world began to be gay at Whitley-wood. Carts and gigs, and horses and carriages, and people of all sorts, arrived from all quarters; " and, lastly, "the blessed sun himself" made · his appearance, adding a triple lustre to the scene. Fiddlers, ballad-singers, cake-baskets and gaiety of a Dutch fair, as one sees it in Teniers' pictures. Plenty of drinking and smoking on the green-plenty of eating in the booths: the gentlemen cricketers, at ore end,' dining off a round of beef, which made the table totter-the players, at the other, supping off a gammon of bacon-Amos Stone eran.med at both and Landlord Sims bustling everywhere with an activity that seemed to confer upon him the gift of ubiquity, assisted by the little light-footed maidens, his daughters, all smiles and curtsies, and by a pretty black-eved young woman-name unknown, with whom,' even in the midst of his hurry, he found time, as it seemed to me, for a little philandenrg. What would the widow and Miss Lydia have said? But they remained in happy ignorance | the one drinking tea in most decorous prun ness in a distant marquée, disliking to mingle with so mixed an assembly,-the other in full chase after the most unlucky of all her urchins, the boy called Sam, who had gotten into a démèle with a showman, in consequence of mimicking the wooden gentleman Punch, and¦ his wife Judy—thus, as the show man observed, bringing his exhibition into disrepute. one o'clock came, and brought no other reinforcement than two or three more of our young Etonians and Wykhamites-less punctual than their precursors, but not a whit less impatient. Very provoking, certainly-but not very uncommon. Your country cricketer, the peasant, the mere rustic, does love, on these Punch-Master Frost, crying cherries — a occasions, to keep his betters waiting, if only Frenchman with dancing dogs-a Bavaraa to display his power; and when we consider woman selling brooms-half-a-dozen sta.s that it is the one solitary opportunity in which with fruit and frippery-and twenty noisy! importance can be felt and vanity gratified, we games of quoits, and bowls, and nine pins must acknowledge it to be perfectly in human boys throwing at boxes-girls playing at bal nature that a few airs should be shown. Ac-gave to the assemblage the bustle, clatter, cordingly, our best players held aloof. Tom Coper would not come to the ground; Joel Brent came, indeed, but would not play; Samuel long coquetted—he would and he would not. Very provoking, certainly! Then two young farmers, a tall brother and a short, Hampshire men, cricketers born, whose goodhumour and love of the game rendered them sure cards, had been compelled to go on business-the one, ten miles south-the other, fifteen north-that very morning. No playing without the Goddards! No sign of either of them on the Broad or the F. Most intolerably provoking, beyond a doubt! Master Sims tried his best coaxing and his best double X on the recusant players; but all in vain. In short, there was great danger of the match going off altogether; when, about two, o'clock, Amos Stone, who was there with the crown of his straw hat sewed in wrong side outward-new thatched, as it were-and who had been set to watch the B-highway, gave notice that something was coming as tall as the Maypole—which something turned out to be the long Goddard, and his brother approaching at the same moment in the opposite, direction, hope, gaiety, and good-humour re- Meanwhile, the band struck up in the Mayvived again; and two elevens, including Amos house, and the dance, after a little de muur, was and another urchin of his calibre, were formed fairly set afloat-an honest English country on the spot. dance (there had been some danger of waltzI never saw a prettier match. The gentle-ing and quadrilling)—with ladies and gentle men, the Goddards, and the boys being equally men at the top, and country lads and lasses at divided, the strength and luck of the parties the bottom; a happy mixture of cordial kindwere so well balanced, that it produced quite a neck-and-neck race, won only by two notches. Amos was completely the hero of the day, standing out half of his side, and getting five notches at one hit. His side lost-but so many of his opponents gave him their ribbons (have not I said that Master Sims bestowed a set of ribbons) that the straw hat was quite covered with purple trophies: and Ainos, stalking about the ground, with a shy and awkward vanity, looked with his decorations like the sole conqueror-the Alexander or Napoleon of the day. The boy did not speak a word; but every now and then he displayed a set of huge white teeth in a grin of inexpressible delight. By far the happiest and proudest personage at that Maying was Amos Stone. By the time the cricket-match was over, the ness on the one hand, and pleased respect on " the other. It was droll though to see the be- I plumed and beflowered French hats, the suks and the furbelows sailing and rustling amidst the straw bonnets and cotton gowns of the humbler dancers; and not less so to catch al glimpse of the little lame clerk, shabbier than ' ever, peeping through the canvass opening of the booth, with a grin of ineffable delight, over the shoulder of our vicar's pretty wife. Really, considering that Mabel Green and Jea Tanner were standing together at that moment at the top of the set, so deeply engaged in making love that they forgot when they ought to begin, and that the little clerk must have seen them, I cannot help taking his grin for a favourable omen to those faithful lovers. Well, the dance finished, the sun went down, and we departed. The Maying is over, the a green-house, and a verandah, may be laid to the former score; a torn book left littering on the seat, a broken swing dangling from the trees, a skipping-rope on the grass, and a booths carried away, and the May-house demolished. Every thing has fallen into its old position, except the love affairs of Landlord Sims. The pretty lass with the black eyes, who first made her appearance at Whitley-straw bonnet on a rose-bush, to the latter; wood, is actually staying at the Rose Inn, on a visit to his daughters; and the village talk goes that she is to be the mistress of that thriving hostelry, and the wife of its master; and both her rivals are jealous, after their several fashions-the widow in the tantrums, the maiden in the dumps. Nobody knows exactly who the black-eyed damsel may be, but she's young, and pretty, and civil, and modest; and, without intending to depreciate the merits of either of her competitors, I cannot help thinking that our good neighbour has shown his taste. AN ADMIRAL ON SHORE. I Do not know any moment in which the two undelightful truisms, which we are all so ready to admit and to run away from, the quick progress of time and the instability of human events, are brought before us with a more uncomfortable consciousness than that of visiting, after a long absence, a house with whose former inhabitants we had been on terms of intimacy. The feeling is still more unpleasant when it comes to us unexpectedly and finds us unprepared, as has happened to me to-day. A friend requested me this morning to accompany her to call on her little girl, whom she had recently placed at the Belvidere, a new and celebrated boarding-school-I beg pardon! — establishment for young ladies, about ten miles off. We set out accordingly, and my friend being a sort of person in whose company one is apt to think little of any thing but herself, had proceeded to the very gate of the Belvidere before I had at all recollected the road we were travelling, when in our momentary stop at the entrance of the lawn, I at once recognised the large substantial mansion, surrounded by magnificent oaks and elms, whose shadow lay broad and heavy on the grass in the bright sun of August; the copselike shrubbery, which sunk with a pretty natural wildness to a dark clear pool, the ha ha, which parted the pleasure-ground from the open common, and the beautiful country which lay like a panorama beyond-in a word, I knew at a glance, in spite of the disguise of its new appellation, the White House at Hannonby, where ten years ago I had so often visited my good old friend Admiral Floyd. The place had undergone other transmogrifications besides its change of name; in particular, it had gained a few prettinesses and had lost much tidiness. A new rustic bench, besides which, the lawn which, under the naval reign, had been kept almost as smooth as water, was now in complete neglect, the turf in some places growing into grass, in others trodden quite bare by the continual movement of little rapid feet; leaves lay under the trees; weeds were on the gravel; and dust upon the steps. And in two or three chosen spots small fairy gardens had been cribbed from the shrubberies, where seedy mignionette and languishing sweet peas, and myrtles over-watered, and geraniums, trained as never geraniums were trained before, gave manifest tokens of youthful gardening. None of the inhabitants were visible, but it was evidently a place gay and busy with children, devoted to their sports and their exercise. As we neared the mansion, the sounds and sights of school-children became more obvious. Two or three pianos were jingling in different rooms, a guitar tinkling, and a harp twanging: a din of childish voices, partly French partly English, issued from one end of the house; and a foreign looking figure advanced from the other; whom, from his silk stockings, his upright carriage, and the boy who followed him carrying his kit, I set down for the dancingmaster; whilst in an upstair apartment were two or three rosy laughing faces, enjoying the pleasure of disobedience in peeping out of window, one of which faces disappeared the moment it caught sight of the carriage, and was in an other instant hanging round its mother's neck in the hall. I could not help observing to the governess, who also met us there, that it was quite shocking to think how often disobedience prospers amongst these little people. If Miss Emily had not been peeping out of the window when we drove up to the door, she would have been at least two minutes later in kissing her dear mamma — a remark to which the little girl assented very heartily, and at which her accomplished preceptress tried to look grave. Leaving Emily with her mother, I sallied forth on the lawn to reconnoitre old scenes and recollect old times. My first visit especially forced itself on my remembrance. It had been made, like this, under the sultry August sun. We then lived within walking distance, and I had been proceeding hither to call on our new neighbours, Admiral and Mrs. Floyd, when a very unaccountable noise on the lawn induced me to pause at the entrance; a moment's observation explained the nature of the sounds. The admiral was shooting wasps with a pocket-pistol; a most villanous amusement, as it seemed to me, who am by nature and habit a hater of such poppery, and indeed of all noises which are at once sudden By that standard his calculations were regslated; all the furniture of the White House at Hannonby was adapted to the proportions of His Majesty's ship the Mermaiden. The great drawing-room was fitted up exactly on the model of her cabin, and the whole of that spacious and commodious mansion made to re semble, as much as possible, that wonderfully inconvenient abode, the inside of a ship; every thing crammed into the smallest possible compass; space most unnecessarily economized, and contrivances devised for all those mattera which need no contriving at all. He victualled the house as for an East-India voyage, served out the provisions in rations, and swung the whole family in hammocks. and unexpected. My first impulse was to run away, and I had actually made some motions towards a retreat, when, struck with the ludicrous nature of the sport, and the folly of | being frightened at a sort of squibbery, which even the unusual game (though the admiral was a capital marksman, and seldom failed to knock down his insect) did not seem to regard, I faced about manfully, and contenting myself with putting my hands to my ears to : keep out the sound, remained at a very safe distance to survey the scene. There, under the shade of the tall elms, sate the veteran, a little old withered man, very like a pocketpistol himself, brown, succinct, grave, and fiery. He wore an old-fashioned naval uniform of blue, faced with white, which set off It will easily be believed that these innovahis mahogany countenance, drawn into a thou- tions, in a small village in a midland county, sand deep wrinkles, so that his face was as where nineteen-twentieths of the inhabitants full of lines as if it had been tattooed, with had never seen a piece of water larger than the full force of contrast. At his side stood Hannonby great pond, occasioned no small a very tall, masculine, large-boned middle- commotion. The poor admiral had his own aged woman, something like a man in petti-troubles. At first every living thing about the coats, whose face, in spite of a quantity of place rebelled-there was a general mutiny; rouge and a small portion of modest assur- the very cocks and hens whom he had eram ance, might still be called handsome, and med up in coops in the poultry-yard screamed could never be mistaken for belonging to other than an Irish woman. There was a touch of the brogue in her very look. She, evidently his wife, stood by marking the covies, and enjoying as it seemed to me, the smell of gunpowder, to which she had the air of being quite as well accustomed as the admiral. A younger lady was watching them at a little distance, apparently as much amused as myself, and far less frightened; on her advancing to meet me, the pistol was put down, and the admiral joined us. This was my first introduction; we were acquainted in a moment, and before the end of my visit he had shown me all over his house, and told me the whole history of his life and adventures. aloud for liberty; and the pigs, ducks, and geese, equally prisoners, squeaked and gahbled for water; the cows lowed in their stall the sheep bleated in their pens, the whole live stock of Hannonby was in durance. The most unmanageable of these complainers were of course the servants: with the men, after a little while, he got on tolerably, sternness and grog (the wind and sun of the fable) conquered them; his stanchest opponents were of the other sex, the whole tribe of housemaids and kitchenmaids abhorred him to a woman, and plagued and thwarted him every hour of the day. He, on his part, returned their aversion with interest; talked of female stupidity, ' female awkwardness, and female dirt, and In these there was nothing remarkable, ex- threatened to compound an household of the cepting their being so entirely of the sea. crew of the Mermaiden, that should shame all Some sixty-five years before, he had come the twirlers of mops and brandishers of brooms into the world in the middle of the British in the county. Especially, he used to vaunt channel, whilst his mother was taking a little the abilities of a certain Bill Jones, as the best trip from Portsmonth to Plymouth on board laundress, sempstress, cook, and housemad her husband's flag-ship, (for he too had been in the navy; him he was determined to proan adiniral,) when, rather before he was expected, our admiral was born. This débat fixed his destiny. At twelve years old he went to sea, and had remeined there ever since, till now, when an unlucky promotion sent him ashore, and seemed likely to keep him there. I never saw a man so unaffectedly displeased with his own title. He forbade any of his family from calling him by it,' and took it as a sort of affront from strangers. Being, however, on land, his first object was to make his residence as much like a man-of-war as possible, or rather as much like that beau-ideal of a habitation his last frigate, the Mermaiden, in which he had by different prizes made above sixty thousand pounds. cure, to keep his refractory household in seme order; accordingly, he wrote to desire his presence; and Bill, unable to resist the summons of his old commander, arrived accordingly. This Avatar, which had been anticipated by the revolted damsels with no small dismay,, tended considerably to ameliorate matters. The dreaded major-domo turned out to be smart young sailor, of four or five-and-twerty, with an arch smile, a bright merry eye, and a most knowing nod, by no means insensible to female objurgation, or indifferent to femsle charms. The women of the house, paruese t larly the pretty ones, soon perceived their power; and as this Admirable Crichton of his Majesty's ship the Mermaiden, had, amongst his other accomplishments, the address com- a delightful simplicity of belief; pitied them; pletely to govern his master, all was soon in relieved them; fought their battles at the the smoothest track possible. Neither, uni- bench and the vestry, and got into two or versal genius though he were, was Bill Jones three scrapes with constables and magistrates, at all disdainful of female assistance, or averse by the activity of his protection. Only one to the theory of a division of labour. Under counterfeit sailor with a sham wooden-leg, he his wise direction and discreet patronage, a found out at a question, and, by aid of Bill peace was patched up between the admiral Jones, ducked in the horse-pond, for an imand his rebellious handmaids. A general am- postor, till the unlucky wretch, who was, as nesty was proclaimed, with the solitary ex- the worthy seaman suspected, totally unused ception of an old crone of a she-cook, who to the water, a thorough land-lubber, was had, on some occasion of culinary interfer- nearly drowned; an adventure which turned ence, turned her master out of his own kitch-out the luckiest of his life, he having carried en, and garnished Bill Jones's jacket with an unseemly rag yclept a dish-clout. She was dismissed by mutual consent; and Sally the kitchenmaid, a pretty black-eyed girl, promoted to the vacant post, which she filled with eminent ability. Soothed, guided, and humoured by his trusty adherent, and influenced perhaps a little by the force of example and the effect of the land breeze, which he had never breathed so long before, our worthy veteran soon began to show symptoms of a man of this world. The earth became, so to say, his native element. He took to gardening, to farming, for which Bill Jones had also a taste; set free his prisoners in the basse-cour, to the unutterable glorification and crowing of cock and hen, and cackling and gabbling of goose and turkey, and enlarged his own walk from pacing backwards and forwards in the dining-room, followed by his old shipmates, a Newfoundland dog and a tame goat, into a stroll round his own grounds, to the great delight of those faithful attendants. He even talked of going pheasant shooting, bought a hunter, and was only saved from following the fox-hounds by accidentally taking up Peregrine Pickle, which, by a kind of Sortes Virgilianæ, opened on the mischances of Lieutenant Hatchway and Commodore Trunnion in a similar expedition. After this warning which he considered as nothing less than providential, he relinquished any attempt at mounting that formidable animal, a horse, but having found his land legs, he was afoot all day long in his farm or his garden, setting people to rights in all quarters, and keeping up the place with the same scrupulous nicety that he was wont to bestow on the planks and rigging of his dear Mermaiden. Amongst the country people, he soon became popular. They liked the testy little gentleman, who dispensed his beer and grog so bountifully, and talked to them so freely. He would have his own way, to be sure, but then The paid for it; besides, he entered into their tastes and amusements, promoted May-games, revels, and other country sports, patronized dancing-dogs and monkeys, and bespoke plays in barns. Above all, he had an exceeding partiality to vagrants, strollers, gipsies, and such like persons; listened to their tales with his case to an attorney, who forced the admiral to pay fifty pounds for the exploit. Our good veteran was equally popular amongst the gentry of the neighbourhood. His own hospitality was irresistible, and his frankness and simplicity, mixed with a sort of petulant vivacity, combined to make him a most welcome relief to the dulness of a country dinner party. He enjoyed society extremely, and even had a spare bed erected for company; moved thereunto by an accident which befel the fat Rector of Kinton, who having unfortunately consented to sleep at Hannonby one wet night, had alarmed the whole house, and nearly broken his own neck, by a fall from his hammock. The admiral would have put up twenty spare beds, if he could have been sure of filling them, for besides his natural sociability, he was, it must be confessed, in spite of his farming, and gardening, and keeping a log-book, a good deal at a loss how to fill up his time. His reading was none of the most extensive: Robinson Crusoe, the Naval Chronicle, Southey's admirable life of Nelson, and Smollet's novels, formed the greater part of his library; and for other books he cared little; though he liked well enough to pore over maps and charts, and to look at modern voyages, especially if written by landsmen or ladies; and his remarks on those occasions often displayed a talent for criticism, which, under different circumstances, might have ripened into a very considerable reviewer. He For the rest, he was a most kind and excellent person, although a little testy and not a little absolute; and a capital disciplinarian, although addicted to the reverse sins of making other people tipsy whilst he kept himself sober, and of sending forth oaths in volleys, whilst he suffered none other to swear. had besides a few prejudices incident to his condition-loved his country to the point of hating all the rest of the world, especially the French; and regarded his own profession with a pride which made him intolerant of every other. To the army he had an intense and growing hatred, much augmented since victory upon victory had deprived him of the comfortable feeling of scorn. The battle of Waterloo fairly posed him. "To be sure to have drubbed the French was a fine thing-a very fine thing-no denying that! but why not have fought out the quarrel by sea?" ladyism, and entirely unaccomplished, if she could be called so, who joined to the most elegant manners a highly-cultivated understanding, and a remarkable talent for conversation. Nothing could exceed the fascination of her delicate and poignant raillery, her voice and smile were so sweet, and her wit so light and glancing. She had the still rarer merit' of being either entirely free from vanity, or of keeping it in such good order, that it never I made no mention of Mrs. Floyd in enumerating the admiral's domestic arrangements, because, sooth to say, no one could have less concern in them than that good lady. She had not been Mrs. Floyd for five-and-twenty years without thoroughly understanding her husband's despotic humour, and her own light and happy temper enabled her to conform to it without the slightest appearance of reluc-appeared in look or word. Conversation, much tance or discontent. She liked to be managed -it saved her trouble. She turned out to be Irish as I had suspected. The admiral, who had reached the age of forty without betraying the slightest symptom of matrimony, had, during a sojourn in Cork Harbour, fallen in love with her, then a buxom widow, and married her in something less than three weeks after their acquaintance began, chiefly moved to that unexpected proceeding by the firmness with which she bore a salute from the Lord Lieutenant, which threw half the ladies on board into hysterics. Mrs. Floyd was indeed as gallant a woman as ever stood fire. Her first husband had been an officer in the army, and she had followed the camp during two campaigns; had been in one battle and several skirmishes, and had been taken and re-taken with the carriages and baggage, without betraying the slightest symptom of fear. Her naval career did not shame her military reputation. She lived chiefly on board, adopted sea phrases and sea customs, and but for the petticoat might have passed for a sailor herself. as she excelled in it, was not necessary to her, as it is to most eminent talkers. I think she enjoyed quiet observation, full as much, if not more; and at such times there was something of good-humoured malice in her bright bazei eye, that spoke more than she ever allowed her tongue to utter. Her father's odd ways, for instance, and her mother's odd speeches, and her sister's lack-a-daisicalness, amused her rather more than they ought to have done; but she had never lived with them, having been brought up by an aunt who had recently died leaving her a splendid fortune; and even now that she had come to reside at home, was treated by her parents, although very kindly. rather as an honoured guest than as a cherished daughter. Anne Floyd was a sweet creature in spite of a little over-acuteness. I used to think she wanted nothing but falling in love to soften her proud spirit, and tame her bright eye; but falling in love was quite out of her way-she had the unfortunate distrust of an heiress, 83tiated with professions of attachment, and suspecting every man of wooing her fortune rather than herself. By dint of hearing exag gerated praise of her beauty, she had even come to think herself plain; perhaps another circumstance a little contributed to this per And of all the sailors that ever lived, she was the merriest, the most generous, the most unselfish; the very kindest of that kindest race! There was no getting away from her hearty hospitality, no escaping her prodigal-suasion-she was said to be, and undoubtedly ity of presents. It was dangerous to praise was, remarkably like her father. There is no or even to approve of any thing belonging to accounting for the strange freaks that nature herself in her hearing; if it had been the plays in the matter of family likeness. The carpet under her feet, or the shawl on her admiral was certainly as ugly a little man as shoulders, either would instantly have been one should see in a summer day, and Anne stripped off to offer. Then her exquisite, was as certainly a very pretty young woman: good-humour! Coarse and boisterous she yet it was quite impossible to see them toge certainly was, and terribly Irish; but the se- ther and not be struck with the extreme and verest stickler for female decorum, the nicest critic of female manners, would have been disarmed by the contagion of Mrs. Floyd's good-humour. My chief friend and favourite of the family was, however, one who hardly seemed to belong to it-Anne, the eldest daughter. I liked her even better than I did her father and mother, although for very different qualities. She was inland bred," and combined in herself sufficient self-possession and knowledge of the world, of literature, and of society, to have set up the whole house, provided it had been possible to supply their deficiency from her superabundance; she was three or four and-twenty, too, past the age of mere young even absurd resemblance between his old bat-, tered face and her bright and sparkling countenance. To have been so like my good friend the admiral, might have cured a lighter spirit. of vanity. Julia, the younger and favourite daughter, was a fine tall handsome girl of nineteen, just what her mother must have been at the same age; she had been entirely brought up by Mrs. Floyd, except when deposited from the to time in various country boarding-sch x`s, whilst that good lady enjoyed the pleasure of ̧ a cruise. Miss Julia exhibited the not us common phenomenon of having imbibed the opposite faults to those of her instructress, and was soft, mincing, languid, affected, and |
