the nearest approach that life and nature can make to absolute silence. The very wagons, as they come down the hill along the beaten track of crisp yellowish frost-dust, glide along like shadows; even May's bounding footsteps, at her height of glee and of speed, fall like snow upon snow. steadying himself by the shoulder of the next in the file, which unlucky follower, thus unexpectedly checked in his career, fell plump backwards, knocking down the rest of the line like a nest of card-houses. There is no harm done; but there they lie roaring, kicking, sprawling, in every attitude of comic distress, whilst Jack Rapley and May-flower, sole authors of this calamity, stand apart from the throng, fondling, and coquetting, and com ing, May in her black eyes, Jack in his wide close-shut mouth, and his whole monkey-face, at their comrades' mischances. I think, Miss May, you may as well come up again, and leave Master Rapley to fight your battles. He'll get out of the scrape. He is a rustic wit-a sort of Robin Goodfellow-the sauciest, idlest, cleverest, best-natured boy in the parish; always foremost in mischief, and always ready to do a good turn. The sages of our village predict sad things of Jack Rapley, so that I am sometimes a little ashamed to confess, before wise people, that I have a lurking predilection for him, (in common with other naughty ones), and that I like to hear him talk to May almost as well as she does. a bird. The road is gay now; carts and postchaises, and girls in red cloaks, and, afar off, looking almost like a toy, the coach. It meets us fast and soon. How much happier the walkers look than the riders-especially the frost-bitten gentleman, and the shivering lady with the invisible face, sole passengers of that commodious machine! Hooded, veiled, and bonneted as she is, one sees from her attitude how miserable she would look uncovered. But we shall have noise enough presently: May has stopped at Lizzy's door: and Lizzy, as she sate on the window-sill, with her bright rosy face laughing through the case-plimenting each other, and very visibly laughment, has seen her and disappeared. She is coming. No! The key is turning in the door, and sounds of evil omen issue through the key-hole-sturdy let-me-outs,' and I will gos,' mixed with shrill cries on May and on me from Lizzy, piercing through a low continuous harangue, of which the prominent parts are apologies, chilblains, sliding, broken bones, lollypops, rods, and gingerbread, from Lizzy's careful mother. Don't scratch the door, May! Don't roar so, my Lizzy! We'll call for you, as we come back.'I'll go now! Let me out! I will go!' are the last words of Miss Lizzy. Mem.-Not to spoil that child-if I can help it. But I do think her mother might have let the poor little soul walk with us to-day. Nothing worse for chil-Come, May!' and up she springs as light as dren than coddling. Nothing better for chilblains than exercise. Besides, I don't believe she has any-and as to breaking her bones in sliding, I don't suppose there's a slide on the common. These murmuring cogitations have brought us up the hill, and half-way across the light and airy common, with its bright expanse of snow and its clusters of cottages, whose turf fires send such wreaths of smoke sailing up the air, and diffuse such aromatic fragrance around. And now comes the delightful sound of childish voices, ringing with glee and merriment almost from beneath our feet. Ah, Lizzy, your mother was right! They are shouting from that deep irregular pool, all glass now, where, on two long, smooth, liny slides, half a dozen ragged urchins are slipping along in tottering triumph. Half a dozen steps bring us to the bank right above them. May can hardly resist the temptation of joining her friends, for most of the varlets are of her acquaintance, especially the rogue who leads the slide- he with the brimless hat, whose bronzed complexion and white flaxen hair, reversing the usual lights and shadows of the human countenance, give so strange and foreign a look to his flat and comic features. This hobgoblin, Jack Rapley by name, is May's great crony; and she stands on the brink of the steep irregular descent, her black eyes fixed full upon him, as if she intended him the favour of jumping on his head. She does: she is down and upon him; but Jack Rapley is not easily to be knocked off his feet. He saw her coming, and in the moment of her leap sprang dexterously off the slide on the rough ice, Another pond, and another noise of children. More sliding? Oh! no. This is a sport of higher pretension. Our good neighbour, the lieutenant, skating, and his own pretty little boys, and two or three other fouryear-old elves, standing on the brink in an ecstasy of joy and wonder! Oh! what happy spectators! And what a happy performer! They admiring, he admired, with an ardour and sincerity never excited by all the quadrilles and the spread-eagles of the Seine and the Serpentine. He really skates well though, and I am glad I came this way; for, with all the father's feelings sitting gaily at his heart, it must still gratify the pride of skill to have one spectator at that solitary pond who has seen skating before. Now we have reached the trees,-the beautiful trees! never so beautiful as to-day. Imagine the effect of a straight and regular double avenue of oaks, nearly a mile long, arching over head, and closing into perspective like the roof and columns of a cathedral, every tree and branch encrusted with the bright and delicate congelation of hoar-frost, white and pure as snow, delicate and defined as carved ivory. How beautiful it is, how fellow of a blackbird—a sad glutton, he would clear the board in two minutes,-used to tap his yellow bill against the window for more. How we loved the fearless confidence of that fine, frank-hearted creature! And surely he loved us. I wonder the practice is not more general." May! May! naughty May!" She has frightened away the kingfisher; and now, in her coaxing penitence, she is covering me with snow. "Come, pretty May! it is time to go home!" THAW. uniform, how various, how filling, how satiating to the eye and to the mind-above all, how melancholy! There is a thrilling awfulness, an intense feeling of simple power in that naked and colourless beauty, which falls on the heart like the thought of death-death pure, and glorious, and smiling, - but still death. Sculpture has always the same effect on my imagination, and painting never. Colour is life. We are now at the end of this magnificent avenue, and at the top of a steep eminence commanding a wide view over four counties a landscape of snow. A deep lane leads abruptly down the hill; a mere narrow January 28th.We have had rain, and cart-track, sinking between high banks clothed snow, and frost, and rain again; four days of with fern and furze and low broom, crowned absolute confinement. Now it is a thaw and with luxuriant hedgerows, and famous for a flood; but our light gravelly soil, and countheir summer smell of thyme. How lovely try boots, and country hardihood, will carry these banks are now-the tall weeds and the us through. What a dripping, comfortless gorse fixed and stiffened in the hoar frost, day it is! just like the last days of Novemwhich fringes round the bright prickly holly, ber: no sun, no sky, grey or blue; one low, the pendent foliage of the bramble, and the overhanging, dark, dismal cloud, like London deep orange leaves of the pollard oaks! Oh, smoke: Mayflower is out coursing too, and this is rime in its loveliest form! And there Lizzy gone to school. Never mind. Up the is still a berry here and there on the holly, hill again! Walk we must. Oh what a wa"blushing in its natural coral" through the tery world to look back upon! Thames, Kendelicate tracery, still a stray hip or haw for net, Loddon-all overflowed; our famous town, the birds who abound here always. The poor inland once, turned into a sort of Venice; C. birds, how tame they are, how sadly tame! park converted into an island; and the long There is the beautiful and rare crested wren, range of meadows from B. to W. one huge "that shadow of a bird," as White of Sel- unnatural lake, with trees growing out of it! borne calls it, perched in the middle of the Oh what a watery world!I will look at it hedge, nestling as it were amongst the cold no longer. I will walk on. The road is alive bare boughs, seeking, poor pretty thing, for again. Noise is reborn. Wagons creak, horses the warmth it will not find. And there, far-plash, carts rattle, and pattens paddle through ther on, just under the bank, by the slender runlet, which still trickles between its transparent fantastic margin of thin ice, as if it were a thing of life, there, with a swift, scudding motion, flits, in short low flights, the gorgeous kingfisher, its magnificent plumage of scarlet and blue flashing in the sun, like the glories of some tropical bird. He is come for water to this little spring by the hill side, -water which even his long bill and slender head can hardly reach, so nearly do the fantastic forms of those garland-like icy margins meet over the tiny stream beneath. It is rarely that one sees the shy beauty so close or so long; and it is pleasant to see him in the grace and beauty of his natural liberty, the only way to look at a bird. We used, before we lived in a street, to fix a little board outside the parlour-window, and cover it with bread-crums in the hard weather. It was quite delightful to see the pretty things come and feed, to conquer their shyness, and do away their mistrust. First came the more social tribes, "the robin red-breast and the wren," cautiously, suspiciously, picking up a crum on the wing, with the little keen bright eye fixed on the window; then they would stop for two pecks; then stay till they were satisfied. The shyer birds, tamed by their example, came next; and at last one saucy the dirt with more than their usual clink. The common has its old fine tints of green and brown, and its old variety of inhabitants,horses, cows, sheep, pigs, and donkeys. The ponds are unfrozen, except where some melancholy piece of melting ice floats sullenly upon the water; and cackling geese and gabbling ducks have replaced the lieutenant and Jack Rapley. The avenue is chill and dark, the hedges are dripping, the lanes knee-deep, and all nature is in a state of "dissolution and thaw." MODERN ANTIQUES. EARLY in the present century there lived in the ancient town of B. two complete and remarkable specimens of the ladies of eighty years ago ladies cased inwardly and outwardly in Addison and whalebone. How they had been preserved in this entireness, amidst the collision and ridicule of a country town, seemed as puzzling a question as the preservation of bees in amber, or mummies in pyramids, or any other riddle that serves to amuse the naturalist or the antiquarian. But so it was. They were old maids and sisters, and so alike in their difference from all other women, that they may be best described together; any little non-resemblance may be noted afterwards; it was no more than nature, prodigal of variety, would make in two leaves from the same oak-tree. Both, then, were as short as women well could be without being entitled to the name of dwarf, or carried about to fairs for a show; both were made considerably shorter by the highest of all high heels, and the tallest of all tall caps, each of which artificial elevations was as ostentatiously conspicuous as the legs and cover of a pipkin, and served equally to add to the squatness of the real machine: both were lean, wrinkled, withered, and old; both enveloped their aged persons in the richest silks, displayed over large hoops, and stays the tightest and stiffest that ever pinched in a beauty of George the Second's reign. The gown was of that make formerly, I believe, called a sacque, and of a pattern so enormous, that one flower with its stalk and leaves, would nearly cover the three quarters of a yard in length, of which the tail might, at a moderate computation, consist. Over this they wore a gorgeously figured apron, whose flourishing white embroidery vied in size with the plants on the robe; a snowy muslin neckerchief, rigidly pinned down: and over that a black lace tippet of the same shape, parting at the middle, to display a grey breast-knot. The riband of which this last decoration was composed, was generally of the same hue with that which adorned the towering lappeted cap, a sort of poppy colour, which they called Pompadour. The sleeves were cut off below the elbows with triple ruffles of portentous length. Brown leather mittens, with peaks turned back, and lined with blue satin, and a variety of tall rings in an odd, out-of-fashion variety of enamelling, and figures of hair, completed the decoration of their hands and arms. The carriage of these useful members was at least equally singular; they had adapt ed themselves in a very remarkable manner to the little taper wasp-like point in which the waist ended, to which the elbows, ruffle and all, adhered as closely as if they had been glued, whilst the ringed and mittened hands, when not employed in knitting, were crossed saltier-wise, in front of the apron. The other termination of their figure was adorned with black stuff shoes, very peaked, with points upwards, and massive silver buckles. Their walking costume was, in winter, a black silk cloak, lined with rabbit-skins, with holes for the arms; in summer, another tippet and a calash, -no bonnet could hold the turreted cap. Their motion out of doors was indescribable; it most nearly resembled sailing. They seemed influenced by the wind in a way incidental to no moving thing, except a ship or a shuttlecock; and, indeed, one boisterous blowing night, about the equinox, when standing on some high stone steps, waiting for a carriage to take her home from a party, the wind did catch one of them, and, but for the intervention of a tall footman, who seized her as one would seize a fly-away umbrella, and held her down by main force, the poor little lady would have been carried up like an airballoon. Her feelings must have been pretty much similar to those of Gulliver in Brobdignag, when flown away with by the eagle. Half a minute later, and she was gone. So far they were exact counterparts. The chief variation lay in the face. Amidst the general hue of age and wrinkles, you could just distinguish that Mrs. Theodosia had been brown, and Mrs. Frances fair. There was a yellow shine here and there amongst the white hairs, curiously rolled over a cushion high above the forehead, that told of Fanny's golden locks; whilst the purely grey rouleau of Mrs. Theodosia showed its mixture of black and white still plainer. Mrs. Frances, too, had the blue eye, with a laughing light, which so often retains its flash to extreme age; whilst Mrs. Theodosia's orbs, bright no longer, had once been hazel. Mrs. Theodosia's aquiline nose, and long sociable chin, evinced that disposition to meet which is commonly known by the name of a pair of nut-crackers; Mrs. Frances' features, on the other hand, were rather terse and sharp. Still there was in spite of these material differences, that look of kindred, that inexplicable and indefinable family likeness, which is so frequently found in sisters; greatly increased in the present case by a similarity in the voice that was quite startling. Both tongues were quick and clear, and high and rattling, to a degree that seemed rather to belong to machinery than to human articulation; and when welcomes and how-d'ye dos were pouring both at once on either side, a stranger was apt to gaze in ludicrous perplexity, as if beset by a ventriloquist, or haunted by strange echoes. When the immediate cackle subsided, they were easily distinguished. Mrs. Theodosia was good, and kind, and hospitable, and social; Mrs. Frances was all that, and was besides shrewd, and clever, and literary, to a degree not very common in her day, though not approaching to the pitch of a blue-stocking lady of the present. Accident was partly the cause of this unusual love of letters. They had known Richardson; had been admitted amongst his flower-garden of young ladies; and still talked familiarly of Miss Highmore, Miss Fielding, Miss Collier, and Miss Mulso, pool the fewer in the course of the year. Their usual occupations were those of other useful old ladies; superintending the endowed girls' school of the town with a vigilance and a jealousy of abuses that might have done honour to Mr. Hume; taking an active part in the more private charities, donations of flannel petticoats, or the loan of baby-things; visiting in a quiet way; and going to church whenever the church-door was open. Their abode was a dwelling ancient and respectable, like themselves, that looked as if it had never undergone the slightest variation, inside or out, since they had been born in it. The rooms were many, low, and small; full of little windows with little panes, and chimneys stuck perversely in the corners. The furniture was exactly to correspond; little patches of carpets in the middle of the slippery, dry-rubbed floors; tables and chairs of mahogany, black with age, but exceedingly neat and bright; and Japan cabinets and old China, which Mr. Beckford might have envied-treasures which had either never gone out of fashion, or had come in again. The garden was beautiful, and beautifully placed; a series of terraces descending to rich and finely timbered meadows, through which the slow magnificent Thames rolled under the chalky hills of the pretty village of C. It was bounded on one side by the remains of an old friary, the end wall of a chapel with a Gothic window of open tracery in high preservation, as rich as point lace. It was full too of oldfashioned durable flowers, jessamine, honeysuckle, and the high-scented fraxinella; I never saw that delicious plant in such profusion. The garden walks were almost as smooth as the floors, thanks to the two assiduous serving maidens (nothing like a manservant ever entered this maidenly abode) who attended it. One, the under damsel, was a stout strapping country wench, changed from time to time as it happened; the other was as much a fixture as her mistresses. She had lived with them for forty years, and, except being twice as big and twice as tall, might have passed for another sister. She wore their gowns, (the two just made her one,) caps, ruffles, and aprons; talked with their voices and their phrases; followed them to church, and school, and market; scolded the schoolmistress; heard the children their catechism; cut out flannel petticoats, and knit stockings to give away. Never was so complete an instance of assimilation! She had even become like them in face. Having a brother who resided at a beautiful seat in the neighbourhood, and being to all intents and purposes of the patrician order, their visiters were very select, and rather more from the country than the town. Six formed the general number, one table-a rubber or a pool-seldom more. As the only child of a very favourite friend, I used, during C. The the holidays, to be admitted as a supernumerary; at first out of compliment to mamma; latterly I stood on my own merits. I was found to be a quiet little girl; an excellent hander of muffins and cakes; a connoisseur in green tea; an amateur of quadrille — the most entertaining of all games to a lookeron; and, lastly and chiefly, a great lover and admirer of certain books, which filled two little shelves at cross-corners with the chimney-namely, that volume of Cowper's Poems which contained John Gilpin, and the whole seven volumes of Sir Charles Grandison. With what delight I used to take down those dear books! It was an old edition; perhaps that very first edition which, as Mrs. Barbauld says, the fine ladies used to hold up to one another at Ranelagh, and adorned with prints not certainly of the highest merit as works of art, but which served exceedingly to realise the story, and to make us, as it were, personally acquainted with the characters. costume was pretty much that of my worthy hostesses, especially that of the two Miss Selbys; there was even in Miss Nancy's face a certain likeness to Mrs. Frances. I remember I used to wonder whether she carried her elbows in the same way. How I read and believed, and believed and read; and liked lady G. though I thought her naughty; and gave all my wishes to Harriet, though I thought her silly; and loved Emily with my whole heart! Clementina I did not quite understand; nor (I am half afraid to say so) do I now; and Sir Charles I positively disliked. He was the only thing in the book that I disbelieved. Those bowings seemed incredible. At last, however, I extended my faith even to him; partly influenced by the irresistibility of the author, partly by the appearance of a real living beau, who in the matter of bowing might almost have competed with Sir Charles himself. This beau was no other than the town member, who, with his brother, was, when in the country, the constant attendant at these chosen parties. Our member was a man of seventy, or thereabout, but wonderfully young-looking, and well-preserved. It was said, indeed, that no fading belle was better versed in cosmetic secrets, or more arduously devoted to the duties of the toilet. Fresh, upright, unwrinkled, pearly-teethed, and point-device in his accoutrements, he might have passed for fifty, -and doubtless often did pass for such when apart from his old-looking younger brother, who, tall, lanky, shambling, long-visaged, and loosely dressed, gave a very vivid idea of Don Quixote when stripped of his armour. Never was so consummate a courtier as our member! Of good family and small fortune, he had early in life been seized with the desire of representing the town in which he resided; and canvassing, sheer canvassing, without eloquence, without talent, without bribery, had brought him in and kept him in. pointment; the powerless anger; the relentThere his ambition stopped. To be a mem-ing; the forgiveness; and then again, that inber of parliament was with him not the means terest, kinder, truer, more unchanging than but the end of advancement. For forty years friendship, that lingering woman's love - Oh he represented an independent borough, and, how can I jest over such feelings! They are though regularly voting with every successive passed away. for she is gone, and he- but ministry, was, at the end of his career, as they clung by her to the last, and ceased only poor as when he began. He never sold him- in death. self, or stood suspected of selling himself— perhaps he might sometimes give himself away. But that he could not help. It was almost impossible for him to say No to any body, quite so to a minister, or a constituent, A GREAT FARM-HOUSE. or a constituent's wife or daughter. So he passed bowing and smiling through the world, THESE are bad times for farmers. I am the most disinterested of courtiers, the most sorry for it. Independently of all questions subservient of upright men, with little other of policy, as a mere matter of taste and of old annoyance than a septennial alarm-for some-association, it was a fine thing to witness the times an opposition was threatened, and some- hearty hospitality, and to think of the social times it came; but then he went through a happiness of a great farm-house. No situadouble course of smirks and hand-shakings, tion in life seemed so richly privileged; none and all was well again. The great grievance had so much power for good and so little for of his life must have been the limitation in evil; it seemed a place where pride could not the number of franks. His apologies, when live, and poverty could not enter. These he happened to be full, were such as a man thoughts pressed on my mind the other day, would make for a great fault; his lamenta in passing the green sheltered lane, overhung tions, such as might become a great misfor- with trees like an avenue, that leads to the tune. Of course there was something ludi- great farm at M., where ten or twelve years crous in his courtliness, but it was not con- ago, I used to spend so many pleasant days. temptible; it only wanted to be obviously dis- I could not help advancing a few paces up the interested to become respectable. The ex- lane, and then turning to lean over the gate, pression might be exaggerated; but the feel- seemingly gazing on the rich undulating valing was real. He was always ready to show ley, crowned with woody hills, which, as I kindness, to the utmost of his power, to any stood under the dark and shady arch, lay human being. He would have been just as bathed in the sunshine before me, but really civil and supple if he had not been M. P. It absorbed in thoughts of other times, in recolwas his vocation. He could not help it. lections of the old delights of that delightful place, and of the admirable qualities of its owners. How often I had opened that gate, and how gaily-certain of meeting a smiling welcome-and what a picture of comfort it was! This excellent person was an old bachelor; and there was a rumour, some forty or fifty years old, that in the days of their bloom, there had been a little love affair, an attachment, some even said an engagement, how broken none could tell, between him and Mrs. Frances. Certain it is, that there were symptoms of flirtation still. His courtesy, always gallant to every female, had something more real and more tender towards "Fanny," as he was wont to call her; and Fanny, on her side, was as conscious as heart could desire. She blushed and bridled; fidgeted with her mittens or her apron; flirted a fan nearly as tall as herself, and held her head on one side with that peculiar air which I have noted in the shyer birds, and ladies in love. She mancuvred to get him next her at the tea-table; liked to be his partner at whist; loved to talk of him in his absence; knew to an hour the time of his return; and did not dislike a little gentle raillery on the subject—even I-But, traitress to my sex, how can I jest with such feelings? Rather let me sigh over the world of woe, that in fifty years of hopeless constancy must have passed through that maiden heart! The timid hope; the sickening suspense; the slow, slow fear; the bitter disap Passing up the lane, we used first to encounter a thick solid suburb of ricks, of all sorts, shapes, and dimensions. Then came the farm, like a town; a magnificent series of buildings, stables, cart-houses, cow-houses, granaries and barns, that might hold half the corn of the parish, placed at angles towards each other, and mixed with smaller habitations for pigs, dogs, and poultry. They formed, together with the old substantial farmhouse, a sort of amphitheatre, looking over a beautiful meadow, which swept greenly and abruptly down into fertile enclosures, richly set with hedge-row timber, oak, and ash, and elm. Both the meadow and the farm-yard swarmed with inhabitants of the earth and of the air; horses, oxen, cows, calves, heifers, sheep, and pigs; beautiful greyhounds, all manner of poultry, a tame goat, and a pet donkey. The master of this land of plenty was well fitted to preside over it; a thick, stout man, of middle height, and middle age, with a |