shadow, stood a female figure, graceful and perfect as ever was fancied by poet or modelled by sculptor. Her white dress had all the effect of drapery, and her pure and colourless complexion, her flaxen ringlets almost as pale as the swan-like neck around which they fell, her fair hand shading her eyes, and the fixed attention of her attitude as she stood watching some of Martha's children at play upon the grass, gave her more the look of an alabaster statue than of a living breathing woman. I never saw grace so unconscious yet so perfect: I stood almost as still as herself to look on her, until she broke, or I should rather say changed the spell, by walking forward to the children, and added the charm of motion to that of symmetry. I then turned to Martha, who was watching my absorbed attention with evident amusement, and, without giving me time to ask any questions, answered my thoughts by an immediate exclamation: “Ah, ma'am, I knew you'd like to look at Lucy Charlton! Many a time I've said to my master, 'Tis a pity that madam has not seen our Lucy! she'd be so sure to take a fancy to her! And now she's going away, poor thing! That's the way things fall out, after the time, as one may say. I knew she'd take your fancy." "Her name is Lucy Charlton, then?" replied I, still riveting my eyes on the lovely, airy creature before me, who, shaking back the ringlets from her fair face with a motion of almost infantine playfulness, was skimming along the bank to meet the rosy, laughing, children." And who may Lucy Charlton be?" "Why, you see, ma'am, her mother was my husband's first cousin. She lived with old Lady Lynnere as housekeeper, and married the butler; and this is the only child. Both father and mother died, poor thing! before she was four years old, and Lady Lynnere brought her up quite like a lady herself; but now she is dead, and dead without a will, and her relations have seized all, and poor Lucy is come back to her friends. But she won't stay with them, though," pursued Mrs. Clewer, half testily; "she's too proud to be wise; and instead of staying with me and teaching my little girls to sew samplers, she's going to be a tutoress in some foreign parts beyond the sea-Russia I think they call the place-going to some people whom Lady Lynnere knew, who are to give her a salary, and so hinder her from being a burthen to her relations, as she's goose enough to say-as if we could feel her little expenses; or, say we did-as if we would not rather go with half a meal than part with her, sweet creature as she is! and to go to that cold country and come back half frozen, or die there and never come back at all! Howsomever," continued Martha, "it's no use bemoaning ourselves now; the matter's settled-her clothes are all aboard ship, her passage taken, and I'm to drive her to Portsmouth in our little shay-cart to-morrow morning. A sorrowful parting 't will be for her and the poor children, merry as she is trying to seem at this minute. I dare say we shall never see her again, for she is but delicate, and there's no putting old heads upon young shoulders; so instead of buying good warm stuffs and flannels, cloth cloaks and such things to fence her pretty dear self against the cold, she has laid out her little money in light summer gear, as if she was going to stay in England and be married this very harvest: and now she 'll ge abroad and catch her death, and we shal never set eyes on her again." And the tears, which during her whole speech had stood in Martha's eyes, fairly began to fall. "Oh, Mrs. Clewer! you must not add to the natural pain of parting by such a fancy as that; your pretty cousin seems slight and delicate, but not unhealthy. What should make you suppose her so?"" "Why, ma'am, our young doctor, Mr. Edward Foster, (you know how clever he is!) was attending my master this spring for the rheumatism, just after Lucy came here. She had a sad cough, poor thing! when she first arrived, caught by sitting up o'nights with old Lady Lynnere; and Mr. Edward said she was a tender plant and required nursing her self. He came to see her every day for two months, and quite set her up, and would not take a farthing for his pains; and I did think and so did my master, after I told himBut, howsomever, that's all over now, and she's going away to-morrow morning." "What did you think?" inquired I, amused to find Edward Foster's affections the subject of speculation in Mrs. Clewer's rank of life, "what did you say you thought of Mr. Foster, Martha ?" "Why to be sure, ma'am-people can't help their thoughts, you know, and it did seem to me that he fancied her." "You mean to say that you think Mr. Edward Foster liked your young relation-was in love with her?" "To be sure I do, ma'am,-at least I did." continued Martha, correcting herself; " and so did my master, and so would anybody. He that has so much business used to come here every day, and stay two hours at a time, when, except for the pleasure of talking to her, there was no more need of his coming to Lucy than of his coming to me. Every day of his life he used to come; his very horse knew the place, and used to stop at the gate as natural as our old mare.' was watching her, though she never said a word to me of the matter, nor I to her; and then this offer to go to Russia came, and she accepted it, I do verily believe, partly to get as far from him as she could. Ah! well-a-day, it's a sad thing when young gentlemen don't know their own minds!" sighed the tenderhearted Mrs. Clewer; "they don't know the grief they're causing!" "What did he say when he heard she was going abroad?" asked I. "That intelligence might have made him acquainted with the state of his own affections." "Lackaday, ma'am !" exclaimed Martha, on whom a sudden ray of light seemed to have broken, "so it might! and I verily believe that to this hour he knows nothing of the matter! What a pity there's not a little more time! The ship sails on Saturday, and this is Thursday night! Let's look at the letter," pursued Martha, diving into her huge pockets. "I'm sure it said the ship, Roebuck, sailed on Saturday morning. Where can the letter be!" exclaimed Martha, after an unsuccessful hunt amidst the pincushions, needlebooks, thread-cases, scissors, handkerchiefs, gloves, mittens, purses, thimbles, primers, tops, apples, buns, and pieces of gingerbread, | with which her pockets were loaded, and making an especial search amongst divers oddlooking notes and memorandums, which the said receptacles contained. "Where can the letter be? Fetch your father, Dolly! Saddle the grey mare, Jem! I am going to have the toothache, and must see Mr. Foster directly. Tell Lucy I want to speak to her, Tom!No; she shall know nothing about it-don't." And with these several directions to some of the elder children, who were by this time crowding about her, Martha bustled off, with her handkerchief held to her face, in total forgetfulness of myself, and of the loaf, which I had paid for but not received; and after vainly waiting for a few minutes, during which I got a nearer view of the elegant Lucy, and thought within myself how handsome a couple she and Mr. Foster would have made, and perhaps might still make, with admiration of her gracefulness, pity for her sorrows, and interest in her fate, I mounted my pony phaeton and took my departure. The next morning Martha, in her shay-cart, (as she called her equipage,) appeared at our door, like an honest woman, with my loaf and a thousand apologies. Her face was tied up, as is usual in cases of toothache, and, though she did not, on narrow observation, look as if much ailed her, for her whole comely face was radiant with happiness,-I thought it only courteous to ask what was the matter. was to be lost. So I had the toothache immediately, and sent my master to fetch the doctor. It was lucky his being a doctor, because one always can send for them at a minute's warning, as one may say. So I sent for Mr. Edward to cure my toothache, and told him the news." "And did he draw your tooth, Martha ?" "Heaven help him! not he! he never said a word about me or my aches, but was off like a shot to find Lucy, who was rambling about somewhere in the moonlight to take a last look of the old grounds. And it's quite remarkable how little time these matters take; for when I went out for a bit of a stroll half an hour afterwards, to see how the land lay, I came bolt upon them by accident, and found that he had popped the question, that she had accepted him, and that the whole affair was as completely settled as if it had been six months about. So Lucy stays to be married; and I am going in my shay-cart to fetch her trunks and boxes from Portsmouth. No need to fling them away, though we must lose the passage-money, I suppose; for all her silks and muslins, and trinkum-trankums, which I found so much fault with, will be just the thing for the wedding! To think how things come round!" added Martha. "And what a handy thing the toothache is sometimes! I don't think there's a happier person anywhere than I am at this minute,-except, perhaps, Lucy and Mr. Edward; and they are walking about making love under the fir-trees in the park." And off she drove, a complete illustration of Prospero's feeling, though expressed in such different words: So glad of this, as they, I cannot be, At nothing can be more. logy is a delightful study; only that nine times out of ten the stuffed birds in a museum lose much of their beauty and almost all their character.-to say nothing of the room which they take up, and the exceeding expense and trouble attending the pursuit. A far better plan was that of my excellent old friend Sir William Elford, who turned his fine talent for painting to the service of his favourite study,-natural history, and has accumulated above one hundred coloured drawings of indigenous birds, or birds of passage, all taken from the life, in natural attitudes, and Note.-Birds are beautiful creatures, and ornitho mostly of the natural size, perched on such trees and backed by such landscapes as those amongst which they are generally found,-forming, in short, a correct representation of the bird and its habits. The occupations of a busy life have prevented the completion naturalists may be induced to carry a similar plan inof this design, which I mention in the hope that other to execution. I cannot name Sir William Elford without paying a brief and passing tribute to my dear and "Lord love you, ma'am, nothing!" quoth venerable friend, who, now in the eighty-fifth year of Martha; "only after you went away I rumhis age, carries his faculties undimmed and unbroken, -is still the painter, the naturalist, the musician, the maged out the letter, and found that the Roe-poet, the man of taste, the man of business, and most buck did sail on Saturday as I thought, and eminently the man of letters. Never since that prince that if I meant to take your kind hint, no time of correspondents, Horace Walpole, was letter-writer so shrewd, so pleasant, so playful, and so humorous, as my excellent friend. And I speak from full experiI ence; for, since the days of my early girlhood, when he had the kind condescension to devote his valuable time and his delightful powers to my amusement and improvement, we have been close and constant correspondents. Long may we continue so! Long, very long, may he remain as he is now, the life of the social circle, and the pride and comfort of his amiable family! THE IRISH HAYMAKER. THAT Our County stands right in the way from Ireland to London, and of consequence from London back again to Ireland, is a fact well known, not only to our Justices of the Peace in Quarter Session assembled, but also to the Commons House of Parliament; the aforesaid county, always a very needy personage, having been so nearly ruined by the cost of passing the Irish paupers home to their own country, that a bill is actually before the Legislature to relieve the local rates from the expense of this novel species of transportation, and provide a separate fund for the transmittal of that wretched class of homeless poor from the metropolis to Bristol, and from Bristol across the Channel. But, besides these unfortunate absentees, whose propensity to rove abroad in imitation of their betters occasions so much trouble to overseers, and police-officers, and mayors of towns, and Magistrates at Quarter Sessions, and, finally, to the two Houses of Lords and Commons, besides this most miserable race of vagrants, there are two other sets of Irish wanderers with whom we are from our peculiar position sufficiently familiar-pig-drivers and haymakers. Of the first, we in the country, who live amongst the by-ways of the world, see much; whilst the inhabitants of Belford, folks who dwell amidst highways and turnpikes, know as little either of the pigs or their drivers, until they see the former served up at table in the shape of ham or bacon, as if they lived at Timbuctoo; inasmuch as these Irish swine people, partly to avoid the hard road, partly to save the tolls, invariably choose a far more intricate track, leading through chains of downs and commons, and back lanes, some of turf and some of mud, (which they plough up after a fashion that makes our parish Macadamizers half crazy,) until they finally reach the metropolis by a route that would puzzle the mapmakers, but which is nevertheless almost as direct and nearly as lawless as that pursued by a different class of bipeds and quadrupeds in that fashionable way of breaking bones called a steeple-chase. Few things are more forlorn in appearance than these Irish droves, weary and footsore, and adding the stain of every soil they have passed through since their landing to their large original stock of native dirt and ugliness. English pigs are ugly and dirty enough, Heaven knows! but then the creatures have! a look of lazy, slovenly enjoyment about them; they are generally fat and always idle,! and for the most part (except when ringing ori killing, or when turned by main force out of some garden or harvest-field) contrive to lead as easy lives, and to have as much their ons way in the world, as any set of animals with whom one is acquainted: so that, unsightly as they are, there is no unpleasant feeling in looking at them, forming as they do the usual! appendage to the busy farm or the tidy col tage. But these poor brutes from over the water are a misery to see; gaunt and long, and shambling, almost as different in make from our English pig as a greyhound from a pointer, dragging one weary limb after the other, with an expression of fretful suffering which, as one cannot relieve, one gets away from as soon as possible. Even their halts hardly seem to improve their condition: hungry though they be, they are too tired to eat. So far as personal appearance goes, there is no small resemblance between the droves. and the drovers. Just as long, as gaunt, and as shambling as the Irish pigs, are the Irish boys (Anglice, men) who drive them; with the same slow lounging gait, and, between the sallow skin, the sunburnt hair, and the brown frieze great-coat, of nearly the same dirty complexion. There, however, the likeness ceases. The Irish drover is as remarkable for good-humour, good spirits, hardihood, and light-heartedness, as his countryman, the pig, is for the contrary properties of peevishness and melancholy, and exhaustion and fatigue. He goes along the road from stage to stage, from alehouse to alehouse, scattering jokes and compliments, to the despair of our duller clowns and the admiration of our laughing maidens. They even waste their repartees on one another, as the following anecdote will show: A friend of mine, passing a public-house about a mile off, well known as the Churchhouse of Aberleigh, saw two drovers leaning against the stile leading into the church-yard, whilst their weary charge was reposing in the highway. The sign of the Six Bells had of course suggested a practical commentary on the Beer-bill. "Christy," says one, with the frothy mug at his lips, "here's luck to us!" | "Ay, Pat," drily replied his companion, "pot luck!" Our business, however, is with the haymakers, a far more diversified race, inasmuch as Irish people of all classes and ages, if they can but raise money for their passage, are occasionally tempted over to try their fortune: in the English harvest. The first of these adventurers known at Belford was a certain Corny Sullivan, who had twenty years ago the luck to be engaged as a haymaker at Denham Park, which, in spite of its spacious demesne, its lodges, and its avenue, is actually within the precincts of the Borough. Now the owner of Denham, being one of the kindest persons in the world, was especially good to the poor Irishman, allowed him a barn full of clean straw for his lodging, and potatoes and buttermilk at discretion for his board,- so that Corny was enabled to carry home nearly the whole of his earnings to "the wife and the childer;" and, having testified his gratitude to his generous benefactor by bringing the ensuing season a pocketful of seed potatoes,*such potatoes as never before were grown upon English ground, -has ever since been accounted a great public benefactor; the potatoes-"rale blacks," Corny calls them (I suppose because they are red) having been very generally diffused by their liberal possessor. whilst his good-humour, his cheerfulness, the promptitude with which he put forth his strength, whether in work or play, (for at the harvest-home supper he danced down two Scotchwomen and outsang a Bavarian broomgirl) and, added to these accomplishments, his decided turn for gallantry, and the abundance and felicity of his compliments, rendered him a favourite with high and low. The lasses, above all, were his devoted admirers; and so skilfully had he contrived to divide his attentions, that when, declining to return to Ireland with his comrade at the end of the hay season, he lingered, first for the harvest, then for the after-math, and lastly for the potato-digging, not only the housemaid and the kitchenmaid at the Park, but Harriet Bridges the gardener's daughter, and Susan Stock of the Lodge, openly imputed his detention in England to the power of her own peculiar charms. Along with the "rale blacks" Corny brought a brother haymaker, Tim Murphy by name, who shared his barn, his allowance of butter- Whether the damsels were actually and milk, and his dole of potatoes and more than actively deceived by the honeyed words of partook of his popularity. Corney was an this Lothario of the Emerald Isle, or whether oldish-looking hollow-eyed man, with a heavy he merely allowed them to deceive themselves, slinging gait, a sallowish, yellowish complex- and was only passively guilty, I do not pretend ion, a red wig much the worse for wear, and to determine-far less do I undertake to defend a long frieze coat, once grey, fastened at the him. On the contrary, I hold the gentleman neck by a skewer, with the vacant sleeves to have been in either case a most indefensible hanging by his side as if he had lost both his flirt, since it was morally impossible but three arms. His English, (though he was said at least of the unhappy quartet must be doomto have beautiful Irish") was rather perplex-ed to undergo the pangs of disappointed love. ing than amusing; and, upon the whole, he I am sorry to say, that Tim Murphy was far was so harmless and inoffensive,-so quite, as from seeing this in a proper point of view. he himself would have phrased it,—that Mary Marshall, the straw-hat-maker in Bristol-street, who, on the first rumour of an Irish-haymaker, | had taken a walk to Denham to see how Sally the housemaid liked a bonnet which she had turned for her, was heard to declare that, but for the wig and the big coat, the man was just like another man, and not worth crossing the road to look after. "Arrah, Mrs. Cotton, dear!" (said he to the house-keeper at Denham when lecturing him on turning the maidens' heads, especially the two under her management,) – "Arrah now, what am I to do? Sure you would not have a man marry four wives at oncet, barring he were a Turk or a blackamore! But if you can bring the faymales to 'gree, so as to toss up heads or tails, or draw lots as to which Tim Murphy was another guess sort of shall be the woman that owns me, and then to person. Tall, athletic, active, and strong, die off, one afther another, mind you, accordwith a bright blue eye, a fair yet manly coming to law, why I'm the boy for 'em all-and plexion, high features, a resolute open countenance, and a head of curling brown hair, it would have been difficult to select a finer specimen of a young and spirited Irishman; It is delightful to see the gratitude of these poor people. A lady in this neighbourhood was very kind to one of them, who was taken ill on his way home. ward. The next year he called on her again, with his wife, who was suffering under an ague, brought probably from their own desolate cabin. They had been in great want during the journey, destitute alike of food and medicine and needful clothing; nevertheless, he produced a little bottle of poieen, which he had brought all the way from his home, as an offering to the person who had been so good to him, and which neither his own wants nor his wife's sickness had induced him to touch. It was even with some difficulty that the lady, much pleased by the simplicity of his gratitude, could induce him to accept of clothes and money," he was afraid," he said, that she should think it was begging he was." bad luck to the hindermost! Only let them meet and settle the matter in pace and quiteness, barring scratching and fighting, and I'll come at a whistle." And off he walked, humming "Garryowen," leaving Mrs. Cotton rather more provoked than it suited her dignity to acknowledge. About this time, that is to say, on a Saturday afternoon towards the middle of November,-Mary Marshall and Mrs. Drake, the widowed aunt with whom she lived, were sitting over their tea in a room no bigger than a closet, behind a little milliner's shop in one of the smallest houses in Bristol-street. Tiny as the shop was, the window was still too large for the stock with which it was set forth; consisting of two or three bonnets belonging to Mary's business, and two or three caps, with half-a-dozen frills and collars, and a few balls of cotton and pieces of tape, as Mrs. Drake's share of the concern: added to which, conspicuously placed in the centre pane, was a box of tooth-powder, a ghastly-looking row of false human teeth, and an explanatory card, informing the nobility and gentry of Belford and its vicinity that Doctor Joseph Vanderhagen, of Amsterdam, odontist to a round dozen of highnesses and high mightinesses, was for a limited period sojourning at Mrs. Drake's in Bristol-street, and would undertake to extract teeth in the most difficult cases without pain, or danger, or delay,- -so that, as the announcement expresses it, "the operation should be in itself a pleasure, and to furnish sets better than real, warranted to perform all the offices of articulation and mastication in an astonishing manner, for a sum so small as to surprise the most rigid economist." London stage; and were afterwards discovered to have mounted the roof of a Bath coach bound to London, having contrived, under different pretences to remove their musical iustruments and other goods and chattels; thus | renewing the old hoax of the bottle-conjuror, at the expense of the weary audience, who! were impatiently pacing the Town-hall-of two fiddlers, engaged for the purpose of completing the accompaniments-of the man who had engaged to furnish lights and refreshments of poor Mrs. Drake, who, in addition to her bill for lodgings, had disbursed many small sums, in the way of provisions and other pur chases, which she could ill afford to lose-and of her good-humoured niece Mary Marshall, whom Madame had not only cheated out of ant expensive bonnet by buying that for which she never meant to pay, but had also defrauded of her best shawl in the way of borrowing. Where Mrs. Drake contrived to put her lodgers might easily be matter of surprise to the best contriver; and indeed an ill-wishing neighbour, a rival at once in lodging and let ting and millinery, maliciously suggested that they must needs sleep in her empty bandboxes. But the up-stair closets, which she was pleased to call her first floor, were of some celebrity in the town-to those in search of cheap and genteel apartments, on account of the moderate rent, the cleanliness, and the civil treatment; to the inhabitants and other observers, on account of the kind of persons whom they were accustomed to see there, and who were ordinarily itinerants of the most showy and notorious description. French stays and French shoes had alternately occupied the centre pane: and it had displayed, in quick succession, patternpictures by artists who undertook to teach drawing as expeditiously and with as little trouble as Doctor Vanderhagen drew teeth; and likenesses in profile, executed by painters to whom, without any disrespect, may be assigned the name of "The Black Masters,' whose portraits rivalled in cheapness the false grinders of the odontist. She had accommodated a glass-spinner and his furnaces, a showman and his dancing-dogs, a wandering lecturer, a she-fortuneteller, a he-ventriloquist, and a vaulter on the tight rope. Her last inmates had been a fine flashy foreign couple, all dirt and tinsel, rags and trumpery, who called themselves Monsieur and Madame de Gourbillon, stuck a guitar and a flute in the window, and announced what they were pleased to call "Musical Promenade" in the Town-hall. The name was ingeniously novel and mysterious, and made fortune, as our French neighbours say and poor Mrs. Drake walked herself off her feet in accompanying Madame round the town to dispose of their tickets, and secure the money. When the night of the per-and-twentieth of Mary Marshall's beaux. formance arrived, the worthy pair were found to have decamped. They left Bristol-street under pretence of going to meet an eminent singer, whom they expected, they said, by the "It was enough," as Mrs. Drake observed, "to warn her against harbouring foreigners in her house, as long as she lived. No painted Madames or Mounseers, with bobs in their ears, should cheat her again." How it happened that, in the teeth of this wise resolution, the next tenant of the good widow's first floor should be Doctor Joseph Vanderhagen, was best known to herself.. For certain, the doctor had no bobs in his ears, and no painted Madame in his company; and, for as much a Dutchman as he called himself, had far more the air of a Jew from Whitechapel than of a citizen of Amsterdam. He was a dark sallow man, chiefly remarkable for a pair of green spectacles, and a dark blue cloak of singular amplitude, both of which he wore rather as articles of decoration than of convenience. And certainly the cloak, arranged in the most melodramatic drapery, and the spectacles adjusted with a peculiarly knowing air, had no small effect in arresting the attention of our Belfordians, and still more in attracting the farmers, and their wives and daughters, on a Saturday morning, when the doctor was sure to plant himself on one side of the market-place, and seldom failed to excite the curiosity of the passers-by. Doctor Joseph Vanderhagen, in his cloak and his spectacles, was worth a score of advertise ments and a whole legion of bill-stickers. It was enough to bring on a fit of the toothache to look at him. a In other respects, the man was perfectly well conducted; cheated nobody except in the way of his profession; was civil to his hostess, and very well disposed to fall in love with her niece; making, according to Mrs. Drake's 10count (who amused herself sometimes with reckoning up the list on her fingers), the two How this little damsel came to have so many admirers it is difficult to say, for she had neither the beauties nor the faults which usually attract a multitude of lovers. She was |