would be too much to part with the comfort and life of the neighbourhood all at once; so I have resolved, in the absence of their master, to become the mistress of the dear dogs."

Mrs. Jones spoke feelingly and with greater effect than she could have even hoped, however sanguine she might have been.

"Are you serious, madam?" inquired Sir Godfrey.

"I was never more so, I assure ye," replied the widow. Yes, Sir Godfrey," continued she, "I will not be denied. The hounds must be mine at whatever cost."

"You must excuse my astonishment, my dear madam," rejoined the Baronet, better pleased with Mrs. Francis James Jones than he had ever been in the whole course of their acquaintanceship; "but it is so very unusual a circumstance for a lady to become an M.F.H., in other words, a Masterproperly speaking, a Mistress of Foxhounds, that a little surprise may not only be natural but pardonable."

or more

"I'll have the greatest care taken of them for your sake, Sir Godfrey," added Mrs. Jones, emphatically. "I, by your leave, will take your old huntsman, too, with the charming pigtail, into my service, and the pets of horses must accompany him. couldn't live," continued the widow, "without one and all of them."

I

If ever Sir Godfrey Flamstead of Wynford Grange felt at a loss for words to frame a polite reply, he did so on this occasion; for he sat tongue-tied, and yet wished to speak with conceived but inexpressible eloquence.

"Possessing these companions of your happiest hours," resumed Mrs. Francis James Jones, discovering, with a woman's quick perception, the rising bubbles in Sir Godfrey's sensibilities, "I shall have the pleasure -a melancholy one, it is true-to recal the pleasant associations with which the past is replete, and endeavour to retrace in memory that which never can be renewed."

"My dear Mrs. Jones," at length he found an opportunity of saying, "if I could only think that I was worthy of so much regard my happiness would be very great."

The widow's bosom heaved a deeply-drawn

sigh.

Sir Godfrey felt a cold moisture ooze upon his forehead.

The critical moment was arriving; and Mrs. Francis James Jones knew it, and in order to quicken the proceeding, she burst into a flood of passionate tears.

Nothing is more soothing to grief than the word of comfort dropped in whispered accents. Perchance Sir Godfrey thought this as he gallantly bent his knee and poured forth a flow of words, such only as the inspired can command.

And here we will throw a curtain around and close the scene.

Much might now be said; but little is needed for the sequel of this slight history. Sir Godfrey, it is hardly necessary to tell, was an accepted suitor, and led to the altar the gratified and successful Mrs. Jones. Desirous of aggravating the envy of the Browns, the Lady Flamstead was lavish with her means and appliances of reinstating the grandeur of Wynford Grange, and phoenixlike the ancient house rose from its ashes and looked again as in days of old.

Shortly after his parent's union, Edward took his departure with the independent desire of acquiring his own fortune; but within a few weeks of taking his leave he was summoned to return in consequence of the unexpected and sudden decease of Emily Matilda. Poor girl! she caught cold from a short exposure to the damp, and, possessing no better constitution than a young tender linnet, parted with her life with the ease of a candle snuffed out.

Edward had always been greatly admired for both his personal and mental qualities by his stepmother who, with all her vanity and powers of finesse, possessed a good, warm, and generous heart; and after the loss of her daughter she would not listen to his quitting his home again. Next to pleasing Sir Godfrey her study was to anticipate and gratify his son's inclination and wishes, and, learning how the tide of affection flowed in a certain quarter, it falls flat and superfluous to add, that Kate Owen soon pledged her troth to him to whom her willing heart had long been plighted,

I HAVE never had much acquaintance with a country-town life, an ignorance which I regret exceedingly, not merely because such a life comprises so much of the intelligence, cultivation, and moral excellence of that most intelligent, cultivated, and excellent body of persons, the middle classes, as they are called, of England, — but, because, so far as authorship is concerned, it is decidedly the sphere which presents most novelty, and would be most valuable as affording a series of unhackneyed studies to an observer and delineator of common nature. To the novelist, indeed, an English provincial town offers ground almost untrodden; and the bold man who shall first adventure from the tempting regions of high life, or low life, or Irish life, or life abroad, or life in the olden times, into that sphere where he has hitherto found so many readers and so few subjects, will, if he write with truth and vividness, find his reward in the strong and clinging interest which we never fail to feel when everyday objects are presented to us under a new and striking form the deep and genuine gratification excited by an union of the original and the familiar. But when will such an adventurer arise ? Who shall dare to delineate the humours of an apothecary? or the parties of his wife? or the loves of his daughter? Who will have courage to make a hero of an attorney? or to throw the halo of imagination around the head of a country brewer? Alas! alas! until a grand literary reform shall take place, boroughs and county towns must be content to remain in obscurity, represented in the house indeed, but absolute nullities in the library.

possess some few younger friends) I cannot help looking around me, and wondering whether the very race of my old acquaintance be not extinct with the individuals, or whether there be still a class of respectable elderly gentlewomen, who, with no apparent object or interest in life, do yet contrive to live, and to live happily, by the help of a little innocent gossiping, and a great deal of visiting and cards.

One of the most notable specimens of this class that I recollect- and I remember her as long as I can remember any thing—was my mother's old friend, Mrs. Nicholson. She was the childless widow of a former vicar of St. John's parish in B———, and her husband's successor residing on another living, and the curate, a single man, preferring to board with a friend in the town, she still retained possession of the vicarage-house, in which she had presided for so many years, and which a limited but sufficient income enabled her to keep up on a small but comfortable scale. The house, indeed, was not of a sort to make any serious demands on her purse. It was a low, dark, dingy dwelling, situate in an angle between St. John's church and the lofty town-hall, the windows of which overtopped the very chimneys; enclosed within high walls, and looking out into a triangular court, where a few dusty poplars and yellow frost-bitten laurels combined to exclude the daylight from the little low rooms, whose small heavy sashes, of a glass older and thicker than common, afforded another protection against the beams of the blessed sun. The parlour in which she usually sat had also a triangular appearance, resulting from the chimney being placed in the little chimney faced with tiny Dutch tiles divided by a small low brass fender from a narrow hearth-rug of Mrs. Nicholson's own work, the lion rampant in the middle of which was particularly like a sandy cat, and fronted by a very dark, very bright, very old-fashioned mahogany table, hardly large enough to hold the frame on which she performed her worsted embroidery. The opposite corner displayed a beaufet,

one corner

adorned with ornamental glass and china in various states of preservation; one side boasted an old settee, and another an indescribable piece of furniture called a commode, consisting of three drawers of dark mahogany, perched upon long legs, and surmounted by four shelves enclosed within glass doors, and containing a miscellaneous collection of odds and ends, one half-shelf being filled with books, Fordyce's Sermons, Young's Night Thoughts, Mrs. Glass's Cookery, and other works placed there for show and use, and the rest filled with a stuffed parrot, a shellwork grotto, some specimens of spars and ores, particularly dusty, and a curious collection of filigree.

The usual inhabitants of this apartment were Mrs. Nicholson, a huge overgrown dame, dressed in a style which twenty years ago had been twenty years out of fashion, with powdered hair and fly-caps and lappets, and a black lace tippet, looking exactly like a head-dress cut out of an old pocket-book, all bustle and speechifying, and fidget and fuss; and a very sedate, demure, pale, sallow, little woman (every thing in the house was on a small scale except its mistress,) whom Mrs. Nicholson called Madge, but whose real name was Miss Day, who filled an equivocal post in the household, half handmaiden and half companion or rather who performed the duties of both offices-dressing her lady, waiting upon her, combing her dog, and making up caps, lappets, and tippets, in the former capacity; and writing her notes, reading her to sleep, sitting with her, and listening to her, (for with reply, or any thing that implied talking, Miss Day had little to do,) in the latter.

There they dwelt, Mrs. Nicholson and Miss Day, with the dog Viper, an astonishingly ugly terrier, most unnaturally fat, a little footboy in clerical livery, and an ancient maid of all work there they lived, patterns of decorum, (even the boy Tom, and Viper the terrier, were most staid and orderly specimens of their usually obstreperous class;) -there they lived, with a regularity so punctual, that they might have set the church clock, had that important functionary been out of order, and the sun unwilling to present himself. At half-past seven they rose, at eight they breakfasted, at three they dined, at six they drank tea, at half-past six they sat down to cards, at half-past nine the pool (for quadrille was the game) finished as by instinct, and at ten precisely they went to bed. As the watchman called halfpast ten they lay down, and before he cried

eleven the whole household, from Mrs. Nicholson to Viper, might be fairly presumed

to be at rest.

Sunday made little variation in this routine, except the episode of going to church, the change in the dinner hour from three to half-past one, and the substitution of Miss Day's reading the late doctor's manuscript sermons during the time which, on the other six days, was devoted to quadrille. The stock of sermons was not very large; and three hours' reading, weekly, soon got through them; but Mrs. Nicholson, to whom Miss Day once humbly and submissively suggested Blair, would by no manner of means consent to a change: and the good lady was right; she had been used to go to sleep to these sermons in the time of her late husband, of happy memory, and knew their quality. Blair might have kept her awake.

For the rest, Mrs. Nicholson was a good woman and a kind, fond of Viper, civil to her acquaintance, and tolerably considerate towards Miss Day; who, for as little as she looked like the heroine of a novel, had that prime requisite of one, which consists in being in love; though whether that phrase may be applied to a twenty years' attachment - for such was the date of Miss Day's engagement to Mr. Thomas Cooke, writing-master in B., and parish-clerk of St. John's - may be doubtful. If fortune frowned, Mrs. Nicholson did not. She asked him how he did every Sunday, invited him to take a glass of wine every Christmas-day, and presented him with a kettle-holder of her own best worsted work, as a token of favour and remembrance.

In the duties of acquaintanceship Mrs. Nicholson was pre-eminent. Never was woman so regular in paying and returning visits, whether morning or evening-in sending to inquire after the sick, to condole on deaths, and congratulate on marriages. At the very moment prescribed by etiquette (the etiquette of a country town many years ago,) the rat-tat-tat of the little footboy was heard at the door, and the pit-a-pat of the clogs, or the heavy clamp of the sedan-chair -a much more dignified conveyance for a dowager of weight in the world than any of the race of flies, whether horse-fly or manfly-resounded in the passage. She was the very pattern of all acquaintances.

But visiting, although it was much to her, was not quite all; she had something more of the salt of life to season her summer and winter worsted-work, in the shape of two

176

TOWARDS the middle of the principal street in my native town of Cranley, stands, or did stand, for I speak of things that happened many years back, a very long-fronted, very regular, very ugly brick house, whose large gravelled court, flanked on each side by offices reaching to the street, was divided from the pavement by iron gates and palisades, and a row of Lombardy poplars, rearing their slender columns so as to veil, without shading, a mansion which evidently considered itself, and was considered by its neighbours, as holding the first rank in the place. That mansion, indisputably the best in the town, belonged, of course, to the lawyer; and that lawyer was, as may not unfrequently be found in small places, one of the most eminent solicitors in the county.

Richard Molesworth, the individual in question, was a person obscurely born and slenderly educated, who, by dint of prudence, industry, integrity, tact, and luck, had risen through the various gradations of writing clerk, managing clerk, and junior partner, to be himself the head of a great office, and a man of no small property or slight importance. Half of Cranley belonged to him, for he had the passion for brick and mortar often observed amongst those who have accumulated large fortunes in totally different pursuits, and liked nothing better than running up rows and terraces, repairing villas, and rebuilding farm-houses. The better half of Cranley called him master, to say nothing of six or seven snug farms in the neighbourhood of the goodly estate and manor of Sanford, famous for its preserves and fisheries, or of a command of floating capital which borrowers, who came to him with good securities in their hands, found almost inexhaustible. In short, he was one of those men with whom every thing had prospered through life; and in spite of a profession too often obnoxious to an unjust, because sweeping, prejudice, there was a pretty universal feeling amongst all who knew him that his prosperity was deserved. A kind temper, a moderate use of power and influence, a splendid hospitality, and that judicious liberality which shows itself in small things as well as in great ones (for it is by twopenny savings that men get an ill name), served to ensure his popularity with high and low. Perhaps, even his tall, erect, portly figure, his good-humoured coun

| tenance, cheerful voice, and frank address, contributed something to his reputation; his remarkable want of pretension or assumption of any sort certainly did, and as certainly the absence of every thing striking, clever, or original, in his conversation. That he must be a man of personal as well as of professional ability, no one tracing his progress through life could for a moment doubt; but, reversing the witty epigram on our wittiest monarch, he reserved his wisdom for his actions, and whilst all that he did showed the most admirable sense and judgment, he never said a word that rose above the level of the merest common-place, trivial, inoffensive, civil, and safe.

So accomplished, both in what he was and in what he was not, our lawyer, at the time of which we write, had been for many years the oracle of the country gentlemen, held all public offices not inconsistent with each other, which their patronage could bestow, and in the shape of stewardships, trusts, and agencies, managed half the landed estates in the county. He was even admitted into visiting intercourse, on a footing of equality very uncommon in the aristocratic circles of country society-a society which is, for the most part, quite as exclusive as that of London, though in a different way. For this he was well suited, not merely by his own unaffected manners, high animal spirits, and nicety of tact, but by the circumstances of his domestic arrangements. After having been twice married, Mr. Molesworth found himself, at nearly sixty, a second time a widower.

His first wife had been a homely, frugal, managing woman, whose few hundred pounds and her saving habits had, at that period of his life, for they were early united, conduced in their several ways to enrich and benefit her equally thrifty but far more aspiring husband. She never had a child; and, after doing him all possible good in her lifetime, was so kind as to die just as his interest and his ambition required more liberal housekeeping and higher connexion, each of which, as he well knew, would repay its cost. For connexion accordingly he married, choosing the elegant though portionless sister of a poor baronet, by whom he had two daughters, at intervals of seven years; the eldest being just of sufficient age to succeed her mother as mistress of the family, when she had the