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not pretty-that is quite certain; nor was she what is generally called a flirt, particularly in her rank of life, being perfectly modest and quiet in her demeanour, and peculiarly unshowy in her appearance. Still there was a charm, and a great charm, in her delicate and slender figure, graceful and pliant in every motion-in the fine expression of her dark eyes, with their flexible brows and long eyelashesin a smile combining much sweetness with some archness-and in a soft low voice, and a natural gentility of manner, which would have rendered it the easiest thing in the world to have passed off Mary Marshall for a young lady.

"That's Charles Lane!" interrupted Mrs Drake;-"he's as tall as the Moniment, and, as Madam Cotton says, no better than a thief. "He'll certainly come to be hanged-everybody says he has not done a stroke of work this twelvemonth, and lives altogether by poaching and thieving. And Tom Hill is noted for having beaten his own poor mother, so that he's no better. And the town_chaps are pretty near as bad," continued Mrs. Drake, going on with the bead-roll of Mary's lovers; "for Will Meadows, the tinman, he tipples; and Sam Fielding, the tailor, he plays all day and all night at four-corners; and Bob Henshall, the shoemaker lad, he-But are you Little did Mary Marshall meditate such a really going?" pursued Mrs. Drake, perceivdeception! She, whilst her aunt was leisure- ing that Mary had lain down her tea-cup and ly sipping her fourth cup of tea, lecturing her was tying on her bonnet. "Are you really all the while after that approved but disagree- going out all by yourself this foggy evening?" able fashion which aunts and godmammas, "Yes, dear aunt! I promised Charlotte and other advisers by profession, call talking Higgs her bonnet-she must have it to go to to young people for their good,-she having church to-morrow; and I shall just fall in with turned down her empty tea-cup, and given it the children going back from school, and I'll three twirls according to rule, was now have nothing to say to Charles Lane or Tom occupied in examining the position which the Hill, and I'll be back in no time," cried Mary, dregs of tea remaining in it had assumed, and catching up her bandbox and preparing to set trying to tell her own fortune, or rather to ac-off just as Dr. Vanderhagen entered the shop. commodate what she saw to what she wished, 66 by those very fallacious but very conformable indications.

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Now, Mary, can there be anything so provoking as your wanting to go to Denham Farm to-night, in such a fog, and almost dark, just to carry Charlotte Higgs's straw bonnet? It will be four o'clock before you are ready to set off, and thieves about, and you coughing all night and all day! Anybody would think you were crazy. What would your relation and godmother Madam Cotton say, I wonder, if she knew of your tramping about after dark? -she that warned me not to let you go into the way of any of those Denham chaps, especially those Lanes, who are no better than so many poachers and vagrants. I should not wonder if that tall fellow Charles Lane came to be hanged. What would Mrs. Cotton say to your going right amongst them, knowing as you do that Charles Lane and Tom Hill fought about you last Michaelmas that ever was? What would Mrs. Cotton say, she that means to give you a power of money, if you are but discreet and prudent as a young woman ought to be? You know yourself that Madam Cotton hates Charles Lane, and would be as mad as a March hare."

"Look, aunt," said Mary, still poring over her tea-cup and showing the hieroglyphics round the bottom to her aunt,-" Look! if there is not the road I'm going to-night as plainly marked as in a picture. Look there! the tall chimneys at Bristol Place; and the flat, low houses on the terrace; and the two lamp-posts at the turnpike, and the avenue, and the lodges, and then the turn round the Park to the Farm,-look! and then a tall stranger."

If you will go, take my shawl," said Mrs. Drake. ""Tis not so good as that which Mrs. Cotton gave you and the French Madam cheated you out of, but 'twill keep out the damp;-don't be obstinate, there's a dear, but put it on at once."

"Meese had bedere take my cloak,” interrupted the doctor, gallantly flinging its ample folds over her slight figure, and accompanying the civility by pressing offer of his own escort; which Mary declined, accepting by way of compromise the loan of the mysterious mantle, and sallying forth into Bristol-street just as the lamps were lighting.

"It's lucky it's so dark," thought Mary to herself, as she tripped lightly along, carefully avoiding the school-children,-"it's well it's so dark, for everybody knows the doctor's cloak, and one should not like to be seen in it; though it was very kind in him to lend it to me, that I must say; and it's ungrateful in me to dislike him so much, only that people can't help their likings or dislikings. Now my aunt, she likes the doctor; but I don't quite think she wants me to marry him either, because of his being a foreigner. She can't abide foreigners since the Mounseer with the ear-bobs. But to think of her fancying that I cared for Charles Lane!" thought Mary, smiling to herself very saucily, as she walked rapidly up the avenue. "Charles Lane, indeed! I wonder what she and Mrs. Cotton would say if they knew the truth!" thought Mary, sighing and pursuing her reverie. Tim says he's a favourite with the old lady; but then he's so poor, and a sort of a foreigner into the bargain, and there's no telling what they might say; so it's as well they should have Charles Lane

in their heads. But where can Tim be this dark, unked night?" thought poor Mary, as, leaving the lodges to the right, she turned down a lonely road that led to the Farm, about a quarter of a mile distant. "He promised to meet me at the park-gate at half-past four; and here it must be nearer to five, and no signs of the gentleman. Some people would be frightened," said the poor trembling lass to herself, trying to feel valiant,-" some people would be frightened out of their wits, walking all by themselves after sunset, in such a fog that one can't see an inch before one, and in such a lonesome way, and thieves about."

And just at this point of her soliloquy a noise was heard in the hedge, and a ruffian seizing hold of her, demanded her money or her life.

Luckily the villain had only grasped the thick cloak; and undoing the fastenings with instinctive rapidity, Mary left the mantle in his hands and ran swiftly towards the Farm, hardly able, from the beating of her heart, to ascertain whether she was pursued, though she plainly heard the villain swearing at her escape. In less than two minutes a pleasanter sound greeted her ears, in the shape of a wellknown whistle; and the ejaculation, "Oh, Tim! why did not you meet me as you promised?" she almost fell into his extended

arms.

"Is it why I did not meet you, Mary dear?" responded Tim tenderly; "sorrow a bit could I come before now, anyhow! There has been a spalpeen of a thief, who has kilt John the futman, and murdered Mrs. Cotton, who were walking this way from Belford to the Park by cause of its shortness; and he knocked John on the head with a bludgeon, and stole a parcel of law dades belonging to the master; and the master is madder nor a mad bull, because he says that all his estates and titles Jays in the parcel-which seems to be sure a mighty small compass for them to be in. And the cowardly spalpeen, after flinging John under the ditch, murdered Mrs. Cotton, and tore off her muff tippet, and turned her pockets inside out-them great panniers of pockets of hers, and stole her thread-cases, and pincushions, and thimbles, and scissors, and a needle-book worked by some forrin queen, and a bundle of love-letters two-andforty years ould ;-think of that, Mary dear! Poor ould lady! she was young in them days. So she's as mad as the master. And they've sent all the world over to offer a reward for the thief, and raise the country; and I'm away to the town to fetch the mayor and corporation, and the poliss and the constable, and all them people; for its hanged the rogue must be as sure as he's alive, though I suppose he's far enough off by this time."

"He was here not five minutes ago," replied Mary, "and robbed me of the Doctor's cloak -Doctor Vanderhagen;-so pray let us go to

the Farm, dear Tim, for fear of his knocking you down too, and murdering you, like poor John and Mrs. Cotton; though, if she's dead, I don't understand how she can be so mad for the loss of the love-letters!"

"Dead! no-only kilt! Sure the woman may be murdered without being dead! And as for the knocking me down, I'll give the thief free lave to do that same-knock me down, and pickle me, and ate me into the bargain, if he can. I'm a Connaught boy, as he'll find to his cost, and not a slip of a futman like John, or an ould faymale like i Mrs. Cotton, all the while maning no disrespect to either; and my twig of a tree" (flou rishing a huge cudgel) "is as good as his bit of oak any day. So come along, Mary dear. I undertuk for the mayor and the poliss and the constable; and sorrow a reward do I want, for the villain desarves hanging worse nor ever for frightening you and staling the Doctor's big cloak."

So in spite of Mary's reluctance, they pursued the way to Belford. Tim loitered a little as they got near to the place where Mary thought she had been robbed,—for she had been too much frightened and the evening was too dark to allow of her being very posi tive in the matter of locality; and although the fog and the increasing darkness made his seeing the thief almost impossible, Tim could not help loitering and thumping the hedge (or,) as he called it, the ditch) with his great stick, pretty much after the fashion of sportsmen beating for a hare. He had, however, nearly given up the pursuit, when Mary stumbled over something which turned out to be her own bandbox, containing Charlotte Higgs's bonnet, which she had never missed before. and at the same moment close beside her, just within the bushes which her lover had been beating, came the welcome sound of a violent fit of sneezing.

"Luck be with you, barring it's the snuff!" ejaculated our friend Tim, following the sound, and dragging out the unhappy sneezer by Dr. Vanderhagen's cloak, which he had probably been induced to assume for the convenience of carriage: "luck be with you!" exclaimed Tim, folding the strong broadcloth round and round his prisoner, whom he rolled up like a bale of goods, whilst he hallooed to one party advancing with lanterns from the farm, and another running with a candle from the lodge,-which, when seen from a distance moving through the fog, no trace of the bearers being visible, had something of the appearance of a set of jack-o'-lanterns.

As they advanced, however, each faintly illuminating its own small circle, and partially dispelling the obscurity, it was soon discovered, aided by the trampling of many footsteps and the confused sound of several voices, that a considerable number of persons were advancing to the assistance of our Irish friend.

Little did he seek of their aid. The Connaught boy and his shilelah would have been equal to the management of half-a-dozen footpads in his single person.

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"Hand me that dark lantern, John Higgs, till we take a look at this jontleman's beautiful countenance," quoth Tim. "She gives as much light," continued Tim, apostrophizing the lantern, "as the moon when it's set, and that's none at all! Lie quite," added he, addressing his prisoner, "lie quite, can't ye, and take the world asy till we sarch ye dacently. Arrah! there's the coach parcel, with them dades and titles of the master's. And there's Madam Cotton's big pincushion and all her trimtrams hid in the ditch-ay, this is them! Hould the lantern a bit lower!here's the hussy, and there's the love-letters, wet through, at the bottom of the pool-all in a sop, poor ould lady! I'm as sorry as ever was for the sopping of them love-letters, becase, I dare say, being used to 'em so long, she'd fancy 'em better nor new ones. Arrah, an't you ashamed of yourself to look at that housewife, worked by a forrin queen, all over mud as it is? Can't you answer a civil question, you spalpeen? Ought you not to be ashamed of yourself, first for thieving, then for sopping them poor dear love-letters, and then for being such a fool as to stay here to be caught like a fox in a trap? I suppose you thought the fog was not dark enough, and so waited for the stars to shine,-eh, Mr. Lane ?" "Mr. Lane! Charles Lane!" exclaimed Mary, stooping to examine the prostrate thief. "Yes, it really is Charles Lane! How strange!" added she, thinking of her aunt's prediction, and of the tall stranger in the teacup to which she had given so different an interpretation-"how very strange."

manner-"if your honour would but spake a good word—becase Mrs. Drake calls me a forriner, and Mrs. Cotton says I'm a decaiver, -one word from your honour" pursued Tim coaxingly.

"And what does Mary say?" inquired Mr. Denham.

"Is it what little Mary says, your honour? Arrah, now ask her! But it's over-shy she is!" exclaimed Tim, throwing his arm round Mary's slender waist as she turned away in blushing confusion; "she'll not tell her mind before company. But the best person to ask is ould Mrs. Cotton, who tould me this very morning that I was a decaiver, and that there was not a faymale in the parish who would say No to a wild Irishman. Best ask her. She'll be out of her flurry and her tantrums by this time; for I left her making tay out of coffee, and drinking a drop of dark-coloured whiskey-cherry-bounce the futman called it-to comfort her after the fright she got, poor cratur! Jist ask her. It's remarkable," continued Tim, as obeying his master's kind commands, he and the fair damsel followed Mr. Denham to the house, under a comfortable persuasion that the kind word would be spoken; "it's remarkable anyhow," said Tim, "that them dades and titles, and the pincushion, which would not have minded wetting a halfpenny, should be high and dry in the ditch; and that the forrin queen's needle-book, and them ould ancient love-letters should have the luck of a sopping. Well, it was no fault of ours, Mary dear, as his honour can testify. The spalpeen of a thief desarves to be sent over the water, if it was only in respect to them love-letters."

And so saying, the Irishman and his fair companion reached the mansion. And how Nay," rejoined Mr. Denham, advancing Mr. Denham pleaded, and whether Mrs. Cotinto the circle, "I have long feared that ton and Mrs. Drake, “the ould faymales,” as poaching, and drunkenness, and idleness, Tim irreverently called them, proved tenderwould bring him to some deplorable catastro-hearted or obdurate, I leave the courteous phe. But, Tim, you are fairly entitled to the reward that I was about to offer; so come with me to the Park and

"Not I, your honour! It's little Mary here that was the cause of catching the thief,little Mary and the doctor's cloak; and it's them, that is to say, Mary and the cloak,that's entitled to the reward."

"But, my good fellow, I must do something to recompense the service you have rendered me by your spirit and bravery. Follow me to the house, and then-"

"Sure I'd follow your honour to the end of the world, let alone the house! But," continued Tim, approaching Mr. Denham and speaking in a confidential whisper; "sorrow a bit of reward do I want, except it's little Mary herseif; and if your honour would be so good as to spake a word for us to Mrs. Cotton and Mrs. Drake," added Tim, twirling his hat, and putting on his most insinuating

reader to settle to his own satisfaction: for my part, if I were called on to form a conjecture, it would be, that the Irishman proved irresistible, and the lovers were made happy.

MARK BRIDGMAN.

ONE of the persons best known in Belford was an elderly gentlemen seldom called by any other appellation than that of Mark Bridgman-or, as the irreverent youth of the place were sometimes wont to style him, Old Mark.

Why he should be spoken of in a manner so much more familiar than respectful, were dif ficult to say; for certainly there was nothing in his somewhat shy and retiring manner to provoke familiarity, whilst there was everything in his mild and venerable aspect to secure respect.

True it was, that the grave and old-fashioned garments in which his slight and somewhat bent figure was constantly arrayed, betrayed a smallness of worldly means which his humble dwelling and still more humble establishment for his whole household consisted of one ancient serving maiden, still more slight and bent than her master-did not fail to corroborate; and perhaps that impression of poverty, aided by the knowledge of his want of patrimonial distinction, (for he was the son of a tradesman in the town,) and still more, his having been known to the older inhabitants from boyhood, and resided amongst them for many years, might serve to counteract the effect of the diffident and somewhat punctilious manner which in general ensures a return of the respect which it evinces, as well as of a head and countenance which a painter would have delighted to delineate-so strikingly fine was the high, bald, polished forehead, so delicately carved the features, and so gentle and amiable the expression.

Mark Bridgman had been the youngest of two sons of a Belford tradesman, who being of the right side in politics, (which in those days meant the tory side,) contrived to get this his youngest son a clerkship in a public office; whilst his elder hope, active, bustling, ambitious, and shrewd, pushed his fortune in his father's line of business in London, and accumulated, during a comparatively short life, so much money, that his only surviving son was enabled at his death to embark in bolder speculations, and was at the time of which I write a flourishing merchant in the city. Mark was, on his side, so entirely free from the visions of avarice, that, as soon as he had remained long enough in his office to entitle him to such a pension as should enable himself and his solitary servant-maid to exist in tolerable comfort, he forsook the trade of quilldriving, and returned to his native town to pass the remainder of his days in one of the smallest dwellings in Mill Lane. It was true that he had received some thousands with a wife who had died within a few months of their marriage, and that he had also received a legacy of about the same amount from his father; but these sums were not to be taken into the account of his ways and means, inasmuch as they had been spent after a fashion which, if the disembodied spirit retain its ancient prejudices, might almost have drawn that thriving ironmonger back into this wicked world to express, in ghostly form, the extent of his indignation.

Be it wise or not, the manner in which these moneys had been spent had rendered Mark Bridgman's back parlour in Mill Lane one of the lions of Belford.

In that small room,-small with reference to its purpose, but very large as compared with the rest of the dwelling, and lighted from the top, as all buildings for pictures ought to

be,-in that little back parlour were assembled some half-dozen chefs-d'œuvre, that the greatest collection of the world might have been proud to have included amongst the choicest of its treasures: a landscape by Both, all sunshine; one by Ruysdael, all dew; a land-storm by Wouvermans, in looking at which one seemed to feel the wind, and folded one's raiment about one involuntarily; a portrait of Mieris by himself, in which, inspired perhaps by vanity, he united his own finish to the graces of Vandyke; a Venus by Titian-need one say more?-and two large pictures on the two sides of the room, of which, all unskilled in art as I confessedly am, I must needs attempt a description, the more inadequate perhaps because the more detailed.

One was a landscape with figures, by Salvator Rosa, called, I believe, after some scriptural story, but really consisting of a group of Neapolitan peasants, some on horseback, some on foot, defiling through a pass in the mountains-emerging, as it were, from darkness into light. The effect of this magnificent picture cannot be conveyed by words. The spectator seemed to be in darkness too, looking from the dusky gloom of the cavernous rocks and overhanging trees into the light and air. the figures thrown out in strong relief; and all this magical effect produced, as it seemed, almost without colour-a little blue, perhaps, on the edge of the palette-by the mère force of chiaroscuro. One never sees Salvator Rosa's compositions without wonder; but this landscape, in its simple grandeur, its power of fixing itself on the eye, the memory, the imagination, seems to me to transcend them all. The other was an historical picture by Guercino-David with the head of Goliath,

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picture which, in spite of the horror of the subject, is the very triumph of beauty. The ghastly face, which is so disposed that the eye can get away from it, serves to contrast and relieve the splendid and luxuriant youth and grace of the other figures. David, the triumphant warrior, the inspired poet, glowing with joy and youthful modesty, is fitly accompanied by two female figures; the one a magnificent brunette, beating some oriental instrument not unlike a drum, with her dark hair flowing down on each side of her bright and beaming countenance; the other, a fair young girl, lightly and exquisitely formed, bending her lovely face over a music-book, with just such a sweet unconsciousness, such a mix ture of elegance and innocence, as one should wish to see in a daughter of one's own. A great poet once said of that picture, that "it was the Faun with colour;" and most surely it is not possible even for Grecian art to carry farther the mixture of natural and ideal gracefulness.

* Vide note at the end of the article.

These pictures, for which he had over and over again refused a sum of money almost too large to mention, formed, together with two or three chairs so placed as best to display to the sitter the Salvator and the Guercino, the sole furniture of Mark Bridgman's back parlour. He had purchased them himself, during two or three short trips to the Continent, at Rome, at Naples, at Vienna, at Antwerp; and having expended his last shilling in the formation of his small but choice selection, sat himself quietly down in Mill Lane, without any thought of increase or exchange, enjoying their beauties with a quiet delight which (although he was kindly anxious to give to those who loved paintings the pleasure of seeing his) hardly seemed to require the praise and admiration of others to stimulate his own pleasure in their possession. It was a very English feeling. Some of the Dutch burgomasters had, in days of yore, equally valuable pictures in equally small rooms: but there was more of vanity in the good Hollanders; vanity of country, for their paintings were Dutch, and vanity of display, for their collections were known and visited by all travellers, and made a part, and a most ostensible part, of their riches.

Our good Englishman had no such ambition. He loved his pictures for themselves; and if he had any pride in knowing himself to be their possessor, showed it only in not being at all ashamed of his poverty,-in thinking, and seeming to think, that the owner of those great works of art could afford to wear a threadbare coat and live in a paltry dwelling. Even his old servant Martha seemed to have imbibed the same feeling,-loved the Guercino and the Salvator as fondly as her master did, spoke of them with the same respect, approached them with the same caution, and dusted the room as reverently as if she had been in presence of a crowned queen.

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and sometimes at Cranley Park, the old man was tempted out oftener than he or his maid Martha had thought possible.

Another person had tried to form an intimacy with him-no less a personage than Mr. King Harwood, who liked nothing better than flourishing and showing off before a great picture, and descanting on the much finer works of art that he had seen abroad and at home. But gentle and placid as our friend Mark was, he could not stand King Harwood: he was not a man of the world enough to have learned the art of hearing a coxcomb talk nonsense about a favourite object without wincing. To hear his paintings mispraised, went to his heart; so he fairly fled the field, and whenever Mr. King Harwood brought a party to Mill Lane, left Martha, who, besides being far less sensitive, had Sir Joshua's advantage of being a little deaf, to play the part of cicerone to his collection.

His nephew Harry also-a kind, frank, liberal, open-hearted man, to whom during his boyhood our connoisseur had been an indulgent and generous uncle, paid him great attention; and of him and his excellent wife, and promising family, Mark Bridgman was perhaps as fond as of anything in this world, excepting his pictures, which for certain he loved better than anybody. Indeed for many years he had cared for nothing else; and the good old man sometimes wondered how he had been beguiled lately into bestowing so much affection upon creatures of flesh and blood, since, besides his kinsman and his family, he had detected himself in feeling something very like friendship towards Louis and Hester, Mr. Carlton and old Martha, and even towards Mrs. Kinlay and Mrs. Duval. To be sure, Louis was a man of genius, and Mr. Carlton a man of taste, and Martha a faithful old servant; and as to Hester, why everybody did love Hester,-and besides, she was a good deal like the young girl with the music-book in his Guercino, and that account

able that the good people who loved Hester, they could hardly tell why, used generally to conjure up some likeness to reconcile themselves to themselves for being caught by her fascinations. I myself think that she resembles a young friend of my own.—But we must come back to our story.

In these pictures Mark Bridgman lived and breathed. He cultivated no associates, visited nobody, read no books, looked at no news-ed for his taking a fancy to her. It is remarkpapers, and, except in the matter of his own paintings, showed little of the common quality termed curiosity, or the rarer one called taste. Two acquaintances indeed he had made during his long sojourn at Belford, and their society he had enjoyed with the relish of a congenial spirit: Louis Duval, to whom he had during his boyhood shown great kindness, and who had studied his Guercino with a love and admiration rivalling that which he felt for Mrs. St. Eloy's Vandyke; and Mr. Carlton, who was a professed lover of pictures, and had not failed to find his out during his two years' sojourn in Belford. And when the death of Mrs. St. Eloy left Louis master of the Nunnery, and his marriage with our young friend Hester (of which happy event I rejoice to be enabled to inform my readers) brought the two families together, sometimes at the Nunnery,

The uncle and nephew had not met for a longer time than usual, when, one bright April morning as Mark was sitting in his back parlour admiring for the thousandth time the deeply tinted and almost breathing lips of the Titian Venus, a hasty knock was heard at the door, and Harry Bridgman rushed into the room, pale, hurried, agitated, trembling; and before his kinsman, always nervous and slow of speech, could inquire what ailed him, poured forth a tale of mercantile embarrassments, of expected remittances, and lingering argosies

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