steps towards "fresh fields new." and pastures like stalled oxen; and the leash of his large red greyhounds, on whose prowess and pediHe did not move very far. Just over the gree he prides himself, and whom he boasts, border-line, which divides the parish of St. and vaunts, and brags of, and offers to bet Stephen, in the loyal and independent borough upon, in the very spirit of the inimitable diaof Belford, from the adjoining hamlet of Sun-logue between Page and Shallow in the ham-that is to say, exactly half a mile from "Merry Wives of Windsor," could no more the great shop in the Butts, did Mr. Lane run a course in their present condition than take up his abode, calling his suburban habi- they could fly, the hares would stand and tation, which was actually joined to the town laugh at them. by two rows of two-story houses, one of them fronted with poplars, and called Marvell Terrace, in compliment to the patriot of that name in Charles's days,-calling this rus in urbe of his "the country," after the fashion of the inhabitants of Kensington and Hackney, and the other suburban villages which surround London proper; as if people who live in the midst of brick houses could have a right to the same rustic title with those who live amongst green fields. Compared to the Butts, however, Mr. Lane's new residence was almost rural; and the country he called it accordingly. Retaining, however, his old town predilections, his large, square, commodious, and very ugly red house, with very white mouldings and window-frames, (red, so to say, picked out with white,) and embellished by a bright green door and a resplendent brass knocker, was placed close to the road-side as close as possible; and the road happening to be that which led from the town of Belford to the little place called London, he had the happiness of counting above sixty stage-coaches, which passed his door in the twenty-four hours, with vans, wagons, carts, and other vehicles in proportion; and of enjoying, not only from his commodious mansion, but also from the window of a smoking-room at the end of a long brick wall which parted his garden from the road, all the clatter, dust, and din, of these several equipages-the noise being duly enhanced by there being, just opposite his smoking-room window, a public house of great resort, where most of the coaches stopped to take up parcels and passengers, and where singing, drinking, and four-corners were going on all the day long. One of his greatest pleasures in this retirement seems to be to bring all around him -wife, children, and grand-children-to the level of his own size, or that of his prize ox, the expressions are nearly synonymous. The servant-lads have a chubby breadth of feature, like the stone heads with wings under them (soi-disant cherubim,) which one sees perched round old monuments; and the maids have a broad, Dutch look, full and florid, like the women in Teniers' pictures. The very animals seem bursting with over-fatness: the great horse who draws his substantial equipage, labours under the double weight of his master's flesh and his own; his cows look Mr. Lane is certainly a very happy person; although, when first he removed from the Butts, it was quite the fashion to bestow a great deal of pity on the poor rich man, selfcondemned to idleness, which pity was as much thrown away as pity for those who have the power to follow their own devices generally is. Our good neighbour is not the man to be idle. Besides going every day to the old shop, where his sons carry on the business, and he officiates en amateur, attending his old clubs, and pursuing his old diversions in Belford, he has his farm in Sunham to manage, (some five hundred acres of pasture and arable land, which he purchased with his new house,) and the whole parish to reform. He has already begun to institute inquiries into charity-schools and poor-rates, has an eye on the surveyor of highways, and a close watch on the overseer; he attends turnpike meetings, and keeps a sharp lookout upon the tolls; and goes peeping about the workhouse with an anxiety to detect peculation that would do honour even to a Radical member of the reformed House of Commons. Moreover, he hath a competitor worthy of his powers, in the shape of the village orator, Mr. Jacob Jones, a little whipper-snapper of a gentleman farmer, with a shrill, cracked voice, and great activity of body, who, having had the advantage of studying some odds-andends of law, during a three years' residence in an attorney's office, has picked up therein a competent portion of technical jargon, together with a prodigious volubility of tongue, and a comfortable stock of impudence; and, under favour of these good gifts, hath led the village senate by the nose for the last dozen years. Now, Mr. Jacob Jones is, in his way, nearly as great a man as Mr. Lane; rides his bit of blood a fox-hunting with my Lord; dines once a year with Sir John; and advocates abuses through thick and thin-he does not well know why-almost as stoutly as our good knight of the cleaver does battle for reform. These two champions are to be pitted against each other at the next vestry-meeting, and much interest is excited as to the event of the contest. I, for my part, think that Mr. Lane will carry the day. He is, in every way, a man of more substance: and Jacob Jones will no more be able to "withstand the momentum of his republican fist," than a soldier of light infantry could stand the charge of a heavy dragoon. Stephen, honest man, will certainly add to his other avocations that of overseer of Sunham. Much good may it do him! WILLIAM AND HANNAH. "DON'T talk to me, William, of our having been asked in church. Don't imagine that I mind what people say about that. Let them attend to their own concerns, and leave me to manage mine. If this were our wedding morning, and I were within half an hour of being your wedded wife, I would part from you as readily as I throw away this rose-leaf, if I were to know for certain what I have heard to-day. Were you or were you not three times tipsy last week, at that most riotous and disorderly house, "The Eight Bells?" This scene, and scenes like this, passed through Hannah's mind, as she leant over the calm face of Mrs. Maynard's lovely infant, who lay sleeping on her lap, and repeated, in a low, calm voice, her former question to William-Were you not three times tipsy last week?" of her brutal husband, bending silently and patiently over the needlework, by which she endeavoured to support herself and her child; and how, when he did return, when his reeling, unsteady step was heard on the pavement, or his loud knock at the door, or the horrid laugh and frightful oath of intoxication in the street, how the poor wife would start and tremble, and strive to mould her quivering lips into a smile, and struggle against her tears, as he called fiercely for comforts which she had not to give, and thundered forth imprecations on herself and her harmless child. Once she remembered she could not have been above five years old at the time, but she remembered it as if it had happened yesterday—awaking suddenly from sleep on her wretched bed, and seeing, by the dim moonlight that came in through the broken windows, her father, in his drunken frenzy, standing over her, and threatening to strangle her, This searching question was put by the whilst her mother, frantic with fear, tore him young and blooming Hannah Rowe, a nursery-away, and had her arm broken in the struggle. maid in the family of General Maynard, of Oakley Manor, to her accepted lover, William Curtis, a very fine young man, who followed his trade of a shoemaker in the good town of Belford. The courtship had, as the fair damsel's words implied, approached as nearly as well could be to the point matrimonial; Hannah having given her good mistress warning, Now, Hannah," replied William, evasiveand prepared her simple wardrobe; and Wil-ly, "how can you be so cross and old-maidish? liam, on his part, having taken and furnished If I did get a little merry, what was it but a a room-for to a whole house neither of them joyful parting from bachelor friends before aspired near his master's shop: William, beginning a steady married life? What do although a clever workman, and likely to do you women know of such things? What well, being as yet only a journeyman. can you know? and what can a young fellow do with himself, when his work is over, if he is not to go to a public house? We have not work now for above half a day-that is to say, not more work in a week than I could finish in three days; and what, I should like to know, am I to do with the remainder? At the Eight Bells, say what you like of the place, there's good liquor and good company, a good fire in winter, a newspaper to read, and the news of the town to talk over. Does not your master himself go to his club every night of his life when he is in London? And what-since you won't let me come above twice a week to see you-what would you have me to do with the long evenings when my work is over?" -a A finer couple it would be difficult to meet with anywhere, than William and his Hannah. He was tall, handsome, and intelligent, with a perpetual spring of good-humour, and a fund of that great gift of Heaven, high animal spirits, which being sustained by equal life of mind, (for otherwise it is not a good gift,) rendered him universally popular. She had a rich, sparkling animated beauty. warmth of manner and of feeling, equally prepossessing. She loved William dearly, and William knew it. Perhaps he did not equally know that her quickness of temper was accompanied by a decision and firmness of character, which, on any really essential point, would not fail to put forth its strength. Such a point was this, as Hannah knew from woful experience: for her own father had been a frequenter of the alehouse-had ruined himself altogether, health, property, and character, by that degrading and ruinous propensity, and had finally died of sheer drunkenness, leaving her mother a broken-hearted woman, and herself, a child of eight years old, to struggle as best they might, through the wide world. Well did Hannah remember her dear mother, and that dear mother's sufferings;-how she would sit night after night awaiting the return 66 Hannah was a little posed at this question. Luckily, however, a present sent to her mistress by an old servant who had married a gardener, consisting of a fine basket of strawberries, another of peas, and a beautiful nosegay of pinks and roses, caught her eye as they lay on the table before her. "Where am I to get this plot of ground? | perish under the same evil influence and detell me that, Hannah! You know that at grading habits? Her good mistress, too, present I am lodging with my aunt in Silver- praised and encouraged her, and for a while street, who has only a little bricked yard; she was comforted. and when we move to our room in Newtonrow, why the outlet there will not be so large as that table. This is all nonsense, as you well know. I am no gardener, but a merry shoemaker; and such as I am you have chosen me, and you must take me." "And you will not promise to give up the Eight Bells?" asked Hannah, imploringly. Promise-no-" hesitated William. "I dare say I should do as you like; but as to promising it is you who have promised to take me for better for worse,'" added he, tenderly; "surely you do not mean to deceive me ?" "Oh, William!" said Hannah, "it is you who would deceive me and yourself. I know what the public house leads to; and suffer what I may, better suffer now and alone, than run the risk of that misery. Either promise to give up the Eight Bells, or, dearly as I love you, and far as things have gone, we must part," added she, firmly. And as William, though petitioning, remonstrating, coaxing, storming, and imploring, would not give the required pledge, part they did; his last speech denouncing a vengeance which she could ill bear. "You will repent this, Hannah! for you have been the ruin of me. You have broken my heart; and if you hear of me every night at the alehouse, endeavouring to drown care, remember that it is you, and you only, who have driven me there!" And so saying, he walked sturdily out of the house. William went away in wrath and anger, determined to be as good, or rather as bad, as his word. Hannah remained, her heart overflowing with all the blended and contending emotions natural to a woman (I mean a woman that has a heart) in such a situation. Something of temper had mingled with the prudence of her resolution, and, as is always the case where a rash and hasty temper has led a generous mind astray, the reaction was proportionably strong. She blamed herself— she pitied William-she burst into a passion of tears; and it was not until the violence of her grief had awakened and terrified the little Emily, and that the necessity of pacifying the astonished child compelled her into the exertion of calming herself, (so salutary in almost all cases is the recurrence of our daily duties!) that she remembered the real danger of William's unhappy propensity, the dying injunctions of her mother, and those fearful scenes of her own childhood which still at times haunted her dreams. Her father, she had heard, had once been as kind, as gay, as engaging as William himself-as fond of her mother as William was of her. Where was the security that these qualities would not Very, very soon the old feeling returned. Hannah had loved with the full and overflowing affection of a fond and faithful nature, and time and absence, which seldom fail to sweep away a slight and trivial fancy, only gave deeper root to an attachment like hers; her very heart clung to William. Her hours were passed in weaving visions of imaginary interviews, and framing to herself imaginary letters. She loved to plan fancied dialogues to think how fondly he would woo, and how firmly she would reject, for she thought it quite sure that she should reject; and yet she yearned (oh! how she yearned) for the opportunity of accepting. But such opportunity was far away. The first thing she heard of him was, that he was realizing his own prediction by pursuing a course of continued intemperance at the Eight Bells; the next, that he was married!-married, it should seein, from hate and anger, not from love, to a young and thoughtless girl, portionless and improvident as himself. Nothing but misery could ensue from such a union;-nothing but misery did. Then came the beer-houses, with their fearful addition of temptation; and Hannah, broken-hearted at the accounts of his evil courses, and ashamed of the interest which she still continued to feel for one who could never be any thing to her again, rejoiced when General and Mrs. Maynard resolved to spend some time in Germany, and determined that she should accompany them. From Germany the travellers proceeded to Italy, from Italy to Switzerland, and from Switzerland to France; so that nearly five years elapsed before they returned to Oakley Manor. Five years had wrought the usual changes amongst Hannah's old friends in that neighbourhood. The servants were nearly all new, the woman at the lodge had gone away, the keeper's daughter was married; so that, finding none who knew her anxiety respecting William, and dreading to provoke the answer which she feared awaited her inquiries, she forbore to ask any question respecting her former lover. One evening, soon after their arrival, General Maynard invited his wife and family to go and see the cottage gardens at Belford. “We'll take even little Emily and Hannah,” added he, "for it's a sight to do one's heart good— ay, fifty times more good than famous rivers and great mountains! and I would not have any of my children miss it for the fee-simple of the land, which, by the by, happens to belong to me. You remember my friend Howard writing to me when I was at Manheim, desiring to rent about thirty acres near Belford, which had just fallen vacant. Well, he has fenced it and drained it, and made roads and paths, and divided it into plots of a quarter of an acre, more or less, and let it out for exactly the same money which he gives me, to the poor families in the town, chiefly to the inhabitants of that wretched suburb Silver-street, where the miserable hovels had not an inch of outlet, and the children were constantly grovelling in the mud and running under the horses' feet; passing their whole days in increasing and progressive demoralization; whilst their mothers were scolding and quarrelling and starving, and their fathers drowning their miseries at the beer-shops-a realization of Crabbe's gloomiest pictures! Only imagine what these gardens have done for these poor people! Every spare hour of the parents is given to the raising of vegetables for their own consumption, or for sale, or for the rearing and fatting that prime luxury of the English peasant, a pig. The children have healthy and pleasant employment. The artisan who can only find work for two or three days in the week is saved from the parish; he who has full pay is saved from the alehouse. A feeling of independence is generated, and the poor man's heart is gladdened and warmed by the conscious pride of property in the soil-by knowing and feeling that the spring shower and the summer sun are swelling and ripening his little harvest. I speak ardently," continued the General, rather ashamed of his own enthusiasm; "but I've just been talking with that noble fellow Howard, who, in the midst of his many avocations, has found time for all this, and really I cannot help it. Whilst I was with him, in came one of the good folks to complain that his garden was rated. I'm glad of it,' replied Howard; it's a proof that you are a real tenant, and that this is not a charity affair.' And the man went off an inch taller. Howard confesses that he has not been able to resist the temptation of giving them back the amount of the rent in tools and rewards of one sort or other. He acknowledges that this is the weak part of his undertaking; but, as I said just now, he could not help it. Moreover, I doubt if the giving back the rent in that form be wrong at least, if it be wrong to give it back at first. The working-classes are apt to be suspicious of their superiors-I am afraid that they have sometimes had reason to be so; and as the benefits of the system cannot be immediately experienced, it is well to throw in these little boons to stimulate them to perseverance. But here we are at Mr. Howard's," pursued the good General, as the carriage stopped at the gate of the brewery; for that admirable person was neither more nor less than a country brewer. A beautiful place was that old-fashioned brewery, situated on an airy bit of rising ground at the outskirts of the town, the very last house in the borough, and divided from all other buildings by noble rows of elms, by its own spacious territory of orchard and meadow, and by the ample outlet, full of drays, and carts, and casks, and men, and horses, and all the life and motion of a great and flourishing business; forming, by its extent and verdure, so striking a contrast to the usual dense and smoky atmosphere, the gloomy yet crowded appearance of a brewer's yard. The dwelling-house, a most picturesque erection, with one end projecting so as to form two sides of a square, the date, 1642, on the porch, and the whole front covered with choice creepers, stood at some distance from the road; and General Maynard and his lady hurried through it, as if knowing instinctively that on a fine summer evening Mrs. Howard's flowergarden was her drawing-room. What a flower-garden it was! A sunny, turfy knoll sloping abruptly to a natural and never-failing spring that divided it from a meadow rising on the other side with nearly equal abruptness; the steep descent dotted with flowerbeds, rich, bright, fresh, and glowing, and the path that wound up the hill, leading through a narrow stone gateway -an irregular arch overrun with luxuriant masses of the narrowleaved, white-veined ivy, which trailed its long pendent strings almost to the ground into a dark and shadowy walk, running along the top of a wild precipitous bank, clothed partly with forest-trees, oak, and elm, and poplarpartly with the finest exotics, cedars, cypresses, and the rare and graceful snow-droptree, of such growth and beauty as are seldom seen in England,—and terminated by a roothouse, overhung by the branches of an immense acacia, now in the full glory of its white and fragrant blossoms, and so completely concealing all but the entrance of the old root-house, that it seemed as if that quiet retreat had no other roof than those bright leaves and chain-like flowers. Here they found Mrs. Howard, a sweet and smiling woman, lovelier in the rich glow of her matronly beauty than she had been a dozen years before as the fair Jane Dorset, the belle of the country side. Here sat Mrs. Howard, surrounded by a band of laughing rosy children; and directed by her, and promising to return to the brewery to coffee, the General and his family proceeded by a private path to the cottage allotments. Pleasant was the sight of those allotments to the right-minded and the kind, who love to contemplate order and regularity in the moral and physical world, and the cheerful and willing exertion of a well-directed and prosperous industry. It was a beautiful evening, late in June, and the tenants and their families were nearly all assembled in their small territories, each of which was literally filled with useful vegetables in every variety and of every kind. Here was a little girl weeding an onion-bed, here a boy sticking French beans; here a woman gathering herbs for a salad, here a man standing in proud and happy contemplation of a superb plot of cauliflowers. Everywhere there was a hum of cheerful voices, as neighbour greeted neighbour, or the several families chatted amongst each other. NOTE. The system on which the above story is founded, is happily no fiction; and although generally appropriated to the agricultural labourer of the rural districts, it has, in more than one instance, been tried, with eminent success, amongst the poorer artisans in towns-to whom, above all other classes, the power of emerging from the (in every sense) polluted atmosphere of their crowded lanes and courts must be invaluable. The origin of the system is so little known, and seems to me at once so striking and so natural, that I cannot resist the temptation of relating it almost in the words in which it! was told to me by one of the most strenuous and judicious supporters of the cottage allot ments. The General, who was warmly interested in the subject, and had just made himself master of the details, pointed out to Mrs. Maynard those persons to whom it had been most beneficial. "That man," said he, "who has, as you perceive, a double allotment, and who is digging with so much good-will, has ten children and a sickly wife, and yet has never been upon the parish for the last two years. That thin young man in the blue jacket is an out-door painter, and has been out of work these six weeks-(by the by, Howard John Denson was a poor working man, an has just given him a job)—and all that time agricultural labourer, a peasant, who, finding has been kept by his garden. And that fine- his weekly wages inadequate to the support looking fellow who is filling a basket with of his family, and shrinking from applying for peas, whilst the pretty little child at his side relief to the parish, sought and obtained of the is gathering strawberries, is the one whom lord of the manor, the permission to enclose a Howard prizes most, because he is a person small plot of waste land, of which the value of higher qualities-one who was redeemed had hitherto been very trifling. By diligent from intolerable drunkenness, retrieved from cultivation he brought it to a state of great sin and misery, by this occupation. He is a productiveness and fertility. This was afterjourneyman shoemaker-a young widower-"wards sufficiently extended to enable him to Hannah heard no more-she had caught sight of William, and William had caught sight of her; and in an instant her hands were clasped in his, and they were gazing on each other with eyes full of love and joy, and of the blessed tears of a true and perfect reconciliation. "Yes, Hannah!" said William, "I have sinned, and deeply; but I have suffered bitterly, and most earnestly have I repented. It is now eighteen months since I have entered a public-house, and never will I set foot in one again. Do you believe me, Hannah ?" "Do I!" exclaimed Hannah, with a fresh burst of tears; "oh, what should I be made of if I did not?" "And here are the peas and the strawberries," said William, smiling; "and the pinks and the roses," added he, more tenderly, taking a nosegay from his lovely little girl, as Hannah stooped to caress her; " and the poor motherless child-my only child! she has no mother, Hannah-will you be one to her?" "Will I!" again echoed Hannah; "oh, William, will I not?" keep a cow or two, to support his family in comfort and independence, and, ultimately, to purchase the fee-simple of the land. During the hours of relaxation, he educated himself sufficiently to enable him to relate clearly and correctly the result of his experience; and feeling it his duty to endeavour to improve the condition of his fellow-labourers, by informing them of the advantages which he had derived from industrious and sober habits, and the cultivation of a small plot of ground, he published a pamphlet called "The Peasant's Warning Voice," which, by attracting the attention of persons of humanity and influence, gave the first impulse to the system. Among the earliest and most zealous of its supporters was Lord Braybrooke, to whom, next after John Denson, (for that noble-minded peasant must always claim the first place,) belongs the honour of promulgating extensively a plan replete with humanity and wisdom. It was first carried into effect by his Lordship, several years ago, in the parish of Saffron Walden, a place then remarkable for misery and vice, but which is now conspicu "Remember, I am still only a poor jour-ous for the prosperity and good conduct of its neyman-I have no money," said William. "But I have," replied Hannah. poorer inhabitants. The paupers on the rates were very numerous, (amounting, I believe, "And shall we not bless Mr. Howard," to 135,) and are now comparatively few, and continued he, as, with his own Hannah on his -which is of far more importance, since the arm, and his little girl holding by his hand, reduction of the poor-rates is merely an incihe followed Mrs. Maynard and the General.- dental consequence of the system-the cases "Shall we not bless Mr. Howard, who res-of crime at the Quarter Sessions have dimincued me from idleness and its besetting ished in a similar proportion. temptations, and gave me pleasant and profitable employment in the cottage-garden?" Since that period, the cottage allotments have been tried in many parts of England, and |