you my soul would smooth her plume For longer flights beyond the tomb. 

 '"May God by whom is seen and heard Departing men and wandering bird, In mercy mark us for His own And guide us to the land unknown!"'

Thoughts soothing and tender came with those touching lines, and gayerimages followed.... 

It is from Swallowfield that she writes: 'I have fell this blessing ofbeing able to respond to new friendships very strongly lately, for Ihave lost many old and valued connections during this trying spring. Ithank God far more earnestly for such blessings than for my daily bread, for friendship is the bread of the heart. '

It was late in life to make such warm new ties as those which followedher removal from Three Mile Cross; but some of the most cordialfriendships of her life date from this time. Mr. James Payn and Mr. Fields she loved with some real motherly feeling, and Lady Russell wholived at the Hall became her tender and devoted friend. 

VI. 

We went down to Reading the other day, as so many of Miss Mitford'sfriends have done before, to look at 'our village' with our own eyes, and at the cottage in which she lived for so long. A phaeton with afast-stepping horse met us at the station and whirled us through thebusy town and along the straight dusty road beyond it. As we drove alongin the soft clouded sunshine I looked over the hedges on either side, and I could see fields and hedgerows and red roofs clustering hereand there, while the low background of blue hills spread towards thehorizon. It was an unpretentious homely prospect intercepted each minuteby the detestable advertisement hoardings recommending this or thatrival pill. 'Tongues in trees' indeed, in a very different sense fromthe exiled duke's experience! Then we come within sight of the runningbrook, uncontaminated as yet; the river flowing cool and swift, withoutquack medicines stamped upon its waters: we reach Whitley presently, with its pretty gabled hostel (Mrs. Mitford used to drive to Whitley andback for her airing), the dust rises on the fresh keen wind, the scentof the ripe corn is in the air, the cows stoop under the elm trees, looking exactly as they do in Mr. Thomson's pretty pictures, dappledand brown, with delicate legs and horns. We pass very few people, a babylugged along in its cart, and accompanied by its brothers and sisters;a fox-terrier comes barking at our wheels; at last the phaeton stopsabruptly between two or three roadside houses, and the coachman, pointing with his whip, says, 'That is "The Mitford, " ma'am. --That'swhere Miss Mitford used to live!'

Was that all? I saw two or three commonplace houses skirting the dustyroad, I saw a comfortable public-house with an elm tree, and beside itanother grey unpretentious little house, with a slate roof and squarewalls, and an inscription, 'The Mitford, ' painted over the doorway.... 

I had been expecting I knew not what; a spire, a pump, a green, awinding street: my preconceived village in the air had immediately to beswept into space, and in its stead, behold the inn with its sign-post, and these half-dozen brick tenements, more or less cut to one squarepattern! So this was all! this was 'our village' of which the authorhad written so charmingly! These were the sights the kind eyes had dweltupon, seeing in them all, the soul of hidden things, rather than dullbricks and slates. Except for one memory, Three Mile Cross would seem tobe one of the dullest and most uninteresting of country places.... 

But we have Miss Mitford's own description. 'The Cross is not a borough, thank Heaven, either rotten or independent. The inhabitants are quiet, peaceable people who would not think of visiting us, even if we had aknocker to knock at. Our residence is a cottage' (she is writing toher correspondent, Sir William Elford), 'no, not a cottage, it does notdeserve the name--a messuage or tenement such as a little farmer who hadmade 1400 pounds might retire to when he left off business to live onhis means. It consists of a series of closets, the largest of which maybe about eight feet square, which they call parlours and kitchensand pantries, some of them minus a corner, which has been unnaturallyfilched for a chimney, others deficient in half a side, which has beentruncated by a shelving roof. Behind is a garden about the size of agood drawing-room, with an arbour, which is a complete sentry-box ofprivet. On one side a public-house, on the other a village shop, andright opposite a cobbler's stall. Notwithstanding all this "the cabin, "as Boabdil says, "is convenient. " It is within reach of my dear oldwalks, the banks where I find my violets, the meadows full of cowslips, and the woods where the woodsorrel blows.... Papa has already had thesatisfaction of setting the neighbourhood to rights and committing adisorderly person who was the pest of "The Cross" to Bridewell.... Mamma has furbished up an old dairy; I have lost my only key and stuffedthe garden with flowers.... ' So writes the contented young woman. 

How much more delightful is all this than any commonplace stagey effectof lattice and gable; and with what pleasant unconscious art the writerof this letter describes what is NOT there and brings in her banks ofviolets to perfume the dull rooms. The postscript to this letter is MissMitford all over. 'Pray excuse my blots and interlineations. They havebeen caused by my attention being distracted by a nightingale in fullsong who is pouring a world of music through my window. '

'Do you not like to meet with good company in your friends' hearts?'Miss Mitford says somewhere, --to no one better than to herself does thisapply. Her heart was full of gracious things, and the best of companywas ever hers, 'La fleur de la hotte, ' as Madame de Sevigne says. 

We walked into the small square hall where Dr. Mitford's bed wasestablished after his illness, whilst visitors and all the rest of thehousehold came and went through the kitchen door. In the parlour, once kept for his private use, now sat a party of homely friends fromReading, resting and drinking tea: we too were served with smoking cups, and poured our libation to her who once presided in the quiet place; andthen the landlady took us round and about, showed us the kitchen withits comfortable corners and low window-frames--'I suppose this isscarcely changed at all?' said one of us. 

'Oh yes, ma'am, ' says the housekeeper--'WE uses a Kitchener, MissMitford always kept an open range. '

The garden, with its sentry-box of privet, exists no longer; an ironmission-room stands in its place, with the harmonium, the rows of strawchairs, the table and the candlesticks de circonstance. Miss Mitford'spicture hangs on the wall, a hand-coloured copy of one of her portraits. The kindly homely features smile from the oils, in good humour andattentive intelligence. The sentiment of to-day is assuredly to be foundin the spirit of things rather than in their outward signs.... Any oneof us can feel the romance of a wayside shrine put up to the memory ofsome mediaeval well-dressed saint with a nimbus at the back of herhead, and a trailing cloak and veil.... Here, after all, is the samesentiment, only translated into nineteenth-century language; usescorrogated iron sheds, and cups of tea, and oakum matting. 'Mr. Palmer, he bought the place, ' says the landlady, 'he made it into a TemperanceHotel, and built the Temperance Hall in the garden. '.... 

No romantic marble shrine, but a square meeting-house of good intent, a tribute not less sincere because it is square, than if it were drawninto Gothic arch and curve. It speaks, not of a holy and mythical saint, but of a good and warm-hearted woman; of a life-long penance borne withcharity and cheerfulness; of sweet fancies and blessings which havegiven innocent pleasure to many generations!

VII. 

There is a note, written in a close and pretty writing, somethingbetween Sir Walter Scott's and Mrs. Browning's, which the presentwriter has possessed for years, fastened in a book among other earlytreasures:--

Thank you, dearest Miss Priscilla, for your great kindness. I return theninth volume of [illegible], with the four succeeding ones, all that Ihave; probably all that are yet published. You shall have the rest whenI get them. Tell dear Mr. George (I must not call him Vert-Vert) that Ihave recollected the name of the author of the clever novel 'Le Rouge etle Noir' (that is the right title of the book, which has nothing to dowith the name); the author's name is Stendhal, or so he calls himself. Ithink that he was either a musician or a musical critic, and that he isdead.... My visitor has not yet arrived (6 o'clock, p. M. ), frightenedno doubt by the abruptness of the two notes which I wrote in reply tohers yesterday morning; and indeed nobody could fancy the hurry in whichone is forced to write by this walking post.... 

Tell my visitors of yesterday with my kind love that they did me all thegood in the world, as indeed everybody of your house does. 

--Ever, dear Miss Priscilla, very affectionately yours, M. R. MITFORD. 

In the present writer's own early days, when the now owner ofSwallowfield was a very young, younger son, she used to hear him and hissister, Mrs. Brackenbury (the Miss Priscilla of the note), speaking withaffectionate remembrance of the old friend lately gone, who had dwelt attheir very gates; through which friendly gates one is glad, indeed, torealise what delightful companionship and loving help came to cheer theend of that long and toilsome life; and when Messrs. Macmillan suggestedthis preface the writer looked for her old autograph-book, and at itssuggestion wrote (wondering whether any links existed still) to ask forinformation concerning Miss Mitford, and so it happened that she foundherself also kindly entertained at Swallowfield, and invited to visitthe scenes of which the author of 'Our Village' had written with so muchdelight. 

I think I should like to reverse the old proverb about letting those whorun read, my own particular fancy being for reading first and runningafterwards. There are few greater pleasures than to meet with anIndividuality, to listen to it speaking from a printed page, recounting, suggesting, growing upon you every hour, gaining in life and presence, and then, while still under its influence, to find oneself suddenlytransported into the very scene of that life, to stand among itsfamiliar impressions and experiences, realising another distinctexistence by some odd metempsychosis, and what may--or rather, whatMUST have been. It is existing a book rather than reading it when thishappens to one. 

The house in Swallowfield Park is an old English country home, afastness still piled up against time; whose stately walls and hallswithin, and beautiful century-old trees in the park without, recordgreat times and striking figures. The manor was a part of the dowryof Henry the VIII. 's luckless queens. The modern house was built byClarendon, and the old church among the elms dates from 1200, withcarved signs and symbols and brasses of knights and burgesses, and namesof strange sound and bygone fashion. 

Lady Russell, who had sent the phaeton with the fast-stepping horse tomeet us, was walking in the park as we drove up, and instead of takingus back to the house, she first led the way across the grass and by thestream to the old church, standing in its trim sweet garden, where Deathitself seems smiling and fearless; where kind Mary Mitford's warm heartrests quiet, and 'her busy hand, ' as she says herself, 'is lying inpeace there, where the sun glances through the great elm trees in thebeautiful churchyard of Swallowfield. '

The last baronet, Sir Charles, who fought in the Crimea, and whosucceeded his father, Sir Henry, moved the dividing rail so that his oldfriend should be well within the shadow of these elm trees. Lady Russellshowed us the tranquil green place, and told us its story, and how theold church had once been doomed to destruction when Kingsley came overby chance, and pleaded that it should be spared; and how, when rubbishand outward signs of decay had been cleared away, the restorers wererewarded for their piety, by coming upon noble beams of oak, untouched by time, upon some fine old buried monuments and brasses andinscriptions, among which the people still say their prayers in theshrine where their fathers knelt, and of which the tradition is not yetswept away. The present Lady of the Manor, who loves old traditions, hasdone her part to preserve the records for her children. 

So Miss Mitford walked from Three Mile Cross to Swallowfield to end herdays, with these kind friends to cheer and to comfort her. Sir HenryRussell was alive when she first established herself, but he wasalready suffering from some sudden seizure, which she, with her usualimpetuosity, describes in her letters as a chronic state of things. After his death, his widow, the Lady Russell of those days, was herkindest friend and comforter. 

The little Swallowfield cottage at the meeting of the three roads, towhich Mary Mitford came when she left Three Mile Cross, has thrown outa room or two, as cottages do, but otherwise I think it can be littlechanged. It was here Miss Mitford was visited by so many interestingpeople, here she used to sit writing at her big table under the 'tasselsof her acacia tree. ' When the present Lady of the Manor brought us tothe gate, the acacia flowers were over, but a balmy breath of summerwas everywhere; a beautiful rose was hanging upon the wall beneath thewindow (it must have taken many years to grow to such a height), andbeyond the palings of the garden spread the fields, ripening in thelate July, and turning to gold. The farmer and his son were at work withtheir scythes; the birds were still flying, the sweet scents were in theair. 

From a lady who had known her, 'my own Miss Anne' of the letters, weheard something more that day of the author of 'Our Village'; of hercharming intellect, her gift of talk, her impulsiveness, her essentialsociability, and rapid grace of mind. She had the faults of herqualities; she jumped too easily to conclusions; she was too muchunder the influence of those with whom she lived. She was born to be avictim, --even after her old tyrant father's death, she was more or lessover-ridden by her servants. Neighbours looked somewhat doubtfully onK. And Ben, but they were good to her, on the whole, and tended hercarefully. Miss Russell said that when she and her brother took refugein the cottage, one morning from a storm, while they dried themselvesby the fire, they saw the careful meal carried up to the old lady, thekidneys, the custard, for her dejeuner a la fourchette. 

When Miss Mitford died, she left everything she had to her belovedK. And to Ben, except that she said she wished that one book from herwell-stocked library should be given to each of her friends. The oldDoctor, with all his faults, had loved books, and bought handsome andvaluable first editions of good authors. K. And Ben also seem to haveloved books and first editions. To the Russells, who had nursed MissMitford, comforted her, by whose gates she dwelt, in whose arms shedied, Ben brought, as a token of remembrance, an old shilling volumeof one of G. P. R. James's novels, which was all he could bear to partwith. A prettier incident was told me by Miss Russell, who once went tovisit Miss Mitford's grave. She found a young man standing there whomshe did not know. 'Don't you know me?' said he; 'I am Henry, ma'am. Ihave just come back from Australia. ' He was one of the children of thecouple who had lived in the cottage, and his first visit on his returnfrom abroad had been to the tomb of his old protectress. 

I also heard a friend who knew Miss Mitford in her latest days, describegoing to see her within a very few months of her death; she was stillbright and responding as ever, though very ill. The young visitor hadherself been laid up and absent from the invalid's bedside for sometime. They talked over many things, --an authoress among the rest, concerning whose power of writing a book Miss Mitford seems to have beenvery doubtful. After her visitor was gone, the sick woman wrote one ofher delicate pretty little notes and despatched it with its tiny seal(there it is still unbroken, with its M. R. M. Just as she stamped it), and this is the little letter:--

Thank you, dearest Miss... For once again showing me your fair face bythe side of the dear, dear friend [Lady Russell] for whose goodnessI have neither thanks nor words. To the end of my life I shall go onsinning and repenting. Heartily sorry have I been ever since you wentaway to have spoken so unkindly to Mrs.... Heaven forgive me for it, and send her a happier conclusion to her life than the beginning mightwarrant. If you have an idle lover, my dear, present over to him mysermon, for those were words of worth. 

God bless you all! Ever, most faithfully and affectionately yours, M. R. MITFORD. 

Sunday Evening. 

VIII. 

When one turns from Miss Mitford's works to the notices in thebiographical dictionary (in which Miss Mitford and Mithridates occupythe same page), one finds how firmly her reputation is established. 'Dame auteur, ' says my faithful mentor, the Biographic Generale, 'consideree comme le peintre le plus fidele de la vie rurale enAngleterre. ' 'Author of a remarkable tragedy, "Julian, " in whichMacready played a principal part, followed by "Foscari, " "Rienzi, " andothers, ' says the English Biographical Dictionary. 

'I am charmed with my new cottage, ' she writes soon after her lastinstallation; 'the neighbours are most kind. ' Kingsley was one ofthe first to call upon her. 'He took me quite by surprise in hisextraordinary fascination, ' says the old lady. 

Mr. Fields, the American publisher, also went to see Miss Mitford atSwallowfield, and immediately became a very great ally of hers. It wasto him that she gave her own portrait, by Lucas. Mr. Fields has left aninteresting account of her in his 'Yesterdays with Authors'--'Her dogsand her geraniums, ' he says, 'were her great glories! She used to writeme long letters about Fanchon, a dog whose personal acquaintance I hadmade some time before, while on a visit to her cottage. Every virtueunder heaven she attributed to that canine individual; and I was obligedto allow in my return letters that since our planet began to spin, nothing comparable to Fanchon had ever run on four legs. I hadalso known Flush, the ancestor of Fanchon, intimately, and had beenaccustomed to hear wonderful things of that dog, but Fanchon had gracesand genius unique. Miss Mitford would have joined with Hamerton, when hesays, 'I humbly thank Divine Providence for having invented dogs, and Iregard that man with wondering pity who can lead a dogless life. '

Another of Miss Mitford's great friends was John Ruskin, * and one canwell imagine how much they must have had in common. Of Miss Mitford'swritings Ruskin says, 'They have the playfulness and purity of the"Vicar of Wakefield" without the naughtiness of its occasional wit, orthe dust of the world's great road on the other side of the hedge.... '

*It is Mr. Harness who says, writing of Ruskin and Miss Mitford, 'Hiskindness cheered her closing days. He sent her every book that wouldinterest, every delicacy that would strengthen her. '

Neither the dust nor the ethics of the world of men quite belonged toMiss Mitford's genius. It is always a sort of relief to turn from hercriticism of people, her praise of Louis Napoleon, her facts about Mr. Dickens, whom she describes as a dull companion, or about my father, whom she looked upon as an utter heartless worldling, to the naturalspontaneous sweet flow of nature in which she lived and movedinstinctively. 

Mr. James Payn gives, perhaps, the most charming of all the descriptionsof the author of 'Our Village. ' He has many letters from her to quotefrom. 'The paper is all odds and ends, ' he says, 'and not a scrap ofit but is covered and crossed. The very flaps of the envelopes and theoutsides of them have their message. '

Mr. Payn went to see her at Swallowfield, and describes the smallapartment lined with books from floor to ceiling and fragrant withflowers. 'Its tenant rose from her arm-chair with difficulty, but with asunny smile and a charming manner bade me welcome. My father had beenan old friend of hers, and she spoke of my home and belongings as only awoman can speak of such things, then we plunged into medea res, into menand books. She seemed to me to have known everybody worth knowing fromthe Duke of Wellington to the last new verse-maker. And she talked likean angel, but her views upon poetry as a calling in life, shocked menot a little. She said she preferred a mariage de convenance to a lovematch, because it generally turned out better. "This surprises you, " shesaid, smiling, "but then I suppose I am the least romantic person thatever wrote plays. " She was much more proud of her plays, even thenwell-nigh forgotten, than of the works by which she was well known, and which at that time brought people from the ends of the earth to seeher.... 

'Nothing ever destroyed her faith in those she loved. If I had not knownall about him from my own folk I should have thought her father had beena patriot and a martyr. She spoke of him as if there had never been sucha father--which in a sense was true. '

Mr. Payn quotes Miss Mitford's charming description of K. , 'for whomshe had the highest admiration. ' 'K. Is a great curiosity, by far thecleverest woman in these parts, not in a literary way [this was not todisappoint me], but in everything that is useful. She could make a Courtdress for a duchess or cook a dinner for a Lord Mayor, but her principaltalent is shown in managing everybody whom she comes near. Especiallyher husband and myself; she keeps the money of both and never allowseither of us to spend sixpence without her knowledge.... You should seethe manner in which she makes Ben reckon with her, and her contempt forall women who do not manage their husbands. '

Another delightful quotation is from one of Charles Kingsley's lettersto Mr. Payn. It brings the past before us from another point of view. 

'I can never forget the little figure rolled up in two chairs in thelittle Swallowfield room, packed round with books up to the ceiling--thelittle figure with clothes on of no recognised or recognisable pattern;and somewhere, out of the upper end of the heap, gleaming under a greatdeep globular brow, two such eyes as I never perhaps saw in any otherEnglishwoman--though I believe she must have had French blood in herveins to breed such eyes and such a tongue, the beautiful speech whichcame out of that ugly (it was that) face, and the glitter and depth tooof the eyes, like live coals--perfectly honest the while.... ' One wouldlike to go on quoting and copying, but here my preface must cease, forit is but a preface after all, one of those many prefaces written out ofthe past and when everything is over. 

COUNTRY PICTURES. 

Of all situations for a constant residence, that which appears tome most delightful is a little village far in the country; a smallneighbourhood, not of fine mansions finely peopled, but of cottages andcottage-like houses, 'messuages or tenements, ' as a friend of mine callssuch ignoble and nondescript dwellings, with inhabitants whose faces areas familiar to us as the flowers in our garden; a little world of ourown, close-packed and insulated like ants in an ant-hill, or bees in ahive, or sheep in a fold, or nuns in a convent, or sailors in a ship;where we know every one, are known to every one, interested in everyone, and authorised to hope that every one feels an interest in us. Howpleasant it is to slide into these true-hearted feelings from the kindlyand unconscious influence of habit, and to learn to know and to love thepeople about us, with all their peculiarities, just as we learn to knowand to love the nooks and turns of the shady lanes and sunny commonsthat we pass every day. Even in books I like a confined locality, and sodo the critics when they talk of the unities. Nothing is so tiresome asto be whirled half over Europe at the chariot-wheels of a hero, to goto sleep at Vienna, and awaken at Madrid; it produces a real fatigue, aweariness of spirit. On the other hand, nothing is so delightful as tosit down in a country village in one of Miss Austen's delicious novels, quite sure before we leave it to become intimate with every spot andevery person it contains; or to ramble with Mr. White* over his ownparish of Selborne, and form a friendship with the fields and coppices, as well as with the birds, mice, and squirrels, who inhabit them; or tosail with Robinson Crusoe to his island, and live there with him and hisgoats and his man Friday;--how much we dread any new comers, any freshimportation of savage or sailor! we never sympathise for a moment in ourhero's want of company, and are quite grieved when he gets away;--or tobe shipwrecked with Ferdinand on that other lovelier island--the islandof Prospero, and Miranda, and Caliban, and Ariel, and nobody else, none of Dryden's exotic inventions:--that is best of all. And a smallneighbourhood is as good in sober waking reality as in poetry or prose;a village neighbourhood, such as this Berkshire hamlet in which I write, a long, straggling, winding street at the bottom of a fine eminence, with a road through it, always abounding in carts, horsemen, andcarriages, and lately enlivened by a stage-coach from B---- to S----, which passed through about ten days ago, and will I suppose return sometime or other. There are coaches of all varieties nowadays; perhaps thismay be intended for a monthly diligence, or a fortnight fly. Will youwalk with me through our village, courteous reader? The journey is notlong. We will begin at the lower end, and proceed up the hill. 

*White's 'Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne;' one of the mostfascinating books ever written. I wonder that no naturalist has adoptedthe same plan. 

The tidy, square, red cottage on the right hand, with the longwell-stocked garden by the side of the road, belongs to a retiredpublican from a neighbouring town; a substantial person with a comelywife; one who piques himself on independence and idleness, talkspolitics, reads newspapers, hates the minister, and cries out forreform. He introduced into our peaceful vicinage the rebelliousinnovation of an illumination on the Queen's acquittal. Remonstrance andpersuasion were in vain; he talked of liberty and broken windows--so weall lighted up. Oh! how he shone that night with candles, and laurel, and white bows, and gold paper, and a transparency (originally designedfor a pocket-handkerchief) with a flaming portrait of her Majesty, hatted and feathered, in red ochre. He had no rival in the village, thatwe all acknowledged; the very bonfire was less splendid; the little boysreserved their best crackers to be expended in his honour, and he gavethem full sixpence more than any one else. He would like an illuminationonce a month; for it must not be concealed that, in spite of gardening, of newspaper reading, of jaunting about in his little cart, andfrequenting both church and meeting, our worthy neighbour begins to feelthe weariness of idleness. He hangs over his gate, and tries to enticepassengers to stop and chat; he volunteers little jobs all round, smokes cherry trees to cure the blight, and traces and blows up all thewasps'-nests in the parish. I have seen a great many wasps in our gardento-day, and shall enchant him with the intelligence. He even assists hiswife in her sweepings and dustings. Poor man! he is a very respectableperson, and would be a very happy one, if he would add a littleemployment to his dignity. It would be the salt of life to him. 

Next to his house, though parted from it by another long garden with ayew arbour at the end, is the pretty dwelling of the shoemaker, a pale, sickly-looking, black-haired man, the very model of sober industry. There he sits in his little shop from early morning till late at night. An earthquake would hardly stir him: the illumination did not. He stuckimmovably to his last, from the first lighting up, through the longblaze and the slow decay, till his large solitary candle was the onlylight in the place. One cannot conceive anything more perfect than thecontempt which the man of transparencies and the man of shoes must havefelt for each other on that evening. There was at least as much vanityin the sturdy industry as in the strenuous idleness, for our shoemakeris a man of substance; he employs three journeymen, two lame, and onea dwarf, so that his shop looks like an hospital; he has purchased thelease of his commodious dwelling, some even say that he has bought itout and out; and he has only one pretty daughter, a light, delicate, fair-haired girl of fourteen, the champion, protectress, and playfellowof every brat under three years old, whom she jumps, dances, dandles, and feeds all day long. A very attractive person is that child-lovinggirl. I have never seen any one in her station who possessed sothoroughly that undefinable charm, the lady-look. See her on a Sundayin her simplicity and her white frock, and she might pass for an earl'sdaughter. She likes flowers too, and has a profusion of white stocksunder her window, as pure and delicate as herself. 

The first house on the opposite side of the way is the blacksmith's;a gloomy dwelling, where the sun never seems to shine; dark and smokywithin and without, like a forge. The blacksmith is a high officer inour little state, nothing less than a constable; but, alas! alas! whentumults arise, and the constable is called for, he will commonly befound in the thickest of the fray. Lucky would it be for his wifeand her eight children if there were no public-house in the land:an inveterate inclination to enter those bewitching doors is Mr. Constable's only fault. 

Next to this official dwelling is a spruce brick tenement, red, high, and narrow, boasting, one above another, three sash-windows, the onlysash-windows in the village, with a clematis on one side and a rose onthe other, tall and narrow like itself. That slender mansion has a fine, genteel look. The little parlour seems made for Hogarth's old maid andher stunted footboy; for tea and card parties, --it would just hold onetable; for the rustle of faded silks, and the splendour of old china;for the delight of four by honours, and a little snug, quiet scandalbetween the deals; for affected gentility and real starvation. Thisshould have been its destiny; but fate has been unpropitious: it belongsto a plump, merry, bustling dame, with four fat, rosy, noisy children, the very essence of vulgarity and plenty. 

Then comes the village shop, like other village shops, multifarious asa bazaar; a repository for bread, shoes, tea, cheese, tape, ribands, andbacon; for everything, in short, except the one particular thing whichyou happen to want at the moment, and will be sure not to find. Thepeople are civil and thriving, and frugal withal; they have let theupper part of their house to two young women (one of them is a prettyblue-eyed girl) who teach little children their A B C, and make caps andgowns for their mammas, --parcel schoolmistress, parcel mantua-maker. I believe they find adorning the body a more profitable vocation thanadorning the mind. 

Divided from the shop by a narrow yard, and opposite the shoemaker's, is a habitation of whose inmates I shall say nothing. A cottage--no--aminiature house, with many additions, little odds and ends of places, pantries, and what not; all angles, and of a charming in-and-outness;a little bricked court before one half, and a little flower-yard beforethe other; the walls, old and weather-stained, covered with hollyhocks, roses, honeysuckles, and a great apricot-tree; the casements full ofgeraniums (ah! there is our superb white cat peeping out from amongthem); the closets (our landlord has the assurance to call them rooms)full of contrivances and corner-cupboards; and the little garden behindfull of common flowers, tulips, pinks, larkspurs, peonies, stocks, andcarnations, with an arbour of privet, not unlike a sentry-box, where onelives in a delicious green light, and looks out on the gayest of allgay flower-beds. That house was built on purpose to show in what anexceeding small compass comfort may be packed. Well, I will loiter thereno longer. 

The next tenement is a place of importance, the Rose Inn: a white-washedbuilding, retired from the road behind its fine swinging sign, with alittle bow-window room coming out on one side, and forming, with ourstable on the other, a sort of open square, which is the constant resortof carts, waggons, and return chaises. There are two carts there now, and mine host is serving them with beer in his eternal red waistcoat. Heis a thriving man and a portly, as his waistcoat attests, which has beentwice let out within this twelvemonth. Our landlord has a stirring wife, a hopeful son, and a daughter, the belle of the village; not so prettyas the fair nymph of the shoe-shop, and far less elegant, but ten timesas fine; all curl-papers in the morning, like a porcupine, all curls inthe afternoon, like a poodle, with more flounces than curl-papers, andmore lovers than curls. Miss Phoebe is fitter for town than country; andto do her justice, she has a consciousness of that fitness, and turnsher steps townward as often as she can. She is gone to B---- to-day withher last and principal lover, a recruiting sergeant--a man as tall asSergeant Kite, and as impudent. Some day or other he will carry off MissPhoebe. 

In a line with the bow-window room is a low garden-wall, belonging to ahouse under repair:--the white house opposite the collar-maker's shop, with four lime-trees before it, and a waggon-load of bricks at the door. That house is the plaything of a wealthy, well-meaning, whimsical personwho lives about a mile off. He has a passion for brick and mortar, and, being too wise to meddle with his own residence, diverts himself withaltering and re-altering, improving and re-improving, doing and undoinghere. It is a perfect Penelope's web. Carpenters and bricklayers havebeen at work for these eighteen months, and yet I sometimes stand andwonder whether anything has really been done. One exploit in last Junewas, however, by no means equivocal. Our good neighbour fancied that thelimes shaded the rooms, and made them dark (there was not a creature inthe house but the workmen), so he had all the leaves stripped from everytree. There they stood, poor miserable skeletons, as bare as Christmasunder the glowing midsummer sun. Nature revenged herself, in her ownsweet and gracious manner; fresh leaves sprang out, and at nearlyChristmas the foliage was as brilliant as when the outrage wascommitted. 

Next door lives a carpenter, 'famed ten miles round, and worthy all hisfame, '--few cabinet-makers surpass him, with his excellent wife, andtheir little daughter Lizzy, the plaything and queen of the village, a child three years old according to the register, but six in size andstrength and intellect, in power and in self-will. She manages everybodyin the place, her schoolmistress included; turns the wheeler's childrenout of their own little cart, and makes them draw her; seduces cakesand lollypops from the very shop window; makes the lazy carry her, thesilent talk to her, the grave romp with her; does anything she pleases;is absolutely irresistible. Her chief attraction lies in her exceedingpower of loving, and her firm reliance on the love and indulgence ofothers. How impossible it would be to disappoint the dear little girlwhen she runs to meet you, slides her pretty hand into yours, looks upgladly in your face, and says 'Come!' You must go: you cannot help it. Another part of her charm is her singular beauty. Together with a gooddeal of the character of Napoleon, she has something of his square, sturdy, upright form, with the finest limbs in the world, a complexionpurely English, a round laughing face, sunburnt and rosy, large merryblue eyes, curling brown hair, and a wonderful play of countenance. Shehas the imperial attitudes too, and loves to stand with her hands behindher, or folded over her bosom; and sometimes, when she has a littletouch of shyness, she clasps them together on the top of her head, pressing down her shining curls, and looking so exquisitely pretty! Yes, Lizzy is queen of the village! She has but one rival in her dominions, acertain white greyhound called Mayflower, much her friend, who resemblesher in beauty and strength, in playfulness, and almost in sagacity, andreigns over the animal world as she over the human. They are both comingwith me, Lizzy and Lizzy's 'pretty May. ' We are now at the end of thestreet; a cross-lane, a rope-walk shaded with limes and oaks, and a coolclear pond overhung with elms, lead us to the bottom of the hill. Thereis still one house round the corner, ending in a picturesque wheeler'sshop. The dwelling-house is more ambitious. Look at the fine floweredwindow-blinds, the green door with the brass knocker, and the somewhatprim but very civil person, who is sending off a labouring man with sirsand curtsies enough for a prince of the blood. Those are the curate'slodgings--apartments his landlady would call them; he lives with hisown family four miles off, but once or twice a week he comes to his neatlittle parlour to write sermons, to marry, or to bury, as the case mayrequire. Never were better or kinder people than his host and hostess;and there is a reflection of clerical importance about them sincetheir connection with the Church, which is quite edifying--a decorum, a gravity, a solemn politeness. Oh, to see the worthy wheeler carry thegown after his lodger on a Sunday, nicely pinned up in his wife's besthandkerchief!--or to hear him rebuke a squalling child or a squabblingwoman! The curate is nothing to him. He is fit to be perpetualchurchwarden. 

We must now cross the lane into the shady rope-walk. That pretty whitecottage opposite, which stands straggling at the end of the village ina garden full of flowers, belongs to our mason, the shortest of men, and his handsome, tall wife: he, a dwarf, with the voice of a giant; onestarts when he begins to talk as if he were shouting through a speakingtrumpet; she, the sister, daughter, and grand-daughter, of a long lineof gardeners, and no contemptible one herself. It is very magnanimous inme not to hate her; for she beats me in my own way, in chrysanthemums, and dahlias, and the like gauds. Her plants are sure to live; mine havea sad trick of dying, perhaps because I love them, 'not wisely, but toowell, ' and kill them with over-kindness. Half-way up the hill is anotherdetached cottage, the residence of an officer, and his beautiful family. That eldest boy, who is hanging over the gate, and looking with suchintense childish admiration at my Lizzy, might be a model for a Cupid. 

How pleasantly the road winds up the hill, with its broad green bordersand hedgerows so thickly timbered! How finely the evening sun falls onthat sandy excavated bank, and touches the farmhouse on the top of theeminence! and how clearly defined and relieved is the figure of theman who is just coming down! It is poor John Evans, the gardener--anexcellent gardener till about ten years ago, when he lost his wife, andbecame insane. He was sent to St. Luke's, and dismissed as cured; buthis power was gone and his strength; he could no longer manage a garden, nor submit to the restraint, nor encounter the fatigue of regularemployment: so he retreated to the workhouse, the pensioner and factotumof the village, amongst whom he divides his services. His mind oftenwanders, intent on some fantastic and impracticable plan, and lost topresent objects; but he is perfectly harmless, and full of a childlikesimplicity, a smiling contentedness, a most touching gratitude. Everyone is kind to John Evans, for there is that about him which must beloved; and his unprotectedness, his utter defencelessness, have anirresistible claim on every better feeling. I know nobody who inspiresso deep and tender a pity; he improves all around him. He is useful, too, to the extent of his little power; will do anything, but lovesgardening best, and still piques himself on his old arts of pruningfruit-trees, and raising cucumbers. He is the happiest of men just now, for he has the management of a melon bed--a melon bed!--fie! What agrand pompous name was that for three melon plants under a hand-light!John Evans is sure that they will succeed. We shall see: as thechancellor said, 'I doubt. '

We are now on the very brow of the eminence, close to the Hill-house andits beautiful garden. On the outer edge of the paling, hanging overthe bank that skirts the road, is an old thorn--such a thorn! Thelong sprays covered with snowy blossoms, so graceful, so elegant, solightsome, and yet so rich! There only wants a pool under the thorn togive a still lovelier reflection, quivering and trembling, like a tuftof feathers, whiter and greener than the life, and more prettily mixedwith the bright blue sky. There should indeed be a pool; but on the darkgrass-plat, under the high bank, which is crowned by that magnificentplume, there is something that does almost as well, --Lizzy and Mayflowerin the midst of a game at romps, 'making a sunshine in the shady place;'Lizzy rolling, laughing, clapping her hands, and glowing like a rose;Mayflower playing about her like summer lightning, dazzling the eyeswith her sudden turns, her leaps, her bounds, her attacks, and herescapes. She darts round the lovely little girl, with the same momentarytouch that the swallow skims over the water, and has exactly the samepower of flight, the same matchless ease and strength and grace. What apretty picture they would make; what a pretty foreground they do make tothe real landscape! The road winding down the hill with a slight bend, like that in the High Street at Oxford; a waggon slowly ascending, and ahorseman passing it at a full trot--(ah! Lizzy, Mayflower will certainlydesert you to have a gambol with that blood-horse!) half-way down, justat the turn, the red cottage of the lieutenant, covered with vines, thevery image of comfort and content; farther down, on the opposite side, the small white dwelling of the little mason; then the limes and therope-walk; then the village street, peeping through the trees, whoseclustering tops hide all but the chimneys, and various roofs of thehouses, and here and there some angle of a wall; farther on, the eleganttown of B----, with its fine old church-towers and spires; the wholeview shut in by a range of chalky hills and over every part of thepicture, trees so profusely scattered, that it appears like a woodlandscene, with glades and villages intermixed. The trees are of all kindsand all hues, chiefly the finely-shaped elm, of so bright and deep agreen, the tips of whose high outer branches drop down with such a crispand garland-like richness, and the oak, whose stately form is justnow so splendidly adorned by the sunny colouring of the young leaves. Turning again up the hill, we find ourselves on that peculiar charm ofEnglish scenery, a green common, divided by the road; the right sidefringed by hedgerows and trees, with cottages and farmhouses irregularlyplaced, and terminated by a double avenue of noble oaks; the left, prettier still, dappled by bright pools of water, and islands ofcottages and cottage-gardens, and sinking gradually down to cornfieldsand meadows, and an old farmhouse, with pointed roofs and clusteredchimneys, looking out from its blooming orchard, and backed by woodyhills. The common is itself the prettiest part of the prospect; halfcovered with low furze, whose golden blossoms reflect so intensely thelast beams of the setting sun, and alive with cows and sheep, and twosets of cricketers; one of young men, surrounded by spectators, somestanding, some sitting, some stretched on the grass, all taking adelighted interest in the game; the other, a merry group of little boys, at a humble distance, for whom even cricket is scarcely lively enough, shouting, leaping, and enjoying themselves to their hearts' content. Butcricketers and country boys are too important persons in our villageto be talked of merely as figures in the landscape. They deserve anindividual introduction--an essay to themselves--and they shall have it. No fear of forgetting the good-humoured faces that meet us in our walksevery day. 

WALKS IN THE COUNTRY. 

Frost. 

January 23rd. --At noon to-day I and my white greyhound, Mayflower, set out for a walk into a very beautiful world, --a sort of silentfairyland, --a creation of that matchless magician the hoar-frost. Therehad been just snow enough to cover the earth and all its covers with onesheet of pure and uniform white, and just time enough since the snow hadfallen to allow the hedges to be freed of their fleecy load, and clothedwith a delicate coating of rime. The atmosphere was deliciously calm;soft, even mild, in spite of the thermometer; no perceptible air, buta stillness that might almost be felt, the sky, rather gray than blue, throwing out in bold relief the snow-covered roofs of our village, and the rimy trees that rise above them, and the sun shining dimly asthrough a veil, giving a pale fair light, like the moon, only brighter. There was a silence, too, that might become the moon, as we stood at ourlittle gate looking up the quiet street; a Sabbath-like pause of workand play, rare on a work-day; nothing was audible but the pleasanthum of frost, that low monotonous sound, which is perhaps the nearestapproach that life and nature can make to absolute silence. The verywaggons as they come down the hill along the beaten track of crispyellowish frost-dust, glide along like shadows; even May's boundingfootsteps, at her height of glee and of speed, fall like snow upon snow. 

But we shall have noise enough presently: May has stopped at Lizzy'sdoor; and Lizzy, as she sat on the window-sill with her bright rosyface laughing through the casement, has seen her and disappeared. Sheis coming. No! The key is turning in the door, and sounds of evil omenissue through the keyhole--sturdy 'let me outs, ' and 'I will goes, 'mixed with shrill cries on May and on me from Lizzy, piercing througha low continuous harangue, of which the prominent parts are apologies, chilblains, sliding, broken bones, lollypops, rods, and gingerbread, from Lizzy's careful mother. 'Don't scratch the door, May! Don't roarso, my Lizzy! We'll call for you as we come back. ' 'I'll go now! Letme out! I will go!' are the last words of Miss Lizzy. Mem. Not to spoilthat child--if I can help it. But I do think her mother might have letthe poor little soul walk with us to-day. Nothing worse for childrenthan coddling. Nothing better for chilblains than exercise. Besides, Idon't believe she has any--and as to breaking her bones in sliding, Idon't suppose there's a slide on the common. These murmuring cogitationshave brought us up the hill, and half-way across the light and airycommon, with its bright expanse of snow and its clusters of cottages, whose turf fires send such wreaths of smoke sailing up the air, anddiffuse such aromatic fragrance around. And now comes the delightfulsound of childish voices, ringing with glee and merriment almost frombeneath our feet. Ah, Lizzy, your mother was right! They are shoutingfrom that deep irregular pool, all glass now, where, on two long, smooth, liny slides, half a dozen ragged urchins are slipping along intottering triumph. Half a dozen steps bring us to the bank right abovethem. May can hardly resist the temptation of joining her friends, formost of the varlets are of her acquaintance, especially the rogue wholeads the slide, --he with the brimless hat, whose bronzed complexion andwhite flaxen hair, reversing the usual lights and shadows of the humancountenance, give so strange and foreign a look to his flat and comicfeatures. This hobgoblin, Jack Rapley by name, is May's great crony; andshe stands on the brink of the steep, irregular descent, her black eyesfixed full upon him, as if she intended him the favour of jumping on hishead. She does: she is down, and upon him; but Jack Rapley is not easilyto be knocked off his feet. He saw her coming, and in the moment ofher leap sprung dexterously off the slide on the rough ice, steadyinghimself by the shoulder of the next in the file, which unlucky follower, thus unexpectedly checked in his career, fell plump backwards, knockingdown the rest of the line like a nest of card-houses. There is no harmdone; but there they lie, roaring, kicking, sprawling, in every attitudeof comic distress, whilst Jack Rapley and Mayflower, sole authors ofthis calamity, stand apart from the throng, fondling, and coquetting, and complimenting each other, and very visibly laughing, May inher black eyes, Jack in his wide, close-shut mouth, and his wholemonkey-face, at their comrades' mischances. I think, Miss May, you mayas well come up again, and leave Master Rapley to fight your battles. He'll get out of the scrape. He is a rustic wit--a sort of RobinGoodfellow--the sauciest, idlest, cleverest, best-natured boy in theparish; always foremost in mischief, and always ready to do a good turn. The sages of our village predict sad things of Jack Rapley, so that I amsometimes a little ashamed to confess, before wise people, that I havea lurking predilection for him (in common with other naughty ones), andthat I like to hear him talk to May almost as well as she does. 'Come, May!' and up she springs, as light as a bird. The road is gay now; cartsand post-chaises, and girls in red cloaks, and, afar off, looking almostlike a toy, the coach. It meets us fast and soon. How much happier thewalkers look than the riders--especially the frost-bitten gentleman, and the shivering lady with the invisible face, sole passengers of thatcommodious machine! Hooded, veiled, and bonneted, as she is, one seesfrom her attitude how miserable she would look uncovered. 

Another pond, and another noise of children. More sliding? Oh no! Thisis a sport of higher pretension. Our good neighbour, the lieutenant, skating, and his own pretty little boys, and two or three otherfour-year-old elves, standing on the brink in an ecstasy of joy andwonder! Oh what happy spectators! And what a happy performer! Theyadmiring, he admired, with an ardour and sincerity never excited by allthe quadrilles and the spread-eagles of the Seine and the Serpentine. Hereally skates well though, and I am glad I came this way; for, with allthe father's feelings sitting gaily at his heart, it must still gratifythe pride of skill to have one spectator at that solitary pond who hasseen skating before. 

Now we have reached the trees, --the beautiful trees! never so beautifulas to-day. Imagine the effect of a straight and regular double avenue ofoaks, nearly a mile long, arching overhead, and closing into perspectivelike the roof and columns of a cathedral, every tree and branchincrusted with the bright and delicate congelation of hoar-frost, whiteand pure as snow, delicate and defined as carved ivory. How beautiful itis, how uniform, how various, how filling, how satiating to the eye andto the mind--above all, how melancholy! There is a thrilling awfulness, an intense feeling of simple power in that naked and colourless beauty, which falls on the earth like the thoughts of death--death pure, andglorious, and smiling, --but still death. Sculpture has always the sameeffect on my imagination, and painting never. Colour is life. --We arenow at the end of this magnificent avenue, and at the top of a steepeminence commanding a wide view over four counties--a landscape of snow. A deep lane leads abruptly down the hill; a mere narrow cart-track, sinking between high banks clothed with fern and furze and low broom, crowned with luxuriant hedgerows, and famous for their summer smellof thyme. How lovely these banks are now--the tall weeds and the gorsefixed and stiffened in the hoar-frost, which fringes round the brightprickly holly, the pendent foliage of the bramble, and the deep orangeleaves of the pollard oaks! Oh, this is rime in its loveliest form! Andthere is still a berry here and there on the holly, 'blushing in itsnatural coral' through the delicate tracery, still a stray hip or hawfor the birds, who abound here always. The poor birds, how tame theyare, how sadly tame! There is the beautiful and rare crested wren, 'thatshadow of a bird, ' as White of Selborne calls it, perched in the middleof the hedge, nestling as it were amongst the cold bare boughs, seeking, poor pretty thing, for the warmth it will not find. And there, fartheron, just under the bank, by the slender runlet, which still tricklesbetween its transparent fantastic margin of thin ice, as if it were athing of life, --there, with a swift, scudding motion, flits, in shortlow flights, the gorgeous kingfisher, its magnificent plumage of scarletand blue flashing in the sun, like the glories of some tropical bird. He is come for water to this little spring by the hillside, --water whicheven his long bill and slender head can hardly reach, so nearly do thefantastic forms of those garland-like icy margins meet over the tinystream beneath. It is rarely that one sees the shy beauty so close orso long; and it is pleasant to see him in the grace and beauty of hisnatural liberty, the only way to look at a bird. We used, before welived in a street, to fix a little board outside the parlour window, andcover it with bread crumbs in the hard weather. It was quite delightfulto see the pretty things come and feed, to conquer their shyness, anddo away their mistrust. First came the more social tribes, 'the robinred-breast and the wren, ' cautiously, suspiciously, picking up a crumbon the wing, with the little keen bright eye fixed on the window; thenthey would stop for two pecks; then stay till they were satisfied. Theshyer birds, tamed by their example, came next; and at last one saucyfellow of a blackbird--a sad glutton, he would clear the board in twominutes, --used to tap his yellow bill against the window for more. Howwe loved the fearless confidence of that fine, frank-hearted creature!And surely he loved us. I wonder the practice is not more general. 'May!May! naughty May!' She has frightened away the kingfisher; and now, inher coaxing penitence, she is covering me with snow. 'Come, pretty May!it is time to go home. '

Thaw. 

January 28th. --We have had rain, and snow, and frost, and rain againfour days of absolute confinement. Now it is a thaw and a flood; butour light gravelly soil, and country boots, and country hardihood, willcarry us through. What a dripping, comfortless day it is! just likethe last days of November: no sun, no sky, gray or blue; one low, overhanging, dark, dismal cloud, like London smoke; Mayflower is outcoursing too, and Lizzy gone to school. Never mind. Up the hill again!Walk we must. Oh what a watery world to look back upon! Thames, Kennet, Loddon--all overflowed; our famous town, inland once, turned into asort of Venice; C. Park converted into an island; and the long range ofmeadows from B. To W. One huge unnatural lake, with trees growing outof it. Oh what a watery world!--I will look at it no longer. I willwalk on. The road is alive again. Noise is reborn. Waggons creak, horsessplash, carts rattle, and pattens paddle through the dirt with more thantheir usual clink. The common has its old fine tints of green and brown, and its old variety of inhabitants, horses, cows, sheep, pigs, anddonkeys. The ponds are unfrozen, except where some melancholy pieceof melting ice floats sullenly on the water; and cackling geese andgabbling ducks have replaced the lieutenant and Jack Rapley. The avenueis chill and dark, the hedges are dripping, the lanes knee-deep, and allnature is in a state of 'dissolution and thaw. '

THE FIRST PRIMROSE. 

March 6th. --Fine March weather: boisterous, blustering, much wind andsqualls of rain; and yet the sky, where the clouds are swept away, deliciously blue, with snatches of sunshine, bright, and clear, andhealthful, and the roads, in spite of the slight glittering showers, crisply dry. Altogether the day is tempting, very tempting. It will notdo for the dear common, that windmill of a walk; but the close shelteredlanes at the bottom of the hill, which keep out just enough of thestormy air, and let in all the sun, will be delightful. Past our oldhouse, and round by the winding lanes, and the workhouse, and across thelea, and so into the turnpike-road again, --that is our route for to-day. Forth we set, Mayflower and I, rejoicing in the sunshine, and stillmore in the wind, which gives such an intense feeling of existence, and, co-operating with brisk motion, sets our blood and our spirits in aglow. For mere physical pleasure, there is nothing perhaps equal to theenjoyment of being drawn, in a light carriage, against such a wind asthis, by a blood-horse at his height of speed. Walking comes next to it;but walking is not quite so luxurious or so spiritual, not quite somuch what one fancies of flying, or being carried above the clouds in aballoon. 

Nevertheless, a walk is a good thing; especially under this southernhedgerow, where nature is just beginning to live again; the periwinkles, with their starry blue flowers, and their shining myrtle-like leaves, garlanding the bushes; woodbines and elder-trees pushing out their smallswelling buds; and grasses and mosses springing forth in every varietyof brown and green. Here we are at the corner where four lanes meet, orrather where a passable road of stones and gravel crosses an impassableone of beautiful but treacherous turf, and where the small whitefarmhouse, scarcely larger than a cottage, and the well-stockedrick-yard behind, tell of comfort and order, but leave all unguessed thegreat riches of the master. How he became so rich is almost a puzzle;for, though the farm be his own, it is not large; and though prudent andfrugal on ordinary occasions, Farmer Barnard is no miser. His horses, dogs, and pigs are the best kept in the parish, --May herself, althoughher beauty be injured by her fatness, half envies the plight of hisbitch Fly: his wife's gowns and shawls cost as much again as any shawlsor gowns in the village; his dinner parties (to be sure they are notfrequent) display twice the ordinary quantity of good things--twocouples of ducks, two dishes of green peas, two turkey poults, twogammons of bacon, two plum-puddings; moreover, he keeps a single-horsechaise, and has built and endowed a Methodist chapel. Yet is he therichest man in these parts. Everything prospers with him. Money driftsabout him like snow. He looks like a rich man. There is a sturdysquareness of face and figure; a good-humoured obstinacy; a civilimportance. He never boasts of his wealth, or gives himself undueairs; but nobody can meet him at market or vestry without finding outimmediately that he is the richest man there. They have no child to allthis money; but there is an adopted nephew, a fine spirited lad, whomay, perhaps, some day or other, play the part of a fountain to thereservoir. 

Now turn up the wide road till we come to the open common, with itspark-like trees, its beautiful stream, wandering and twisting along, andits rural bridge. Here we turn again, past that other white farmhouse, half hidden by the magnificent elms which stand before it. Ah! richesdwell not there, but there is found the next best thing--an industriousand light-hearted poverty. Twenty years ago Rachel Hilton was theprettiest and merriest lass in the country. Her father, an oldgamekeeper, had retired to a village alehouse, where his good beer, hissocial humour, and his black-eyed daughter, brought much custom. She hadlovers by the score; but Joseph White, the dashing and lively son of anopulent farmer, carried off the fair Rachel. They married and settledhere, and here they live still, as merrily as ever, with fourteenchildren of all ages and sizes, from nineteen years to nineteen months, working harder than any people in the parish, and enjoying themselvesmore. I would match them for labour and laughter against any family inEngland. She is a blithe, jolly dame, whose beauty has amplified intocomeliness; he is tall, and thin, and bony, with sinews like whipcord, astrong lively voice, a sharp weather-beaten face, and eyes and lips thatsmile and brighten when he speaks into a most contagious hilarity. Theyare very poor, and I often wish them richer; but I don't know--perhapsit might put them out. 

Quite close to Farmer White's is a little ruinous cottage, white-washedonce, and now in a sad state of betweenity, where dangling stockings andshirts, swelled by the wind, drying in a neglected garden, give signalof a washerwoman. There dwells, at present in single blessedness, BettyAdams, the wife of our sometimes gardener. I never saw any one who somuch reminded me in person of that lady whom everybody knows, Mistress Meg Merrilies;--as tall, as grizzled, as stately, as dark, asgipsy-looking, bonneted and gowned like her prototype, and almost asoracular. Here the resemblance ceases. Mrs. Adams is a perfectly honest, industrious, painstaking person, who earns a good deal of money bywashing and charing, and spends it in other luxuries than tidiness, --ingreen tea, and gin, and snuff. Her husband lives in a great family, tenmiles off. He is a capital gardener--or rather he would be so, if hewere not too ambitious. He undertakes all things, and finishes none. Buta smooth tongue, a knowing look, and a great capacity of labour, carryhim through. Let him but like his ale and his master and he will do workenough for four. Give him his own way, and his full quantum, and nothingcomes amiss to him. 

Ah, May is bounding forward! Her silly heart leaps at the sight ofthe old place--and so in good truth does mine. What a pretty place itwas--or rather, how pretty I thought it! I suppose I should have thoughtany place so where I had spent eighteen happy years. But it was reallypretty. A large, heavy, white house, in the simplest style, surroundedby fine oaks and elms, and tall massy plantations shaded down intoa beautiful lawn by wild overgrown shrubs, bowery acacias, raggedsweet-briers, promontories of dogwood, and Portugal laurel, and bays, over-hung by laburnum and bird-cherry; a long piece of water lettinglight into the picture, and looking just like a natural stream, thebanks as rude and wild as the shrubbery, interspersed with broom, andfurze, and bramble, and pollard oaks covered with ivy and honeysuckle;the whole enclosed by an old mossy park paling, and terminating in aseries of rich meadows, richly planted. This is an exact description ofthe home which, three years ago, it nearly broke my heart to leave. What a tearing up by the root it was! I have pitied cabbage-plants andcelery, and all transplantable things, ever since; though, incommon with them, and with other vegetables, the first agony of thetransportation being over, I have taken such firm and tenacious hold ofmy new soil, that I would not for the world be pulled up again, evento be restored to the old beloved ground;--not even if its beauty wereundiminished, which is by no means the case; for in those three years ithas thrice changed masters, and every successive possessor has broughtthe curse of improvement upon the place; so that between filling up thewater to cure dampness, cutting down trees to let in prospects, plantingto keep them out, shutting up windows to darken the inside of the house(by which means one end looks precisely as an eight of spades would dothat should have the misfortune to lose one of his corner pips), andbuilding colonnades to lighten the out, added to a general clearance ofpollards, and brambles, and ivy, and honeysuckles, and park palings, andirregular shrubs, the poor place is so transmogrified, that if it hadits old looking-glass, the water, back again, it would not know itsown face. And yet I love to haunt round about it: so does May. Herparticular attraction is a certain broken bank full of rabbit burrows, into which she insinuates her long pliant head and neck, and tears herpretty feet by vain scratchings: mine is a warm sunny hedgerow, inthe same remote field, famous for early flowers. Never was a spot morevariously flowery: primroses yellow, lilac white, violets of either hue, cowslips, oxslips, arums, orchises, wild hyacinths, ground ivy, pansies, strawberries, heart's-ease, formed a small part of the Flora of thatwild hedgerow. How profusely they covered the sunny open slope under theweeping birch, 'the lady of the woods'--and how often have I started tosee the early innocent brown snake, who loved the spot as well as I did, winding along the young blossoms, or rustling amongst the fallen leaves!There are primrose leaves already, and short green buds, but no flowers;not even in that furze cradle so full of roots, where they used to blowas in a basket. No, my May, no rabbits! no primroses! We may as wellget over the gate into the woody winding lane, which will bring us homeagain. 

Here we are making the best of our way between the old elms that arch sosolemnly over head, dark and sheltered even now. They say that a spirithaunts this deep pool--a white lady without a head. I cannot say that Ihave seen her, often as I have paced this lane at deep midnight, to hearthe nightingales, and look at the glow-worms;--but there, betterand rarer than a thousand ghosts, dearer even than nightingales orglow-worms, there is a primrose, the first of the year; a tuft ofprimroses, springing in yonder sheltered nook, from the mossy rootsof an old willow, and living again in the clear bright pool. Oh, howbeautiful they are--three fully blown, and two bursting buds! How glad Iam I came this way! They are not to be reached. Even Jack Rapley's loveof the difficult and the unattainable would fail him here: May herselfcould not stand on that steep bank. So much the better. Who would wishto disturb them? There they live in their innocent and fragrant beauty, sheltered from the storms, and rejoicing in the sunshine, and looking asif they could feel their happiness. Who would disturb them? Oh, how gladI am I came this way home!

VIOLETING. 

March 27th. --It is a dull gray morning, with a dewy feeling in the air;fresh, but not windy; cool, but not cold;--the very day for a personnewly arrived from the heat, the glare, the noise, and the fever ofLondon, to plunge into the remotest labyrinths of the country, andregain the repose of mind, the calmness of heart, which has been lost inthat great Babel. I must go violeting--it is a necessity--and I must goalone: the sound of a voice, even my Lizzy's, the touch of Mayflower'shead, even the bounding of her elastic foot, would disturb the serenityof feeling which I am trying to recover. I shall go quite alone, withmy little basket, twisted like a bee-hive, which I love so well, becauseSHE gave it to me, and kept sacred to violets and to those whom I love;and I shall get out of the high-road the moment I can. I would not meetany one just now, even of those whom I best like to meet. 

Ha!--Is not that group--a gentleman on a blood-horse, a lady keepingpace with him so gracefully and easily--see how prettily her veil wavesin the wind created by her own rapid motion!--and that gay, gallantboy, on the gallant white Arabian, curveting at their side, but ready tospring before them every instant--is not that chivalrous-looking partyMr. And Mrs. M. And dear R? No! the servant is in a different livery. Itis some of the ducal family, and one of their young Etonians. I may goon. I shall meet no one now; for I have fairly left the road, and amcrossing the lea by one of those wandering paths, amidst the gorse, andthe heath, and the low broom, which the sheep and lambs have made--apath turfy, elastic, thymy, and sweet, even at this season. 

We have the good fortune to live in an unenclosed parish, and maythank the wise obstinacy of two or three sturdy farmers, and the luckyunpopularity of a ranting madcap lord of the manor, for preserving thedelicious green patches, the islets of wilderness amidst cultivation, which form, perhaps, the peculiar beauty of English scenery. The commonthat I am passing now--the lea, as it is called--is one of the loveliestof these favoured spots. It is a little sheltered scene, retiring, as itwere, from the village; sunk amidst higher lands, hills would bealmost too grand a word; edged on one side by one gay high-road, andintersected by another; and surrounded by a most picturesque confusionof meadows, cottages, farms, and orchards; with a great pond in onecorner, unusually bright and clear, giving a delightful cheerfulnessand daylight to the picture. The swallows haunt that pond; so do thechildren. There is a merry group round it now; I have seldom seen itwithout one. Children love water, clear, bright, sparkling water; itexcites and feeds their curiosity; it is motion and life. 

The path that I am treading leads to a less lively spot, to that largeheavy building on one side of the common, whose solid wings, juttingout far beyond the main body, occupy three sides of a square, and give acold, shadowy look to the court. On one side is a gloomy garden, withan old man digging in it, laid out in straight dark beds of vegetables, potatoes, cabbages, onions, beans; all earthy and mouldy as a newly-duggrave. Not a flower or flowering shrub! Not a rose-tree or currant-bush!Nothing but for sober, melancholy use. Oh, different from the longirregular slips of the cottage-gardens, with their gay bunches ofpolyanthuses and crocuses, their wallflowers sending sweet odoursthrough the narrow casement, and their gooseberry-trees bursting into abrilliancy of leaf, whose vivid greenness has the effect of a blossom onthe eye! Oh, how different! On the other side of this gloomy abode is ameadow of that deep, intense emerald hue, which denotes the presence ofstagnant water, surrounded by willows at regular distances, and like thegarden, separated from the common by a wide, moat-like ditch. That isthe parish workhouse. All about it is solid, substantial, useful;--butso dreary! so cold! so dark! There are children in the court, and yetall is silent. I always hurry past that place as if it were a prison. Restraint, sickness, age, extreme poverty, misery, which I have no powerto remove or alleviate, --these are the ideas, the feelings, which thesight of those walls excites; yet, perhaps, if not certainly, theycontain less of that extreme desolation than the morbid fancy is apt topaint. There will be found order, cleanliness, food, clothing, warmth, refuge for the homeless, medicine and attendance for the sick, restand sufficiency for old age, and sympathy, the true and active sympathywhich the poor show to the poor, for the unhappy. There may be worseplaces than a parish workhouse--and yet I hurry past it. The feeling, the prejudice, will not be controlled. 

The end of the dreary garden edges off into a close-sheltered lane, wandering and winding, like a rivulet, in gentle 'sinuosities' (to usea word once applied by Mr. Wilberforce to the Thames at Henley), amidstgreen meadows, all alive with cattle, sheep, and beautiful lambs, in thevery spring and pride of their tottering prettiness; or fields of arableland, more lively still with troops of stooping bean-setters, womenand children, in all varieties of costume and colour; and ploughs andharrows, with their whistling boys and steady carters, going through, with a slow and plodding industry, the main business of this busyseason. What work beansetting is! What a reverse of the positionassigned to man to distinguish him from the beasts of the field! Onlythink of stooping for six, eight, ten hours a day, drilling holes in theearth with a little stick, and then dropping in the beans one by one. They are paid according to the quantity they plant; and some of the poorwomen used to be accused of clumping them--that is to say, of droppingmore than one bean into a hole. It seems to me, considering thetemptation, that not to clump is to be at the very pinnacle of humanvirtue. 

Another turn in the lane, and we come to the old house standing amongstthe high elms--the old farm-house, which always, I don't know why, carries back my imagination to Shakspeare's days. It is a long, low, irregular building, with one room, at an angle from the house, coveredwith ivy, fine white-veined ivy; the first floor of the main buildingprojecting and supported by oaken beams, and one of the windows below, with its old casement and long narrow panes, forming the half of ashallow hexagon. A porch, with seats in it, surmounted by a pinnacle, pointed roofs, and clustered chimneys, complete the picture! Alas! it islittle else but a picture! The very walls are crumbling to decay under acareless landlord and ruined tenant. 

Now a few yards farther, and I reach the bank. Ah! I smell themalready--their exquisite perfume steams and lingers in this moist, heavyair. Through this little gate, and along the green south bank of thisgreen wheat-field, and they burst upon me, the lovely violets, intenfold loveliness. The ground is covered with them, white and purple, enamelling the short dewy grass, looking but the more vividly colouredunder the dull, leaden sky. There they lie by hundreds, by thousands. In former years I have been used to watch them from the tiny green bud, till one or two stole into bloom. They never came on me before in sucha sudden and luxuriant glory of simple beauty, --and I do really owe onepure and genuine pleasure to feverish London! How beautifully they areplaced too, on this sloping bank, with the palm branches waving overthem, full of early bees, and mixing their honeyed scent with the moredelicate violet odour! How transparent and smooth and lusty are thebranches, full of sap and life! And there, just by the old mossy root, is a superb tuft of primroses, with a yellow butterfly hovering overthem, like a flower floating on the air. What happiness to sit on thistufty knoll, and fill my basket with the blossoms! What a renewal ofheart and mind! To inhabit such a scene of peace and sweetness is againto be fearless, gay, and gentle as a child. Then it is that thoughtbecomes poetry, and feeling religion. Then it is that we are happy andgood. Oh, that my whole life could pass so, floating on blissful andinnocent sensation, enjoying in peace and gratitude the common blessingsof Nature, thankful above all for the simple habits, the healthfultemperament, which render them so dear! Alas! who may dare expect a lifeof such happiness? But I can at least snatch and prolong the fleetingpleasure, can fill my basket with pure flowers, and my heart with purethoughts; can gladden my little home with their sweetness; can divide mytreasures with one, a dear one, who cannot seek them; can see them whenI shut my eyes and dream of them when I fall asleep. 

THE COPSE. 

April 18th. --Sad wintry weather; a northeast wind; a sun that puts outone's eyes, without affording the slightest warmth; dryness that chapslips and hands like a frost in December; rain that comes chilly andarrowy like hail in January; nature at a dead pause; no seeds up inthe garden; no leaves out in the hedgerows; no cowslips swinging theirpretty bells in the fields; no nightingales in the dingles; no swallowsskimming round the great pond; no cuckoos (that ever I should miss thatrascally sonneteer!) in any part. Nevertheless there is something of acharm in this wintry spring, this putting-back of the seasons. If theflower-clock must stand still for a month or two, could it choose abetter time than that of the primroses and violets? I never remember(and for such gauds my memory, if not very good for aught of wise oruseful, may be trusted) such an affluence of the one or such a durationof the other. Primrosy is the epithet which this year will retain inmy recollection. Hedge, ditch, meadow, field, even the very paths andhighways, are set with them; but their chief habitat is a certain copse, about a mile off, where they are spread like a carpet, and where I go tovisit them rather oftener than quite comports with the dignity of a ladyof mature age. I am going thither this very afternoon, and May and hercompany are going too. 

This Mayflower of mine is a strange animal. Instinct and imitation makein her an approach to reason which is sometimes almost startling. Shemimics all that she sees us do, with the dexterity of a monkey, and farmore of gravity and apparent purpose; cracks nuts and eats them; gatherscurrants and severs them from the stalk with the most delicate nicety;filches and munches apples and pears; is as dangerous in an orchard asa schoolboy; smells to flowers; smiles at meeting; answers in a prettylively voice when spoken to (sad pity that the language should beunknown!) and has greatly the advantage of us in a conversation, inasmuch as our meaning is certainly clear to her;--all this and athousand amusing prettinesses (to say nothing of her canine feat ofbringing her game straight to her master's feet, and refusing to resignit to any hand but his), does my beautiful greyhound perform untaught, by the mere effect of imitation and sagacity. Well, May, at the endof the coursing season, having lost Brush, our old spaniel, her greatfriend, and the blue greyhound, Mariette, her comrade and rival, both ofwhich four-footed worthies were sent out to keep for the summer, beganto find solitude a weary condition, and to look abroad for company. Nowit so happened that the same suspension of sport which had reduced ourlittle establishment from three dogs to one, had also dispersed thesplendid kennel of a celebrated courser in our neighbourhood, threeof whose finest young dogs came home to 'their walk' (as the sportingphrase goes) at the collarmaker's in our village. May, accordingly, onthe first morning of her solitude (she had never taken the slightestnotice of her neighbours before, although they had sojourned in ourstreet upwards of a fortnight), bethought herself of the timely resourceoffered to her by the vicinity of these canine beaux, and went up boldlyand knocked at their stable door, which was already very commodiouslyon the half-latch. The three dogs came out with much alertness andgallantry, and May, declining apparently to enter their territories, brought them off to her own. This manoeuvre has been repeated every day, with one variation; of the three dogs, the first a brindle, the seconda yellow, and the third a black, the two first only are now allowed towalk or consort with her, and the last, poor fellow, for no fault thatI can discover except May's caprice, is driven away not only by the fairlady, but even by his old companions--is, so to say, sent to Coventry. Of her two permitted followers, the yellow gentleman, Saladin by name, is decidedly the favourite. He is, indeed, May's shadow, and will walkwith me whether I choose or not. It is quite impossible to get rid ofhim unless by discarding Miss May also;--and to accomplish a walk in thecountry without her, would be like an adventure of Don Quixote withouthis faithful 'squire Sancho. 

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

Our route lay for the first part along the sheltered quiet lanes whichlead to our old habitation; a way never trodden by me without peculiarand homelike feelings, full of the recollections, the pains andpleasures, of other days. But we are not to talk sentiment now;--evenMay would not understand that maudlin language. We must get on. Whata wintry hedgerow this is for the eighteenth of April! Primrosy to besure, abundantly spangled with those stars of the earth, --but so bare, so leafless, so cold! The wind whistles through the brown boughs asin winter. Even the early elder shoots, which do make an approach tospringiness, look brown, and the small leaves of the woodbine, whichhave also ventured to peep forth, are of a sad purple, frost-bitten, like a dairymaid's elbows on a snowy morning. The very birds, in thisseason of pairing and building, look chilly and uncomfortable, and theirnests!--'Oh, Saladin! come away from the hedge! Don't you see that whatpuzzles 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 hencalling as it were for help? Come here this moment, sir!' And by goodluck Saladin (who for a paynim has tolerable qualities) comes, beforehe has touched the nest, or before his playmate the brindle, the lessmanageable of the two, has espied it. 

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

Mrs. Sally Mearing, when I first became acquainted with her, occupied, together with her father (a superannuated man of ninety), a largefarm very near our former habitation. It had been anciently a greatmanor-farm or court-house, and was still a stately, substantialbuilding, whose lofty halls and spacious chambers gave an air ofgrandeur to the common offices to which they were applied. Traces ofgilding might yet be seen on the panels which covered the walls, and onthe huge carved chimney-pieces which rose almost to the ceilings; andthe marble tables and the inlaid oak staircase still spoke of the formergrandeur of the court. Mrs. Sally corresponded well with the date of hermansion, although she troubled herself little with its dignity. She wasthoroughly of the old school, and had a most comfortable contempt forthe new: rose at four in winter and summer, breakfasted at six, dined ateleven in the forenoon, supped at five, and was regularly in bed beforeeight, except when the hay-time or the harvest imperiously required herto sit up till sunset, a necessity to which she submitted with novery good grace. To a deviation from these hours, and to the moderniniquities of white aprons, cotton stockings, and muslin handkerchiefs(Mrs. Sally herself always wore check, black worsted, and a sort ofyellow compound which she was wont to call 'susy'), together with theinvention of drill plough and thrashing-machines, and other agriculturalnovelties, she failed not to attribute all the mishaps or misdoings ofthe whole parish. The last-mentioned discovery especially aroused herindignation. Oh to hear her descant on the merits of the flail, wieldedby a stout right arm, such as she had known in her youth (for by heraccount there was as great a deterioration in bones and sinews as inthe other implements of husbandry), was enough to make the very inventorbreak his machine. She would even take up her favourite instrument, andthrash the air herself by way of illustrating her argument, and, to saytruth, few men in these degenerate days could have matched the stout, brawny, muscular limb which Mrs. Sally displayed at sixty-five. 

In spite of this contumacious rejection of agricultural improvements, the world went well with her at Court Farm. A good landlord, an easyrent, incessant labour, unremitting frugality, and excellent times, insured a regular though moderate profit; and she lived on, grumblingand prospering, flourishing and complaining, till two misfortunes befellher at once--her father died, and her lease expired. The loss of herfather although a bedridden man, turned of ninety, who could not in thecourse of nature have been expected to live long, was a terrible shockto a daughter, who was not so much younger as to be without fears forher own life, and who had besides been so used to nursing the good oldman, and looking to his little comforts, that she missed him as a motherwould miss an ailing child. The expiration of the lease was a grievanceand a puzzle of a different nature. Her landlord would have willinglyretained his excellent tenant, but not on the terms on which she thenheld the land, which had not varied for fifty years; so that poor Mrs. Sally had the misfortune to find rent rising and prices sinking both atthe same moment--a terrible solecism in political economy. Even this, however, I believe she would have endured, rather than have quitted thehouse where she was born, and to which all her ways and notions wereadapted, had not a priggish steward, as much addicted to improvementand reform as she was to precedent and established usages, insisted onbinding her by lease to spread a certain number of loads of chalk onevery field. This tremendous innovation, for never had that novelty inmanure whitened the crofts and pightles of Court Farm, decided her atonce. She threw the proposals into the fire, and left the place in aweek. 

Her choice of a habitation occasioned some wonder, and much amusementin our village world. To be sure, upon the verge of seventy, an old maidmay be permitted to dispense with the more rigid punctilio of her class, but Mrs. Sally had always been so tenacious on the score of character, so very a prude, so determined an avoider of the 'men folk' (as shewas wont contemptuously to call them), that we all were conscious ofsomething like astonishment, on finding that she and her little handmaidhad taken up their abode in one end of a spacious farmhouse belonging tothe bluff old bachelor, George Robinson, of the Lea. Now Farmer Robinsonwas quite as notorious for his aversion to petticoated things, as Mrs. Sally for her hatred to the unfeathered bipeds who wear doublet andhose, so that there was a little astonishment in that quarter too, andplenty of jests, which the honest farmer speedily silenced, by tellingall who joked on the subject that he had given his lodger fair warning, that, let people say what they would, he was quite determined not tomarry her: so that if she had any views that way, it would be better forher to go elsewhere. This declaration, which must be admitted to havebeen more remarkable for frankness than civility, made, however, no illimpression on Mrs. Sally. To the farmer's she went, and at his house shelives still, with her little maid, her tabby cat, a decrepit sheep-dog, and much of the lumber of Court Farm, which she could not find in herheart 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 byscandal, with no other grievance than an occasional dearth of employmentfor herself and her young lass (even pewter dishes do not always wantscouring), and now and then a twinge of the rheumatism. 

Here she is, that good relique of the olden time--for, in spite of herwhims and prejudices, a better and a kinder woman never lived--here sheis, with the hood of her red cloak pulled over her close black bonnet, of that silk which once (it may be presumed) was fashionable, sinceit is still called mode, and her whole stout figure huddled up in amiscellaneous and most substantial covering of thick petticoats, gowns, aprons, shawls, and cloaks--a weight which it requires the strength of athrasher to walk under--here she is, with her square honest visage, and her loud frank voice;--and we hold a pleasant disjointed chat ofrheumatisms and early chickens, bad weather, and hats with feathers inthem;--the last exceedingly sore subject being introduced by poor JaneDavis (a cousin of Mrs. Sally), who, passing us in a beaver bonnet, onher road from school, stopped to drop her little curtsy, and was soundlyscolded for her civility. Jane, who is a gentle, humble, smilinglass, about twelve years old, receives so many rebukes from her worthyrelative, and bears them so meekly, that I should not wonder if theywere to be followed by a legacy: I sincerely wish they may. Well, atlast we said good-bye; when, on inquiring my destination, and hearingthat I was bent to the ten-acre copse (part of the farm which she ruledso long), she stopped me to tell a dismal story of two sheep-stealerswho, sixty years ago, were found hidden in that copse, and onlytaken after great difficulty and resistance, and the maiming of apeace-officer. --'Pray don't go there, Miss! For mercy's sake don't be soventuresome! Think if they should kill you!' were the last words of Mrs. Sally. 

Many thanks for her care and kindness! But, without being at allfoolhardy in general, I have no great fear of the sheep-stealers ofsixty years ago. Even if they escaped hanging for that exploit, I shouldgreatly doubt their being in case to attempt another. So on we go: downthe short shady lane, and out on the pretty retired green, shut in byfields and hedgerows, which we must cross to reach the copse. How livelythis green nook is to-day, half covered with cows, and horses, andsheep! And how glad these frolicsome greyhounds are to exchange the hardgravel of the high road for this pleasant short turf, which seems madefor their gambols! How beautifully they are at play, chasing eachother round and round in lessening circles, darting off at all kinds ofangles, crossing and recrossing May, and trying to win her sedatenessinto 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 crowsin 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 haveactually singled out that pretty spotted lamb--'Brutes, if I catch you!Saladin! Brindle!' We shall be taken up for sheep-stealing presentlyourselves. They have chased the poor little lamb into a ditch, and aremounting guard over it, standing at bay. --'Ah, wretches, I have you now!for shame, Saladin! Get away, Brindle! See how good May is. Off withyou, brutes! For shame! For shame!' and brandishing a handkerchief, which could hardly be an efficient instrument of correction, I succeededin driving away the two puppies, who after all meant nothing more thanplay, although it was somewhat rough, and rather too much in the styleof the old fable of the boys and the frogs. May is gone after them, perhaps to scold them: for she has been as grave as a judge during thewhole proceeding, keeping ostentatiously close to me, and taking no partwhatever in the mischief. 

The poor little pretty lamb! here it lies on the bank quite motionless, frightened I believe to death, for certainly those villains nevertouched it. It does not stir. Does it breathe? Oh yes, it does! It isalive, safe enough. Look, it opens its eyes, and, finding the coastclear and its enemies far away, it springs up in a moment and gallopsto its dam, who has stood bleating the whole time at a most respectfuldistance. Who would suspect a lamb of so much simple cunning? I reallythought the pretty thing was dead--and now how glad the ewe is torecover her curling spotted little one! How fluttered they look! Well!this adventure has flurried me too; between fright and running, Iwarrant you my heart beats as fast as the lamb's. 

Ah! here is the shameless villain Saladin, the cause of the commotion, thrusting his slender nose into my hand to beg pardon and make up! 'Ohwickedest of soldans! Most iniquitous pagan! Soul of a Turk!'--but thereis no resisting the good-humoured creature's penitence. I must pat him. 'There! there! Now we will go to the copse; I am sure we shall find noworse malefactors than ourselves--shall we, May?--and the sooner weget out of sight of the sheep the better; for Brindle seems meditatinganother attack. Allons, messieurs, over this gate, across this meadow, and here is the copse. '

How boldly that superb ash-tree with its fine silver bark rises from thebank, and what a fine entrance it makes with the holly beside it, whichalso deserves to be called a tree! But here we are in the copse. Ah!only one half of the underwood was cut last year, and the other isat its full growth: hazel, brier, woodbine, bramble, forming oneimpenetrable thicket, and almost uniting with the lower branches of theelms, and oaks, and beeches, which rise at regular distances overhead. No foot can penetrate that dense and thorny entanglement; but there isa walk all round by the side of the wide sloping bank, walk and bank andcopse carpeted with primroses, whose fresh and balmy odour impregnatesthe very air. Oh how exquisitely beautiful! and it is not the primrosesonly, those gems of flowers, but the natural mosaic of which they forma part; that network of ground-ivy, with its lilac blossoms and thesubdued tint of its purplish leaves, those rich mosses, those enamelledwild hyacinths, those spotted arums, and above all those wreaths of ivylinking all those flowers together with chains of leaves more beautifulthan blossoms, whose white veins seem swelling amidst the deep greenor splendid brown;--it is the whole earth that is so beautiful! Neversurely were primroses so richly set, and never did primroses betterdeserve such a setting. There they are of their own lovely yellow, thehue to which they have given a name, the exact tint of the butterflythat overhangs them (the first I have seen this year! can spring reallybe coming at last?)--sprinkled here and there with tufts of a reddishpurple, and others of the purest white, as some accident of soil affectsthat strange and inscrutable operation of nature, the colouring offlowers. Oh how fragrant they are, and how pleasant it is to sit in thissheltered copse, listening to the fine creaking of the wind amongst thebranches, the most unearthly of sounds, with this gay tapestry under ourfeet, and the wood-pigeons flitting from tree to tree, and mixing thedeep note of love with the elemental music. 

Yes! spring is coming. Wood-pigeons, butterflies, and sweet flowers, allgive token of the sweetest of the seasons. Spring is coming. The hazelstalks are swelling and putting forth their pale tassels, the satinpalms with their honeyed odours are out on the willow, and the lastlingering winter berries are dropping from the hawthorn, and making wayfor the bright and blossomy leaves. 

THE WOOD. 

April 20th. --Spring is actually come now, with the fulness and almostthe suddenness of a northern summer. To-day is completely April;--cloudsand sunshine, wind and showers; blossoms on the trees, grass in thefields, swallows by the ponds, snakes in the hedgerows, nightingales inthe thickets, and cuckoos everywhere. My young friend Ellen G. Is goingwith me this evening to gather wood-sorrel. She never saw that mostelegant plant, and is so delicate an artist that the introduction willbe a mutual benefit; Ellen will gain a subject worthy of her pencil, and the pretty weed will live;--no small favour to a flower almost astransitory as the gum cistus: duration is the only charm which itwants, and that Ellen will give it. The weather is, to be sure, a littlethreatening, but we are not people to mind the weather when we have anobject in view; we shall certainly go in quest of the wood-sorrel, andwill take May, provided we can escape May's followers; for since theadventure of the lamb, Saladin has had an affair with a gander, furiousin defence of his goslings, in which rencontre the gander came offconqueror; and as geese abound in the wood to which we are going (calledby the country people the Pinge), and the victory may not always inclineto the right side, I should be very sorry to lead the Soldan to fighthis battles over again. We will take nobody but May. 

So saying, we proceeded on our way through winding lanes, betweenhedgerows tenderly green, till we reached the hatch-gate, with the whitecottage beside it embosomed in fruit-trees, which forms the entrance tothe Pinge, and in a moment the whole scene was before our eyes. 

'Is not this beautiful, Ellen?' The answer could hardly be other thana glowing rapid 'Yes!'--A wood is generally a pretty place; butthis wood--Imagine a smaller forest, full of glades and sheep-walks, surrounded by irregular cottages with their blooming orchards, a clearstream winding about the brakes, and a road intersecting it, and givinglife and light to the picture; and you will have a faint idea of thePinge. Every step was opening a new point of view, a fresh combinationof glade and path and thicket. The accessories too were changing everymoment. Ducks, geese, pigs, and children, giving way, as we advancedinto the wood, to sheep and forest ponies; and they again disappearingas we became more entangled in its mazes, till we heard nothing but thesong of the nightingale, and saw only the silent flowers. 

What a piece of fairy land! The tall elms overhead just bursting intotender vivid leaf, with here and there a hoary oak or a silver-barkedbeech, every twig swelling with the brown buds, and yet not quitestripped of the tawny foliage of autumn; tall hollies and hawthornbeneath, with their crisp brilliant leaves mixed with the whiteblossoms of the sloe, and woven together with garlands of woodbines andwild-briers;--what a fairy land!

Primroses, cowslips, pansies, and the regular open-eyed white blossomof the wood anemone (or, to use the more elegant Hampshire name, thewindflower), were set under our feet as thick as daisies in a meadow;but the pretty weed that we came to seek was coyer; and Ellen beganto fear that we had mistaken the place or the season. --At last she hadherself the pleasure of finding it under a brake of holly--'Oh, look!look! I am sure that this is the wood-sorrel! Look at the pendent whiteflower, shaped like a snowdrop and veined with purple streaks, and thebeautiful trefoil leaves folded like a heart, --some, the young ones, sovividly yet tenderly green that the foliage of the elm and the hawthornwould show dully at their side, --others of a deeper tint, and lined, asit were, with a rich and changeful purple!--Don't you see them?' pursuedmy dear young friend, who is a delightful piece of life and sunshine, and was half inclined to scold me for the calmness with which, amused byher enthusiasm, I stood listening to her ardent exclamations--'Don't yousee them? Oh how beautiful! and in what quantity! what profusion!See how the dark shade of the holly sets off the light and delicatecolouring of the flower!--And see that other bed of them springing fromthe rich moss in the roots of that old beech-tree! Pray, let us gathersome. Here are baskets. ' So, quickly and carefully we began gathering, leaves, blossoms, roots and all, for the plant is so fragile thatit will not brook separation;--quickly and carefully we gathered, encountering divers petty misfortunes in spite of all our care, nowcaught by the veil in a holly bush, now hitching our shawls in abramble, still gathering on, in spite of scratched fingers, till we hadnearly filled our baskets and began to talk of our departure:--

'But where is May? May! May! No going home without her. May! Here shecomes galloping, the beauty!'--(Ellen is almost as fond of May as Iam. )--'What has she got in her mouth? that rough, round, brown substancewhich she touches so tenderly? What can it be? A bird's nest? NaughtyMay!'

'No! as I live, a hedgehog! Look, Ellen, how it has coiled itself into athorny ball! Off with it, May! Don't bring it to me!'--And May, somewhatreluctant to part with her prickly prize, however troublesome ofcarriage, whose change of shape seemed to me to have puzzled hersagacity more than any event I ever witnessed, for in general she hasperfectly the air of understanding all that is going forward--Mayat last dropt the hedgehog; continuing, however, to pat it with herdelicate cat-like paw, cautiously and daintily applied, and caught backsuddenly and rapidly after every touch, as if her poor captive had beena red-hot coal. Finding that these pats entirely failed in solving theriddle (for the hedgehog shammed dead, like the lamb the other day, andappeared entirely motionless), she gave him so spirited a nudge withher pretty black nose, that she not only turned him over, but sent himrolling some little way along the turfy path, --an operation which thatsagacious quadruped endured with the most perfect passiveness, the mostadmirable non-resistance. No wonder that May's discernment was at fault, I myself, if I had not been aware of the trick, should have said thatthe ugly rough thing which she was trundling along, like a bowl or acricket-ball, was an inanimate substance, something devoid of sensationand of will. At last my poor pet, thoroughly perplexed and tired out, fairly relinquished the contest, and came slowly away, turning back onceor twice to look at the object of her curiosity, as if half inclinedto return and try the event of another shove. The sudden flight of awood-pigeon effectually diverted her attention; and Ellen amused herselfby fancying how the hedgehog was scuttling away, till our notice wasalso attracted by a very different object. 

We had nearly threaded the wood, and were approaching an open groveof magnificent oaks on the other side, when sounds other than ofnightingales burst on our ear, the deep and frequent strokes of thewoodman's axe, and emerging from the Pinge we discovered the havoc whichthat axe had committed. Above twenty of the finest trees lay stretchedon the velvet turf. There they lay in every shape and form ofdevastation: some, bare trunks stripped ready for the timber carriage, with the bark built up in long piles at the side; some with the spoilersbusy about them, stripping, hacking, hewing; others with their noblebranches, their brown and fragrant shoots all fresh as if they werealive--majestic corses, the slain of to-day! The grove was like a fieldof battle. The young lads who were stripping the bark, the very childrenwho were picking up the chips, seemed awed and silent, as if consciousthat death was around them. The nightingales sang faintly andinterruptedly--a few low frightened notes like a requiem. 

Ah! here we are at the very scene of murder, the very tree that theyare felling; they have just hewn round the trunk with those slaughteringaxes, and are about to saw it asunder. After all, it is a fine andthrilling operation, as the work of death usually is. Into how grand anattitude was that young man thrown as he gave the final strokes roundthe root; and how wonderful is the effect of that supple and apparentlypowerless saw, bending like a riband, and yet overmastering that giantof the woods, conquering and overthrowing that thing of life! Now it haspassed half through the trunk, and the woodman has begun to calculatewhich way the tree will fall; he drives a wedge to direct itscourse;--now a few more movements of the noiseless saw; and then alarger wedge. See how the branches tremble! Hark how the trunk beginsto crack! Another stroke of the huge hammer on the wedge, and the treequivers, as with a mortal agony, shakes, reels, and falls. How slow, and solemn, and awful it is! How like to death, to human death in itsgrandest form! Caesar in the Capitol, Seneca in the bath, could not fallmore sublimely than that oak. 

Even the heavens seem to sympathise with the devastation. The cloudshave gathered into one thick low canopy, dark and vapoury as the smokewhich overhangs London; the setting sun is just gleaming underneath witha dim and bloody glare, and the crimson rays spreading upward with alurid and portentous grandeur, a subdued and dusky glow, like the lightreflected on the sky from some vast conflagration. The deep flush fadesaway, and the rain begins to descend; and we hurry homeward rapidly, yetsadly, forgetful alike of the flowers, the hedgehog, and the wetting, thinking and talking only of the fallen tree. 

THE DELL. 

May 2nd. --A delicious evening;--bright sunshine; light summer air; a skyalmost cloudless; and a fresh yet delicate verdure on the hedges andin the fields;--an evening that seems made for a visit to mynewly-discovered haunt, the mossy dell, one of the most beautiful spotsin the neighbourhood, which after passing, times out of number, thefield which it terminates, we found out about two months ago from theaccident of May's killing a rabbit there. May has had a fancy for theplace ever since; and so have I. 

Thither accordingly we bend our way;--through the village;--up thehill;--along the common;--past the avenue;--across the bridge; and bythe hill. How deserted the road is to-night! We have not seen a singleacquaintance, except poor blind Robert, laden with his sack of grassplucked from the hedges, and the little boy that leads him. A singulardivision of labour! Little Jem guides Robert to the spots where the longgrass grows, and tells him where it is most plentiful; and then the oldman cuts it close to the roots, and between them they fill the sack, andsell the contents in the village. Half the cows in the street--for ourbaker, our wheelwright, and our shoemaker has each his Alderney--owe thebest part of their maintenance to blind Robert's industry. 

Here we are at the entrance of the cornfield which leads to the dell, and which commands so fine a view of the Loddon, the mill, the greatfarm, with its picturesque outbuildings, and the range of woody hillsbeyond. It is impossible not to pause a moment at that gate, thelandscape, always beautiful, is so suited to the season and thehour, --so bright, and gay, and spring-like. But May, who has the chanceof another rabbit in her pretty head, has galloped forward to thedingle, and poor May, who follows me so faithfully in all my wanderings, has a right to a little indulgence in hers. So to the dingle we go. 

At the end of the field, which when seen from the road seems terminatedby a thick dark coppice, we come suddenly to the edge of a ravine, onone side fringed with a low growth of alder, birch, and willow, onthe other mossy, turfy, and bare, or only broken by bright tufts ofblossomed broom. One or two old pollards almost conceal the winding roadthat leads down the descent, by the side of which a spring as bright ascrystal runs gurgling along. The dell itself is an irregular piece ofbroken ground, in some parts very deep, intersected by two or threehigh banks of equal irregularity, now abrupt and bare, and rocklike, now crowned with tufts of the feathery willow or magnificent old thorns. Everywhere the earth is covered by short, fine turf, mixed with mosses, soft, beautiful, and various, and embossed with the speckled leaves andlilac flowers of the arum, the paler blossoms of the common orchis, theenamelled blue of the wild hyacinth, so splendid in this evening light, and large tufts of oxslips and cowslips rising like nosegays from theshort turf. 

The ground on the other side of the dell is much lower than thefield through which we came, so that it is mainly to the labyrinthineintricacy of these high banks that it owes its singular character ofwildness and variety. Now we seem hemmed in by those green cliffs, shutout from all the world, with nothing visible but those verdant moundsand the deep blue sky; now by some sudden turn we get a peep at anadjoining meadow, where the sheep are lying, dappling its slopingsurface like the small clouds on the summer heaven. Poor harmless, quietcreatures, how still they are! Some socially lying side by side; somegrouped in threes and fours; some quite apart. Ah! there are lambsamongst them--pretty, pretty lambs--nestled in by their mothers. Soft, quiet, sleepy things! Not all so quiet, though! There is a party ofthese young lambs as wide awake as heart can desire; half a dozen ofthem playing together, frisking, dancing, leaping, butting, and cryingin the young voice, which is so pretty a diminutive of the full-grownbleat. How beautiful they are with their innocent spotted faces, theirmottled feet, their long curly tails, and their light flexible forms, frolicking like so many kittens, but with a gentleness, an assurance ofsweetness and innocence, which no kitten, nothing that ever is to be acat, can have. How complete and perfect is their enjoyment of existence!Ah! little rogues! your play has been too noisy; you have awakened yourmammas; and two or three of the old ewes are getting up; and one of themmarching gravely to the troop of lambs has selected her own, given hera gentle butt, and trotted off; the poor rebuked lamb following meekly, but every now and then stopping and casting a longing look at itsplaymates; who, after a moment's awed pause, had resumed their gambols;whilst the stately dame every now and then looked back in her turn, tosee that her little one was following. At last she lay down, and thelamb by her side. I never saw so pretty a pastoral scene in my life. *

*I have seen one which affected me much more. Walking in the Church-lanewith one of the young ladies of the vicarage, we met a large flock ofsheep, with the usual retinue of shepherds and dogs. Lingering afterthem and almost out of sight, we encountered a straggling ewe, nowtrotting along, now walking, and every now and then stopping to lookback, and bleating. A little behind her came a lame lamb, bleatingoccasionally, as if in answer to its dam, and doing its very best tokeep up with her. It was a lameness of both the fore-feet; the kneeswere bent, and it seemed to walk on the very edge of the hoof--ontip-toe, if I may venture such an expression. My young friend thoughtthat the lameness proceeded from original malformation, I am ratherof opinion that it was accidental, and that the poor creature waswretchedly foot-sore. However that might be, the pain and difficultywith which it took every step were not to be mistaken; and the distressand fondness of the mother, her perplexity as the flock passed graduallyout of sight, the effort with which the poor lamb contrived to keep upa sort of trot, and their mutual calls and lamentations were reallyso affecting, that Ellen and I, although not at all lachrymose sort ofpeople, had much ado not to cry. We could not find a boy to carry thelamb, which was too big for us to manage;--but I was quite sure that theewe would not desert it, and as the dark was coming on, we both trustedthat the shepherds on folding their flock would miss them and return forthem;--and so I am happy to say it proved. 

Another turning of the dell gives a glimpse of the dark coppice by whichit is backed, and from which we are separated by some marshy, rushyground, where the springs have formed into a pool, and where themoor-hen loves to build her nest. Ay, there is one scudding away now;--Ican hear her plash into the water, and the rustling of her wings amongstthe rushes. This is the deepest part of the wild dingle. How uneventhe ground is! Surely these excavations, now so thoroughly clothed withvegetation, must originally have been huge gravel pits; there is noother way of accounting for the labyrinth, for they do dig gravel insuch capricious meanders; but the quantity seems incredible. Well! thereis no end of guessing! We are getting amongst the springs, and mustturn back. Round this corner, where on ledges like fairy terraces theorchises and arums grow, and we emerge suddenly on a new side of thedell, just fronting the small homestead of our good neighbour FarmerAllen. 

This rustic dwelling belongs to what used to be called in this partof the country 'a little bargain': thirty or forty acres, perhaps, ofarable land, which the owner and his sons cultivated themselves, whilstthe wife and daughters assisted in the husbandry, and eked out theslender earnings by the produce of the dairy, the poultry yard, and theorchard;--an order of cultivators now passing rapidly away, but inwhich much of the best part of the English character, its industry, its frugality, its sound sense, and its kindness might be found. FarmerAllen himself is an excellent specimen, the cheerful venerable old manwith his long white hair, and his bright grey eye, and his wife is astill finer. They have had a hard struggle to win through the worldand keep their little property undivided; but good management and goodprinciples, and the assistance afforded them by an admirable son, wholeft our village a poor 'prentice boy, and is now a partner in a greathouse in London have enabled them to overcome all the difficulties ofthese trying times, and they are now enjoying the peaceful evenings ofa well-spent life as free from care and anxiety as their best friendscould desire. 

Ah! there is Mr. Allen in the orchard, the beautiful orchard, with itsglorious gardens of pink and white, its pearly pear-blossoms and coralapple-buds. What a flush of bloom it is! How brightly delicateit appears, thrown into strong relief by the dark house and theweather-stained barn, in this soft evening light! The very grass isstrewed with the snowy petals of the pear and the cherry. And there sitsMrs. Allen, feeding her poultry, with her three little grand-daughtersfrom London, pretty fairies from three years old to five (onlytwo-and-twenty months elapsed between the birth of the eldest and theyoungest) playing round her feet. 

Mrs. Allen, my dear Mrs. Allen, has been that rare thing a beauty, andalthough she be now an old woman I had almost said that she is sostill. Why should I not say so? Nobleness of feature and sweetness ofexpression are surely as delightful in age as in youth. Her face andfigure are much like those which are stamped indelibly on the memory ofevery one who ever saw that grand specimen of woman--Mrs. Siddons. Theoutline of Mrs. Allen's face is exactly the same; but there is moresoftness, more gentleness, a more feminine composure in the eye and inthe smile. Mrs. Allen never played Lady Macbeth. Her hair, almost asblack as at twenty, is parted on her large fair forehead, and combedunder her exquisitely neat and snowy cap; a muslin neckerchief, a greystuff gown and a white apron complete the picture. 

There she sits under an old elder-tree which flings its branches overher like a canopy, whilst the setting sun illumines her venerable figureand touches the leaves with an emerald light; there she sits, placid andsmiling, with her spectacles in her hand and a measure of barley onher lap, into which the little girls are dipping their chubby handsand scattering the corn amongst the ducks and chickens with unspeakableglee. But those ingrates the poultry don't seem so pleased and thankfulas they ought to be; they mistrust their young feeders. All domesticanimals dislike children, partly from an instinctive fear of theirtricks and their thoughtlessness; partly, I suspect, from jealousy. Jealousy seems a strange tragic passion to attribute to the inmates ofthe basse cour, --but only look at that strutting fellow of a bantam cock(evidently a favourite), who sidles up to his old mistress with anair half affronted and half tender, turning so scornfully from thebarley-corns which Annie is flinging towards him, and say if he be notas jealous as Othello? Nothing can pacify him but Mrs. Allen's noticeand a dole from her hand. See, she is calling to him and feeding him, and now how he swells out his feathers, and flutters his wings, anderects his glossy neck, and struts and crows and pecks, proudest andhappiest of bantams, the pet and glory of the poultry yard!

In the meantime my own pet May, who has all this while been peeping intoevery hole, and penetrating every nook and winding of the dell, in hopesto find another rabbit, has returned to my side, and is sliding hersnake-like head into my hand, at once to invite the caress which shelikes so well, and to intimate, with all due respect, that it is time togo home. The setting sun gives the same warning; and in a moment we arethrough the dell, the field, and the gate, past the farm and the mill, and hanging over the bridge that crosses the Loddon river. 

What a sunset! how golden! how beautiful! The sun just disappearing, andthe narrow liny clouds, which a few minutes ago lay like soft vapourystreaks along the horizon, lighted up with a golden splendour that theeye can scarcely endure, and those still softer clouds which floatedabove them wreathing and curling into a thousand fantastic forms, as thin and changeful as summer smoke, now defined and deepened intograndeur, and edged with ineffable, insufferable light! Another minuteand the brilliant orb totally disappears, and the sky above grows everymoment more varied and more beautiful as the dazzling golden lines aremixed with glowing red and gorgeous purple, dappled with small darkspecks, and mingled with such a blue as the egg of the hedge-sparrow. Tolook up at that glorious sky, and then to see that magnificent picturereflected in the clear and lovely Loddon water, is a pleasure never tobe described and never forgotten. My heart swells and my eyes fill asI write of it, and think of the immeasurable majesty of nature, and theunspeakable goodness of God, who has spread an enjoyment so pure, sopeaceful, and so intense before the meanest and the lowliest of Hiscreatures. 

THE COWSLIP-BALL. 

May 16th. --There are moments in life when, without any visible orimmediate cause, the spirits sink and fail, as it were, under the merepressure of existence: moments of unaccountable depression, when oneis weary of one's very thoughts, haunted by images that will notdepart--images many and various, but all painful; friends lost, orchanged, or dead; hopes disappointed even in their accomplishment;fruitless regrets, powerless wishes, doubt and fear, and self-distrust, and self-disapprobation. They who have known these feelings (and who isthere so happy as not to have known some of them?) will understand whyAlfieri became powerless, and Froissart dull; and why even needle-work, the most effectual sedative, that grand soother and composer of woman'sdistress, fails to comfort me to-day. I will go out into the air thiscool, pleasant afternoon, and try what that will do. I fancy thatexercise or exertion of any kind, is the true specific for nervousness. 'Fling but a stone, the giant dies. ' I will go to the meadows, thebeautiful meadows! and I will have my materials of happiness, Lizzy andMay, and a basket for flowers, and we will make a cowslip-ball. 'Didyou ever see a cowslip-ball, my Lizzy?'--'No. '--'Come away, then; makehaste! run, Lizzy!'

And on we go, fast, fast! down the road, across the lea, past theworkhouse, along by the great pond, till we slide into the deep narrowlane, whose hedges seem to meet over the water, and win our way to thelittle farmhouse at the end. 'Through the farmyard, Lizzy; over thegate; never mind the cows; they are quiet enough. '--'I don't mind 'em, 'said Miss Lizzy, boldly and truly, and with a proud affronted air, displeased at being thought to mind anything, and showing by herattitude and manner some design of proving her courage by an attack onthe largest of the herd, in the shape of a pull by the tail. 'I don'tmind 'em. '--'I know you don't, Lizzy; but let them alone, and don'tchase the turkey-cock. Come to me, my dear!' and, for a wonder, Lizzycame. 

In the meantime, my other pet, Mayflower, had also gotten into a scrape. She had driven about a huge unwieldy sow, till the animal's gruntinghad disturbed the repose of a still more enormous Newfoundland dog, theguardian of the yard. Out he sallied, growling, from the depth of hiskennel, erecting his tail, and shaking his long chain. May's attentionwas instantly diverted from the sow to this new playmate, friend or foe, she cared not which; and he of the kennel, seeing his charge unhurt, andout of danger, was at leisure to observe the charms of his fair enemy, as she frolicked round him, always beyond the reach of his chain, yetalways, with the natural instinctive coquetry of her sex, alluringhim to the pursuit which she knew to be vain. I never saw a prettierflirtation. At last the noble animal, wearied out, retired to the inmostrecesses of his habitation, and would not even approach her when shestood right before the entrance. 'You are properly served, May. Comealong, Lizzy. Across this wheatfield, and now over the gate. Stop! letme lift you down. No jumping, no breaking of necks, Lizzy!' And here weare in the meadows, and out of the world. Robinson Crusoe, in his lonelyisland, had scarcely a more complete, or a more beautiful solitude. 

These meadows consist of a double row of small enclosures of richgrass-land, a mile or two in length, sloping down from high arablegrounds on either side, to a little nameless brook that winds betweenthem with a course which, in its infinite variety, clearness, andrapidity, seems to emulate the bold rivers of the north, of whom, farmore than of our lazy southern streams, our rivulet presents a miniaturelikeness. Never was water more exquisitely tricksy:--now darting overthe bright pebbles, sparkling and flashing in the light with a bubblingmusic, as sweet and wild as the song of the woodlark; now stretchingquietly along, giving back the rich tufts of the golden marsh-marigoldswhich grow on its margin; now sweeping round a fine reach of greengrass, rising steeply into a high mound, a mimic promontory, whilst theother side sinks softly away, like some tiny bay, and the waterflows between, so clear, so wide, so shallow, that Lizzy, longing foradventure, is sure she could cross unwetted; now dashing through twosand-banks, a torrent deep and narrow, which May clears at a bound;now sleeping, half hidden, beneath the alders, and hawthorns, and wildroses, with which the banks are so profusely and variously fringed, whilst flags, * lilies, and other aquatic plants, almost cover thesurface of the stream. In good truth, it is a beautiful brook, and onethat Walton himself might have sitten by and loved, for trout are there;we see them as they dart up the stream, and hear and start at the suddenplunge when they spring to the surface for the summer flies. IzaakWalton would have loved our brook and our quiet meadows; they breathethe very spirit of his own peacefulness, a soothing quietude that sinksinto the soul. There is no path through them, not one; we might wandera whole spring day, and not see a trace of human habitation. They belongto a number of small proprietors, who allow each other access throughtheir respective grounds, from pure kindness and neighbourly feeling;a privilege never abused: and the fields on the other side of the waterare reached by a rough plank, or a tree thrown across, or some suchhomely bridge. We ourselves possess one of the most beautiful; sothat the strange pleasure of property, that instinct which makes Lizzydelight in her broken doll, and May in the bare bone which she haspilfered from the kennel of her recreant admirer of Newfoundland, isadded to the other charms of this enchanting scenery; a strange pleasureit is, when one so poor as I can feel it! Perhaps it is felt most by thepoor, with the rich it may be less intense--too much diffused and spreadout, becoming thin by expansion, like leaf-gold; the little of the poormay be not only more precious, but more pleasant to them: certain thatbit of grassy and blossomy earth, with its green knolls and tuftedbushes, its old pollards wreathed with ivy, and its bright and babblingwaters, is very dear to me. But I must always have loved these meadows, so fresh, and cool, and delicious to the eye and to the tread, fullof cowslips, and of all vernal flowers: Shakspeare's 'Song of Spring'bursts irrepressibly from our lips as we step on them. 

*Walking along these meadows one bright sunny afternoon, a year or twoback, and rather later in the season, I had an opportunity of noticinga curious circumstance in natural history. Standing close to the edge ofthe stream, I remarked a singular appearance on a large tuft of flags. It looked like bunches of flowers, the leaves of which seemed dark, yettransparent, intermingled with brilliant tubes of bright blue or shininggreen. On examining this phenomenon more closely, it turned out tobe several clusters of dragon-flies, just emerged from their deformedchrysalis state, and still torpid and motionless from the wetness oftheir filmy wings. Half an hour later we returned to the spot and theywere gone. We had seen them at the very moment when beauty was completeand animation dormant. I have since found nearly a similar account ofthis curious process in Mr. Bingley's very entertaining work, called'Animal Biography. '

 'When daisies pied and violets blue And lady-smocks all silver-white And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue Do paint the meadows with delight, The cuckoo then, on every tree--'

'Cuckoo! cuckoo!' cried Lizzy, breaking in with her clear childishvoice; and immediately, as if at her call, the real bird, from aneighbouring tree (for these meadows are dotted with timber like apark), began to echo my lovely little girl, 'cuckoo! cuckoo!' I have aprejudice very unpastoral and unpoetical (but I cannot help it, Ihave many such) against this 'harbinger of spring. ' His note is somonotonous, so melancholy; and then the boys mimic him; one hears'cuckoo! cuckoo!' in dirty streets, amongst smoky houses, and the birdis hated for faults not his own. But prejudices of taste, likings anddislikings, are not always vanquishable by reason; so, to escape theserenade from the tree, which promised to be of considerable duration(when once that eternal song begins, on it goes ticking like aclock)--to escape that noise I determined to excite another, andchallenged Lizzy to a cowslip-gathering; a trial of skill and speed, to see which should soonest fill her basket. My stratagem succeededcompletely. What scrambling, what shouting, what glee from Lizzy! twentycuckoos might have sung unheard whilst she was pulling her own flowers, and stealing mine, and laughing, screaming, and talking through all. 

At last the baskets were filled, and Lizzy declared victor: and downwe sat, on the brink of the stream, under a spreading hawthorn, justdisclosing its own pearly buds, and surrounded with the rich andenamelled flowers of the wild hyacinth, blue and white, to make ourcowslip-ball. Every one knows the process: to nip off the tuft offlowerets just below the top of the stalk, and hang each cluster nicelybalanced across a riband, till you have a long string like a garland;then to press them closely together, and tie them tightly up. We went onvery prosperously, CONSIDERING; as people say of a young lady's drawing, or a Frenchman's English, or a woman's tragedy, or of the poor littledwarf who works without fingers, or the ingenious sailor who writes withhis toes, or generally of any performance which is accomplished by meansseemingly inadequate to its production. To be sure we met with a fewaccidents. First, Lizzy spoiled nearly all her cowslips by snapping themoff too short; so there was a fresh gathering; in the next place, Mayoverset my full basket, and sent the blossoms floating, like so manyfairy favours, down the brook; then, when we were going on prettysteadily, just as we had made a superb wreath, and were thinking oftying it together, Lizzy, who held the riband, caught a glimpse of agorgeous butterfly, all brown and red and purple, and, skipping off topursue the new object, let go her hold; so all our treasures wereabroad again. At last, however, by dint of taking a branch of alder asa substitute for Lizzy, and hanging the basket in a pollard-ash, outof sight of May, the cowslip-ball was finished. What a concentration offragrance and beauty it was! golden and sweet to satiety! rich to sight, and touch, and smell! Lizzy was enchanted, and ran off with her prize, hiding amongst the trees in the very coyness of ecstasy, as if any humaneye, even mine, would be a restraint on her innocent raptures. 

In the meanwhile I sat listening, not to my enemy the cuckoo, but to awhole concert of nightingales, scarcely interrupted by any meaner bird, answering and vying with each other in those short delicious strainswhich are to the ear as roses to the eye: those snatches of lovely soundwhich come across us as airs from heaven. Pleasant thoughts, delightfulassociations, awoke as I listened; and almost unconsciously I repeatedto myself the beautiful story of the Lutist and the Nightingale, fromFord's 'Lover's Melancholy. ' Here it is. Is there in English poetryanything finer?

 'Passing from Italy to Greece, the tales Which poets of an elder time have feign'd To glorify their Tempe, bred in me Desire of visiting Paradise. To Thessaly I came, and living private, Without acquaintance of more sweet companions Than the old inmates to my love, my thoughts, I day by day frequented silent groves And solitary walks. One morning early This accident encounter'd me: I heard The sweetest and most ravishing contention That art and nature ever were at strife in. A sound of music touch'd mine ears, or rather Indeed entranced my soul; as I stole nearer, Invited by the melody, I saw This youth, this fair-faced youth, upon his lute With strains of strange variety and harmony Proclaiming, as it seem'd, so bold a challenge To the clear choristers of the woods, the birds, That as they flock'd about him, all stood silent, Wondering at what they heard. I wonder'd too. A nightingale, Nature's best skill'd musician, undertakes The challenge; and for every several strain The well-shaped youth could touch, she sang him down. He could not run divisions with more art Upon his quaking instrument than she, The nightingale, did with her various notes Reply to. 

 Some time thus spent, the young man grew at last Into a pretty anger, that a bird, Whom art had never taught cliffs, moods, or notes Should vie with him for mastery, whose study Had busied many hours to perfect practice. To end the controversy, in a rapture Upon his instrument he plays so swiftly, So many voluntaries, and so quick, That there was curiosity and cunning, Concord in discord, lines of differing method Meeting in one full centre of delight. The bird (ordain'd to be Music's first martyr) strove to imitate These several sounds; which when her warbling throat Fail'd in, for grief down dropt she on his lute, And brake her heart. It was the quaintest sadness To see the conqueror upon her hearse To weep a funeral elegy of tears. He look'd upon the trophies of his art, Then sigh'd, then wiped his eyes; then sigh'd, and cry'd "Alas! poor creature, I will soon revenge This cruelty upon the author of it. Henceforth this lute, guilty of innocent blood, Shall never more betray a harmless peace To an untimely end:" and in that sorrow, As he was pashing it against a tree, I suddenly stept in. '

When I had finished the recitation of this exquisite passage, the sky, which had been all the afternoon dull and heavy, began to look moreand more threatening; darker clouds, like wreaths of black smoke, flewacross the dead leaden tint; a cooler, damper air blew over the meadows, and a few large heavy drops splashed in the water. 'We shall have astorm. Lizzy! May! where are ye? Quick, quick, my Lizzy! run, run!faster, faster!'

And off we ran; Lizzy not at all displeased at the thoughts of awetting, to which indeed she is almost as familiar as a duck; May, onthe other hand, peering up at the weather, and shaking her pretty earswith manifest dismay. Of all animals, next to a cat, a greyhound dreadsrain. She might have escaped it; her light feet would have borne herhome long before the shower; but May is too faithful for that, too truea comrade, understands too well the laws of good-fellowship; so shewaited for us. She did, to be sure, gallop on before, and then stop andlook back, and beckon, as it were, with some scorn in her black eyes atthe slowness of our progress. We in the meanwhile got on as fast as wecould, encouraging and reproaching each other. 'Faster, my Lizzy! Oh, what a bad runner!'--'Faster, faster! Oh, what a bad runner!' echoed mysaucebox. 'You are so fat, Lizzy, you make no way!'--'Ah! who else isfat?' retorted the darling. Certainly her mother is right; I do spoilthat child. 

By this time we were thoroughly soaked, all three. It was a peltingshower, that drove through our thin summer clothing and poor May's shortglossy coat in a moment. And then, when we were wet to the skin, the suncame out, actually the sun, as if to laugh at our plight; and then, moreprovoking still, when the sun was shining, and the shower over, came amaid and a boy to look after us, loaded with cloaks and umbrellas enoughto fence us against a whole day's rain. Never mind! on we go, fasterand faster; Lizzy obliged to be most ignobly carried, having had themisfortune to lose a shoe in the mud, which we left the boy to lookafter. 

Here we are at home--dripping; but glowing and laughing, and bearing ourcalamity most manfully. May, a dog of excellent sense, went instantlyto bed in the stable, and is at this moment over head and ears in straw;Lizzy is gone to bed too, coaxed into that wise measure by a promise oftea and toast, and of not going home till to-morrow, and the story ofLittle Red Riding Hood; and I am enjoying the luxury of dry clothing bya good fire. Really getting wet through now and then is no bad thing, finery apart; for one should not like spoiling a new pelisse, or ahandsome plume; but when there is nothing in question but a white gownand a straw bonnet, as was the case to-day, it is rather pleasant thannot. The little chill refreshes, and our enjoyment of the subsequentwarmth and dryness is positive and absolute. Besides, the stimulus andexertion do good to the mind as well as body. How melancholy I was allthe morning! how cheerful I am now! Nothing like a shower-bath--a realshower-bath, such as Lizzy and May and I have undergone, to cure lowspirits. Try it, my dear readers, if ever ye be nervous--I will answerfor its success. 

THE OLD HOUSE AT ABERLEIGH. 

June 25th. --What a glowing glorious day! Summer in its richest prime, noon in its most sparkling brightness, little white clouds dapplingthe deep blue sky, and the sun, now partially veiled, and now burstingthrough them with an intensity of light! It would not do to walk to-day, professedly to walk, --we should be frightened at the very sound! and yetit is probable that we may be beguiled into a pretty long stroll beforewe return home. We are going to drive to the old house at Aberleigh, tospend the morning under the shade of those balmy firs, and amongst thoseluxuriant rose trees, and by the side of that brimming Loddon river. 'Donot expect us before six o'clock, ' said I, as I left the house; 'Six atsoonest!' added my charming companion; and off we drove in our littlepony chaise, drawn by our old mare, and with the good humoured urchin, Henry's successor, a sort of younger Scrub, who takes care of horse andchaise, and cow and garden, for our charioteer. 

My comrade in this homely equipage was a young lady of high familyand higher endowments, to whom the novelty of the thing, and her ownnaturalness of character and simplicity of taste, gave an unspeakableenjoyment. She danced the little chaise up and down as she got into it, and laughed for very glee like a child, Lizzy herself could not havebeen more delighted. She praised the horse and the driver, and the roadsand the scenery, and gave herself fully up to the enchantment of a ruralexcursion in the sweetest weather of this sweet season. I enjoyed allthis too; for the road was pleasant to every sense, winding throughnarrow lanes, under high elms, and between hedges garlanded withwoodbine and rose trees, whilst the air was scented with the deliciousfragrance of blossomed beans. I enjoyed it all, --but, I believe, myprincipal pleasure was derived from my companion herself. 

Emily I. Is a person whom it is a privilege to know. She is quite likea creation of the older poets, and might pass for one of Shakspeare'sor Fletcher's women stepped into life; just as tender, as playful, asgentle, and as kind. She is clever too, and has all the knowledge andaccomplishments that a carefully-conducted education, acting on a mindof singular clearness and ductility, matured and improved by the verybest company, can bestow. But one never thinks of her acquirements. Itis the charming artless character, the bewitching sweetness of manner, the real and universal sympathy, the quick taste and the ardent feeling, that one loves in Emily. She is Irish by birth, and has in perfectionthe melting voice and soft caressing accent by which her faircountrywomen are distinguished. Moreover she is pretty--I think herbeautiful, and so do all who have heard as well as seen her, --butpretty, very pretty, all the world must confess; and perhaps that is adistinction more enviable, because less envied, than the 'palmy state'of beauty. Her prettiness is of the prettiest kind--that of which thechief character is youthfulness. A short but pleasing figure, allgrace and symmetry, a fair blooming face, beaming with intelligenceand good-humour; the prettiest little feet and the whitest hands in theworld;--such is Emily I. 

She resides with her maternal grandmother, a venerable old lady, slightly shaken with the palsy; and when together (and they are sofondly attached to each other that they are seldom parted), it is one ofthe loveliest combinations of youth and age ever witnessed. There isno seeing them without feeling an increase of respect and affection forboth grandmother and granddaughter--always one of the tenderest and mostbeautiful of natural connections--as Richardson knew when he made suchexquisite use of it in his matchless book. I fancy that grandmammaShirley must have been just such another venerable lady as Mrs. S. , andour sweet Emily--Oh no! Harriet Byron is not half good enough for her!There is nothing like her in the whole seven volumes. 

But here we are at the bridge! Here we must alight! 'This is the Loddon, Emily. Is it not a beautiful river? rising level with its banks, soclear, and smooth, and peaceful, giving back the verdant landscapeand the bright blue sky, and bearing on its pellucid stream the snowywater-lily, the purest of flowers, which sits enthroned on its own coolleaves, looking chastity itself, like the lady in Comus. That queenlyflower becomes the water, and so do the stately swans who are sailing somajestically down the stream, like those who

 "'On St. Mary's lake Float double, swan and shadow. "

We must dismount here, and leave Richard to take care of our equipageunder the shade of these trees, whilst we walk up to the house:--See, there it is! We must cross this stile; there is no other way now. '

And crossing the stile we were immediately in what had been a driveround a spacious park, and still retained something of the character, though the park itself had long been broken into arable fields, --and infull view of the Great House, a beautiful structure of James the First'stime, whose glassless windows and dilapidated doors form a melancholycontrast with the strength and entireness of the rich and massive front. 

The story of that ruin--for such it is--is always to me singularlyaffecting. It is that of the decay of an ancient and distinguishedfamily, gradually reduced from the highest wealth and station to actualpoverty. The house and park, and a small estate around it, were entailedon a distant cousin, and could not be alienated; and the late owner, the last of his name and lineage, after long struggling with debt anddifficulty, farming his own lands, and clinging to his magnificent homewith a love of place almost as tenacious as that of the younger Foscari, was at last forced to abandon it, retired to a paltry lodging in apaltry town, and died there about twenty years ago, broken-hearted. His successor, bound by no ties of association to the spot, and rightlyjudging the residence to be much too large for the diminished estate, immediately sold the superb fixtures, and would have entirely taken downthe house, if, on making the attempt, the masonry had not been foundso solid that the materials were not worth the labour. A great part, however, of one side is laid open, and the splendid chambers, with theircarving and gilding, are exposed to the wind and rain--sad memorialsof past grandeur! The grounds have been left in a merciful neglect; thepark, indeed, is broken up, the lawn mown twice a year like a commonhayfield, the grotto mouldering into ruin, and the fishponds chokedwith rushes and aquatic plants; but the shrubs and flowering trees areundestroyed, and have grown into a magnificence of size and wildness ofbeauty, such as we may imagine them to attain in their native forests. Nothing can exceed their luxuriance, especially in the spring, whenthe lilac, and laburnum, and double-cherry put forth their gorgeousblossoms. There is a sweet sadness in the sight of such flowerinessamidst such desolation; it seems the triumph of nature over thedestructive power of man. The whole place, in that season moreparticularly, is full of a soft and soothing melancholy, reminding me, Iscarcely know why, of some of the descriptions of natural scenery in thenovels of Charlotte Smith, which I read when a girl, and which, perhaps, for that reason hang on my memory. 

But here we are, in the smooth grassy ride, on the top of a steep turfyslope descending to the river, crowned with enormous firs and limes ofequal growth, looking across the winding waters into a sweet peacefullandscape of quiet meadows, shut in by distant woods. What a fragranceis in the air from the balmy fir trees and the blossomed limes! What anintensity of odour! And what a murmur of bees in the lime trees! What acoil those little winged people make over our heads! And what a pleasantsound it is! the pleasantest of busy sounds, that which comes associatedwith all that is good and beautiful--industry and forecast, and sunshineand flowers. Surely these lime trees might store a hundred hives; thevery odour is of a honeyed richness, cloying, satiating. 

Emily exclaimed in admiration as we stood under the deep, strong, leafy shadow, and still more when honeysuckles trailed their untrimmedprofusion in our path, and roses, really trees, almost intercepted ourpassage. 

'On, Emily! farther yet! Force your way by that jessamine--it willyield; I will take care of this stubborn white rose bough. '--'Take careof yourself! Pray take care, ' said my fairest friend; 'let me hold backthe branches. '--After we had won our way through the strait, at someexpense of veils and flounces, she stopped to contemplate and admirethe tall, graceful shrub, whose long thorny stems, spreading in everydirection, had opposed our progress, and now waved their delicateclusters over our heads. 'Did I ever think, ' exclaimed she, 'of standingunder the shadow of a white rose tree! What an exquisite fragrance! Andwhat a beautiful flower! so pale, and white, and tender, and the petalsthin and smooth as silk! What rose is it?'--'Don't you know? Did younever see it before? It is rare now, I believe, and seems rarer than itis, because it only blossoms in very hot summers; but this, Emily, isthe musk rose, --that very musk rose of which Titania talks, and which isworthy of Shakspeare and of her. Is it not?--No! do not smell to it; itis less sweet so than other roses; but one cluster in a vase, or eventhat bunch in your bosom, will perfume a large room, as it does thesummer air. '--'Oh! we will take twenty clusters, ' said Emily. 'I wishgrandmamma were here! She talks so often of a musk rose tree that grewagainst one end of her father's house. I wish she were here to seethis!'

Echoing her wish, and well laden with musk roses, planted perhaps inthe days of Shakspeare, we reached the steps that led to a squaresummer-house or banqueting-room, overhanging the river: the under partwas a boat-house, whose projecting roof, as well as the walls and thevery top of the little tower, was covered with ivy and woodbine, andsurmounted by tufted barberries, bird cherries, acacias, covered withtheir snowy chains, and other pendent and flowering trees. Beyond rosetwo poplars of unrivalled magnitude, towering like stately columns overthe dark tall firs, and giving a sort of pillared and architecturalgrandeur to the scene. 

We were now close to the mansion; but it looked sad and desolate, andthe entrance, choked with brambles and nettles, seemed almost to repelour steps. The summer-house, the beautiful summer-house, was free andopen, and inviting, commanding from the unglazed windows, which hunghigh above the water, a reach of the river terminated by a rustic mill. 

There we sat, emptying our little basket of fruit and country cakes, till Emily was seized with a desire of viewing, from the other side ofthe Loddon, the scenery which had so much enchanted her. 'I must, ' saidshe, 'take a sketch of the ivied boat-house, and of this sweet room, andthis pleasant window;--grandmamma would never be able to walk from theroad to see the place itself, but she must see its likeness. ' So forthwe sallied, not forgetting the dear musk roses. 

We had no way of reaching the desired spot but by retracing our steps amile, during the heat of the hottest hour of the day, and then followingthe course of the river to an equal distance on the other side; norhad we any materials for sketching, except the rumpled paper which hadcontained our repast, and a pencil without a point which I happened tohave about me. But these small difficulties are pleasures to gay andhappy youth. Regardless of such obstacles, the sweet Emily bounded onlike a fawn, and I followed delighting in her delight. The sun went in, and the walk was delicious; a reviving coolness seemed to breathe overthe water, wafting the balmy scent of the firs and limes; we found apoint of view presenting the boat-house, the water, the poplars, and themill, in a most felicitous combination; the little straw fruit basketmade a capital table; and refreshed and sharpened and pointed by ourtrusty lacquey's excellent knife (your country boy is never withouta good knife, it is his prime treasure), the pencil did doubleduty;--first in the skilful hands of Emily, whose faithful and spiritedsketch does equal honour to the scene and to the artist, and then in thehumbler office of attempting a faint transcript of my own impressions inthe following sonnet:--

 It was an hour of calmest noon, at day Of ripest summer: o'er the deep blue sky White speckled clouds came sailing peacefully, Half-shrouding in a chequer'd veil the ray Of the sun, too ardent else, --what time we lay By the smooth Loddon, opposite the high Steep bank, which as a coronet gloriously Wore its rich crest of firs and lime trees, gay With their pale tassels; while from out a bower Of ivy (where those column'd poplars rear Their heads) the ruin'd boat-house, like a tower, Flung its deep shadow on the waters clear. My Emily! forget not that calm hour, Nor that fair scene, by thee made doubly dear!

THE HARD SUMMER. 

August 15th. --Cold, cloudy, windy, wet. Here we are, in the midst ofthe dog-days, clustering merrily round the warm hearth like so manycrickets, instead of chirruping in the green fields like that othermerry insect the grasshopper; shivering under the influence of theJupiter Pluvius of England, the watery St. Swithin; peering at thatscarce personage the sun, when he happens to make his appearance, asintently as astronomers look after a comet, or the common people stareat a balloon; exclaiming against the cold weather, just as we used toexclaim against the warm. 'What a change from last year!' is the firstsentence you hear, go where you may. Everybody remarks it, and everybodycomplains of it; and yet in my mind it has its advantages, or at leastits compensations, as everything in nature has, if we would only takethe trouble to seek for them. 

Last year, in spite of the love which we are now pleased to professtowards that ardent luminary, not one of the sun's numerous admirers hadcourage to look him in the face: there was no bearing the world till hehad said 'Good-night' to it. Then we might stir: then we began to wakeand to live. All day long we languished under his influence in a strangedreaminess, too hot to work, too hot to read, too hot to write, too hoteven to talk; sitting hour after hour in a green arbour, emboweredin leafiness, letting thought and fancy float as they would. Thoseday-dreams were pretty things in their way; there is no denying that. But then, if one half of the world were to dream through a whole summer, like the sleeping Beauty in the wood, what would become of the other?

The only office requiring the slightest exertion, which I performed inthat warm weather, was watering my flowers. Common sympathy called forthat labour. The poor things withered, and faded, and pined away; theyalmost, so to say, panted for draught. Moreover, if I had not wateredthem myself, I suspect that no one else would; for water last year wasnearly as precious hereabout as wine. Our land-springs were dried up;our wells were exhausted; our deep ponds were dwindling into mud; andgeese, and ducks, and pigs, and laundresses, used to look with a jealousand suspicious eye on the few and scanty half-buckets of that impureelement, which my trusty lacquey was fain to filch for my poor geraniumsand campanulas and tuberoses. We were forced to smuggle them in throughmy faithful adherent's territories, the stable, to avoid lectures withindoors and at last even that resource failed; my garden, my bloominggarden, the joy of my eyes, was forced to go waterless like itsneighbours, and became shrivelled, scorched, and sunburnt, like them. Itreally went to my heart to look at it. 

On the other side of the house matters were still worse. What a dustyworld it was, when about sunset we became cool enough to creep intoit! Flowers in the court looking fit for a 'hortus siccus;' mummies ofplants, dried as in an oven; hollyhocks, once pink, turned into Quakers;cloves smelling of dust. Oh, dusty world! May herself looked of thatcomplexion; so did Lizzy; so did all the houses, windows, chickens, children, trees, and pigs in the village; so above all did the shoes. No foot could make three plunges into that abyss of pulverised gravel, which had the impudence to call itself a hard road, without beingclothed with a coat a quarter of an inch thick. Woe to white gowns! woeto black! Drab was your only wear. 

Then, when we were out of the street, what a toil it was to mount thehill, climbing with weary steps and slow upon the brown turf by thewayside, slippery, hot, and hard as a rock! And then if we happened tomeet a carriage coming along the middle of the road, --the bottomlessmiddle, --what a sandy whirlwind it was! What choking! what suffocation!No state could be more pitiable, except indeed that of the travellerswho carried this misery about with them. I shall never forget the plightin which we met the coach one evening in last August, full an hour afterits time, steeds and driver, carriage and passengers, all one dust. Theoutsides, and the horses, and the coachman, seemed reduced to a torpidquietness, the resignation of despair. They had left off tryingto better their condition, and taken refuge in a wise and patienthopelessness, bent to endure in silence the extremity of ill. The sixinsides, on the contrary, were still fighting against their fate, vainly struggling to ameliorate their hapless destiny. They were visiblygrumbling at the weather, scolding at the dust, and heating themselveslike a furnace, by striving against the heat. How well I remember thefat gentleman without his coat, who was wiping his forehead, heaving uphis wig, and certainly uttering that English ejaculation, which, toour national reproach, is the phrase of our language best known on thecontinent. And that poor boy, red-hot, all in a flame, whose mamma, having divested her own person of all superfluous apparel, was trying torelieve his sufferings by the removal of his neckerchief--an operationwhich he resisted with all his might. How perfectly I remember him, aswell as the pale girl who sat opposite, fanning herself with her bonnetinto an absolute fever! They vanished after a while into their own dust;but I have them all before my eyes at this moment, a companion pictureto Hogarth's 'Afternoon, ' a standing lesson to the grumblers at coldsummers. 

For my part, I really like this wet season. It keeps us within, to besure, rather more than is quite agreeable; but then we are at leastawake and alive there, and the world out of doors is so much thepleasanter when we can get abroad. Everything does well, except thosefastidious bipeds, men and women; corn ripens, grass grows, fruit isplentiful; there is no lack of birds to eat it, and there has not beensuch a wasp-season these dozen years. My garden wants no watering, andis more beautiful than ever, beating my old rival in that primitive art, the pretty wife of the little mason, out and out. Measured with mine, her flowers are naught. Look at those hollyhocks, like pyramids ofroses; those garlands of the convolvulus major of all colours, hangingaround that tall pole, like the wreathy hop-bine; those magnificentdusky cloves, breathing of the Spice Islands; those flaunting doubledahlias; those splendid scarlet geraniums, and those fierce and warlikeflowers the tiger-lilies. Oh, how beautiful they are! Besides, theweather clears sometimes--it has cleared this evening; and here arewe, after a merry walk up the hill, almost as quick as in the winter, bounding lightly along the bright green turf of the pleasant common, enticed by the gay shouts of a dozen clear young voices, to lingerawhile, and see the boys play at cricket. 

I plead guilty to a strong partiality towards that unpopular class ofbeings, country boys: I have a large acquaintance amongst them, and Ican almost say, that I know good of many and harm of none. In generalthey are an open, spirited, good-humoured race, with a pronenessto embrace the pleasures and eschew the evils of their condition, acapacity for happiness, quite unmatched in man, or woman, or a girl. They are patient, too, and bear their fate as scape-goats (for all sinswhatsoever are laid as matters of course to their door), whether at homeor abroad, with amazing resignation and, considering the many lies ofwhich they are the objects, they tell wonderfully few in return. Theworst that can be said of them is, that they seldom, when grown toman's estate, keep the promise of their boyhood; but that is a fault tocome--a fault that may not come, and ought not to be anticipated. It isastonishing how sensible they are to notice from their betters, or thosewhom they think such. I do not speak of money, or gifts, or praise, orthe more coarse and common briberies--they are more delicate courtiers;a word, a nod, a smile, or the mere calling of them by their names, isenough to ensure their hearts and their services. Half a dozen of them, poor urchins, have run away now to bring us chairs from their severalhomes. 'Thank you, Joe Kirby!--you are always first--yes, that isjust the place--I shall see everything there. Have you been in yet, Joe?'--'No, ma'am! I go in next. '--'Ah, I am glad of that--and now'sthe time. Really that was a pretty ball of Jem Eusden's!--I was sure itwould go to the wicket. Run, Joe! They are waiting for you. ' Therewas small need to bid Joe Kirby make haste; I think he is, next toa race-horse, or a greyhound, or a deer, the fastest creature thatruns--the most completely alert and active. Joe is mine especial friend, and leader of the 'tender juveniles, ' as Joel Brent is of the adults. In both instances this post of honour was gained by merit, even moreremarkably so in Joe's case than in Joel's; for Joe is a less boy thanmany of his companions (some of whom are fifteeners and sixteeners, quite as tall and nearly as old as Tom Coper), and a poorer than all, as may be conjectured from the lamentable state of that patched roundfrock, and the ragged condition of those unpatched shoes, which wouldencumber, if anything could, the light feet that wear them. But whyshould I lament the poverty that never troubles him? Joe is the merriestand happiest creature that ever lived twelve years in this wicked world. Care cannot come near him. He hath a perpetual smile on his round ruddyface, and a laugh in his hazel eye, that drives the witch away. He worksat yonder farm on the top of the hill, where he is in such repute forintelligence and good-humour, that he has the honour of performing allthe errands of the house, of helping the maid, the mistress, and themaster, in addition to his own stated office of carter's boy. There heworks hard from five till seven, and then he comes here to work stillharder, under the name of play--batting, bowling, and fielding, as iffor life, filling the place of four boys; being, at a pinch, a wholeeleven. The late Mr. Knyvett, the king's organist, who used in his ownperson to sing twenty parts at once of the Hallelujah Chorus, so thatyou would have thought he had a nest of nightingales in his throat, was but a type of Joe Kirby. There is a sort of ubiquity about him; hethinks nothing of being in two places at once, and for pitching a ball, William Grey himself is nothing to him. It goes straight to the marklike a bullet. He is king of the cricketers from eight to sixteen, both inclusive, and an excellent ruler he makes. Nevertheless, in thebest-ordered states there will be grumblers, and we have an oppositionhere in the shape of Jem Eusden. 

Jem Eusden is a stunted lad of thirteen, or thereabout, lean, small, andshort, yet strong and active. His face is of an extraordinary ugliness, colourless, withered, haggard, with a look of extreme age, muchincreased by hair so light that it might rather pass for white thanflaxen. He is constantly arrayed in the blue cap and old-fashioned coat, the costume of an endowed school to which he belongs; where he sitsstill all day, and rushes into the field at night, fresh, untired, andripe for action, to scold and brawl, and storm, and bluster. He hatesJoe Kirby, whose immovable good-humour, broad smiles, and knowing nods, must certainly be very provoking to so fierce and turbulent a spirit;and he has himself (being, except by rare accident, no great player) thepreposterous ambition of wishing to be manager of the sports. In short, he is a demagogue in embryo, with every quality necessary to a splendidsuccess in that vocation, --a strong voice, a fluent utterance, anincessant iteration, and a frontless impudence. He is a great 'scholar'too, to use the country phrase; his 'piece, ' as our village schoolmasterterms a fine sheet of flourishing writing, something between a valentineand a sampler, enclosed within a border of little coloured prints--hislast, I remember, was encircled by an engraved history of Moses, beginning at the finding in the bulrushes, with Pharaoh's daughterdressed in a rose-coloured gown and blue feathers--his piece is notonly the admiration of the school, but of the parish, and is senttriumphantly round from house to house at Christmas, to extort halfpenceand sixpences from all encouragers of learning--Montem in miniature. The Mosaic history was so successful, that the produce enabled Jem topurchase a bat and ball, which, besides adding to his natural arrogance(for the little pedant actually began to mutter against being eclipsedby a dunce, and went so far as to challenge Joe Kirby to a trial inPractice, or the Rule of Three), gave him, when compared with thegeneral poverty, a most unnatural preponderance in the cricket state. Hehad the ways and means in his hands (for alas! the hard winter had madesad havoc among the bats, and the best ball was a bad one)--he had theways and means, could withhold the supplies, and his party was beginningto wax strong, when Joe received a present of two bats and a ball forthe youngsters in general and himself in particular--and Jem's adherentsleft him on the spot--they ratted, to a man, that very evening. Notwithstanding this desertion, their forsaken leader has in nothingrelaxed from his pretensions, or his ill-humour. He stills quarrelsand brawls as if he had a faction to back him, and thinks nothing ofcontending with both sides, the ins and the outs, secure of out-talkingthe whole field. He has been squabbling these ten minutes, and is justmarching off now with his own bat (he has never deigned to use one ofJoe's) in his hand. What an ill-conditioned hobgoblin it is! And yetthere is something bold and sturdy about him too. I should miss JemEusden. 

Ah, there is another deserter from the party! my friend the littlehussar--I do not know his name, and call him after his cap and jacket. He is a very remarkable person, about the age of eight years, theyoungest piece of gravity and dignity I ever encountered; short, and square, and upright, and slow, with a fine bronzed flatvisage, resembling those convertible signs the Broad-Face and theSaracen's-Head, which, happening to be next-door neighbours in thetown of B. , I never knew apart, resembling, indeed, any face that isopen-eyed and immovable, the very sign of a boy! He stalks about withhis hands in his breeches pockets, like a piece of machinery; sitsleisurely down when he ought to field, and never gets farther in battingthan to stop the ball. His is the only voice never heard in the melee:I doubt, indeed, if he have one, which may be partly the reason of acircumstance that I record to his honour, his fidelity to Jem Eusden, to whom he has adhered through every change of fortune, with a tenacityproceeding perhaps from an instinctive consciousness that the loquaciousleader talks enough for two. He is the only thing resembling a followerthat our demagogue possesses, and is cherished by him accordingly. Jem quarrels for him, scolds for him, pushes for him; and but forJoe Kirby's invincible good-humour, and a just discrimination of theinnocent from the guilty, the activity of Jem's friendship would get thepoor hussar ten drubbings a day. 

But it is growing late. The sun has set a long time. Only see what agorgeous colouring has spread itself over those parting masses of cloudsin the west, --what a train of rosy light! We shall have a fine sunshinyday to-morrow, --a blessing not to be undervalued, in spite of my latevituperation of heat. Shall we go home now? And shall we take thelongest but prettiest road, that by the green lanes? This way, to theleft, round the corner of the common, past Mr. Welles's cottage, andour path lies straight before us. How snug and comfortable that cottagelooks! Its little yard all alive with the cow, and the mare, and thecolt almost as large as the mare, and the young foal, and the greatyard-dog, all so fat! Fenced in with hay-rick, and wheat-rick, andbean-stack, and backed by the long garden, the spacious drying-ground, the fine orchard, and that large field quartered into four differentcrops. How comfortable this cottage looks, and how well the owners earntheir comforts! They are the most prosperous pair in the parish--shea laundress with twenty times more work than she can do, unrivalled inflounces and shirt-frills, and such delicacies of the craft; he, partlya farmer, partly a farmer's man, tilling his own ground, and thentilling other people's;--affording a proof, even in this declining age, when the circumstances of so many worthy members of the community seemto have 'an alacrity in sinking, ' that it is possible to amend themby sheer industry. He, who was born in the workhouse, and bred up asa parish boy, has now, by mere manual labour, risen to the rank of aland-owner, pays rates and taxes, grumbles at the times, and is calledMaster Welles, --the title next to Mister--that by which Shakspeare wascalled;--what would man have more? His wife, besides being the bestlaundress in the county, is a comely woman still. There she stands atthe spring, dipping up water for to-morrow, --the clear, deep, silentspring, which sleeps so peacefully under its high flowery bank, red withthe tall spiral stalks of the foxglove and their rich pendent bells, blue with the beautiful forget-me-not, that gem-like blossom, whichlooks like a living jewel of turquoise and topaz. It is almost too lateto see its beauty; and here is the pleasant shady lane, where the highelms will shut out the little twilight that remains. Ah, but we shallhave the fairies' lamps to guide us, the stars of the earth, theglow-worms! Here they are, three almost together. Do you not see them?One seems tremulous, vibrating, as if on the extremity of a leaf ofgrass; the others are deeper in the hedge, in some green cell onwhich their light falls with an emerald lustre. I hope my friends thecricketers will not come this way home. I would not have the prettycreatures removed for more than I care to say, and in this matter Iwould hardly trust Joe Kirby--boys so love to stick them in their hats. But this lane is quite deserted. It is only a road from field to field. No one comes here at this hour. They are quite safe; and I shall walkhere to-morrow and visit them again. And now, goodnight! beautifulinsects, lamps of the fairies, good-night!

THE SHAW. 

September 9th. --A bright sunshiny afternoon. What a comfort it is toget out again--to see once more that rarity of rarities, a fine day! WeEnglish people are accused of talking overmuch of the weather; but theweather, this summer, has forced people to talk of it. Summer! didI say? Oh! season most unworthy of that sweet, sunny name! Season ofcoldness and cloudiness, of gloom and rain! A worse November!--for inNovember the days are short; and shut up in a warm room, lighted by thathousehold sun, a lamp, one feels through the long evenings comfortablyindependent of the out-of-door tempests. But though we may have, and didhave, fires all through the dog-days, there is no shutting out daylight;and sixteen hours of rain, pattering against the windows and drippingfrom the eaves--sixteen hours of rain, not merely audible, but visiblefor seven days in the week--would be enough to exhaust the patience ofJob or Grizzel; especially if Job were a farmer, and Grizzel a countrygentlewoman. Never was known such a season! Hay swimming, cattledrowning, fruit rotting, corn spoiling! and that naughty river, theLoddon, who never can take Puff's advice, and 'keep between its banks, 'running about the country, fields, roads, gardens, and houses, likemad! The weather would be talked of. Indeed, it was not easy to talk ofanything else. A friend of mine having occasion to write me a letter, thought it worth abusing in rhyme, and bepommelled it through threepages of Bath-guide verse; of which I subjoin a specimen:--

 'Aquarius surely REIGNS over the world, And of late he his water-pot strangely has twirl'd; Or he's taken a cullender up by mistake, And unceasingly dips it in some mighty lake; Though it is not in Lethe--for who can forget The annoyance of getting most thoroughly wet? It must be in the river called Styx, I declare, For the moment it drizzles it makes the men swear. "It did rain to-morrow, " is growing good grammar; Vauxhall and camp-stools have been brought to the hammer; A pony-gondola is all I can keep, And I use my umbrella and pattens in sleep: Row out of my window, whene'er 'tis my whim To visit a friend, and just ask, "Can you swim?"'

So far my friend. * In short, whether in prose or in verse, everybodyrailed at the weather. But this is over now. The sun has come to dry theworld; mud is turned into dust; rivers have retreated to their properlimits; farmers have left off grumbling; and we are about to take awalk, as usual, as far as the Shaw, a pretty wood about a mile off. Butone of our companions being a stranger to the gentle reader, we must dohim the honour of an introduction. 

 *This friend of mine is a person of great quickness and talent, who, if she were not a beauty and a woman of fortune--that is to say, if she were prompted by either of those two powerful stimuli, want of money or want of admiration, to take due pains--would inevitably become a clever writer. As it is, her notes and 'jeux d'esprit' struck off 'a trait de plume, ' have great point and neatness. Take the following billet, which formed the label to a closed basket, containing the ponderous present alluded to, last Michaelmas day:--

 'To Miss M. "When this you see Remember me, " Was long a phrase in use; And so I send To you, dear friend, My proxy, "What?"--A goose!'

Dogs, when they are sure of having their own way, have sometimes ways asodd as those of the unfurred, unfeathered animals, who walk on twolegs, and talk, and are called rational. My beautiful white greyhound, Mayflower, * for instance, is as whimsical as the finest lady in theland. Amongst her other fancies, she has taken a violent affection fora most hideous stray dog, who made his appearance here about six monthsago, and contrived to pick up a living in the village, one can hardlytell how. Now appealing to the charity of old Rachael Strong, thelaundress--a dog-lover by profession; now winning a meal from thelightfooted and open-hearted lasses at the Rose; now standing on hishind-legs, to extort by sheer beggary a scanty morsel from some pair of'drouthy cronies, ' or solitary drover, discussing his dinner or supperon the alehouse-bench; now catching a mouthful, flung to him in purecontempt by some scornful gentleman of the shoulder-knot, mounted onhis throne, the coach-box, whose notice he had attracted by dint ofugliness; now sharing the commons of Master Keep the shoemaker's pigs;now succeeding to the reversion of the well-gnawed bone of Master Brownthe shopkeeper's fierce house-dog; now filching the skim-milk of DameWheeler's cat:--spit at by the cat; worried by the mastiff; chased bythe pigs; screamed at by the dame; stormed at by the shoemaker; floggedby the shopkeeper; teased by all the children, and scouted by all theanimals of the parish;--but yet living through his griefs, and bearingthem patiently, 'for sufferance is the badge of all his tribe;'--andeven seeming to find, in an occasional full meal, or a gleam ofsunshine, or a wisp of dry straw on which to repose his sorry carcase, some comfort in his disconsolate condition. 

*Dead, alas, since this was written. 

In this plight was he found by May, the most high-blooded andaristocratic of greyhounds; and from this plight did May rescuehim;--invited him into her territory, the stable; resisted all attemptsto turn him out; reinstated him there, in spite of maid and boy, andmistress and master; wore out everybody's opposition, by the activity ofher protection, and the pertinacity of her self-will; made him sharerof her bed and of her mess; and, finally, established him as one of thefamily as firmly as herself. 

Dash--for he has even won himself a name amongst us, before he wasanonymous--Dash is a sort of a kind of a spaniel; at least there is inhis mongrel composition some sign of that beautiful race. Besides hisugliness, which is of the worst sort--that is to say, the shabbiest--hehas a limp on one leg that gives a peculiar one-sided awkwardness to hisgait; but independently of his great merit in being May's pet, he hasother merits which serve to account for that phenomenon--being, beyondall comparison, the most faithful, attached, and affectionate animalthat I have ever known; and that is saying much. He seems to think itnecessary to atone for his ugliness by extra good conduct, and does sodance on his lame leg, and so wag his scrubby tail, that it does any onewho has a taste for happiness good to look at him--so that he may now besaid to stand on his own footing. We are all rather ashamed of him whenstrangers come in the way, and think it necessary to explain that heis May's pet; but amongst ourselves, and those who are used to hisappearance, he has reached the point of favouritism in his own person. I have, in common with wiser women, the feminine weakness of lovingwhatever loves me--and, therefore, I like Dash. His master has found outthat he is a capital finder, and in spite of his lameness will hunt afield or beat a cover with any spaniel in England--and, therefore, HElikes Dash. The boy has fought a battle, in defence of his beauty, with another boy, bigger than himself, and beat his opponent mosthandsomely--and, therefore, HE likes Dash; and the maids like him, orpretend to like him, because we do--as is the fashion of that pliantand imitative class. And now Dash and May follow us everywhere, and aregoing with us to the Shaw, as I said before--or rather to the cottage bythe Shaw, to bespeak milk and butter of our little dairy-woman, HannahBint--a housewifely occupation, to which we owe some of our pleasantestrambles. 

And now we pass the sunny, dusty village street--who would have thought, a month ago, that we should complain of sun and dust again!--and turnthe corner where the two great oaks hang so beautifully over the cleardeep pond, mixing their cool green shadows with the bright blue sky, andthe white clouds that flit over it; and loiter at the wheeler's shop, always picturesque, with its tools, and its work, and its materials, allso various in form, and so harmonious in colour; and its noise, merryworkmen, hammering and singing, and making a various harmony also. Theshop is rather empty to-day, for its usual inmates are busy on the greenbeyond the pond--one set building a cart, another painting a waggon. Andthen we leave the village quite behind, and proceed slowly up the cool, quiet lane, between tall hedgerows of the darkest verdure, overshadowingbanks green and fresh as an emerald. 

Not so quick as I expected, though--for they are shooting here to-day, as Dash and I have both discovered: he with great delight, for a gunto him is as a trumpet to a war-horse; I with no less annoyance, forI don't think that a partridge itself, barring the accident of beingkilled, can be more startled than I at that abominable explosion. Dashhas certainly better blood in his veins than any one would guess tolook at him. He even shows some inclination to elope into the fields, in pursuit of those noisy iniquities. But he is an orderly person afterall, and a word has checked him. 

Ah! here is a shriller din mingling with the small artillery--a shrillerand more continuous. We are not yet arrived within sight of MasterWeston's cottage, snugly hidden behind a clump of elms; but we are infull hearing of Dame Weston's tongue, raised as usual to scolding pitch. The Westons are new arrivals in our neighbourhood, and the first thingheard of them was a complaint from the wife to our magistrate ofher husband's beating her: it was a regular charge of assault--aninformation in full form. A most piteous case did Dame Weston make ofit, softening her voice for the nonce into a shrill tremulous whine, andexciting the mingled pity and anger--pity towards herself, anger towardsher husband--of the whole female world, pitiful and indignant as thefemale world is wont to be on such occasions. Every woman in the parishrailed at Master Weston; and poor Master Weston was summoned to attendthe bench on the ensuing Saturday, and answer the charge; and such wasthe clamour abroad and at home, that the unlucky culprit, terrified atthe sound of a warrant and a constable, ran away, and was not heard offor a fortnight. 

At the end of that time he was discovered, and brought to the bench; andDame Weston again told her story, and, as before, on the full cry. She had no witnesses, and the bruises of which she made complaint haddisappeared, and there were no women present to make common cause withthe sex. Still, however, the general feeling was against Master Weston;and it would have gone hard with him when he was called in, if a mostunexpected witness had not risen up in his favour. His wife had broughtin her arms a little girl about eighteen months old, partly perhaps tomove compassion in her favour; for a woman with a child in her arms isalways an object that excites kind feelings. The little girl had lookedshy and frightened, and had been as quiet as a lamb during her mother'sexamination; but she no sooner saw her father, from whom she had been afortnight separated, than she clapped her hands, and laughed, and cried, 'Daddy! daddy!' and sprang into his arms, and hung round his neck, and covered him with kisses--again shouting, 'Daddy, come home! daddy!daddy!'--and finally nestled her little head in his bosom, with afulness of contentment, an assurance of tenderness and protection suchas no wife-beating tyrant ever did inspire, or ever could inspire, sincethe days of King Solomon. Our magistrates acted in the very spirit ofthe Jewish monarch: they accepted the evidence of nature, and dismissedthe complaint. And subsequent events have fully justified theirdecision; Mistress Weston proving not only renowned for the feminineaccomplishment of scolding (tongue-banging, it is called in our parts, a compound word which deserves to be Greek), but is actually herselfaddicted to administering the conjugal discipline, the infliction ofwhich she was pleased to impute to her luckless husband. 

Now we cross the stile, and walk up the fields to the Shaw. Howbeautifully green this pasture looks! and how finely the evening sunglances between the boles of that clump of trees, beech, and ash, andaspen! and how sweet the hedgerows are with woodbine and wild scabious, or, as the country people call it, the gipsy-rose! Here is little DollyWeston, the unconscious witness, with cheeks as red as a real rose, tottering up the path to meet her father. And here is the carroty-poledurchin, George Coper, returning from work, and singing 'Home! sweetHome!' at the top of his voice; and then, when the notes prove toohigh for him, continuing the air in a whistle, until he has turned theimpassable corner; then taking up again the song and the words, 'Home!sweet Home!' and looking as if he felt their full import, ploughboythough he be. And so he does; for he is one of a large, an honest, akind, and an industrious family, where all goes well, and where the poorploughboy is sure of finding cheerful faces and coarse comforts--allthat he has learned to desire. Oh, to be as cheaply and as thoroughlycontented as George Coper! All his luxuries a cricket-match!--all hiswants satisfied in 'home! sweet home!'

Nothing but noises to-day! They are clearing Farmer Brooke's greatbean-field, and crying the 'Harvest Home!' in a chorus, before which allother sounds--the song, the scolding, the gunnery--fade away, and becomefaint echoes. A pleasant noise is that! though, for one's ears' sake, one makes some haste to get away from it. And here, in happy time, isthat pretty wood, the Shaw, with its broad pathway, its tangled dingles, its nuts and its honeysuckles;--and, carrying away a faggot of thosesweetest flowers, we reach Hannah Bint's: of whom, and of whose doings, we shall say more another time. 

NOTE. --Poor Dash is also dead. We did not keep him long, indeed Ibelieve that he died of the transition from starvation to good feed, as dangerous to a dog's stomach, and to most stomachs, as the lessagreeable change from good feed to starvation. He has been succeeded inplace and favour by another Dash, not less amiable in demeanour and farmore creditable in appearance, bearing no small resemblance to thepet spaniel of my friend Master Dinely, he who stole the bone from themagpies, and who figures as the first Dash of this volume. Let not theunwary reader opine, that in assigning the same name to three severalindividuals, I am acting as an humble imitator of the inimitable writerwho has given immortality to the Peppers and the Mustards, on the onehand; or showing a poverty of invention or a want of acquaintance withthe bead-roll of canine appellations on the other. I merely, with myusual scrupulous fidelity, take the names as I find them. The fact isthat half the handsome spaniels in England are called Dash, just as halfthe tall footmen are called Thomas. The name belongs to the species. Sitting in an open carriage one day last summer at the door of afarmhouse where my father had some business, I saw a noble and beautifulanimal of this kind lying in great state and laziness on the steps, andfelt an immediate desire to make acquaintance with him. My father, whohad had the same fancy, had patted him and called him 'poor fellow' inpassing, without eliciting the smallest notice in return. 'Dash!' criedI at a venture, 'good Dash! noble Dash!' and up he started in a moment, making but one spring from the door into the gig. Of course I was rightin my guess. The gentleman's name was Dash. 

NUTTING. 

September 26th. --One of those delicious autumnal days, when the air, thesky, and the earth seem lulled into a universal calm, softer and mildereven than May. We sallied forth for a walk, in a mood congenial to theweather and the season, avoiding, by mutual consent, the brightand sunny common, and the gay highroad, and stealing through shady, unfrequented lanes, where we were not likely to meet any one, --not eventhe pretty family procession which in other years we used to contemplatewith so much interest--the father, mother, and children, returning fromthe wheat-field, the little ones laden with bristling close-tied bunchesof wheat-ears, their own gleanings, or a bottle and a basket which hadcontained their frugal dinner, whilst the mother would carry her babehushing and lulling it, and the father and an elder child trudged afterwith the cradle, all seeming weary and all happy. We shall not see sucha procession as this to-day; for the harvest is nearly over, the fieldsare deserted, the silence may almost be felt. Except the wintry notesof the redbreast, nature herself is mute. But how beautiful, how gentle, how harmonious, how rich! The rain has preserved to the herbage allthe freshness and verdure of spring, and the world of leaves has lostnothing of its midsummer brightness, and the harebell is on the banks, and the woodbine in the hedges, and the low furze, which the lambscropped in the spring, has burst again into its golden blossoms. 

All is beautiful that the eye can see; perhaps the more beautiful forbeing shut in with a forest-like closeness. We have no prospect inthis labyrinth of lanes, cross-roads, mere cart-ways, leading to theinnumerable little farms into which this part of the parish is divided. Up-hill or down, these quiet woody lanes scarcely give us a peep at theworld, except when, leaning over a gate, we look into one of the smallenclosures, hemmed in with hedgerows, so closely set with growingtimber, that the meady opening looks almost like a glade in a wood;or when some cottage, planted at a corner of one of the little greensformed by the meeting of these cross-ways, almost startles us by theunexpected sight of the dwellings of men in such a solitude. But thatwe have more of hill and dale, and that our cross-roads are excellent intheir kind, this side of our parish would resemble the description givenof La Vendee, in Madame Laroche-Jacquelin's most interesting book. * I amsure if wood can entitle a country to be called Le Bocage, none canhave a better right to the name. Even this pretty snug farmhouse onthe hillside, with its front covered with the rich vine, which goeswreathing up to the very top of the clustered chimney, and its slopingorchard full of fruit--even this pretty quiet nest can hardly peep outof its leaves. Ah! they are gathering in the orchard harvest. Look atthat young rogue in the old mossy apple-tree--that great tree, bendingwith the weight of its golden-rennets--see how he pelts his littlesister beneath with apples as red and as round as her own cheeks, whileshe, with her outstretched frock, is trying to catch them, and laughingand offering to pelt again as often as one bobs against her; and look atthat still younger imp, who, as grave as a judge, is creeping onhands and knees under the tree, picking up the apples as they fall sodeedily, ** and depositing them so honestly in the great basket on thegrass, already fixed so firmly and opened so widely, and filled almostto overflowing by the brown rough fruitage of the golden-rennet's nextneighbour the russeting; and see that smallest urchin of all, seatedapart in infantine state on the turfy bank, with that toothsome pieceof deformity a crumpling in each hand, now biting from one sweet, hard, juicy morsel and now from another--Is not that a pretty English picture?And then, farther up the orchard, that bold hardy lad, the eldest born, who has scaled (Heaven knows how) the tall, straight upper branchof that great pear-tree, and is sitting there as securely and asfearlessly, in as much real safety and apparent danger, as a sailor onthe top-mast. Now he shakes the tree with a mighty swing that bringsdown a pelting shower of stony bergamots, which the father gathersrapidly up, whilst the mother can hardly assist for her motherly fear--afear which only spurs the spirited boy to bolder ventures. Is not that apretty picture? And they are such a handsome family too, the Brookers. I do not know that there is any gipsy blood, but there is the truegipsy complexion, richly brown, with cheeks and lips so red, blackhair curling close to their heads in short crisp rings, white shiningteeth--and such eyes!--That sort of beauty entirely eclipses your mereroses and lilies. Even Lizzy, the prettiest of fair children, would lookpoor and watery by the side of Willy Brooker, the sober little personagewho is picking up the apples with his small chubby hands, and fillingthe basket so orderly, next to his father the most useful man in thefield. 'Willy!' He hears without seeing; for we are quite hidden bythe high bank, and a spreading hawthorn bush that overtops it, thoughbetween the lower branches and the grass we have found a convenientpeep-hole. 'Willy!' The voice sounds to him like some fairy dream, andthe black eyes are raised from the ground with sudden wonder, the longsilky eyelashes thrown back till they rest on the delicate brow, and adeeper blush is burning on those dark cheeks, and a smile is dimplingabout those scarlet lips. But the voice is silent now, and the littlequiet boy, after a moment's pause, is gone coolly to work again. Heis indeed a most lovely child. I think some day or other he must marryLizzy; I shall propose the match to their respective mammas. At presentthe parties are rather too young for a wedding--the intended bridegroombeing, as I should judge, six, or thereabout, and the fair bridebarely five, --but at least we might have a betrothment after the royalfashion, --there could be no harm in that. Miss Lizzy, I have no doubt, would be as demure and coquettish as if ten winters more had gone overher head, and poor Willy would open his innocent black eyes, and wonderwhat was going forward. They would be the very Oberon and Titania of thevillage, the fairy king and queen. 

*An almost equally interesting account of that very peculiar andinteresting scenery, may be found in The Maid of La Vendee, an Englishnovel, remarkable for its simplicity and truth of painting, written byMrs. Le Noir, the daughter of Christopher Smart, an inheritrix of muchof his talent. Her works deserve to be better known. 

**'Deedily, '--I am not quite sure that this word is good English; but itis genuine Hampshire, and is used by the most correct of female writers, Miss Austen. It means (and it is no small merit that it has no exactsynonym) anything done with a profound and plodding attention, an actionwhich engrosses all the powers of mind and body. 

Ah! here is the hedge along which the periwinkle wreathes and twines soprofusely, with its evergreen leaves shining like the myrtle, and itsstarry blue flowers. It is seldom found wild in this part of England;but, when we do meet with it, it is so abundant and so welcome, --thevery robin-redbreast of flowers, a winter friend. Unless in thoseunfrequent frosts which destroy all vegetation, it blossoms fromSeptember to June, surviving the last lingering crane's-bill, forerunning the earliest primrose, hardier even than the mountaindaisy, --peeping out from beneath the snow, looking at itself in the ice, smiling through the tempests of life, and yet welcoming and enjoying thesunbeams. Oh, to be like that flower!

The little spring that has been bubbling under the hedge all alongthe hillside, begins, now that we have mounted the eminence and areimperceptibly descending, to deviate into a capricious variety of cleardeep pools and channels, so narrow and so choked with weeds, that achild might overstep them. The hedge has also changed its character. Itis no longer the close compact vegetable wall of hawthorn, and maple, and brier-roses, intertwined with bramble and woodbine, and crowned withlarge elms or thickly-set saplings. No! the pretty meadow which riseshigh above us, backed and almost surrounded by a tall coppice, needsno defence on our side but its own steep bank, garnished with tufts ofbroom, with pollard oaks wreathed with ivy, and here and there with longpatches of hazel overhanging the water. 'Ah, there are still nuts onthat bough!' and in an instant my dear companion, active and eager anddelighted as a boy, has hooked down with his walking-stick one of thelissome hazel stalks, and cleared it of its tawny clusters, and inanother moment he has mounted the bank, and is in the midst of thenuttery, now transferring the spoil from the lower branches into thatvast variety of pockets which gentlemen carry about them, now bendingthe tall tops into the lane, holding them down by main force, so thatI might reach them and enjoy the pleasure of collecting some of theplunder myself. A very great pleasure he knew it would be. I doffed myshawl, tucked up my flounces, turned my straw bonnet into a basket, andbegan gathering and scrambling--for, manage it how you may, nutting isscrambling work, --those boughs, however tightly you may grasp them bythe young fragrant twigs and the bright green leaves, will recoiland burst away; but there is a pleasure even in that: so on we go, scrambling and gathering with all our might and all our glee. Oh, whatan enjoyment! All my life long I have had a passion for that sort ofseeking which implies finding (the secret, I believe, of the love offield-sports, which is in man's mind a natural impulse)--therefore Ilove violeting, --therefore, when we had a fine garden, I used to loveto gather strawberries, and cut asparagus, and above all, to collectthe filberts from the shrubberies: but this hedgerow nutting beats thatsport all to nothing. That was a make-believe thing, compared withthis; there was no surprise, no suspense, no unexpectedness--it was asinferior to this wild nutting, as the turning out of a bag-fox is tounearthing the fellow, in the eyes of a staunch foxhunter. 

Oh, what enjoyment this nut-gathering is! They are in such abundance, that it seems as if there were not a boy in the parish, nor a young man, nor a young woman, --for a basket of nuts is the universal tribute ofcountry gallantry; our pretty damsel Harriet has had at least half adozen this season; but no one has found out these. And they are so fulltoo, we lose half of them from over-ripeness; they drop from the socketat the slightest motion. If we lose, there is one who finds. May is asfond of nuts as a squirrel, and cracks the shell and extracts the kernelwith equal dexterity. Her white glossy head is upturned now to watchthem as they fall. See how her neck is thrown back like that of a swan, and how beautifully her folded ears quiver with expectation, and how herquick eye follows the rustling noise, and her light feet dance and patthe ground, and leap up with eagerness, seeming almost sustained in theair, just as I have seen her when Brush is beating a hedgerow, and sheknows from his questing that there is a hare afoot. See, she has caughtthat nut just before it touched the water; but the water would havebeen no defence, --she fishes them from the bottom, she delves after themamongst the matted grass--even my bonnet--how beggingly she looks atthat! 'Oh, what a pleasure nutting is!--Is it not, May? But the pocketsare almost full, and so is the basket-bonnet, and that bright watch thesun says it is late; and after all it is wrong to rob the poor boys--isit not, May?'--May shakes her graceful head denyingly, as if sheunderstood the question--'And we must go home now--must we not? But wewill come nutting again some time or other--shall we not, my May?'

THE VISIT. 

October 27th. --A lovely autumnal day; the air soft, balmy, genial;the sky of that softened and delicate blue upon which the eye loves torest, --the blue which gives such relief to the rich beauty of the earth, all around glowing in the ripe and mellow tints of the most gorgeousof the seasons. Really such an autumn may well compensate our Englishclimate for the fine spring of the south, that spring of which the poetstalk, but which we so seldom enjoy. Such an autumn glows upon us likea splendid evening; it is the very sunset of the year; and I have beentempted forth into a wider range of enjoyment than usual. This WALK (ifI may use the Irish figure of speech called a bull) will be a RIDE. Avery dear friend has beguiled me into accompanying her in her prettyequipage to her beautiful home, four miles off; and having sent forwardin the style of a running footman the servant who had driven her, sheassumes the reins, and off we set. 

My fair companion is a person whom nature and fortune would have spoiledif they could. She is one of those striking women whom a stranger cannotpass without turning to look again; tall and finely proportioned, with abold Roman contour of figure and feature, a delicate Englishcomplexion, and an air of distinction altogether her own. Her beauty isduchess-like. She seems born to wear feathers and diamonds, and toform the grace and ornament of a court; and the noble frankness andsimplicity of her countenance and manner confirm the impression. Destinyhas, however, dealt more kindly by her. She is the wife of a richcountry gentleman of high descent and higher attainments, to whom sheis most devotedly attached, --the mother of a little girl as lovelyas herself, and the delight of all who have the happiness of heracquaintance, to whom she is endeared not merely by her remarkablesweetness of temper and kindness of heart, but by the singularingenuousness and openness of character which communicate anindescribable charm to her conversation. She is as transparent as water. You may see every colour, every shade of a mind as lofty and beautifulas her person. Talking with her is like being in the Palace of Truthdescribed by Madame de Genlis; and yet so kindly are her feelings, sogreat her indulgence to the little failings and foibles of our commonnature, so intense her sympathy with the wants, the wishes, thesorrows, and the happiness of her fellow-creatures, that, with all herfrank-speaking, I never knew her make an enemy or lose a friend. 

But we must get on. What would she say if she knew I was putting herinto print? We must get on up the hill. Ah! that is precisely what weare 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 anArabian, has suddenly turned sulky. He does not indeed stand quitestill, but his way of moving is little better--the slowest andmost sullen of all walks. Even they who ply the hearse at funerals, sad-looking beasts who totter under black feathers, go faster. It is ofno use to admonish him by whip, or rein, or word. The rogue has foundout that it is a weak and tender hand that guides him now. Oh, for onepull, one stroke of his old driver, the groom! how he would fly! Butthere is the groom half a mile before us, out of earshot, clearing theground at a capital rate, beating us hollow. He has just turned thetop of the hill;--and in a moment--ay, NOW he is out of sight, and willundoubtedly so continue till he meets us at the lawn gate. Well!there is no great harm. It is only prolonging the pleasure of enjoyingtogether this charming scenery in this fine weather. If once we make upour minds not to care how slowly our steed goes, not to fret ourselvesby vain exertions, it is no matter what his pace may be. There is littledoubt 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 aredetermined to give him his way, he may relent and give us ours. All hissex are sticklers for dominion, though, when it is undisputed, someof them are generous enough to abandon it. Two or three of the mostdiscreet wives of my acquaintance contrive to manage their husbandssufficiently with no better secret than this seeming submission; and inour case the example has the more weight since we have no possible wayof helping ourselves. 

Thus philosophising, we reached the top of the hill, and viewed with'reverted eyes' the beautiful prospect that lay bathed in goldensunshine behind us. Cowper says, with that boldness of expressing inpoetry the commonest and simplest feelings, which is perhaps one greatsecret of his originality, '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 admirethe broad winding road with the green waste on each side, uniting itwith the thickly timbered hedgerows; the two pretty cottages at unequaldistances, placed so as to mark the bends; the village beyond, with itsmass of roofs and clustered chimneys peeping through the trees; and therich distance, where cottages, mansions, churches, towns, seem emboweredin some wide forest, and shut in by blue shadowy hills. Every day Iadmire this most beautiful landscape; yet never did it seem to me sofine or so glowing as now. All the tints of the glorious autumn, orange, tawny, yellow, red, are poured in profusion among the bright greens ofthe meadows and turnip fields, till the eyes are satiated with colour;and then before us we have the common with its picturesque roughness ofsurface tufted with cottages, dappled with water, edging off on one sideinto fields and farms and orchards, and terminated on the other by theprincely oak avenue. What a richness and variety the wild broken groundgives to the luxuriant cultivation of the rest of the landscape! Cowperhas described it for me. How perpetually, as we walk in the country, hisvivid pictures recur to the memory! Here is his common and mine!

 '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 onesolitary urchin, as if in contemplation of its past and future glories;for, alas! cricket is over for the season. Ah! it is Ben Kirby, nextbrother to Joe, king of the youngsters, and probably his successor--forthis Michaelmas has cost us Joe! He is promoted from the farm to themansion-house, two miles off; there he cleans shoes, rubs knives, and runs on errands, and is, as his mother expresses it, 'a sort of'prentice to the footman. ' I should not wonder if Joe, some day orother, should overtop the footman, and rise to be butler; and hissplendid prospects must be our consolation for the loss of this greatfavourite. In the meantime we have Ben. 

Ben Kirby is a year younger than Joe, and the school-fellow and rival ofJem Eusden. To be sure his abilities lie in rather a different line: Jemis a scholar, Ben is a wag: Jem is great in figures and writing, Ben infaces and mischief. His master says of him, that, if there were two suchin the school, he must resign his office; and as far as my observationgoes, the worthy pedagogue is right. Ben is, it must be confessed, agreat corrupter of gravity. He hath an exceeding aversion to authorityand decorum, and a wonderful boldness and dexterity in overthrowing theone and puzzling the other. His contortions of visage are astounding. His 'power over his own muscles and those of other people' is almostequal to that of Liston; and indeed the original face, flat and squareand Chinese in its shape, of a fine tan complexion, with a snubnose, and a slit for a mouth, is nearly as comical as that matchlessperformer's. When aided by Ben's singular mobility of feature, hisknowing winks and grins and shrugs and nods, together with a certaindry shrewdness, a habit of saying sharp things, and a marvellous gift ofimpudence, it forms as fine a specimen as possible of a humorous countryboy, an oddity in embryo. Everybody likes Ben, except his butts (whichmay perhaps comprise half his acquaintance); and of them no one sothoroughly hates and dreads him as our parish schoolmaster, a mostworthy King Log, whom Ben dumbfounds twenty times a day. He is a greatornament of the cricket-ground, has a real genius for the game, and displays it after a very original manner, under the disguise ofawkwardness--as the clown shows off his agility in a pantomime. Nothingcomes amiss to him. By the bye, he would have been the very lad for usin 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 areso. I believe the rogue has a kindness for me, in remembrance of certainapples and nuts, which my usual companion, who delights in his wit, is accustomed to dole out to him. But it is a Robin Goodfellownevertheless, a perfect Puck, that loves nothing on earth so well asmischief. Perhaps the horse may be the safer conductor of the two. 

The avenue is quite alive to-day. Old women are picking up twigs andacorns, and pigs of all sizes doing their utmost to spare them thelatter part of the trouble; boys and girls groping for beech-nuts underyonder clump; and a group of younger elves collecting as many deadleaves as they can find to feed the bonfire which is smoking away sobriskly amongst the trees, --a sort of rehearsal of the grand bonfirenine days hence; of the loyal conflagration of the arch-traitor GuyVaux, which is annually solemnised in the avenue, accompanied with asmuch of squibbery and crackery as our boys can beg or borrow--not to saysteal. Ben Kirby is a great man on the 5th of November. All thesavings of a month, the hoarded halfpence, the new farthings, the veryluck-penny, go off in fumo on that night. For my part, I like thisdaylight mockery better. There is no gunpowder--odious gunpowder! nonoise but the merry shouts of the small fry, so shrill and happy, andthe cawing of the rooks, who are wheeling in large circles overhead, and wondering what is going forward in their territory--seeming intheir loud clamour to ask what that light smoke may mean that curlsso prettily amongst their old oaks, towering as if to meet the clouds. There is something very intelligent in the ways of that black peoplethe rooks, particularly in their wonder. I suppose it results from theirnumbers and their unity of purpose, a sort of collective and corporatewisdom. Yet geese congregate also; and geese never by any chance lookwise. But then geese are a domestic fowl; we have spoiled them; androoks are free commoners of nature, who use the habitations we providefor them, tenant our groves and our avenues, but never dream of becomingour subjects. 

What a labyrinth of a road this is! I do think there are four turningsin the short half-mile between the avenue and the mill. And what a pity, as my companion observes--not that our good and jolly miller, the veryrepresentative of the old English yeomanry, should be so rich, butthat one consequence of his riches should be the pulling down of theprettiest old mill that ever looked at itself in the Loddon, withthe picturesque, low-browed, irregular cottage, which stood with itslight-pointed roof, its clustered chimneys, and its ever-open door, looking like the real abode of comfort and hospitality, to build thishuge, staring, frightful, red-brick mill, as ugly as a manufactory, andthis great square house, ugly and red to match, just behind. The oldbuildings always used to remind me of Wollett's beautiful engraving ofa scene in the Maid of the Mill. It will be long before any artist willmake a drawing of this. Only think of this redness in a picture! thisboiled lobster of a house! Falstaff's description of Bardolph's nosewould look pale in the comparison. 

Here is that monstrous machine of a tilted waggon, with its load offlour, and its four fat horses. I wonder whether our horse will have thedecency to get out of the way. If he does not, I am sure we cannot makehim; and that enormous ship upon wheels, that ark on dry land, wouldroll over us like the car of Juggernaut. Really--Oh no! there is nodanger now. I should have remembered that it is my friend Samuel Longwho drives the mill team. He will take care of us. 'Thank you, Samuel!'And Samuel has put us on our way, steered us safely past his waggon, escorted us over the bridge and now, having seen us through ourimmediate difficulties, has parted from us with a very civil bow andgood-humoured smile, as one who is always civil and good-humoured, butwith a certain triumphant masterful look in his eyes, which I havenoted in men, even the best of them, when a woman gets into straits byattempting manly employments. He has done us great good though, andmay be allowed his little feeling of superiority. The parting salute hebestowed on our steed, in the shape of an astounding crack of his hugewhip, has put that refractory animal on his mettle. On we go! past theglazier's pretty house, with its porch and its filbert walk; along thenarrow lane bordered with elms, whose fallen leaves have made the roadone yellow; past that little farmhouse with the horse-chestnut treesbefore, glowing like oranges; past the whitewashed school on the otherside, gay with October roses; past the park, and the lodge, and themansion, where once dwelt the great Earl of Clarendon;--and now therascal has begun to discover that Samuel Long and his whip are a mileoff, and that his mistress is driving him, and he slackens his paceaccordingly. Perhaps he feels the beauty of the road just here, andgoes slowly to enjoy it. Very beautiful it certainly is. The park palingforms the boundary on one side, with fine clumps of oak, and deer in allattitudes; the water, tufted with alders, flowing along on the other. Another turn, and the water winds away, succeeded by a low hedge, and asweep of green meadows; whilst the park and its palings are replacedby a steep bank, on which stands a small, quiet, village alehouse; andhigher up, embosomed in wood, is the little country church, with itssloping churchyard and its low white steeple, peeping out from amongstmagnificent 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 ofthe peace and humbleness inculcated within its walls. 

Ah! here is a higher hill rising before us, almost like a mountain. Howgrandly the view opens as we ascend over that wild bank, overgrown withfern, and heath, and gorse, and between those tall hollies, glowing withtheir coral berries! What an expanse! But we have little time to gaze atpresent; for that piece of perversity, our horse, who has walked over somuch level ground, has now, inspired, I presume, by a desire to revisithis stable, taken it into that unaccountable noddle of his to trot upthis, the very steepest hill in the county. Here we are on the top; andin five minutes we have reached the lawn gate, and are in the very midstof that beautiful piece of art or nature (I do not know to which classit belongs), the pleasure-ground of F. Hill. Never was the 'propheticeye of taste' exerted with more magical skill than in theseplantations. Thirty years ago this place had no existence; it was a mereundistinguished tract of field and meadow and common land; now it is amimic forest, delighting the eye with the finest combinations of treesand shrubs, the rarest effects of form and foliage, and bewilderingthe mind with its green glades, and impervious recesses, and apparentlyinterminable extent. It is the triumph of landscape gardening, and nevermore beautiful than in this autumn sunset, lighting up the ruddy beechand the spotted sycamore, and gilding the shining fir-cones that hang sothickly amongst the dark pines. The robins are singing around us, asif they too felt the magic of the hour. How gracefully the roadwinds through the leafy labyrinth, leading imperceptibly to themore ornamented sweep. Here we are at the door amidst geraniums, andcarnations, and jasmines, still in flower. Ah! here is a flower sweeterthan all, a bird gayer than the robin, the little bird that chirps tothe tune of 'mamma! mamma!', the bright-faced fairy, whose tiny feetcome pattering along, making a merry music, mamma's own Frances! Andfollowing her guidance, here we are in the dear round room time enoughto catch the last rays of the sun, as they light the noble landscapewhich lies like a panorama around us, lingering longest on that longisland of old thorns and stunted oaks, the oasis of B. Heath, and thenvanishing in a succession of gorgeous clouds. 

October 28th. --Another soft and brilliant morning. But the pleasuresof to-day must be written in shorthand. I have left myself no room fornotes of admiration. 

First we drove about the coppice: an extensive wood of oak, and elm, andbeech, chiefly the former, which adjoins the park-paling of F. Hill, ofwhich demesne, indeed, it forms one of the most delightful parts. Theroads through the coppice are studiously wild; so that they have theappearance of mere cart-tracks: and the manner in which the groundis tumbled about, the steep declivities, the sunny slopes, the suddenswells and falls, now a close narrow valley, then a sharp ascent to aneminence commanding an immense extent of prospect, have a striking airof natural beauty, developed and heightened by the perfection of art. All this, indeed, was familiar to me; the colouring only was new. I hadbeen there in early spring, when the fragrant palms were on the willow, and the yellow tassels on the hazel, and every twig was swellingwith renewed life; and I had been there again and again in the greenleafiness of midsummer; but never as now, when the dark verdure of thefir-plantations, hanging over the picturesque and unequal paling, partlycovered with moss and ivy, contrasts so remarkably with the shiningorange-leaves of the beech, already half fallen, the pale yellow of thescattering elm, the deeper and richer tints of the oak, and the glossystems of the 'lady of the woods, ' the delicate weeping birch. Theunderwood is no less picturesque. The red-spotted leaves and redderberries of the old thorns, the scarlet festoons of the bramble, the tallfern of every hue, seem to vie with the brilliant mosaic of the ground, now covered with dead leaves and strewn with fir-cones, now, where alittle glade intervenes, gay with various mosses and splendid fungi. Howbeautiful is this coppice to-day! especially where the little spring, as clear as crystal, comes bubbling out from the old 'fantastic' beechroot, and trickles over the grass, bright and silent as the dew in aMay morning. The wood-pigeons (who are just returned from their summermigration, and are cropping the ivy berries) add their low cooings, thevery note of love, to the slight fluttering of the falling leaves in thequiet air, giving a voice to the sunshine and the beauty. This coppiceis a place to live and die in. But we must go. And how fine is theascent which leads us again into the world, past those cottages hiddenas in a pit, and by that hanging orchard and that rough heathy bank! Thescenery in this one spot has a wildness, an abruptness of rise and fall, rare in any part of England, rare above all in this rich and lovely butmonotonous county. It is Switzerland in miniature. 

And now we cross the hill to pay a morning visit to the family at thegreat house, --another fine place, commanding another fine sweep ofcountry. The park, studded with old trees, and sinking gently intoa valley, rich in wood and water, is in the best style of ornamentallandscape, though more according to the common routine of gentlemen'sseats than the singularly original place which we have just left. There is, however, one distinctive beauty in the grounds of the greathouse;--the magnificent firs which shade the terraces and surround thesweep, giving out in summer odours really Sabaean, and now in this lowautumn sun producing an effect almost magical, as the huge red trunks, garlanded with ivy, stand out from the deep shadows like an army ofgiants. Indoors--Oh I must not take my readers indoors, or we shallnever get away! Indoors the sunshine is brighter still; for there, in alofty, lightsome room, sat a damsel fair and arch and piquante, onewhom Titian or Velasquez should be born again to paint, leaning over aninstrument* as sparkling and fanciful as herself, singing pretty Frenchromances, and Scottish Jacobite songs, and all sorts of graceful andairy drolleries picked up I know not where--an English improvisatrice!a gayer Annot Lyle! whilst her sister, of a higher order of beauty, andwith an earnest kindness in her smile that deepens its power, lends tothe piano, as her father to the violin, an expression, a sensibility, aspirit, an eloquence almost superhuman--almost divine! Oh to hear thesetwo instruments accompanying my dear companion (I forgot to say that sheis a singer worthy to be so accompanied) in Haydn's exquisite canzonet, "She never told her love, "--to hear her voice, with all its power, itssweetness, its gush of sound, so sustained and assisted by modulationsthat rivalled its intensity of expression; to hear at once such poetry, such music, such execution, is a pleasure never to be forgotten, ormixed with meaner things. I seem to hear it still. 

 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, Pictured 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 soothed old Prospero with music rare. 

 *The dital harp. 

HANNAH BINT. 

The Shaw, leading to Hannah Bint's habitation, is, as I perhaps havesaid before, a very pretty mixture of wood and coppice; that is to say, a tract of thirty or forty acres covered with fine growing timber--ash, and oak, and elm, very regularly planted; and interspersed here andthere with large patches of underwood, hazel, maple, birch, holly, andhawthorn, woven into almost impenetrable thickets by long wreaths of thebramble, the briony, and the brier-rose, or by the pliant and twistinggarlands of the wild honeysuckle. In other parts, the Shaw is quiteclear of its bosky undergrowth, and clothed only with large beds offeathery fern, or carpets of flowers, primroses, orchises, cowslips, ground-ivy, crane's-bill, cotton-grass, Solomon's seal, andforget-me-not, crowded together with a profusion and brilliancy ofcolour, such as I have rarely seen equalled even in a garden. Herethe wild hyacinth really enamels the ground with its fresh and lovelypurple; there, 'On aged roots, with bright green mosses clad, Dwells the wood-sorrel, with its bright thin leaves Heart-shaped and triply folded, and its root Creeping like beaded coral; whilst around Flourish the copse's pride, anemones, With rays like golden studs on ivory laid Most delicate; but touch'd with purple clouds, Fit crown for April's fair but changeful brow. '

The variety is much greater than I have enumerated; for the ground isso unequal, now swelling in gentle ascents, now dimpling into dells andhollows, and the soil so different in different parts, that the sylvanFlora is unusually extensive and complete. 

The season is, however, now too late for this floweriness; and exceptthe tufted woodbines, which have continued in bloom during the wholeof this lovely autumn, and some lingering garlands of the purple wildvetch, wreathing round the thickets, and uniting with the ruddy leavesof the bramble, and the pale festoons of the briony, there is littleto call one's attention from the grander beauties of the trees--thesycamore, its broad leaves already spotted--the oak, heavy withacorns--and the delicate shining rind of the weeping birch, 'the lady ofthe woods, ' thrown out in strong relief from a background of holly andhawthorn, each studded with coral berries, and backed with old beeches, beginning to assume the rich tawny hue which makes them perhaps the mostpicturesque of autumnal trees, as the transparent freshness of theiryoung foliage is undoubtedly the choicest ornament of the forest inspring. 

A sudden turn round one of these magnificent beeches brings us to theboundary of the Shaw, and leaning upon a rude gate, we look over an openspace of about ten acres of ground, still more varied and brokenthan that which we have passed, and surrounded on all sides by thickwoodland. As a piece of colour, nothing can be well finer. The ruddyglow of the heath-flower, contrasting, on the one hand, with thegolden-blossomed furze--on the other, with a patch of buck-wheat, of which the bloom is not past, although the grain be ripening, thebeautiful buck-wheat, whose transparent leaves and stalks are sobrightly tinged with vermilion, while the delicate pink-white of theflower, a paler persicaria, has a feathery fall, at once so rich and sograceful, and a fresh and reviving odour, like that of birch treesin the dew of a May evening. The bank that surmounts this attempt atcultivation is crowned with the late foxglove and the stately mullein;the pasture of which so great a part of the waste consists, looks asgreen as an emerald; a clear pond, with the bright sky reflected in it, lets light into the picture; the white cottage of the keeper peeps fromthe opposite coppice; and the vine-covered dwelling of Hannah Bint risesfrom amidst the pretty garden, which lies bathed in the sunshine aroundit. 

The living and moving accessories are all in keeping with thecheerfulness and repose of the landscape. Hannah's cow grazing quietlybeside the keeper's pony; a brace of fat pointer puppies holdingamicable intercourse with a litter of young pigs; ducks, geese, cocks, hens, and chickens scattered over the turf; Hannah herself sallyingforth from the cottage-door, with her milk-bucket in her hand, and herlittle brother following with the milking-stool. 

My friend, Hannah Bint, is by no means an ordinary person. Her father, Jack Bint (for in all his life he never arrived at the dignity of beingcalled John, indeed in our parts he was commonly known by the cognomenof London Jack), was a drover of high repute in his profession. No man, between Salisbury Plain and Smithfield, was thought to conduct a flockof sheep so skilfully through all the difficulties of lanes and commons, streets and high-roads, as Jack Bint, aided by Jack Bint's famous dog, Watch; for Watch's rough, honest face, black, with a little white aboutthe muzzle, and one white ear, was as well known at fairs and marketsas his master's equally honest and weather-beaten visage. Lucky wasthe dealer that could secure their services; Watch being renownedfor keeping a flock together better than any shepherd's dog onthe road--Jack, for delivering them more punctually, and in bettercondition. No man had a more thorough knowledge of the proper nightstations, where good feed might be procured for his charge, and goodliquor for Watch and himself; Watch, like other sheep dogs, beingaccustomed to live chiefly on bread and beer. His master, though notaverse to a pot of good double X, preferred gin; and they who plodslowly along, through wet and weary ways, in frost and in fog, haveundoubtedly a stronger temptation to indulge in that cordial andreviving stimulus, than we water-drinkers, sitting in warm andcomfortable rooms, can readily imagine. For certain, our drover couldnever resist the gentle seduction of the gin-bottle, and being of afree, merry, jovial temperament, one of those persons commonly calledgood fellows, who like to see others happy in the same way withthemselves, he was apt to circulate it at his own expense, to the greatimprovement of his popularity, and the great detriment of his finances. 

All this did vastly well whilst his earnings continued proportionate tohis spendings, and the little family at home were comfortably supportedby his industry: but when a rheumatic fever came on, one hard winter, and finally settled in his limbs, reducing the most active and hardyman in the parish to the state of a confirmed cripple, then his recklessimprovidence stared him in the face; and poor Jack, a thoughtless, but kind creature, and a most affectionate father, looked at his threemotherless children with the acute misery of a parent who has broughtthose whom he loves best in the world to abject destitution. He foundhelp, where he probably least expected it, in the sense and spirit ofhis young daughter, a girl of twelve years old. 

Hannah was the eldest of the family, and had, ever since her mother'sdeath, which event had occurred two or three years before, beenaccustomed to take the direction of their domestic concerns, to manageher two brothers, to feed the pigs and the poultry, and to keep houseduring the almost constant absence of her father. She was a quick, clever lass, of a high spirit, a firm temper, some pride, and a horrorof accepting parochial relief, which is every day becoming rarer amongstthe peasantry; but which forms the surest safeguard to the sturdyindependence of the English character. Our little damsel possessed thisquality in perfection; and when her father talked of giving up theircomfortable cottage, and removing to the workhouse, whilst she andher brothers must go to service, Hannah formed a bold resolution, andwithout disturbing the sick man by any participation of her hopes andfears, proceeded after settling their trifling affairs to act at once onher own plans and designs. 

Careless of the future as the poor drover had seemed, he had yet keptclear of debt, and by subscribing constantly to a benefit club, hadsecured a pittance that might at least assist in supporting him duringthe long years of sickness and helplessness to which he was doomed tolook forward. This his daughter knew. She knew also, that the employerin whose service his health had suffered so severely, was a rich andliberal cattle-dealer in the neighbourhood, who would willingly aid anold and faithful servant, and had, indeed, come forward with offers ofmoney. To assistance from such a quarter Hannah saw no objection. FarmerOakley and the parish were quite distinct things. Of him, accordingly, she asked, not money, but something much more in his own way--'a cow!any cow! old or lame, or what not, so that it were a cow! she would bebound to keep it well; if she did not, he might take it back again. Sheeven hoped to pay for it by and by, by instalments, but that she wouldnot promise!' and, partly amused, partly interested by the child'searnestness, the wealthy yeoman gave her, not as a purchase, but as apresent, a very fine young Alderney. She then went to the lord of themanor, and, with equal knowledge of character, begged his permissionto keep her cow on the Shaw common. 'Farmer Oakley had given her a fineAlderney, and she would be bound to pay the rent, and keep her fatheroff the parish, if he would only let it graze on the waste;' and he too, half from real good nature--half, not to be outdone in liberality by histenant, not only granted the requested permission, but reduced the rentso much, that the produce of the vine seldom fails to satisfy their kindlandlord. 

Now Hannah showed great judgment in setting up as a dairy-woman. Shecould not have chosen an occupation more completely unoccupied, or moreloudly called for. One of the most provoking of the petty difficultieswhich beset people with a small establishment in this neighbourhood, is the trouble, almost the impossibility, of procuring the pastoralluxuries of milk, eggs, and butter, which rank, unfortunately, amongstthe indispensable necessaries of housekeeping. To your thoroughbredLondoner, who, whilst grumbling over his own breakfast, is apt to fancythat thick cream, and fresh butter, and new-laid eggs, grow, so to say, in the country--form an actual part of its natural produce--it may besome comfort to learn, that in this great grazing district, however thecalves and the farmers may be the better for cows, nobody else is;that farmers' wives have ceased to keep poultry; and that we unluckyvillagers sit down often to our first meal in a state of destitution, which may well make him content with his thin milk and his Cambridgebutter, when compared to our imputed pastoralities. 

Hannah's Alderney restored us to one rural privilege. Never was socleanly a little milkmaid. She changed away some of the cottage finery, which, in his prosperous days, poor Jack had pleased himself withbringing home, the china tea-service, the gilded mugs, and the paintedwaiters, for the useful utensils of the dairy, and speedily establisheda regular and gainful trade in milk, eggs, butter, honey, andpoultry--for poultry they had always kept. 

Her domestic management prospered equally. Her father, who retained theperfect use of his hands, began a manufacture of mats and baskets, whichhe constructed with great nicety and adroitness; the eldest boy, a sharpand clever lad, cut for him his rushes and osiers; erected, under hissister's direction, a shed for the cow, and enlarged and cultivated thegarden (always with the good leave of her kind patron the lord of themanor) until it became so ample, that the produce not only kept the pig, and half kept the family, but afforded another branch of merchandise tothe indefatigable directress of the establishment. For the younger boy, less quick and active, Hannah contrived to obtain an admission to thecharity-school, where he made great progress--retaining him at home, however, in the hay-making and leasing season, or whenever his servicescould be made available, to the great annoyance of the schoolmaster, whose favourite he is, and who piques himself so much on George'sscholarship (your heavy sluggish boy at country work often turnsout quick at his book), that it is the general opinion that thismuch-vaunted pupil will, in process of time, be promoted to the post ofassistant, and may, possibly, in course of years, rise to the dignity ofa parish pedagogue in his own person; so that his sister, although stillmaking him useful at odd times, now considers George as pretty well offher hands, whilst his elder brother, Tom, could take an under-gardener'splace directly, if he were not too important at home to be spared evenfor a day. 

In short, during the five years that she has ruled at the Shaw cottage, the world has gone well with Hannah Bint. Her cow, her calves, her pigs, her bees, her poultry, have each, in their several ways, thriven andprospered. She has even brought Watch to like butter-milk, as well asstrong beer, and has nearly persuaded her father (to whose wantsand wishes she is most anxiously attentive) to accept of milk as asubstitute for gin. Not but Hannah hath had her enemies as well as herbetters. Why should she not? The old woman at the lodge, who alwayspiqued herself on being spiteful, and crying down new ways, foretoldfrom the first she would come to no good, and could not forgive her forfalsifying her prediction; and Betty Barnes, the slatternly widow of atippling farmer, who rented a field, and set up a cow herself, and wasuniversally discarded for insufferable dirt, said all that the wit ofan envious woman could devise against Hannah and her Alderney; nay, evenNed Miles, the keeper, her next neighbour, who had whilom held entiresway over the Shaw common, as well as its coppices, grumbled as muchas so good-natured and genial a person could grumble, when he found alittle girl sharing his dominion, a cow grazing beside his pony, andvulgar cocks and hens hovering around the buck-wheat destined to feedhis noble pheasants. Nobody that had been accustomed to see that paragonof keepers, so tall and manly, and pleasant looking, with his merry eye, and his knowing smile, striding gaily along, in his green coat, and hisgold-laced hat, with Neptune, his noble Newfoundland dog (a retriever isthe sporting word), and his beautiful spaniel Flirt at his heels, couldconceive how askew he looked, when he first found Hannah and Watchholding equal reign over his old territory, the Shaw common. 

Yes! Hannah hath had her enemies; but they are passing away. The oldwoman at the lodge is dead, poor creature; and Betty Barnes, havingherself taken to tippling, has lost the few friends she once possessed, and looks, luckless wretch, as if she would soon die too!--and thekeeper?--why, he is not dead, or like to die; but the change that hastaken place there is the most astonishing of all--except, perhaps, thechange in Hannah herself. 

Few damsels of twelve years old, generally a very pretty age, were lesspretty than Hannah Bint. Short and stunted in her figure, thin in face, sharp in feature, with a muddled complexion, wild sunburnt hair, and eyes whose very brightness had in them something startling, over-informed, super-subtle, too clever for her age, --at twelve yearsold she had quite the air of a little old fairy. Now, at seventeen, matters are mended. Her complexion has cleared; her countenance hasdeveloped itself; her figure has shot up into height and lightness, anda sort of rustic grace; her bright, acute eye is softened and sweetenedby the womanly wish to please; her hair is trimmed, and curled andbrushed, with exquisite neatness; and her whole dress arranged with thatnice attention to the becoming, the suitable both in form and texture, which would be called the highest degree of coquetry, if it didnot deserve the better name of propriety. Never was such atransmogrification beheld. The lass is really pretty, and Ned Miles hasdiscovered that she is so. There he stands, the rogue, close at her side(for he hath joined her whilst we have been telling her little story, and the milking is over!)--there he stands--holding her milk-pail inone hand, and stroking Watch with the other; whilst she is returning thecompliment by patting Neptune's magnificent head. There they stand, as much like lovers as may be; he smiling, and she blushing--he neverlooking so handsome nor she so pretty in all their lives. There theystand, in blessed forgetfulness of all except each other; as happya couple as ever trod the earth. There they stand, and one would notdisturb them for all the milk and butter in Christendom. I should notwonder if they were fixing the wedding day. 

THE FALL OF THE LEAF. 

November 6th. --The weather is as peaceful to-day, as calm, and asmild, as in early April; and, perhaps, an autumn afternoon and a springmorning do resemble each other more in feeling, and even in appearance, than any two periods of the year. There is in both the same freshnessand dewiness of the herbage; the same balmy softness in the air; and thesame pure and lovely blue sky, with white fleecy clouds floatingacross it. The chief difference lies in the absence of flowers, and thepresence of leaves. But then the foliage of November is so rich, andglowing, and varied, that it may well supply the place of the gayblossoms of the spring; whilst all the flowers of the field or thegarden could never make amends for the want of leaves, --that beautifuland graceful attire in which nature has clothed the rugged forms oftrees--the verdant drapery to which the landscape owes its loveliness, and the forests their glory. 

If choice must be between two seasons, each so full of charm, it is atleast no bad philosophy to prefer the present good, even whilst lookinggratefully back, and hopefully forward, to the past and the future. Andof a surety, no fairer specimen of a November day could well be foundthan this, --a day made to wander

 'By yellow commons and birch-shaded hollows, And hedgerows bordering unfrequented lanes;'

nor could a prettier country be found for our walk than this shady andyet sunny Berkshire, where the scenery, without rising into grandeur orbreaking into wildness, is so peaceful, so cheerful, so varied, and sothoroughly English. 

We must bend our steps towards the water side, for I have a messageto leave at Farmer Riley's: and sooth to say, it is no unpleasantnecessity; for the road thither is smooth and dry, retired, as onelikes a country walk to be, but not too lonely, which women never like;leading past the Loddon--the bright, brimming, transparent Loddon--afitting mirror for this bright blue sky, and terminating at one of theprettiest and most comfortable farmhouses in the neighbourhood. 

How beautiful the lane is to-day, decorated with a thousand colours! Thebrown road, and the rich verdure that borders it, strewed with the paleyellow leaves of the elm, just beginning to fall; hedgerows glowingwith long wreaths of the bramble in every variety of purplish red; andoverhead the unchanged green of the fir, contrasting with the spottedsycamore, the tawny beech, and the dry sere leaves of the oak, whichrustle as the light wind passes through them; a few common hardy yellowflowers (for yellow is the common colour of flowers, whether wild orcultivated, as blue is the rare one), flowers of many sorts, but almostof one tint, still blowing in spite of the season, and ruddy berriesglowing through all. How very beautiful is the lane!

And how pleasant is this hill where the road widens, with the group ofcattle by the wayside, and George Hearn, the little post-boy, trundlinghis hoop at full speed, making all the better haste in his work, becausehe cheats himself into thinking it play! And how beautiful, again, isthis patch of common at the hilltop with the clear pool, whereMartha Pither's children, --elves of three, and four, and five yearsold, --without any distinction of sex in their sunburnt faces andtattered drapery, are dipping up water in their little homely cupsshining with cleanliness, and a small brown pitcher with the lip broken, to fill that great kettle, which, when it is filled, their unitedstrength will never be able to lift! They are quite a group for apainter, with their rosy cheeks, and chubby hands, and round merryfaces; and the low cottage in the background, peeping out of its vineleaves and china roses, with Martha at the door, tidy, and comely, andsmiling, preparing the potatoes for the pot, and watching the progressof dipping and filling that useful utensil, completes the picture. 

But we must go on. No time for more sketches in these short days. It isgetting cold too. We must proceed in our walk. Dash is showing us theway and beating the thick double hedgerow that runs along the side ofthe meadows, at a rate that indicates game astir, and causes the leavesto fly as fast as an east-wind after a hard frost. Ah! a pheasant! asuperb cock pheasant! Nothing is more certain than Dash's questing, whether in a hedgerow or covert, for a better spaniel never went intothe field; but I fancied that it was a hare afoot, and was almost asmuch startled to hear the whirring of those splendid wings, as theprincely bird himself would have been at the report of a gun. Indeed, Ibelieve that the way in which a pheasant goes off, does sometimes makeyoung sportsmen a little nervous, (they don't own it very readily, butthe observation may be relied on nevertheless), until they get as itwere broken in to the sound; and then that grand and sudden burst ofwing becomes as pleasant to them as it seems to be to Dash, who isbeating the hedgerow with might and main, and giving tongue louder, andsending the leaves about faster than ever--very proud of finding thepheasant, and perhaps a little angry with me for not shooting it; atleast looking as if he would be angry if I were a man; for Dash is adog of great sagacity, and has doubtless not lived four years in thesporting world without making the discovery, that although gentlemen doshoot, ladies do not. 

The Loddon at last! the beautiful Loddon! and the bridge, where everyone stops, as by instinct, to lean over the rails, and gaze a momenton a landscape of surpassing loveliness, --the fine grounds of the GreatHouse, with their magnificent groups of limes, and firs, and poplarsgrander than ever poplars were; the green meadows opposite, studded withoaks and elms; the clear winding river; the mill with its picturesqueold buildings, bounding the scene; all glowing with the rich colouringof autumn, and harmonised by the soft beauty of the clear blue sky, andthe delicious calmness of the hour. The very peasant whose daily path itis, cannot cross that bridge without a pause. 

But the day is wearing fast, and it grows colder and colder. I reallythink it will be a frost. After all, spring is the pleasantest season, beautiful as this scenery is. We must get on. Down that broad yetshadowy lane, between the park, dark with evergreens and dappled withdeer, and the meadows where sheep, and cows, and horses are grazingunder the tall elms; that lane, where the wild bank, clothed with fern, and tufted with furze, and crowned by rich berried thorn, and thickshining holly on the one side, seems to vie in beauty with thepicturesque old paling, the bright laurels, and the plumy cedars, onthe other;--down that shady lane, until the sudden turn brings us to anopening where four roads meet, where a noble avenue turns down to theGreat House; where the village church rears its modest spire from amidstits venerable yew trees: and where, embosomed in orchards and gardens, and backed by barns and ricks, and all the wealth of the farmyard, stands the spacious and comfortable abode of good Farmer Riley, --the endand object of our walk. 

And in happy time the message is said and the answer given, for thisbeautiful mild day is edging off into a dense frosty evening; the leavesof the elm and the linden in the old avenue are quivering and vibratingand fluttering in the air, and at length falling crisply on the earth, as if Dash were beating for pheasants in the tree-tops; the sun gleamsdimly through the fog, giving little more of light and heat than hisfair sister the lady moon;--I don't know a more disappointing personthan a cold sun; and I am beginning to wrap my cloak closely round me, and to calculate the distance to my own fireside, recanting all the waymy praises of November, and longing for the showery, flowery April, asmuch as if I were a half-chilled butterfly, or a dahlia knocked down bythe frost. 

Ah, dear me! what a climate this is, that one cannot keep in the samemind about it for half an hour together! I wonder, by the way, whetherthe fault is in the weather, which Dash does not seem to care for, orin me? If I should happen to be wet through in a shower next spring, andshould catch myself longing for autumn, that would settle the question.