of the dancing-room. Her face was almost parts, pincushions, petticoats, thimbles, frocks, invisible, being concealed between a mannish kind of neckcloth, that tied in her chin, and an enormous cap, whose wide flaunting strip hung over her cheeks and eyes, to say nothing of a huge pair of spectacles. What could be seen of the face was in a fine Roman style of beauty that answered to her figure; beautiful, in spite of age, and cap-strip, and neckcloth, and spectacles; lady-like, in spite of the high heels, the trip, the mantua-making vulgarity of scissors and pincushion dangling outside of her gown, and such a pair of panniers within as have seldom been seen in these degenerate days of reticules and work-bags. Such was the outward woman of Madame. Her inner qualities were speedily developed. We soon found that like “Goose Gibbie," she kept the hours of her flock; went to bed at nine o'clock, and rose at six; and, instead of trying to lose the sight and sound of children in books and drawings, and running away from the very thoughts of us the moment school-hours were over, as poor Mademoiselle L. used to do, Madame was content to keep us company all the day long; was never tired of us, tiresome as we were; and made no other difference between school-time and playtime than that of exchanging scolding for talking, long lessons for long stories. She superintended our sports; watched over the games of ball and battledore; reprimanded the awkward and the noisy; and finally insisted on translating our old forfeits of " Peter Piper," and "I love my love with an A," into their Gallic counterpart, 66 Qui veut vendre le corbillon?"

sashes, dolls, portfolios, shuttlecocks, playthings, work-things, trumpery without end. The entire mass was to be apportioned amongst the different owners and then affixed to their persons, after the manner of some of Mr. Lancaster's punishments, though, to do Madame justice, the design, under her management, was altogether French. She had generously taken the most difficult part herself, and was much in the situation of the Princess in the Fairy Tale, who was put into a great hall full of feathers, and ordered to select from the mingled heap those which belonged to every separate bird. Poor Madame! she was worse off than the princess-she had no good Genius to help her she did not even know the plumage of her little birds-sad refractory birds as ever beat their wings against a cage. Poor Madame! Article after article was fished up from the mass, and held out to be owned in vain; not a soul would claim such dangerous property: gloves looked about for hands to wear them; slippers were like the famous glass one, and fitted nobody; bonnets wanted heads; dolls went a-begging. Poor Madame! Even when she found a name, it did her little service; she had, to be sure, in ten years picked up some ten words of English,-but proper names! she never came so near them in her life as old Bassompierre when he wrote Innimthorpe for Kensington. Even if she made a distant approach to the sounds in pronunciation, she would never have recognised them when written; it was two to one against her hitting on the initial letter. Nevertheless she did succeed, by dint of lucky guesses and This was sufficiently irksome; but the questions which could not be parried, in apworst was to come. Madame, all Parisian portioning quite sufficient to form a style of though she was, had the fidgety neatness of a decoration more novel than elegant,-an order Dutch-woman, and was scandalized at our of demerit. Dictionaries suspended from the untidy habits. Four days passed in distant neck en medaillon, shawls tied round the murmurs; an exercise book, found, to use her waist en ceinture, unbound music pinned to favourite word, "trainant" about the room, the frock en queue, formed a slight part of our was thrown into the fire, and a skipping-rope, adornment; not one of us but had three or four which nearly overset her by entangling in her of these appendages; many had five or six. train, was tossed out of the window but this These preparations were intended to meet the was only the gathering of the wind before the eye of Madame's countryman, the French storm. It was dancing-day; we were all dancing-master, who would doubtless assist. dressed and assembled, when Madame, pro- in supporting her authority, and in making us voked by some indication of latent disorder, thoroughly ashamed. She did not know that some stray pinafore or pocket-handkerchief before his arrival we were to pass an hour in peeping from under the form that was meant an exercise of another kind, standing on one to conceal it, instituted, much to our conster-leg like geese upon a common, or facing to nation, a general rummage through the house for things out of their places, which certainly comprised the larger half of our possessions. Every hole and corner were searched for contraband goods, and the collected mass thrown together in one stupendous pile in the middle of the school-room; a pile that defies description or analysis. Bonnets, old and new, with strings and without, pelisses, tippets, parasols, unmatched shoes, halves of pairs of gloves, books tattered or whole, music in many

right and left, under the command of a drillsergeant. The man of scarlet was ushered in; and it is difficult to say whether the professor of marching or the improver of discipline looked most astonished: the culprits, I am afraid, supported by numbers and amused by the ridiculous appearance of their corps, were not so much disconcerted as they should have been. Madame began a very voluble explana tory harangue; but she was again unfortunate, the sergeant did not understand French.

She attempted to translate-"It is, Sare, que genius and a poetess, who succeeded to the ces dames, dat dese Miss be des traineuses." functions of the stupid English Teacher. The This clear and intelligible sentence producing dislike was mutual. Never were two better no other visible effect than a shake of the head, haters. Their relative situation had probably Madame desired the nearest culprit to tell "ce something to do with it; and yet it was wonsoldat la" what she had said, and to inform derful that two such excellent persons should her what he could possibly be come for. Our so thoroughly detest each other. Miss R.'s interpreter was puzzled in her turn, as much aversion was of the cold, phlegmatic, conpuzzled as Pistol's boy when bidden to con- temptuous, provoking sort; she kept aloof strue "fer ferret and firk" to Monsieur le Fer. and said nothing: Madame's was acute, fiery, She had to find English for traineuses (no and loquacious; she not only hated Miss R., dictionary word! I believe Madame invented but hated for her sake knowledge, and literait expressly for our use,) and French for drill- ture, and wit, and, above all, poetry, which sergeant. She got through her difficulties she denounced as something fatal and conrastly well, called him of the red coat a walk-tagious, like the plague. I shall never forget ing-master, and confessed frankly that we her horror when she detected one of her were in disgrace. The sergeant was a man favourites in the act of translating a stanza of bowels; besides he hated the French; he of Tasso into something that looked like verse; declared that it made his blood boil to see if she had caught her committing forgery, her so many free-born English girls domineered lamentations could not have been more inover by a natural enemy," and as he said this dignantly pathetic. What would she say he eyed poor Madame as fiercely as if she had now? been a member of the Legion of Honour : finally he insisted that we could not march with such incumbrances; which declaration being done into French all at once by half a dozen eager tongues, the trappings were removed, and the experiment ended without any very sensible improvement.

I have already mentioned with honour Madame's high heels. They were once put to an unexpected use. She had been ill, and had gone into lodgings on the other side of London, to be near her favourite physician. We soon found a relaxation of discipline; our poetess piqued herself upon managing us in a Inauspicious as the beginning was, in a different way from her rival (she never susshort time we did improve; our habits became pected that we managed her); besides which more regular, we began to feel the comfort of she had a most comfortable habit of abstracorder, and we began to like Madame. She tion, and seldom saw what passed before her lived with us and for us, like a family nurse, eyes. The business of the school went on as or a good old grandmamma (only that she did usual: but our amusements were left to ournot spoil us)-she had no other occupation, selves, and a dramatic fury raged high amongst Do other thought, scarcely another friend in us. Our first performance was Pizarro, that the world; and she had herself an aptness to delight of children. In this choice we had love which could not fail to attach young one trifling difficulty, the absence of the printed hearts. It was touching to see that respecta-play; but most of the actors had seen the ble woman homeless and desolate in her old piece, and we managed it by memory and inage, clinging to children for society and com- vention. I should like to see a variorum edifort, joining in their pursuits and amusements, tion of our Pizarro. The Spanish hero himand bringing down her own thoughts and feel- self had never seen the tragedy; but he was ngs to their comprehension. Her youth of a very clever little Irish girl, not more than a mind and simplicity of heart kept her happy: foot shorter than Elvira, and, being well inI doubt whether grown people would have structed in the spirit of the part, blustered suited her so well. She entered thoroughly through the tyrant very creditably, excepting and heartily into our little schemes, and had one mistake, that of regularly ordering the more of her own than all the school put together. soldiers to shoot Rolla three scenes before his Never found mortal such pleasure in small time. The error was pardonable. Every body surprises, innocent secrets, and mysterious sympathised with Pizarro in thinking the gifts. Cherries dropped in our path like fairy sooner Rolla was out of pain the better. His favours; sweetpeas and mignionette spring-sufferings were exquisite. He was a fine ing up as if by magic in our little gardens; well grown personable girl, but labouring perses netted under the table and smuggled under such a melancholy want of words and into our pockets no one knew how; birth-day fees gotten up as secretly as state conspiracies these were her delights. She was cross sometimes, and strict enough always; but we loved Madame, and Madame loved us. I really think she would have been one of the happiest creatures in the world, but for a strange aversion which she unluckily took to a very charming young lady, a woman of

ideas, that he felt and inflicted in a higher degree the sort of distress which is so often caused by stammering; we could no more prevail on him to relinquish his impracticable part, than a stammerer can be persuaded to abandon the unutterable word. Elvira we chose for her especial gift in scolding, her natural shrewishness; and she did not disappoint us; she acted like a virago born, the

pride and glory of the play. As to Cora, I When once, however, the theatrical fever is did her myself, after an exceedingly original thoroughly excited, it is not easily allayed, fashion. I recollect one trait. I did not like especially if heightened by a prohibition. We going mad; it was troublesome, and I did not were just on the point of actual rebellion, and well know how to go about it,-fainting was had contrived a plot for regaining Deaf and much easier; so I fainted, and had the plea- Dumb, when a turn was given to our ideas by sure of being pulled by the arms across the one of the confederates going to the opera, room, with my heels dragging along the floor, and coming back with her head full of a Scotby one of our stage footmen; an operation in tish divertisement and the ballet of Orpheus which I found so much amusement, that I got and Eurydice. We hesitated a long time a part of the audience (the little girls, the de- which to choose; to have one we were determure and the stupid,) to encore my swoon. mined. A ballet is not a play; there was no Our next performance was Feudal Times, edict against dancing; and as the Grecian and induced by the mistake of a silly maid, who Scottish parties ran high, we boldly resolved had smuggled that pageant into the house in- to blend the two stories into one. "Rather imstead of Pizarro. We performed this enter- probable, to be sure," said our manager, "but tainment to the letter, only leaving out the not impossible. No reason on earth why Or songs, the scenery, and the processions. Al-pheus might not go to Scotland in search of together Feudal Times did not go off like Pi- Eurydice; we must make that understood in zarro; the zest of suspense and unexpected- the bills. The ballet will be quite as intelliginess was wanting; every body knew what ble one way as the other." Quite. The union was to come next; no delightful blunders, no of twenty plots would not have puzzled our balhappy mistakes, no tragedy in our comedy, let mistress; the confusion of her brain defied and far too little comedy in our tragedy; it increase. I cannot attempt a minute detail of was as dull as a lesson, and the run would our performance. Venus-for we enlisted the have been short. We had already begun to whole corps of gods and goddesses in our serturn our attention to a stray copy of Deaf and vice-Venus, a black-haired brown gipsy, raDumb, when an unlucky accident put an en- ther quick-witted than beautiful, slid about in tire stop to our dramatic career. In the mea pasteboard car, which she pushed forward lancholy of Feudal Times one part seemed much as a child manages a go-cart, driving indispensable to the story. The heroine, a cruelly over her paper doves, and stooping lady Claribel, is picked up out of a moat by every moment to pick them up and set them a certain fisherman called Walter, into which flying again. Cupid, the ci-devant Pizarro, moat she had been precipitated by the same was the charm of the piece, full of grace and Walter's sawing asunder a draw-bridge, which playfulness: he managed his shining wings. her oppressor, the baron, was defending against with great address, and his bow and arrows her lover. This we contrived almost as no- still better. One of his feats was the demotably as the wall and moonshine were man-lition of a pasteboard fortress, which we had aged in Bottom's play, by tying together two long high forms, which Walter, seated tailorfashion in a short low form, turned topsy-turvy, to resemble a boat, divided with a knife, catching hold, at the same time, of the lady Claribel, and pushing off with her to her lover, who stood on the chalked line, which we callIed the bank. Four afternoons was this manœuvre adroitly performed: on the fifth, an over-eager combatant lost his balance, and fell over just as the bridge was sawing asunder; in falling he caught at the baron's white frock, who, overset in his turn, clung to the bridge, and down they came, vassal, baron, and bridge, together with the fair lady Claribel, full on the unlucky boat and the unfortunate boatman. The crash was tremendous. An universal scream from actors and spectators soon brought Miss R. to the scene, and disturbed the tranquil course of Mrs. ***'s embroidery. The mischief was less than might have been expected; a few bruises, one broken form, and two torn frocks; but the fright, the din, and the clatter, made too deep an impression to be overcome; the drama was instantly proscribed, Feudal Times thrown on the fire, and Deaf and Dumb put under lock and key.

erected across one corner of the room, just large enough to contain the Scottish heroine, and ingeniously contrived to keep together by strings held in her hand, which she dropped as soon as cupid drew his bow, and sprang away from her prison. This piece of machine ry was our principal attempt in that line; but we had made great advances in costume since the luckless night when the baron was brought to the ground by a pull at his white frock. Our highland lasses had muslin aprons bound with tartan ribands, the right Highland dress of the Opera House; Jupiter had a rich pelisse; and Pluto a beard-a fine tuft of bearskin, docked by our manager from her own fur tippet. This conscious splendour inspired us with a desire for a more numerous audience.! We invited two or three young ladies of the neighbourhood, who came to take lessons in dancing; Miss R., too, we asked, the parlour boarders, and the good old house-keeper. The evening arrived, the spectators were seated, unexpectedly reinforced by Mrs, ***, in high good humour; and we danced on in triumphant confusion, till we came to the grand scene of the infernal regions. We had been at some loss as to the management of the classical

in my recollection. Hedge, ditch, meadow, field, even the very paths and highways, are set with them; but the chief habitat is a certain copse, about a mile off, where they are spread like a carpet, and where I go to visit them rather oftener than quite comports with the dignity of a lady of mature age. I am going thither this very afternoon, and May and her company are going too.

This Mayflower of mine is a strange animal. Instinct and imitation make in her an approach to reason which is sometimes almost startling. She mimics all that she sees us do, with the dexterity of a monkey and far more of gravity and apparent purpose; cracks nuts and eats them; gathers currants and severs them from the stalk with the most delicate nicety; filches and munches apples and pears, is as dangerous in an orchard as a

Hell. Even our undoubting manager was posed. Fire seemed to our simple apprehensions a necessary element. The furies must have torches. No dispensing with that engine of horror. Accordingly we erected a sort of artificial rock-work, composed of tables, stools, and trunks of unequal height, over which was flung a large covering of canvass. Towards the centre of this machine we placed a saucer full of burning spirits of wine, emitting much such a flame as I have seen issue at Christmas from a minced-pie floated with burning brandy. Our orchestra was playing "The Soldier Tired;" the whole dramatis personæ, gods and mortals, Greeks and Scots, were assembled on the stage; Orpheus was casting his memorable look back on Eurydice; and the furies were lighting their torches at the blazing spirits-when the folding doors flew back, and Madame appeared in the open-school-boy; smells to flowers; smiles at meeting, muffled in white drapery, motionless for a moment, and then glided gently in, like another Castle Spectre. One of the Furies, in astonishment at this apparition, dropped her torch, and set fire to the canvass-covering, just as Madame reached the rock-work. The fame caught her eye, and she dexterously whisked off her yellow slipper, and tapped out the fire with its slender heel. I still seem to hear the quick clear sound of those taps. She then gracefully resumed her shoe and her tripping motion, and glided up to Mrs. ***, with her usual mincing pace. So ended our ballet. We crowded round our dear old fnend, and thought no more of Orpheus and Eurydice.

WALKS IN THE COUNTRY.

THE COPSE.

ing; answers in a pretty lively voice when spoken to, (sad pity that the language should be unknown!) and has greatly the advantage of us in a conversation, inasmuch as our meaning is certainly clear to her;-all this and a thousand amusing prettinesses, (to say nothing of her canine feat of bringing her game straight to her master's feet, and refusing to resign it to any hand but his) does my beautiful greyhound perform untaught, by the mere effect of imitation and sagacity. Well, May, at the end of the coursing season, having lost Brush, our old spaniel, her great friend, and the blue greyhound Mariette, her comrade and rival, both of which four-footed worthies were sent out to keep for the summer, began to find solitude a weary condition, and to look abroad for company. Now it so happened that the same suspension of sport which had reduced our little establishment from three dogs to one, had also dispersed the splendid kennel of a celebrated courser in our neighbourhood, three of whose finest young dogs APRIL 18th.-Sad wintry weather; a north- came home to "their walk" (as the sporting east wind; a sun that puts out one's eyes, phrase goes) at the collar-maker's in our vilwithout affording the slightest warmth; dry- lage. May, accordingly, on the first morning ness that chaps lips and hands like a frost in of her solitude (she had never taken the slightDecember; rain that comes chilling and ar- est notice of her neighbours before, although towy like hail in January; nature at a dead they had sojourned in our street upwards of a pause; no seeds up in the garden; no leaves fortnight,) bethought herself of the timely reat in the hedge-rows; no cowslips swinging source offered to her by the vicinity of these their pretty bells in the fields; no nightingales canine beaux, and went up boldly and knocked is the dingles; no swallows skimming round at their stable door, which was already very the great pond; no cuckoos (that ever I should commodiously on the half-latch. The three miss that rascally sonnetteer!) in any part! dogs came out with much alertness and galNevertheless there is something of a charm lantry, and May, declining apparently to enter in this wintery spring, this putting-back of the their territories, brought them off to her own. seasons. If the flower-clock must stand still This manoeuvre has been repeated every day, for a month or two, could it choose a better with one variation; of the three dogs, the first time than that of the primroses and violets? a brindle, the second a yellow, and the third I tever remember (and for such gauds my a black, the two first only are now admitted memory, if not very good for aught of wise or to walk or consort with her, and the last, poor useful, may be trusted) such an affluence of fellow, for no fault that I can discover, except the one or such a duration of the other. Prim- May's caprice, is driven away, not only by rosy is the epithet which this year will retain the fair lady, but even by his old companions

So forth we set, May and I, and Saladin and the brindle; May and myself walking with the sedateness and decorum befitting our sex and age (she is five years old this grass, rising six)-the young things, for the soldan and the brindle are (not meaning any disrespect) little better than puppies, frisking and frolicking as best pleased them.

-is, so to say, sent to Coventry. Of her court-house, and was still a stately substantwo permitted followers, the yellow gentle- tial building, whose lofty halls and spacious man, Saladin by name, is decidedly the fa- chambers gave an air of grandeur to the comvourite. He is, indeed, May's shadow, and mon offices to which they were applied. will walk with me whether I choose or not. Traces of gilding might yet be seen on the It is quite impossible to get rid of him unless panels which covered the walls, and on the by discarding Miss May also;-and to accom- huge carved chimney-pieces, which rose alplish a walk in the country without her, would most to the ceilings; and the marble tables, be like an adventure of Don Quixote without and the inlaid oak staircase, still spoke of the his faithful 'squire Sancho. former grandeur of the court. Mrs. Sally cor responded well with the date of her mansion, although she troubled herself little with its dignity. She was thoroughly of the old school, and had a most comfortable contempt for the new; rose at four in winter and summer, breakfasted at six, dined at eleven in the forenoon, supped at five, and was regularly in bed before eight, except when the hay-time or the harvest imperiously required her to sit up till sunset,-a necessity to which she submitted with no very good grace. To a deviation from these hours, and to the modern iniquities of white aprons, cotton stockings, and muslin handkerchiefs, (Mrs. Sally herself always wore check, black worsted, and a sort of yellow compound which she was wont to call susy,) together with the invention of drill plough and threshing machines, and other agricultural novelties, she failed to attribute: all the mishaps or misdoings of the whole, parish. The last-mentioned discovery, especially, aroused her indignation. Oh to hear her descant on the merits of the flail, wielded by a stout right arm, such as she had known in her youth (for by her account there was as great a deterioration in bones and sinews as in the other implements of husbandry,) was enough to make the very inventor break his machine. She would even take up her favourite instrument, and thresh the air herself, by way of illustrating her argument, and, to say truth, few men in these degenerate days, could have matched the stout brawny muscular limb which Mrs. Sally displayed at sixty-five.

Our route lay for the first part along the sheltered quiet lanes which led to our old habitation; a way never trodden by me without peculiar and home-like feelings, full of the recollections, the pains, and pleasures of other days. But we are not to talk sentiment now; -even May would not understand that maudlin language. We must go on. What a wintery hedge-row this is for the eighteenth of April! Primrosy to be sure, abundantly spangled with those stars of the earth,—but so bare, so leafless, so cold! The wind whistles through the brown boughs as in winter. Even the early elder shoots, which do make an approach to springiness, look brown, and the small leaves of the woodbine, which have also ventured to peep forth, are of a sad purple, frost-bitten, like a dairy-maid's elbows on a snowy morning. The very birds in this season of pairing and building, look chilly and uncomfortable, and their nests!"Oh Saladin! come away from the hedge! Don't you see that what puzzles you and makes you leap up in the air is a redbreast's nest? Don't you see the pretty speckled eggs? Don't you hear the poor hen calling as it were for help? Come here this moment, sir!" And by good luck Saladin (who for a paynim has tolerable qualities) comes, before he has touched the nest, or before his playmate the brindle, the less manageable of the two, has espied it.

Now we go round the corner and cross the bridge, where the common, with its clear stream winding between clumps of elms, assumes so park-like an appearance. Who is this approaching so slowly and majestically, this square bundle of petticoat and cloak, this road-wagon of a woman? It is, it must be, Mrs. Sally Mearing, the completest specimen within my knowledge of farmeresses (may I be allowed that innovation in language?) as they were. It can be nobody else.

In spite of this contumacious rejection of all agricultural improvements, the world went well with her at Court-farm. A good landlord, an easy rent, incessant labour and unremitting frugality, and excellent times, insured a regular though moderate profit; and shej lived on, grumbling and prospering, flourishing and complaining, till two misfortunes befell her at once-her father died, and her lease] expired. The loss of her father, although a bedridden man, turned of ninety, who could not in the course of nature, have been expected to live long, was a terrible shock to a daughter, who was not so much younger as to be without fears for her own life, and who had besides been so used to nursing the good, Mrs. Sally Mearing, when I first became old man, and looking to his little comforts, acquainted with her, occupied, together with that she missed him as a mother would miss. her father (a superannuated man of ninety,) a an ailing child. The expiration of the lease large farm very near our former habitation. It was a grievance and a puzzle of a different had been anciently a great manor-farm, or nature. Her landlord would have willingly