healthy, ruddy, square face, all alive with intelligence and good-humour. There was a larking jest in his eye, and a smile about the corners of his firmly-closed lips, that gave assurance of good-fellowship. His voice was load enough to have hailed a ship at sea, without the assistance of a speaking-trumpet, wonderfully rich and round in its tones, and harmonizing admirably with his bluff, jovial visage. He wore his dark shining hair combed straight over his forehead, and had a trick, when particularly merry, of stroking it down with his hand. The moment his right hand approached his head, out flew a jest.

round, graceful things, sleek and glossy, and for the most part milk-white, with the smallest heads, and the most dove-like eyes that were ever seen. There was a peculiar sort of innocent beauty about them, like that of a roly-poly child. They were as gentle as lambs too: all the evil spirit of the family evaporated in the gentlemen. But, to my thinking, these pretty creatures were fitter for the parlour than the field. They were strong, certainly, excellently loined, cat-footed, and chested like a war-horse; but there was a want of length about them a want of room, as the coursers say; something a little, a very Besides his own great farm, the business little inclining to the clumsy; a dumpiness, a of which seemed to go on like machinery, al- pointer-look. They went off like an arrow ways regular, prosperous, and unfailing-be- from the bow; for the first hundred yards nosides this and two or three constant steward-thing could stand against them; then they ships, and a perpetual succession of arbitrations, in which, such was the influence of his acuteness, his temper, and his sturdy justice, that he was often named by both parties, and left to decide alone,-in addition to these occupations, he was a sort of standing overseer and churchwarden; he ruled his own hamlet like a despotic monarch, and took a prime minister's share in the government of the large parish to which it was attached; and one of the gentlemen, whose estates he managed, being the independent member for an independent borough, he had every now and then a contested election on his shoulders. Even that did not discompose him. He had always leisure to receive his friends at home, or to visit them abroad; to take journeys to London, or make excursions to the sea-side; was as punctual in pleasure as in business, and thought being happy and making happy as much the purpose of his life as getting rich. His great amusement was coursing. He kept several brace of capital greyhounds, so high-blooded, that I remember when five of them were confined in five different kennels on account of their ferocity. The greatest of living painters once called a greyhound, "the line of beauty in perpetual motion." Our friend's large dogs were a fine illustration of this remark. His old dog, Hector, for instance, for which he refused a hundred guineas, what a superb dog was Hector!-a model of grace and symmetry, necked and crested like an Arabian, and bearing himself with a stateliness and gallantry that showed some "conscience of his worth." He was the largest dog I ever saw; but so finely proportioned, that the most determined faultfinder could call him neither too long nor too heavy. There was not an inch too much of him. His colour was the purest white, entirely unspotted, except that his head was very regularly and richly marked with black. Hector was certainly a perfect beauty. But the little bitches, on which his master piqued himself still more, were not, in my poor judgment, so admirable. They were pretty little

began to flag, to find their weight too much
for their speed, and to lose ground from the
shortness of the stroke. Up-hill, however,
they were capital. There their compactness
told. They turned with the hare, and lost
neither wind nor way in the sharpest ascent.
I shall never forget one single-handed course
of our good friend's favourite little bitch
Helen, on W. hill. All the coursers were in
the valley below, looking up to the hill-side
as on a moving picture. I suppose she turned
the hare twenty times on a piece of green-
sward not much bigger than an acre, and as
steep as the roof of a house. It was an old
hare, a famous hare, one that had baffled half
the dogs in the county; but she killed him;
and then, though almost as large as herself,
took it up in her mouth, brought it to her mas-
ter, and laid it down at his feet. Oh how
pleased he was! and what a pleasure it was
to see his triumph! He did not always find
W. hill so fortunate. It is a high steep hill,
of a conical shape, encircled by a mountain
road winding up to the summit like a cork-
screw, a deep road dug out of the chalk,
and fenced by high mounds on either side.
The hares always make for this hollow way,
as it is called, because it is too wide for a
leap, and the dogs lose much time in mount-
ing and descending the sharp acclivities. Very
eager dogs, however, will sometimes dare the
leap, and two of our good friend's favourite
greyhounds perished in the attempt in two
following years. They were found dead in
the hollow way. After this he took a dislike
to distant coursing meetings, and sported
chiefly on his own beautiful farm.

His wife was like her husband, with a difference, as they say in heraldry. Like him in looks, only thinner and paler; like him in voice and phrase, only not so loud; like him in merriment and good-humour; like him in her talent of welcoming and making happy, and being kind; like him in cherishing an abundance of pets, and in getting through with marvellous facility an astounding quantity of business and pleasure. Perhaps the quality

in which they resembled each other most common flowers for their use, and literally completely, was the happy ease and serenity" redolent of sweets." Bees are insects of of behaviour, so seldom found amongst people of the middle rank, who have usually a best manner and a worst, and whose best (that is, the studied, the company manner) is so very much the worst. She was frankness itself; entirely free from prickly defiance, or bristling self-love. She never took offence or gave it; never thought of herself or of what others would think of her; had never been afflicted with the besetting sins of her station, a dread of the vulgar, or an aspiration after the genteel. Those "words of fear" had never disturbed her delightful heartiness.

ding, which was kept at our house, was almost | own sunshine into the shady places, and would as tragical as a funeral; and from pure regret hope and doubt as long as either was possible. and affection we sum up her merits, and be- Her fertility of intelligence was wonderful; moan our loss, just as if she had really de- and so early! Her news had always the bloom parted this life. on it; there was no being beforehand with Lucy. It was a little mortifying when one came prepared with something very recent and surprising, something that should have made her start with astonishment, to find her fully acquainted with the story, and able to furnish you with twenty particulars that you never heard of. But this evil had its peculiar compensation. By Lucy's aid I passed with every body, but Lucy herself, for a woman of great information, an excellent authority, an undoubted reference in all matters of gossipry. Now I lag miserably behind the time; I never hear of a death till after the funeral, nor of a wedding till I read it in the papers; and, when people talk of reports and rumours, they undo me. I should be obliged to run away from the tea-tables, if I had not taken the resolution to look wise and say nothing, and live on my old reputation. Indeed, even now Lucy's fund is not entirely exhausted; things have not quite done happening. I know nothing new; but my knowledge of by-gone passages is absolute; I can prophesy past events like a gipsy.

Lucy's praise is a most fertile theme: she united the pleasant and amusing qualities of a French soubrette, with the solid excellence of an English woman of the old school, and was good by contraries. In the first place, she was exceedingly agreeable to look at; remarkably pretty. She lived in our family eleven years; but, having come to us very young, was still under thirty, just in full bloom, and a very brilliant bloom it was. Her figure was rather tall, and rather large, with delicate hands and feet, and a remarkable ease and vigour in her motions: I never saw any woman walk so fast or so well. Her face was round and dimpled, with sparkling grey eyes, black eye-brows and eye-lashes, a profusion of dark hair, very red lips, very white teeth, and a complexion that entirely took away the look of vulgarity which the breadth and flatness of her face might otherwise have given. Such a complexion, so pure, so finely grained, so healthily fair, with such a sweet rosiness, brightening and varying like her dancing eyes whenever she spoke or smiled! When silent, she was almost Scattered amongst her great merits Lucy pale; but, to confess the truth, she was not had a few small faults, as all persons should often silent. Lucy liked talking, and every have. She had occasionally an aptness to body liked to hear her talk. There is always take offence where none was intended, and great freshness and originality in an unedu- then the whole house bore audible testimony cated and quick-witted person, who surprises to her displeasure: she used to scour through one continually by unsuspected knowledge or half-a-dozen doors in a minute for the mere amusing ignorance; and Lucy had a real purpose of banging them after her. She had talent for conversation. Her light and pleasant rather more fears than were quite convenient temper, her cleverness, her universal kindness, of ghosts and witches, and thunder, and earand the admirable address, or rather the ex- wigs, and various other real and unreal sights cellent feeling, with which she contrived to and sounds, and thought nothing of rousing unite the most perfect respect with the most half the family in the middle of the night at cordial and affectionate interest, gave a singular the first symptom of a thunder-storm or an charm to her prattle. No confidence or indul- apparition. She had a terrible genius for gence and she was well tried with both music, and a tremendously powerful shrill ever made her forget herself for a moment. high voice. Oh! her door-clapping was noAll our friends used to loiter at the door or in thing to her singing! it rang through one's the hall to speak to Lucy, and they miss her, head like the screams of a peacock. Lastly, and ask for her, as if she were really one of she was a sad flirt; she had about twenty the family.-She was not less liked by her lovers whilst she lived with us, probably equals. Her constant simplicity and right- more, but upwards of twenty she acknowmindedness kept her always in her place with ledged. Her master, who watched with great them as with us; and her gaiety and good amusement this uninterrupted and intricate humour made her a most welcome visiter in succession of favourites, had the habit of callevery shop and cottage round. She had ing her by the name of the reigning beauanother qualification for village society-she Mrs. Charles, Mrs. John, Mrs. Robert; so that was an incomparable gossip, had a rare genius she has answered in her time to as many masfor picking up news, and great liberality in its culine appellations as would serve to supply diffusion. Births, deaths, marriages, casualties, a large family with a "commodity of good ¡quarrels, battles, scandal-nothing came amiss names." Once he departed from this custo her. She could have furnished a weekly tom, and called her "Jenny Dennison." On paper from her own stores of facts, without her inquiring the reason, we showed her "Old once resorting for assistance to the courts of Mortality," and asked if she could not guess. law or the two houses of parliament. She "Dear me," said she, "why Jenny Dennison was a very charitable reporter too; threw her had only two!" Amongst Lucy's twenty

I hope that her choice has been fortunate; it is certainly very different from what we all expected. The happy man had been a neighbour, (not on the side of the acacia-trees,) and on his removal to a greater distance the marriage took place. Poor dear Lucy! her spouse is the greatest possible contrast to herself; ten years younger at the very least; welllooking, but with no expression good or bad

were three one-eyed lovers, like the three reign; one who had dangled after her during one-eyed calendars in the "Arabian Nights." the long courtship of the three calendars; one They were much about the same period, near- who was the handiest and most complaisant ly contemporaries, and one of them had nearly of wooers, always ready to fill up an interval, carried off the fair Helen. If he had had two like a book, which can be laid aside when eyes, his success would have been certain. company comes in, and resumed a month afShe said yes and no, and yes again; he was terwards at the very page and line where the a very nice young man-but that one eye-reader left off. I think it was an affair of that unlucky one eye!-and the being rallied amusement and convenience on both sides. on her three calendars. There was no get- Lucy never intended to marry this commoditing over that one eye: she said no, once ous stopper of love gaps; and he, though he more, and stood firm. And yet the pendulum courted her for ten mortal years, never made might have continued to vibrate many times a direct offer, till after the banns were publonger, had it not been fixed by the athletic lished between her and her present husband: charms of a gigantic London tailor, a superb then, indeed, he said he was sorry - he had man, really; black-haired, black-eyed, six feet hoped-was it too late? and so forth. Ah! high, and large in proportion. He came to his sorrow was nothing to ours, and, when it improve the country fashions, and fixed his came to the point, nothing to Lucy's. She shop-board in a cottage so near us that his cried every day for a fortnight, and had not garden was only divided from our lawn by a her successor in office, the new housemaid, plantation full of acacias and honey-suckles, arrived, I do really believe that this lover where "the air smelt wooingly." It followed would have shared the fate of the many sucof course that he should make love to Lucy, cessors to the unfortunate tailor. and that Lucy should listen. All was speedily settled; as soon as he should be established in a good business, which, from his incomparable talent at cutting out, nobody could doubt, they were to be married. But they had not calculated on the perversity of country taste; he was too good a workman; his suits fitted over well; his employers missed certain accustomed awkwardnesses and redundancies which passed for beauties; be--I don't think he could smile, if he wouldsides, the stiffness and tightness which distinguished the new coat of the ancien regime, were wanting in the make of this daring innovator. The shears of our Bond-street cutter were as powerful as the wooden sword of Harlequin; he turned his clowns into gentlemen, and their brother clod-hoppers laughed at them, and they were ashamed. So the poor tailor lost his customers and his credit; and just as he had obtained Lucy's consent to the marriage, he walked off one fair morning, and was never heard of more. Lucy's absorbing feeling on this catastrophe was astonishment, pure unmixed astonishment! One would have thought that she considered fickleness as a female privilege, and had never heard of a man deserting a woman in her life. For three days she could only wonder; then came great indignation, and a little, a very little grief, which showed itself not so much in her words, which were chiefly such disclaimers as "I don't care! very lucky! happy escape!" and so on, as in her goings and doings, her aversion to the poor acacia grove, and even to the sight and smell of honeysuckles, her total loss of memory, and above all, in the distaste she showed to new conquests. She paid her faithless suitor the compliment of remaining loverless for three weary months; and when she relented a little, she admitted no fresh adorer, nothing but an old hangeron ; one not quite discarded during the tailor's

assuredly he never tries; well made, but as stiff as a poker; I dare say he never ran three yards in his life; perfectly steady, sober, honest, and industrious; but so young, so grave, so dull! one of your "demure boys," as Fallstaff calls them, "that never come to proof." You might guess a mile off that he was a schoolmaster, from the swelling pomposity of gait, the solemn decorum of manner, the affectation of age and wisdom, which contrast so oddly with his young unmeaning face. The moment he speaks, you are certain. Nobody but a village pedagogue ever did or ever could talk like Mr. Brown,-ever displayed such elaborate politeness, such a study of phrases, such choice words and long words, and fine words and hard words! He speaks by the book,-the spelling book, and is civil after the fashion of the Polite Letter-Writer. He is so entirely without tact, that he does not in the least understand the impression produced by his wife's delightful manners, and interrupts her perpetually to speechify and apologise, and explain and amend. He is fond of her, nevertheless, in his own cold, slow way, and proud of her, and grateful to her friends, and a very good kind of young man altogether; only that I cannot quite forgive him for taking Lucy away in the first place, and making her a school-mistress in the second. She a school-mistress, a keeper of silence, a maintainer of discipline, a scold

er, a punisher! Ah! she would rather be scolded herself; it would be a far lighter punishment. Lucy likes her vocation as little as I do. She has not the natural love of children, which would reconcile her to the evils they cause; and she has a real passion for cleanliness, a fiery spirit of dispatch, which cannot endure the dust and litter created by the little troop on the one hand, or their tormenting slowness and stupidity on the other. She was the quickest and neatest of workwomen, piqued herself on completing a shirt or a gown sooner and better than seemed possible, and was scandalized at finding such talents degraded to the ignoble occupations of tacking a quarter of a yard of hemming for one, pinning half a seam for another, picking out the crooked stitching of a third, and working over the weak irregular burst-out buttonhole of a fourth. When she first went to S-, she was strongly tempted to do all the work herself. "The children would have liked it," said she, "and really I don't think the mothers would have objected; they care for nothing but marking. There are seven girls now in the school working samplers to be framed. Such a waste of silk, and time, and trouble! I said to Mrs. Smith, and Mrs. Smith said to me"-Then she recounted the whole battle of the samplers, and her defeat; and then she sent for one which, in spite of her declaration that her girls never finished any thing, was quite completed (probably with a good deal of her assistance), and of which, notwithstanding her rational objection to its uselessness, Lucy was not a little proud. She held it up with great delight, pointed out all the beauties, selected her own favourite parts, especially a certain square rose-bud, and the landscape at the bottom; and finally pinned it against the wall, to show the effect it would have when framed. Really, that sampler was a superb thing in its way. First came a plain pink border; then a green border, zig-zag; then a crimson, wavy; then a brown, of a different and more complicated zig-zag; then the alphabet, great and small, in every colour of the rainbow, followed by a Tow of figures, flanked on one side by a flower, name unknown, tulip, poppy, lily,-something orange or scarlet, or orange-scarlet; on the other by the famous rose-bud; the divers sentences, religious and moral;-Lucy was quite provoked with me for not being able to read them: I dare say she thought in her heart that I was as stupid as any of her scholars; but Lucy's pleasure is in her house; mine is in Dever was MS. so illegible, not even my own, its situation. The common on which it stands as the print work of that sampler-then, last is one of a series of heathy hills, or rather a and finest, the landscape, in all its glory. It high table-land, pierced in one part by a occupied the whole narrow line at the bottom, ravine of marshy ground, filled with alder and was composed with great regularity. In bushes growing larger and larger as the valthe centre was a house of a bright scarlet, with yellow windows, a green door, and a blue roof: on one side, a man with a dog; on the other, a woman with a cat-this is Lucy's

information; I should never have guessed that there was any difference, except in colour, between the man and the woman, the dog and the cat; they were in form, height, and size, alike to a thread; the man grey, the woman pink, his attendant white, and her's black. Next to these figures, on either side, rose two fir-trees from two red flower-pots, nice little round bushes of a bright green intermixed with brown stitches, which Lucy explained, not to me.-"Don't you see the fir-cones, Sir? Don't you remember how fond she used to be of picking them up in her little basket at the dear old place? Poor thing, I thought of her all the time that I was working them! Don't you like the fir-cones?"After this, I looked at the landscape almost as lovingly as Lucy herself.

With all her dislike to keeping school, the dear Lucy seems happy. In addition to the merciful spirit of conformity, which shapes the mind to the situation, whatever that may be, she has many sources of vanity and comfort - her house above all. It is a very respectable dwelling, finely placed on the edge of a large common, close to a high-road, with a pretty flower-court before it, shaded by four horse-chestnuts cut into arches, a sashed window on either side of the door, and on the door a brass knocker, which being securely nailed down, serves as a quiet peaceable handle for all goers, instead of the importunate and noisy use for which it was designed. Jutting out at one end of the court is a small stable; retiring back at the other, a large school-room; and behind, a yard for children, pigs, and poultry, a garden, and an arbour. The inside is full of comfort; miraculously clean and orderly for a village school, and with a little touch of very allowable finery in the gay window-curtains, the cupboard full of pretty china, the handsome chairs, the bright mahogany table, the shining tea-urn, and brilliant tea-tray, that decorate the parlour. What a pleasure it is to see Lucy presiding in that parlour, in all the glory of her honest affection and her warm hospitality, making tea for the three guests whom she loves best in the world, vaunting with courte ous pride her home-made bread and her fresh butter, yet thinking nothing good enough for the occasion; smiling and glowing, and looking the very image of beautiful happiness. Such a moment almost consoles us for losing her.

ley widens, and at last mixing with the fine old oaks of the forest of P. Nothing can be more delightful than to sit on the steep brow of the hill, amongst the fragrant heath