"So much for arriving at what the law calls years of discretion," observed Lady Lindore, quietly resuming her embroidery. "From the time you wrote yourself sixteen, until this very hour, that silly heart of yours has been tossed like a shuttlecock from one pretty girl to another; and now you celebrate your coming of age by the sage avowal of loving a lady whom you have never spoken to, and hating another whom you have never seen-Well! I suppose you must have your own way. But, without questioning the charms and graces of this Katy of yours, just be pleased to tell me why you have taken such an aversion to my poor little girl. Is it merely because she has the hundred thousand pounds necessary to clear off your mortgages?" "Certainly not." "Or because I unluckily spoke of her talents?" "Not of her talents, dear mother: no son of yours could dislike clever women. But you spoke of her as awfully accomplished-" "I have never said a word of her accomplishments." 66 "As awfully learned, then" "Neither do I remember speaking of that." "At all events, as awfully wise. And, dearest mother, your wise ladies and literary ladies are, not to say anything affronting, too wise for me. I like something artless, simple, natural-a wild, gay, playful creature, full of youthful health and life, with all her girlish tastes about her; fond of birds and flowers-" "And charmed with a country play," added Lady Lindore, completing her son's sentence. "Well! we must find out this Katy of yours, if indeed the fancy holds. In the mean while, I have letters to write to your guardians; and you can revisit your old haunts in the grounds till dinner time, when you will see this formidable heiress, and will, I trust, treat her at least with the politeness of a gentleman and the attention due from the master of the house to an unoffending guest." "She is here then ?" inquired Lord Lindore. "She was in this room in search of a book not half an hour before your arrival." "Some grave essay or learned treatise, doubtless!" thought Arthur within himself; and then assuring his mother of his attention to her commands, he followed her suggestion and strolled out into the park. The sun was yet high in the heavens, and the beautiful scene around him, clothed in the deep verdure of September, seemed rejoicing in his beams, the lake, especially, lay sparkling in the sunshine like a sheet of molten silver; and almost unconsciously Lord Lindore directed his steps to a wild glen near the water, which had been the favourite haunt of his boyhood. It was a hollow dell, surrounded by steep banks, parted from the lake by a thicket of fern and holly and old thorn, much frequented by the deer, and containing in its bosom its own deep silent pool, dark and bright as a diamond, with a grotto scooped out of one side of the hill, which in his childish days had been decayed and deserted, and of which he had taken possession for his fishing-tackle and other boyish property. Lady Lindore had, however, during his absence, taken a fancy to the place; had extended the stone-work, and covered it with climbing plants; had made walks and flowerbeds round the pool, indenting the pond itself with banks, bays, and headlands; had erected one or two rustic seats;-and it formed now, under the name of The Rockery, a very pretty lady's garden-all the prettier that the improvements had been managed with great taste-that the scene retained much of its original wildness, its irreg ularity of form and variety of shadow-and that even even in the creepers which trailed about the huge masses of stone, indigenous plants were skilfully mingled with the more gorgeous exotics. On this lovely autumn day it looked like a piece of fairy-land, and Lord Lindore stood gazing at the scene from under the ivied arch which led to its recesses with much such a feeling of delight and astonishment as must have been caused to Aladdin the morning after the slaves of the lamp had erected his palace of jewels and gold. There are no jewels after all, like the living gems called flowers; and never were flowers so bright, so gorgeous, so beautiful, as in the Glenham Rockery. Convolvuluses of all colours, passion-flowers of all shades, clematises of twenty kinds, rich nasturtiums, sweet musk-roses, pearly-blossomed myrtles, starry jessamines, and a hundred splendid exotics, formed a glowing tapestry round the walls,whose tops were crowned by velvet snapdragons, and large bushes of the beautiful cistus, called the rock-rose; whilst beds of geraniums, of lobelias, of calceolaria, and of every sort of gay annual, went dotting round the pool, and large plants of the blue hydrangea grew low upon the banks, and the long coral blossoms of the fuschia hung like weeping-willows into the water. Bees were busy in the honeyed tubes of the different coloured sultans, and dappled butterflies were swinging in the rich flowers of the China-aster; gold and silver fishes were playing in the pond, and the songster of early autumn, the ever-cheerful redbreast, was twittering from the tree. But bees, and birds, and butterflies were not the only tenants of the Glenham Rockery. A group well suited to the scene, and so deeply occupied as to be wholly unconscious of observation, was collected near the entrance of the grotto. Adam Griffith, the well-remembered old gardener, with his venerable white locks, was standing, receiving and depositing in a covered basket certain prettily-folded little packets delivered to him by a young lady, who, half sitting, half kneeling, was It would not be fair, even if it were possible, writing with a pencil the names of the flower-| seeds (for such it seemed they were) on each to follow the course of a conversation that nicely-arranged parcel. A fawn with a silver lasted two hours, which seemed to them as collar, and a very large Newfoundland dog, two minutes. were amicably lying at her side. The figure was light, and round, and graceful; the air of the head (for her straw bonnet was also performing the office of a basket) was exquisitely fine, and the little white hand that was writing under old Adam's dictation might have served as a model for a sculptor. If these indications had not been sufficient to convince him that the incognita was not his night mare the heiress, the first words she uttered I would have done so. "What name did you say, Adam?" "Eschscholtzia Californica!" "Oh dear me! I shall never write that without a blunder. How I do wish they would call flowers by pretty simple short names nowa-days, as they used to do! How much prettier words lilies and roses are than EsWhat did you say, Adam ?" "Eschscholtzia, Miss; 'tis a strange heathenish name, to be sure-Eschscholtzia Californica," replied Adam. "Esch-scholt-zia! Is that right, Adam? Look." And Adam assumed his spectacles, examined and assented. "Eschscholtzia Cali- And the fair seed-gatherer was proceeding gravely with her task, when the little fawn, whose quick sense of hearing was alarmed at some slight motion of Arthur's, bounded suddenly up, jerked the basket out of old Adam's hand, which fell (luckily tightly closed) into the water, and was immediately followed by the Newfoundland dog, who with no greater damage than alarming a whole shoal of gold and silver fish, who wondered what monster was coming upon them, and wetting his own shaggy coat, rescued the basket and bore it triumphantly to his mistress. "Fie, Leila! Good Nelson!" exclaimed their fair mistress, turning round to caress her dog" Lord Lindore!" 66 Katy-Miss Elphinstone!" And enchanted to see her, and bewildered at finding her there, (for Katy it really wasthe very Katy of the Belford Race-ground,) Lord Lindore joined the party, shook hands with old Adam, patted Nelson, made friends with Leila, and finally found himself tête-à-tête with his fair mistress; she sitting on one of the great low stones of the Rockery; he reclining at her side, just like that most graceful of all lovers Hamlet the Dane at the feet of Ophelia, but with feelings differing as completely from those of that most sweet and melancholy prince, as happiness from misery. Never had Lord Lindore been so happy before!-never, (and it is saying much, considering the temperament of the young gentleman) never half so much in love! They talked of a thousand things: first of flower-seeds, and she introduced him to the beautiful winged seed of the geranium, with the curious elastic corkscrew curl at the bottom of its silvery plume; and to that miniature shuttlecock which gives its name to one species of larkspur; and to the minute shining sandlike seed of the small lilac campanula, and the bright jet-like bullets of the fraxinella, and the tiny lilac balls of the white petuana; and to the heavy nutmeg-like seeds of the marvel of Peru: and they both joined in loving flowers and in hating hard names. And then he tried to find out how she came there and she told him that she lived close by: that the dear and kind relation with whom she resided was married to Mr. John Hale, his old tenant "John Hale!" interrupted Lord Lindore"Old John Hale, the great farmer, great mealman, great maltster, the richest yeoman in Berkshire!-the most respectable of his respectable class! John Hale, who has accumulated his ample fortune with every man's good word, and has lived eighty years in the world without losing a friend or making an enemy!-I have thought too little of these things; but I have always been proud of being the landlord of John Hale!" "Oh, how glad I am to hear you say so!" cried Katy. "He and his dear wife-his mistress, as he calls her-are so good to everybody and so kind to me! How glad I am to hear you say that!" The tears glistened in her beautiful eyes; and Lord Lindore, after a little more praise of his venerable tenant, began talking of her own family, of the races, and of the play. And Katy laughed at her admiration of the acting, and acknowledged her delight with the most genuine naïveté. "I did like it," said Katy: "and I should like to go to the play every night; and I don't wish to become too wise to be pleased, like mamma and Gertrude. But I should like to see Shakspeare acted best," added she, pointing to a book at her side, which Lord Lindore had not observed before. He took it up, and it opened of itself at "Much ado about Nothing;" and they naturally fell into talk upon the subject of the great poet of England, a subject which is almost as inexhaustible as nature itself. "I should think," said Katy, "that an actress of real talent would rather play Beatrice than any other part. Lady Lindore says that it is too saucy-but I think not; provided always that the sauciness be very sweetly spoken. That, however, is not what I love best in Beatrice: it is her uncalculating friendship for Hero, her devotion to her injured cousin, her generous indignation at the base "To be sure, when provoked. What else can she do? You would not have her fight, would you? And yet Beatrice had as good a mind for a battle as any woman that ever lived. Hark! There's the dressing-bell. You and I must fight out this battle another time," said she, with something of the sweet sauciness she had described. "Good b'ye till dinner-time, my lord.-Leila! Nelson!" And followed by her pets, Katy ran off by an entrance to the Rockery which he had not seen before. Arthur was about to trace the windings of the labyrinth and follow the swiftfooted beauty, when his mother's voice arrested him. She was standing under the ivied arch by which he had entered. "Well, Arthur, how do you like the little heiress?" "Mother!" "Ay, the little heiress, the learned, the ugly, and the wise! Your Katy! my Katy!" "And are they really one? And had you the heart to frighten me in this cruel way for nothing?" "Nay, Arthur, not for nothing! If I had called Katy as pretty as I thought her, there was great danger that the very commendation might have provoked you into setting up some opposite standard of beauty. I having selected a Hebe, you would have chosen a Juno. For, after all, your falling in love with her dear self at Belford Races, which I could not foresee, was as much the result of the spirit of contradiction as of anything else. Heaven grant that, now you know she has a hundred thousand pounds, you may not for that reason think fit to change your mind! For the rest, you now, I suppose, understand that good old John Hale (whose riches are not at all suspected by those foolish persons, Mr. and Mrs. Elphinstone) proposed the match to me on finding at once your embarrassments and my fondness for his young relation, who, since the marriage of my own children, has been as a daughter in my house; and who is the kindest and dearest little girl that ever trod this work-a-day world." "And learned?" inquired Lord Lindore, laughing. 66 "That you must inquire into yourself," replied his mother. But if it should turn out that Doctor Wilmot, our good rector, finding her a child of seven years old, with very quick parts and very little instruction, took her education in hand, and has enabled her at twenty to gratify her propensity for the drama, by understanding Schiller and Calderon as well as you do, and Eschylus and Sophocles much better, why then you will have to consider how far your philosophy and her beauty may enable you to support the calamity. For my part, I hold the opinion that knowledge untainted by pedantry or vanity seldom does harm to man or woman; and Katy's bright eyes may possibly convert you to the same faith. In the mean while, you have nothing to do but to make love; a language, in which, from long practice, I presume you to be sufficiently well versed to play the part of instructor." "O mother! have some mercy!" "And as the fair lady dines here, you may begin your lessons this very evening. So now, my dear Arthur, go and dress." And with another deprecating "O mother!" the happy son kissed Lady Lindore's hand, and they parted. 66 THE ABSENT MEMBER. EVERYBODY remembers the excellent character of an absent man by La Bruyère, since so capitally dramatized by Isaac Bickerstaff; [why does not Mr. Liston revive the piece?— he would be irresistibly amusing in the part]; everybody remembers the character, and everybody would have thought the whole account a most amusing and pleasant invention, had not the incredible facts been verified by the sayings and doings of a certain Parisian count, whose name has escaped me, known individual of that day, whose distractions (I use the word in the French sense, and not in the English) set all exaggeration at defiance,- who was, in a word, more distrait than Le Distrait of La Bruyère. a well He, "that nameless he," still remains unrivalled; as an odd Frenchman, when such a thing turns up, which is seldom, will generally be found to excel at all points your English oddity, which is comparatively common. No single specimen so complete in its kind has appeared in our country; but the genus is In writing of the forgetfulness of others, a touch of that quality may be permitted in oneself. It is in truth, if one may say of this sort of distractions as of keeping, and belongs to the subject. And in good that worst species of hallucination called love," they best can paint them who can feel them most," then am I a fit recorder of all the errors, blunders, and mistakes that proceed from want of memory; I being as much addicted to forget names, and dates, and places-to write one word for another-to confound authorities, and misquote verse, as Mr. Coningsby himself. I cannot even remember the style and title of my own geraniums, and only yesterday gave away our own Megalanthon seedling (as precious to a geranium-breeder as an Eclipse colt to a gentleman on the turf), mistaking it for a Lord Combermere. force of absence could no farther go." "The by no means extinct; and every now and then, especially amongst learned men, great mathematicians, and eminent Grecians, one has the luck to light upon an original, whose powers of perception and memory are subject to lapses the most extraordinary,-fits of abstraction, during which everything that passes falls unobserved into some pit of forgetfulness, like the oubliette of an old castle, and is never seen or heard of again. ham and chicken, for instance, or roast beef and French beans-was placed before him, and settled the question. But for that inestimable butler, a coroner's inquest would have been held upon him long ago. After breakfast he would dress, thrice happy if the care of his valet protected him from shaving with a pruning-knife, or putting on his waistcoat wrong side out; being dressed, he would prepare for his morning ride, mounting if his groom did not happen to be waiting, the very first four-footed animal that came in his way, sometimes the butcher's horse, with a tray nicely balanced before-sometimes the postboy's donkey, with the letter-bags swinging behind-sometimes his daughter's pony, mounted, forth he sallies, rather in the direction which his steed may happen to prefer than in that which he himself had intended to follow. My excellent friend Mr. Coningsby is just such a man. The Waters of Oblivion of the Eastern Fairy Tale, or the more classical Lethe, are but types to shadow forth the extent and variety of his anti-recollective faculty. Let the fit be strong upon him, and he shall not recognize his own mansion or remember side-saddle notwithstanding; and, when his own name. Suppose him at Whitehall, and the fire which burnt the two Houses would at such a time hardly disturb him. You might, at certain moments, commit murder in his presence with perfect impunity. He would not know the killer from the killed. Of course this does not happen every day; or rather opportunities of so striking a character do not often fall in his way, or doubtless he would not fail to make the most of them. Of the smaller occasions, which can occur more frequently, he is pretty sure to take advantage; and, from the time of his putting on two different coloured stockings, when getting up in the morning, to that of his assuming his wife's laced night-cap on going to bed, his every-day's history is one perpetual series of blunders and mistakes. priation of other people's property might bring our hero into an awkward dilemma; but the man and his ways are well known in our parts; and, when the unlucky owner of the abstracted equipage arrives in a fury, and demands of the astounded ostler what has become of his carriage, one simple exclamation, "Mr. Coningsby, sir!" is at once felt by the aggrieved proprietor to be explanation enough. Bold would be the pen that should attempt even a brief summary of the mistakes committed in one single morning's ride. If he proceed, as he frequently does, to our good town of Belford, he goes for wrong things, to the wrong shops; miscalls the people whom he accosts (seldom, indeed, shall he hit on the proper name, title, or vocation of any one whom he chances to address ;) and asks an old bachelor after his wife, and an old maid after her children; and finally sums up a morning of blunders by going to the inn where he had not left his horse, and quietly stepping into some gig or phaeton prepared for another He will salt his tea, for instance, at break-person. In a new neighbourhood this approfast-time, and put sugar on his muffin, and swallow both messes without the slightest perception of his having deviated from the common mode of applying those relishing condiments. With respect to the quality of his food, indeed, he is as indifferent as Dominie Sampson; and he has been known to fill his glass with vinegar instead of sherry, and to pour a ladle of turtle-soup over his turbot instead of lobster-sauce; and doubtless would have taken both the eatables and drinkables very quietly, had not his old butler, on the watch against such occurrences, whisked both glass and plate away with the celerity of Sancho's physician, Don- -Bless me! I have forgotten that name also! I said that this subject was contagious-Don-he who officiated in the island of Barataria-Don-No, Doctor Pedro Rezio de Aguero, that is the title to which the gentleman answers:-Well, the vinegar would have been drunken, and the turbot and turtle-sauce eaten, had not the vigilant butler played the part of Don Pedro Rezio, and whipped off the whole concern, whilst the good man, his master, sat in dubious meditation, wondering what had become of his dinner, and not quite certain that he might not have eaten it, until a plateful of more salubrious and less incongruous viands Should morning-calls be the order of the day, he contrives to make a pretty comfortable confusion in that simple civility. First of all, he can hardly gallop along the king's highway without getting into a démêlé with the turnpike keepers; sometimes riding quietly through a gate without paying the slightest attention to their demand for toll; at others, tossing them, without dreaming of stopping to receive the change, a shilling or a sovereign, as the case may be for, although great on the currency question-(have I not said that the gentleman is* a county member?)—he is *Erratum: for is read was. "Was a county member" will do just as well, and save the eminent publisher and respectable printer of these loyal volumes from any danger of being called, innocent as they are, to the bar of the House, and committed to his Majesnothing of my own share of the peril. Was must be ty's gaol of Newgate for breach of privilege-to say the word. practically most happily ignorant of the current coin of the realm, and would hardly know gold from silver, if asked to distinguish between them. This event is a perfect Godsend to the gate-keeper; who, confiding in the absolute deafness produced by his abstraction, calls after him with a complete assurance that he may be honest with impunity, and that, bawl as he may, there is no more chance of his arresting his passenger, than the turnpikeman of Ware had of stopping Johnny Gilpin. Accordingly, after undergoing the ceremony of offering change, he pockets the whole coin with a safe conscience. Beggars (and he is very charitable) find their account also in this ignorance: he flings about crowns for pennypieces, and half-sovereigns for sixpences, relieving the same set a dozen times over, and getting quit of a pocketful of money (for though he have a purse, he seldom remembers to make use of it-luckily seldom-for if he do fill that gentlemanly net-work, he is sure to lose it, cash, bank-notes, and all) in the course of a morning's ride. - Arrived at the place of his destination, the house at which he is to call, a new scene of confusion is pretty sure to arise. In the first place, it rarely happens that he does arrive at the veritable mansion to which his visit is intended. He is far more likely to ride to the wrong place, inquire of the bewildered footman for some name not his master's, and be finally ushered into a room full of strangers, persons whom he neither visits nor knows, who stare and wonder what brought him, whilst he, not very sure whether he ought to remember them, whether they be his acquaintances or not, stammers out an apology and marches off again. (N. B. He once did this whilst canvassing for the county to a rival candidate, and finding only the lady of the house, entreated her, in the most insinuating manner, to exert her influence with her husband for his vote and interest. This passed for a deep stroke of finesse amongst those who did not know him-they who did, laughed and exclaimed," Mr. Coningsby !") or he shall commit the reverse mistake, and riding to the right house, shall ask for the wrong people; or, finding the family out, he shall have forgotten his own name-I mean his nametickets and shall leave one from his wife's or daughter's card-case, taken up by that sort of accident which is to him second nature;or he shall unite all these blunders, and leave at a house, where he himself does not visit, a card left at his own mansion by a third person, who is also unacquainted with the family to which so unconsciously that outward sign and token of acquaintanceship had travelled. Imagine the mistakes and the confusions occasioned by such doings in a changeable neighbourhood, much broken into parties by politics and election contests! Sometimes it does good, -as between two old country squires, who, having been friends all their lives, had quarrelled about the speed of a greyhound and the decision of a course, and had mutually vowed never to approach each other's door. The sight of his antagonist's card (left in one of Mr. Coningsby's absent fits) so mollified the more testy elder of the two, that he forthwith returned the visit, and the opposite party being luckily not at home, a card was left there also; and either individual thinking the concession first made to himself, was emulous in stepping forward with the most cordial hand-shaking when they met casually at dinner at a third place. But Mr. Coningsby's visiting blunders were not always so fortunate; where they healed one breach, they made twenty, and one had very nearly occasioned a duel betwixt two youngsters, lords of neighbouring manors, between whose gamekeepers there was an outstanding feud. The card left was taken for a cartel-a note of defiance; and but for the interference of constables and mayors, and magistrates, and aunts, and sisters, and mammas, and peace-preservers of all ages and sexes, some very hot blood would inevitably have been spilt. As it was, the affair terminated in a grand effusion of ink; the correspondence between the seconds, a delicious specimen of polite and punctilious quarrelling, having been published for the edification of the world, and filling three columns of the county newspapers. It came to no conclusion; for although the one party conceded that a card had been left, and the other that the person to whom the name belonged did not leave it, yet how the thing did arrive on the hall-table remained a mystery. The servant who opened the door happened to be a stranger, and somehow or other nobody ever thought of Mr. Coningsby ;-nay, he himself, although taking a great interest in the dispute, and wondering over the puzzle like the rest of the neighbourhood, never once recollected his own goings on that eventful morning, nor dreamt that it could be through his infirmity that Sir James Mordaunt's card was left at Mr. Chandler's;-to so incredible a point was his forgetfulness carried. If in so simple a matter as morning visiting he contrived to produce such confusion, think how his genius must have expanded when so dangerous a weapon as a pen got into his hands! I question if he ever wrote a letter in his life without some blunder in the date, the address, the signature, or the subject. He would indite an epistle to one person, direct it to another, and send it to a third, who could not conceive from whom it came, because he had forgotten to put his name at the bottom. But of the numerous perplexities to which he was in the habit of giving rise, franks were by very far the most frequent cause. Ticklish things are they even to the punctual and the careful; and to Mr. |