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forced to give up, and drawing, and some day or other she would show me, only that it seemed so vain, some verses which her brother William had written upon a group of wild flowers which she had begun before her misfortune. Oh! it was almost worth while to be blind, to be the subject of such verse, and the object of such affection. Her dear mamma was very good to her, and so was Emma, but William! oh she wished that I knew William! no one could be so kind as he! oh it was impossible! He read to her, he talked to her, he walked with her, he taught her to feel confidence in walking alone; he, had made for her the wooden steps up the high bank which led to Kibe's meadow. He had put the hand-rail on the old bridge, so that now she could get across without danger, even when the brook was flooded. He had tamed her linnet; he had constructed the wooden frame, by the aid of which she could write so comfortably and evenly; could write letters to him, and say her own self, all that she felt of love and gratitude; and that," she continued with a deep sigh, "was her chief comfort now, for William was gone, and they should never meet again; never alive, that she was sure of, she knew it." "But why, Jessy "Oh because William was so much too good for this world, there was nobody Jike William! and he was gone for a soldier. Old General Lucas, her father's uncle, had sent for him abroad, had given him a commission in his regiment, and he would never come home, at least they should never meet again, of that she was sure she knew it!" This persuasion was evidently the master grief of poor Jessy's life; the cause, which far more than her blindness, faded her cheek, and saddened her spirit. How it had arisen, no one knew, partly perhaps from some lurking superstition, some idle word, or idler omen which had taken root in her mind, nourished by the calamity which, in other respects, she ¡bore so calmly, but which left her so often in darkness and loneliness, to brood over her Town gloomy forebodings; partly from her trembling sensibility, and partly from the delicacy of frame and of habit, which had always characterized the object of her love, a slender youth, whose ardent spirit was but too apt to overtask his body.

However it found admittance, there the presentiment was, hanging like a dark cloud over the sun-shine of lessy's young life. Reasoning was useless; they know little of the passions who seek to argue with that most intractable of them all, the fear that is born of love. So Mrs. Lucas and Emma tried to amuse away these sad thoughts, trusting to time, to William's letters, and above all, to William's return to eradicate the evil. The letters came punctually and gaily; letters that might have quieted the heart of any sister in England, except the fluttering heart of

Jessy Lucas. William spoke of improved health, of increased strength, of actual promotion, and expected recall. At last he even announced his return, under auspices the most gratifying to his mother, and the most beneficial to her family. The regiment was ordered home, and the old and wealthy relation, under whose protection he had already risen so rapidly, had expressed his intention to accompany him to Kibe's farm, to be introduced to his nephew's widow, and daughters, especially Jessy, for whom he expressed himself greatly interested. A letter from General Lucas himself, which arrived by the same post, was still more explicit; it adduced the son's admirable character, and exemplary conduct, as reasons for befriending the mother, and avowed his design of providing for each of his young relations, and of making William his heir.

For half an hour after the first hearing of these letters, Jessy was happy; till the peril of a winter voyage, for it was deep January, crossed her imagination, and checked her joy. At length, long before they were expected, another letter arrived, dated Portsmouth. They had sailed by the next vessel to that which conveyed their previous despatches, and might be expected hourly at Kibe's farm. The voyage was past, safely past, and the weight seemed now really taken from Jessy's heart. She raised her sweet face, and smiled; yet still it was a fearful and trembling joy, and somewhat of fear was mingled even with the very intensity of her hope.

It had been a time of wind and rain, and the Loddon, the beautiful Loddon, always so affluent in water, had overflowed its boundaries, and swelled the smaller streams which it fed into torrents. The brook which crossed Kibe's lane, had washed away part of the foot-bridge, destroying poor William's railing, and was still foaming and dashing, like a cataract. Now this was the nearest way; and if William should insist on coming that way! To be sure, the carriage-road was round by Grazeley Green, but to cross the road would save half a mile; and William, dear William, would never think of danger, to get to those whom he loved. These were Jessy's thoughts; the fear seemed impossible, for no postilion would think of breasting that roaring stream; but the fond sister's heart was fluttering like a new-caught bird, and she feared she knew not what.

All day she paced the little court, and stopped and listened, and listened and stopped. About sun-set, with the nice sense of sound, which seemed to come with her fearful calamity, and that fine sense quickened by anxiety, expectation, and love, she heard, she thought she heard, she was sure she heard the sound of a carriage rapidly advancing on the other side of the stream. "It is only the noise of the rushing waters," cried Emma. "I hear

a carriage, the horses, the wheels," replied
Jessy; and darted off at once, with the double
purpose of meeting William and warning the
postilion against crossing the stream. Emma
and her mother followed, fast! fast! but
what speed could vie with Jessy's, when the
object was William! They called, but she
neither heard or answered. Before they had
won to the bend in the lane, she had reached
the brook, and long before either of her pur-
suers had gained the bridge, her foot had
slipt, from the wet and tottering plank, and
she was borne resistlessly down the stream.
Assistance was immediately procured; men,
and boats, and ropes; for the sweet blind
girl was beloved by all; and many a poor
man perilled his life, in a fruitless endeavour
to save Jessy Lucas. And William too, was
there, for Jessy's quickened sense had not
deceived her. William was there, strug-
gling with all the strength of love and agony,
to rescue that dear and helpless creature;
but every effort, although he persevered, till
he too was taken out senseless-every effort
was vain.
The fair corse was recovered,
but life was extinct. Poor Jessy's prediction
was verified to the letter; and the brother
and his favourite sister never met again.

dearing abbreviation he was called everywhere but in his own inscription. So agreeable, indeed, is the impression which he has left on my memory, that although, doubtless, the he-people find it more convenient to shave themselves, and to dispense with wigs and powder, yet I cannot help regretting, the more for his sake, the decline and extinction of a race, which, besides figuring so notably in the old novels and comedies, formed so genial a link between the higher and lower orders of society; supplying to the rich the most familiar of followers and most harmless of gossips.

It certainly was not Will Skinner's beauty that caught my fancy. His person was hardly of the kind to win a lady's favour, even although that lady were only four years of age. He was an elderly man, with an infirm feeble step, which gave him the air of being older than he was a lank, long, stooping figure, which seemed wavering in the wind like a powder-puff; a spare wrinkled visage, with the tremulous appearance about the mouth and cheeks which results from extreme thinness; a pale complexion; scanty white hair; and a beard considerably longer than beseemed his craft.

Will Skinner. Even the hat, which by frequent reverential applications of his finger and thumb, had become moulded into a perpetual form of salutation, was almost as richly frosted as a church-warden's wig. Add to this a white apron, with a comb sticking out of the pocket; shoes clumsily patched-poor Will was his own cobbler; blue stockings, indifferently darned-he was to boot his own sempstress; and a ragged white cravat, marvellously badly ironed-for he was also his own washerwoman; and the picture will be complete.

Neither did his apparel serve greatly to set off his lean and wrinkled person. It was usually composed within-doors, of a faded linen jacket; without, of a grey pepper-andA COUNTRY BARBER. salt coat, repaired with black; both somewhat the worse for wear; both "a world too IN the little primitive town of Cranley, wide for his shrunk" sides, and both well where I spent the first few years of my life-covered with powder. Dusty as a miller was a town which, but for the distinction of a market and a post-office, might have passed for a moderately-sized village-the houses in that part of the great western road which passed through it, were so tumbled about, so intermixed with garden walls, garden palings, and garden hedges, to say nothing of stables, farm-yards, pigsties and barns, that it derogated nothing from the dignity of the handsome and commodious dwelling in which I had the honour to be born, that its next-door neighbour was a barber's shop, a real, genuine, old-fashioned barber's shop, consisting of a low-browed cottage, with a pole before it; a basin, as bright as Mambrino's helmet, in the window; a half-hatch always open, through which was visible a little dusty hole, where a few wigs, on battered wooden blocks, were ranged round a comfortable shaving chair; and a legend over the door, in which "William Skinner, wig-maker, hair-dresser, and barber," was set forth in yellow letters on a blue ground. I left Cranley before I was four years old; and, next to a certain huge wax-doll, called Sophy, who died the usual death of wax-dolls, by falling out of the nursery window, the most vivid and the pleasantest of my early recollections is our good neighbour Will Skinner-for by that en

Good old man! I see him in my mind's eye at this moment; lean, wrinkled, shabby, poor, slow of speech, ungainly of aspect; yet pleasant to look at, and delightful to recollect, in spite of rags, ugliness, age, and poverty. It was the contented expression of his withered countenance, the cheerful humility of his deportment, and the overflowing kindness of his temper, that rendered Will Skinner so general a favourite. There was nothing within his small power that he was not ready to undertake for any body. home in every house, and conversant in every business, he was the universal help of the place. Poor he was certainly, as poor as well could be, and lonely; for he had been

At

crossed in love in his youth, and lived alone in his little tenement, with no other companions than his wig-blocks and a tame starling, ("pretty company" he used to call them); but destitute as he was of worldly goods, and although people loved to talk of him with a kind of gentle pity, I have always considered him as one of the happiest persons of my acquaintance; one "who suffered all as suffering nothing" a philosopher rather of temperament than of reason; the only man in the parish, as mine host of the Swan used to observe, who was foolish enough to take a drink of small-beer as thankfully as a draught of double ale."

in the rectory, a little, thin, bald-headed person, as sharp as a needle, who shaved himself and wore no wigs, took such a disgust at certain small irregularities, such as marking the evening lessons instead of the morning, forgetting to say Amen in the proper place, and other mistakes committed in his trepidation by the clerk-deputy when the new incumbent came to read in, that, instead of the translation to a higher post, which poor Will anticipated, he was within an ace of losing his sextonship, which he was only permitted to retain, on condition of never raising his voice again in a stave so long as he lived; the rector, a musical amateur, having been so excruciated by Will's singing, as to be fain to stop his ears. Thus ended all his hopes of church preferment.

After this disaster, the world began to go ill with him. People learnt to shave themselves, that was a great evil; they took to wearing their own hair, that was a greater; and when the French revolution and cropped heads came into fashion, and powder and hairdressing went out, such was the defalcation of his customers, and the desolate state of his trade, that poor Will, in spite of the smallness of his wants, and the equanimity of his spirit, found himself nearly at his wit's end. In this dilemma he resolved to turn his hand to other employments; and living in the neighbourhood of a famous trout stream, and becoming possessed of a tattered copy of Izaak Walton's Complete Angler, he applied himself to the construction of artificial flies; in which delicate manufacture, facilitated doubtless by his dexterity in wig-weaving, he soon became deservedly eminent.

His fortunes had, at one time, assumed a more flourishing aspect. Our little insignificant town was one of the richest livings in England, and had been held by the Bishop of in conjunction with his very poor see. He resided nearly half the year at Cranley Rectory, and was the strenuous friend and patron of our friend Will. A most orthodox person at all points was the bishop, portly, comely, and important; one who had won his way to the Bench by learning and merit, and was rather more finical about his episcopal decorations, and more jealous of his episcopal dignity, than a man early accustomed to artificial distinctions is apt to be. He omitted no opportunity of rustling and bustling in a silk apron; assumed the lawn sleeves whenever it was possible to introduce those inconvenient but pleasant appendages to the clerical costume and was so precise in the article of perukes, as to have had one constructed in London on the exact model of the caxon worn by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, which our orthodox divine appears to have consider- This occupation he usually followed in his ed as a sort of regulation wig. Now this territory, the church-yard, as pleasant a place magnificent cauliflower, (for such it was), had to be buried in as heart could desire, occupynever been frosted to his Lordship's satisfac- ing a gentle eminence by the side of Cranley tion until it came under the hands of Will Down, on which the cricketers of that crickSkinner, who was immediately appointed his eting country used to muster two elevens for shaver, wig-dresser, and wig-maker in ordi- practice, almost every fine evening, from Easnary, and recommended by him to all the ter to Michaelmas. Thither Will, who had beards and caxons in the neighbourhood. Nor been a cricketer himself in his youth, and still did the kindness of his right reverend patron loved the wind of a ball, used to resort on end here. Pleased with his barber's sim- summer afternoons; perching himself on a plicity and decency of demeanour, as well as large square raised monument, whose very with the zealous manner in which he led the inscription was worn away, a spreading limepsalmody at church, quivering forth in a high tree above his head, Izaak Walton before him, thin voice the strains of Hopkins and Stern- and his implements of trade at his side. I hold, the good Bishop determined to promote never read that delicious book without rememhim in that line; appointed him to the sex-bering how Will Skinner used to study it. tonship which happened to fall vacant; and Skipping the fine pastoral poetry, and still caused him to officiate as deputy to David more poetical prose of the dialogues, and porHunt, the parish-clerk-a man of eighty, ing over the notes, as a housekeeper pores worn out in the service, and now bed-ridden with the rheumatism-with a complete understanding that he should succeed to the post, as soon as David was fairly deposited in the church-yard. These were comfortable prospects. But, alas! the Bishop, a hale man of sixty, happened to die first; and his successor

over the receipts in the Cook's Oracle, or a journeyman apothecary applies himself to the London Pharmacopeia. Curious directions of a truth they were, and curiously followed. The very list of materials had in it something striking and outlandish; camel's hair, badger's hair, bog's wool, seal's fur, cock's hackles, a

heron's neck, a starling's wing, a mallard's Perhaps there might be a little self-defence tail, and the crest of a peacock!

These and a thousand such knick-knacks, a wilderness of fur and feather, were ranged beside him, with real nicety, but seeming confusion; and mingled with flies, finished or in progress, and with homelier and more familiar tools, hooks, bristles, shoemaker's-wax, needles, scissors, marking-silk of all colours, and "barge sail for dubbing." And there he sate, now manufacturing a cannon-fly, "dubbing it with black wool, and Isabella-coloured mohair, and bright brownish bear's hair, warped on with yellow silk, shaping the wings of the feather of a woodcock's wing, and working the head of an ash colour," and now watching Tom Taylor's unparagoned bowling, or throwing away the half-dubbed cannon-fly, in admiration of Jem Willis's hits.

On this spot our intimacy commenced. A spoilt child and an only child, it was my delight to escape from my nurse and nursery, and all the restraint of female management, and to follow everywhere the dear papa, my chief spoiler, who so fully returned my partiality, as to have a little pad constructed on which I used to accompany him in his excurIsions on horseback.

The only place at which his fondness ever allowed him to think my presence burthensome was the cricket-ground, to which I used regularly to follow him in spite of all remonstrance and precaution, causing him no small perplexity, as to how to bestow me in safety during the game. Will and the monument seemed to offer exactly the desired refuge, and our good neighbour readily consented to fill the post of deputy nursery-maid for the time, assisted in the superintendence by a very beautiful and sagacious black Newfoundland dog, called Coe, who partly from a sense of duty, and partly from personal affection, used when out to take me under his particular care, and mounted guard over the monument as well as Will Skinner, who assuredly required all the aid that could be mustered to cope with my vagaries.

Poor dear old man, what a life I led him! —now playing at bo-peep on one side of the great monument, and now on the other; now crawling away amongst the green graves; now starting up between two head-stones; now shouting in triumph with my small childish voice, from the low church-yard wall; now gliding round before him, and laughing up in his face as he sate. Poor dear old man! with what undeviating good-humour did he endure my naughtiness! How he would catch me away from the very shadow of danger, if a ball came near! and how often did he interrupt his own labours to forward my amusement, sliding from his perch to gather lime branches to stick in Coe's collar, or to collect daisies, buttercups, or ragged-robbins to make what I used to call daisy-beds for my doll.

in this last-mentioned kindness; the picking to pieces of flowers and making of daisy-beds being, as Will weil knew, the most efficacious means of hindering me from picking to pieces his oak-flies or May-flies; or, which was still worse, of constructing others after my own fashion out of his materials; which, with a spirit of imitation as innocently mischievous as a monkey, I used to purloin for the purpose the moment his back was turned, mixing marten's fur and otter's fur, and dipping my little fingers amongst brown and red hackles, with an audacity that would have tried the patience of Job. How Will's held out I cannot imagine! but he never got farther than a very earnest supplication that I would give over helping him, a deprecation of my assistance, a "pray don't, dear Miss!" that on remembering the provocation seems to me a forbearance surpassing that of Grisildis. What is the desertion of a good-for-nothing husband, and even the cooking his second wedding dinner, (so I believe the story runs,) compared to seeing an elf of four years old mixing and oversetting the thousand and one materials of fly-making! Old Chaucer hath made the most of it, but in point of patience Grisildis was nothing to Will Skinner.

And yet to do myself justice, my intentions towards my friend the fly-maker, were perfectly friendly. Mischievous as I undoubtedly was, I did not intend to do mischief. If I filched from him, I filched for him; courted the cook for pheasant and partridge feathers; begged the old jays and black-birds which were hung up in terrorem in the cherry-trees from the gardener, dragged a great bit of Turkey carpet to the church-yard because I had heard him say that it made good dubbing; got into a demélé with a peacock in the neighbourhood from seizing a piece of his tail to form the bodies of Will's dragon-flies; and had an affair with a pig, in an attempt to procure that staple commodity, hog's down. N. B. the hog had the better of that battle; and but for the intervention of my friend Coe, who seeing the animal in chase of me, ran to the rescue, and pulled him back by the tail, I might have rued my attack upon those pig's ears (for behind them grows the commodity in question,) to this very hour.

Besides the torment that I unconsciously gave him, poor Will had not always reason to congratulate himself on the acquaintance of my faithful follower, Coe. He was, as I have said, a dog of great accomplishment and sagacity, and possessed in perfection all the tricks, which boys and servants love so well to teach to this docile and noble race. Now it so happened that our barber, in the general defalcation of wig-wearers at Cranley, retained one constant customer, a wealthy grocer, who had been churchwarden ever since the Bishop's time, and still emulated that regretted prelate

in the magnificence of his peruke; wearing a caxon such as I have seldom seen on any head, except that of Mr. Fawcett on the stage, and of Dr. Parr off.

Mr. Samuel Saunders, such was the name of our churchwarden, having had the calamity to lose a wife whom he had wedded some forty years before, was, as the talk went, paying his addresses to pretty Jenny Wren, the bar-maid at the Swan. Samuel was a thick, short, burly person, with a red nose, a red waistcoat, and a cinnamon-coloured coat, altogether a very proper wearer of the buzz wig. If all the men in Cranley could have been ranged in a row, the wig would have been assigned to him, in right of look and demeanour, just as the hats in one corner of Hogarth's print, The Election Ball, can be put each on the proper head without difficulty. The man and the wig matched each other. Now Jenny Wren was no match for either. She was a pretty, airy, jaunty girl, with a merry hazel eye, a ready smile, and a nimble tongue, the arrantest flirt in Cranley, talking to every beau in the parish, but listening only to tall Thomas, our handsome groom.

Samuel Saunders' noddle, snatched off the other wig, and deposited both his trophies at Jenny's feet!-a catastrophe, which was followed in less than a month by the marriage of the handsome groom and the pretty bar-maid; for the churchwarden, who had withstood all other rebuffs, was driven for ever from the field by the peals of laughter, which, after the first surprise was over, burst inexpressibly from both the lovers. In less than a month they were married; and Will Skinner and Coe, who had hitherto avoided each other by mutual consent, met as guests at the weddingdinner; and through the good offices of the bridegroom, were completely and permanently reconciled; Coe's consciousness being far more difficult to conquer than the shortlived anger of the most placable of barbers.

HAY-CARRYING.

AT one of the cluster of cottages and cottage-like houses, which formed the little street An ill match for Samuel Saunders at sixty, of Hilton cross-a pretty but secluded vilor for Samuel Saunders' wig, was the pretty lage, a few miles to the south, stood the coquette Jenny Wren at eighteen! The dis- shop of Judith Kent, widow, "Licensed "— parity was painful to think of. But it was as the legend imported, " to vend tea, coffee, the old story. Samuel was wealthy and Jenny tobacco, and snuff." Tea, coffee, tobacco, poor; and uncles, aunts, friends and cousins and snuff, formed, however, but a small part coaxed and remonstrated; and poor Jenny of the multifarious merchandise of Mrs. pouted and cried, and vowed fifty times a day that she would not marry him if he were fifty times as rich; till at length, worn out by importunity, exhausted by the violence of her own opposition, offended by the supineness of her favourite lover, and perhaps a little moved by the splendour of the churchwarden's presents, she began to relent, and finally consented to the union.

The match was now talked of as certain by all the gossips in Cranley,-some had even gone so far as to fix the wedding-day; when one evening our handsome groom, tall Thomas, poor Jenny's favourite beau, passing by Will Skinner's shop, followed by Coe, saw a new wig of Samuel Saunders' pattern, doubtless the identical wedding wig, reposing in full friz on one of the battered wooden blocks. "High, Coe!" said Thomas, making a sign with his hand; and in an instant Coe had sprung over the half-hatch, into the vacant shop, had seized the well-powdered perriwig, and in another instant returned with it into the street, and followed Thomas, wig in mouth, into the little bar at the Swan, where sate Mr. Samuel Saunders, making love to Jenny Wren.

The sudden apparition of his wig borne in so unexpected a manner, wholly discomfited the unlucky suitor and even dumfounded his fair mistress. “High, Coe! high!" repeated Thomas, and, at the word, Coe, letting drop the first caxon, sprang upon that living block,

Kent; whose shop, the only repository of the hamlet, might have seemed an epitome of the wants and luxuries of humble life. In her window, candles, bacon, sugar, mustard, and soap, flourished amidst calicoes, oranges, dolls, ribbons, and gingerbread. Crockeryware was piled on one side of her door-way, Dutch cheeso and Irish butter encumbered the other; brooms and brushes rested against the wall; and ropes of onions and bunches of red herrings hung from the ceiling. She sold bread, butcher's meat, and garden-stuff, on commission; and engrossed, at a word, the whole trade of Hilton Cross.

Notwithstanding this monopoly, the world went ill with poor Judith. She was a mild, pleasant-looking, middle-aged woman, with a heart too soft for her calling. She could not say, no! to the poor creatures who came to her on a Saturday night, to seek bread for their children, however deep they might already be in her debt, or however certain it was, that their husbands were, at that moment, spending, at the Checquers or the Four Horse-shoes, the money that should have supported their wives and families; for in this village, as in others, there were two flourishing ale-houses, although but one illaccustomed shop-" but one half-pennyworth of bread to this intolerable deal of sack!”

She could not say, no! as a prudent woman might have said; and, accordingly, half the

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