was grace itself. She was, in short, the very | and Shakspeare, and Richardson's novels, in picture of youth, health, and happiness. No which she was learned; but then her powers one could see her without being prepossessed in her favour. I took a fancy to her the moment she entered the room; and it increased every hour in spite of, or rather perhaps for, certain deficiencies, which caused poor Cousin Mary to be held exceedingly cheap by her accomplished relatives.

of observation were sharpened and quickened, in a very unusual degree, by the leisure and opportunity afforded for their developement, at a time of life when they are most acute. She had nothing to distract her mind. Her attention was always awake and alive. She was an excellent and curious naturalist, merely because she had gone into the fields with her eyes open; and knew all the details of rural management, domestic or agricultural, as well as the peculiar habits and modes of thinking of the peasantry, simply because she had lived in the country, and made use of her ears. Then she was fanciful, recollective, new; drew her images from the real objects, not from their shadows in books. In short, to listen to her, and the young ladies her companions, who, accomplished to the height, had trodden the education-mill till they all moved in one step, had lost sense in sound, and ideas in words, was enough to make us turn masters and governesses out of doors, and leave our daughters and grand-daughters to Mrs. C.'s system of non-instruction. I should have liked to meet with another specimen, just to ascertain whether the peculiar charm and advantage arose from the quick and active mind of this fair Ignorant, or was really the natural and inevitable result of the training; but, alas! to find more than one unaccomplished young lady, in this accomplished age, is not to be hoped for. So I admired and envied; and her fair kinswoman pitied and scorned, and tried to teach; and Mary, never made for a learner, and as full of animal spirits as a school-boy in the holidays, sang, and laughed, and skipped about from morning till night.

She was the youngest daughter of an officer of rank, dead long ago; and his sickly widow having lost by death, or that other death, marriage, all her children but this, could not, from very fondness, resolve to part with her darling for the purpose of acquiring the commonest instruction. She talked of it, indeed, now and then, but she only talked; so that, in this age of universal education, Mary C. at eighteen exhibited the extraordinary phenomenon of a young woman of high family, whose acquirements were limited to reading, writing, needle-work, and the first rules of arithmetic. The effect of this let-alone system, combined with a careful seclusion from all improper society, and a perfect liberty in her country rambles, acting upon a mind of great power and activity, was the very reverse of what might have been predicted. It had produced not merely a delightful freshness and originality of manner and character, a piquant ignorance of those things of which one is tired to death, but knowledge, positive, accurate, and various knowledge. She was, to be sure, wholly unaccomplished; knew nothing of quadrilles, though her every motion was dancing: nor a note of music, though she used to warble, like a bird, sweet snatches of old songs, as she skipped up and down the house; nor of painting, except as her taste had been formed by a minute acquaintance with nature into It must be confessed, as a counter-balance an intense feeling of art. She had that real to her other perfections, that the dear Cousin extra sense, an eye for colour, too, as well as Mary was, as far as great natural modesty an ear for music. Not one in twenty-not and an occasional touch of shyness would let one in a hundred of our sketching and copying her, the least in the world of a romp! She ladies could love and appreciate a picture loved to toss about children, to jump over where there was colour and mind, a picture stiles, to scramble through hedges, to climb by Claude, or by our English Claudes, Wil- trees; and some of her knowledge of plants son and Hoffland, as she could-for she loved and birds may certainly have arisen from her landscape best, because she understood it best delight in these boyish amusements. And -it was a portrait of which she knew the which of us has not found that the strongest, original. Then her needle was in her hands the healthiest, and most flourishing acquirealmost a pencil. I never knew such an ment has arisen from pleasure or accident, has embroideress-she would sit "printing her been in a manner self-sown, like an oak of the thoughts on lawn," till the delicate creation forest? Oh she was a sad romp; as skittish vied with the snowy tracery, the fantastic as a wild colt, as uncertain as a butterfly, as carving of hoar frost, the richness of Gothic uncatchable as a swallow! But her great architecture, or of that which so much resembles it, the luxuriant fancy of old point lace. That was her only accomplishment, and a rare artist she was-muslin and net were She had no French either, not a word; no Italian; but then her English was racy, unhackneyed, proper to the thought to a degree that only original thinking could give. She had not much reading, except of the Bible

her canvass.

personal beauty, the charm, grace, and light ness of her movements, and above all, her evident innocence of heart, were bribes of indulgence which no one could withstand. I never heard her blamed by any human being. The perfect unrestraint of her attitudes, and the exquisite symmetry of her form, would have rendered her an invaluable study for a painter. Her daily doings would have formed

a series of pictures. I have seen her scudding gerous illness of her mother, who, after lanthrough a shallow rivulet, with her petticoats guishing for some months, died; and Mary caught up just a little above the ankle, like a went to live with a sister much older than young Diana, and a bounding, skimming, en- herself, and richly married in a manufacturing joying motion, as if native to the element, town, where she languished in smoke, conwhich might have become a Naiad. I have finement, dependence, and display, (for her seen her on the topmost round of a ladder, sister was a match-making lady, a manœuwith one foot on the roof of a house, flinging vrer) for about a twelvemonth. She then left down the grapes that no one else had nerve her house and went into Wales-as a govenough to reach, laughing, and garlanded, and erness! Imagine the astonishment caused by crowned with vine leaves, like a Bacchante. this intelligence amongst us all; for I myself, But the prettiest combination of circumstances though admiring the untaught damsel almost under which I ever saw her, was driving a as much as I loved her, should certainly never donkey cart up a hill one sunny windy day, have dreamed of her as a teacher. However, in September. It was a gay party of young she remained in the rich baronet's family women, some walking, some in open carriages where she had commenced her employment. of different descriptions, bent to see a cele- They liked her apparently, there she was; brated prospect from a hill called the Ridges. and again nothing was heard of her for many The ascent was by a steep narrow lane, cut months, until, happening to call on the friends deeply between sand-banks, crowned with at whose house I had originally met her, I high feathery hedges. The road and its pic- espied her fair blooming face, a rose amongst turesque banks lay bathed in the golden sun-roses, at the drawing-room window,—and inshine, whilst the autumnal sky, intensely stantly with the speed of light was met and blue, appeared at the top as through an arch. embraced by her at the hall-door. The hill was so steep that we had all dismounted, and left our different vehicles in charge of the servants below; but Mary, to whom, as incomparably the best charioteer, the conduct of a certain nondescript machine, a sort of donkey curricle, had fallen, determined to drive a delicate little girl, who was afraid of the walk, to the top of the eminence. She jumped out for the purpose, and we followed, watching and admiring her as she won her way up the hill: now tugging at the donkeys in front with her bright face towards them and us, and springing along backwards -now pushing the chaise from behind-now running by the side of her steeds, patting and caressing them-now soothing the half frightened child-now laughing, nodding, and shaking her little whip at us-darting about like some winged creature-till at last she stopped at the top of the ascent, and stood for a moment on the summit, her straw bonnet blown back, and held on only by the strings; her brown hair playing on the wind in long natural ringlets; her complexion becoming every moment more splendid from exertion, redder and whiter; her eyes and her smile brightening and dimpling; her figure in its simple white gown, strongly relieved by the deep blue sky, and her whole form seeming to dilate before our eyes. There she stood under the arch formed by two meeting elms, a Hebe, a Psyche, a perfect goddess of youth and joy. The Ridges are very fine things altogether, especially the part to which we were bound, a turfy, breezy spot, sinking down abruptly like a rock into a wild foreground of heath and forest, with a magnificent command of distant objects; but we saw nothing that day like the figure on the top of the hill.

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There was not the slightest perceptible difference in her deportment. She still bounded like a fawn, and laughed and clapped her hands like an infant. She was not a day older, or graver, or wiser, since we parted. Her post of tutoress had at least done her no harm, whatever might have been the case with her pupils. The more I looked at her, the more I wondered; and after our mutual expressions of pleasure had a little subsided, I could not resist the temptation of saying, "So you are really a governess!". "Yes." -"And you continue in the same family?" -"Yes.". -"And you like your post?", "O yes, yes!"-" But my dear Mary, what could induce you to go?". Why, they wanted a governess, so I went."-" But what could induce them to keep you?" The perfect gravity and earnestness with which this question was put, set her laughing, and the laugh was echoed back from a group at the end of the room, which I had not before noticed-an elegant man in the prime of life showing a portfolio of rare prints to a fine girl of twelve, and a rosy boy of seven, evidently his children. Why did they keep me? Ask them," replied Mary, turning towards them with an arch smile. "We kept her to teach her ourselves," said the young lady."We kept her to play cricket with us," said her brother. "We kept her to marry," said the gentleman, advancing gaily to shake hands with me. "She was a bad governess, perhaps; but she is an excellent wife—that is her true vocation." And so it is. She is, indeed, an excellent wife; and assuredly a most fortunate one. I never saw happiness so sparkling or so glowing; never saw such devotion to a bride, or such fondness for a After this I lost sight of her for a long time. step-mother, as Sir W. S. and his lovely chil-She was called suddenly home by the dan-dren show to the sweet Cousin Mary.

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thankful above all for the simple habits, the healthful temperament, which render them so dear! Alas! who may dare expect a life of such happiness?-But I can at least snatch and prolong the fleeting pleasure, can fill my basket with pure flowers, and my heart with pure thoughts; can gladden my little home with their sweetness; can divide my treasures with one, a dear one, who cannot seek them; can see them when I shut my eyes; and dream of them when I fall asleep.

scandal of a large county forty years ago, and neous harangues. The matter of these oraa hundred years before, and ever since, all the tions is inconceivably various. Perhaps the marriages, deaths, births, elopements, law-local and genealogical anecdotes, the sort of suits, and casualties of her own times, her supplement to the history of *** ****shire, may father's, grandfather's, great-grandfather's, ne- be her strongest point; but she shines almost phew's, and grand-nephew's, has she detailed as much in medicine and housewifery. Her with a minuteness, an accuracy, a prodigality medical dissertations savour a little of that of learning, a profuseness of proper names, a particular branch of the science called quackpedantry of locality, which would excite the ery. She has a specific against almost every envy of a county historian, a king-at-arms, or disease to which the human frame is liable; even a Scotch novelist. Her knowledge is and is terribly prosy and unmerciful in her astonishing; but the most astonishing part of symptoms. Her cures kill. In house-keepall is how she came by that knowledge. It ing, her notions resemble those of other verbal should seem, to listen to her, as if, at some managers; full of economy and retrenchment, time of her life, she must have listened her- with a leaning towards reform, though she self; and yet her countryman declares, that in loves so well to declaim on the abuses in the the forty years he has known her, no such cook's department, that I am not sure that she event has occurred; and she knows new news would very heartily thank any radical who too! It must be intuition. should sweep them quite away. For the rest, her system sounds very finely in theory, but rather fails in practice. Her recipes would be capital, only that some way or other they do not eat well; her preserves seldom keep; and her sweet wines are sure to turn sour. These are certainly her favourite topics; but any one will do. Allude to some anecdote of the neighbourhood, and she forthwith treats you with as many parallel passages as are to be found in an air with variations. Take up a new publication, and she is equally at home there; for though she knows little of books, she has, in the course of an up-and-down life, met with a good many authors, and teazes and provokes you by telling of them precisely what you do not care to hear, the maiden names of their wives, and the Christian names of their daughters, and into what families their sisters and cousins married, and in what towns they have lived, what streets, and what numbers. Boswell himself never drew up the table of Dr. Johnson's Fleet-street courts with greater care, than she made out to me the successive residences of P. P., Esq., author of a tract on the French Revolution, and a pamphlet on the Poor Laws. The very weather is not a safe subject. Her memory is a perpetual register of hard frosts, and long droughts, and high winds, and terrible storms, with all the evils that followed in their train, and all the personal events connected with them, so that if you happen to remark that clouds are come up, and you fear it may rain, she replies, "Ay, it is just such a morning as three and thirty years ago, when my poor cousin was married-you remember my cousin Barbara she married so and so, the son of so and so;" and then comes the whole pedigree of the bridegroom; the amount of the settlements, and the reading and signing them over night; a description of the weddingdresses, in the style of Sir Charles Grandison, and how much the bride's gown cost per yard; the names, residences, and a short subsequent history of the bridemaids and men, the gentleman who gave the bride away, and the

The manner of her speech has little remarkable. It is rather old-fashioned and provincial, but perfectly lady-like, low and gentle, and not seeming so fast as it is; like the great pedestrians she clears her ground easily, and never seems to use any exertion; yet, "I would my horse had the speed of her tongue, and so good a continuer." She will talk you sixteen hours a day for twenty days together, and not deduct one poor five minutes for halts and baiting time. Talking, sheer talking, is meat and drink and sleep to her. She likes nothing else. Eating is a sad interruption. For the tea-table she has some toleration; but dinner, with its clatter of plates and jingle of knives and forks, dinner is her abhorrence. Nor are the other common pursuits of life more in her favour. Walking exhausts the breath that might be better employed. Dancing is a noisy diversion, and singing is worse; she cannot endure any music, except the long, grand, dull concerto, which nobody thinks of listening to. Reading and chess she classes together as silent barbarisms, unworthy of a social and civilized people. Cards, too, have their faults; there is a rivalry, a mute eloquence in those four aces, that leads away the attention; besides, partners will sometimes scold; so she never plays at cards; and upon the strength of this abstinence had very nearly passed for serious, till it was discovered that she could not abide a long sermon. She always looks out for the shortest preacher, and never went to above one Bible meeting in her life. "Such speeches!" quoth she, "I thought the men never meant to have done. People have great need of patience." Plays, of course, she abhors; and operas, and mobs, and all things that will be heard, especially children; though for babies, particularly when asleep, for dogs and pictures, and such silent intelligences as serve to talk of and talk to, she has a considerable partiality; and an agreeable and gracious flattery to the mammas and other owners of these pretty dumb things is a very usual introduction to her miscella

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