Divided from the shop by a narrow yard, and opposite the shoemaker's, is a habitation, of whose inmates I shall say nothing. A cottage-no-a miniature house, with many additions, little odds and ends of places, pantries, and what not; all angles, and of a charming in-and-outness; a little bricked court before one half, and a little flower-yard before the other; the walls old and weatherstained, covered with hollyhocks, roses, honey-suckles, and a great apricot tree; the casements full of geraniums; (ah, there is our superb white cat peeping out from amongst them!) the closets (our landlord has the assurance to call them rooms) full of contrivances and corner-cupboards; and the little garden behind full of common flowers, tulips, pinks, larkspurs, pionies, stocks, and carnations, with an arbour of privet, not unlike a sentry-box, where one lives in a delicious green light, and looks out on the gayest of all gay flower-beds. That house was built on purpose to show in what an exceedingly small compass comfort may be packed. Well, I will loiter there no longer. improving, doing and undoing here. It is a perfect Penelope's web. Carpenters and bricklayers have been at work for these eighteen months, and yet I sometimes stand and wonder whether any thing has really been done. One exploit in last June was, however, by no means equivocal. Our good neighbour fancied that the limes shaded the rooms, and made them dark, (there was not a creature in the house but the workmen,) so he had all the leaves stripped from every tree. There they stood, poor miserable skeletons, as bare as Christmas under the glowing midsummer sun. Nature revenged herself in her own sweet and gracious manner; fresh leaves sprang out, and at early Christmas the foliage was as brilliant as when the outrage was committed. Next door lives a carpenter, "famed ten miles round, and worthy all his fame,"-few cabinet-makers surpass him, with his excellent wife, and their little daughter Lizzy, the plaything and queen of the village, a child three years old according to the register, but six in size and strength and intellect, in The next tenement is a place of impor- power and in self-will. She manages every tance, the Rose inn; a white-washed build- body in the place, her schoolmistress ining, retired from the road behind its fine cluded; turns the wheeler's children out of swinging sign, with a little bow-window their own little cart, and makes them draw room coming out on one side, and forming, her; seduces cakes and lollypops from the with our stable on the other, a sort of open very shop-window; makes the lazy carry square, which is the constant resort of carts, her, the silent talk to her, the grave romp wagons, and return chaises. There are two with her; does any thing she pleases; is carts there now, and mine host is serving absolutely irresistible. Her chief attraction them with beer in his eternal red waistcoat. lies in her exceeding power of loving, and He is a thriving man, and a portly, as his her firm reliance on the love and indulgence waistcoat attests, which has been twice let of others. How impossible it would be to out within this twelvemonth. Our landlord disappoint the dear little girl when she runs has a stirring wife, a hopeful son, and a to meet you, slides her pretty hand into yours, daughter, the belle of the village; not so looks up gladly in your face, and says, pretty as the fair nymph of the shoe-shop," Come!" You must go you cannot help and far less elegant, but ten times as fine; all curl-papers in the morning, like a porcupine, all curls in the afternoon, like a poodle, with more flounces than curl-papers, and more lovers than curls. Miss Phoebe is fitter for town than country; and, to do her justice, she has a consciousness of that fitness, and turns her steps town-ward as often as she can. She is gone to B-to-day with her last and principal lover, a recruiting serjeant -a man as tall as Serjeant Kite, and as impodent. Some day or other he will carry off Miss Phoebe. In a line with the bow-window room is a low garden wall, belonging to a house under repair-the white house opposite the collarmaker's shop, with four lime trees before it, and a wagon-load of bricks at the door. That house is the plaything of a wealthy, well-meaning, whimsical person, who lives about a mile off. He has a passion for brick and mortar, and, being too wise to meddle with his own residence, diverts himself with altering and re-altering, improving and re B it. Another part of her charm is her singular beauty. Together with a good deal of the character of Napoleon, she has something of his square, sturdy, upright form, with the finest limbs in the world, a complexion purely English, a round laughing face, sunburnt and rosy, large merry blue eyes, curling brown hair, and a wonderful play of countenance. She has the imperial attitudes too, and loves to stand with her hands behind her, or folded over her bosom; and sometimes, when she has a little touch of shyness, she clasps them together on the top of her head, pressing down her shining curls, and looking so exquisitely pretty! Yes, Lizzy is queen of the village! She has but one rival in her dominions, a certain white grey-hound called May-flower, much her friend, who resembles her in beauty and strength, in playfulness, and almost in sagacity, and reigns over the animal world as she over the human. They are both coming with me, Lizzy and Lizzy's "pretty May." We are now at the end of the street; a cross lane, a rope-walk, shaded with limes and oaks, and a cool clear pond overhung with elms, lead us to the bottom of the hill. There is still one house round the corner, ending in a picturesque wheeler's shop. The dwelling-house is more ambitious. Look at the fine flowered window-blinds, the green door with the brass knocker, and the somewhat prim but very civil person, who is sending off a labouring man with sirs and curtsies enough for a prince of the blood. Those are the curate's lodgings-apartments, his landlady would call them: he lives with his own family four miles off, but once or twice a week he comes to his neat little parlour to write sermons, to marry, or to bury, as the case may require. Never were better or kinder people than his host and hostess; and there is a reflection of clerical importance about them, since their connection with the church, which is quite edifying-a decorum, a gravity, a solemn politeness. Oh, to see the worthy wheeler carry the gown after his lodger on a Sunday, nicely pinned up in his wife's best handkerchief!or to hear him rebuke a squalling child or a squabbling woman! The curate is nothing to him. He is fit to be perpetual churchwarden. We must now cross the lane into the shady rope-walk. That pretty white cottage opposite, which stands straggling at the end of the village, in a garden full of flowers, belongs to our mason, the shortest of men, and his handsome, tall wife: he, a dwarf, with the voice of a giant; one starts when he begins to talk as if he were shouting through a speakingtrumpet; she, the sister, daughter, and granddaughter, of a long line of gardeners, and no contemptible one herself. It is very magnanimous in me not to hate her; for she beats me in my own way, in chrysanthemums, and dahlias, and the like gauds. Her plants are sure to live; mine have a sad trick of dying, perhaps because I love them, "not wisely, but too well," and kill them with over-kindness. Half-way up the hill is another detached cottage, the residence of an officer and his beautiful family. That eldest boy, who is hanging over the gate, and looking with such intense childish admiration at my Lizzy, might be a model for a Cupid. so he retreated to the work-house, the pensioner and factotum of the village, amongst whom he divides his services. His mind often wanders, intent on some fantastic and impracticable plan, and lost to present objects; but he is perfectly harmless, and full of a child-like simplicity, a smiling contentedness, a most touching gratitude. Every one is kind to John Evans, for there is that about him which must be loved; and his unprotectedness, his utter defencelessness, have an irresistible claim on every better feeling. I know nobody who inspires so deep and tender a pity; he improves all around him. He is useful, too, to the extent of his little power; will do any thing, but loves gardening best, and still piques himself on his old arts of pruning fruit-trees, and raising cucumbers. He is the happiest of men just now, for he has the management of a melon bed-a melon bed!-fie! What a grand pompous name was that for three melon plants under a handlight! John Evans is sure that they will succeed. We shall sce: as the chancellor said, "I doubt." We are on the very brow of the eminence close to the Hill-house and its beautiful garden. On the outer edge of the paling, hanging over the bank that skirts the road, is an old thorn-such a thorn! The long sprays covered with snowy blossoms, so graceful, so elegant, so lightsome, and yet so rich! There only wants a pool under the thorn to give a still lovelier reflection, quivering and trembling, like a tuft of feathers, whiter and greener than the life, and more prettily mixed with the bright blue sky. There should indeed be a pool; but on the dark grass-plat, under the high bank, which is crowned by that magnificent plume, there is something that does almost as well,- Lizzy and Mayflower in the midst of a game at romps, "making a sun-shine in the shady place;" Lizzy rolling, laughing, clapping her hands, and glowing like a rose; May-flower playing about her like summer lightning, dazzling the eyes with her sudden turns, her leaps, her bounds, her attacks and her escapes. She darts round the lovely little girl, with the same momentary touch that the swallow How pleasantly the road winds up the hill, skims over the water, and has exactly the with its broad green borders and hedge-rows same power of flight, the same matchless so thickly timbered! How finely the evening ease and strength and grace. What a pretty sun falls on that sandy excavated bank, and picture they would make; what a pretty foretouches the farm-house on the top of the emi- ground they do make to the real landscape! nence! and how clearly defined and relieved The road winding down the hill with a slight is the figure of the man who is just coming bend, like that in the High-street at Oxford; down! It is poor John Evans, the gardener a wagon slowly ascending, and a horseman -an excellent gardener till about ten years passing it at a full trot-(ah! Lizzy, Mayago, when he lost his wife, and became in-flower will certainly desert you to have a He was sent to St. Luke's, and dismissed as cured; but his power was gone and his strength; he could no longer manage a garden, nor submit to the restraints, nor encounter the fatigue of regular employment; sane. gambol with that blood-horse!)-half-way down, just at the turn, the red cottage of the lieutenant, covered with vines, the very image of comfort and content; farther down, on the opposite side, the small white dwelling of A ing, backed by a blooming orchard, and covered with honeysuckle and jessamine, looks, like the chosen abode of snugness and comfort. And so it is. 66 the little mason; then the limes and the ropewalk; then the village street, peeping through the trees, whose clustering tops hide all but the chimneys, and various roofs of the houses, and here and there some angle of a wall: Dame Wilson was a respected servant in a farther on, the elegant town of B-, with most respectable family, where she passed its fine old church towers and spires; the all the early part of her life, and which she whole view shut in by a range of chalky quitted only on her marriage with a man of hills; and over every part of the picture, trees character and industry, and of that peculiar so profusely scattered, that it appears like a universality of genius which forms, what is woodland scene, with glades and villages in- called in our country phrase, a handy fellow. termixed. The trees are of all kinds and all He could do any sort of work; was thatcher, hues, chiefly the finely shaped elm, of so deep carpenter, bricklayer, painter, gardener, gameand bright a green, the tips of whose high keeper, every thing by turns, and nothing outer branches droop down with such a crisp long." No job came amiss to him. He and garland-like richness, and the oak, whose killed pigs, mended shoes, cleaned clocks, stately form is just now so splendidly adorned doctored cows, dogs, and horses, and even by the sunny colouring of the young leaves. went so far as bleeding and drawing teeth in Turning again up the hill, we find ourselves his experiments on the human subject. In on that peculiar charm of English scenery, a addition to these multifarious talents, he was green common, divided by the road; the right ready, obliging, and unfearing; jovial withal, side fringed by hedge-rows and trees, with and fond of good fellowship; and endowed cottages and farm-houses irregularly placed, with a promptness of resource which made and terminated by a double avenue of noble him the general adviser of the stupid, the oaks: the left, prettier still, dappled by bright puzzled, and the timid. He was universally pools of water, and islands of cottages and admitted to be the cleverest man in the parish; cottage-gardens, and sinking gradually down and his death, which happened about ten to corn-fields and meadows, and an old farm- years ago, in consequence of standing in the house, with pointed roofs and clustered chim- water, drawing a pond for one neighbour, at a neys, looking out from its blooming orchard, time when he was over-heated by loading hay and backed by woody hills. The common is for another, made quite a gap in our village itself the prettiest part of the prospect; half commonwealth. John Wilson had no rival, covered with low furze, whose golden blos- and has had no successor: — - for the Robert soms reflect so intensely the last beams of the Ellis, whom certain youngsters would fain setting sun, and alive with cows and sheep, exalt to a co-partnery of fame, is simply noand two sets of cricketers: one of young men, body-a bell-ringer, a ballad-singer-a troller surrounded with spectators, some standing, of profane catches- -a fiddler-a bruiser-a some sitting, some stretched on the grass, all loller on alehouse benches-a teller of good taking a delightful interest in the game; the stories—a mimic-a poet!-What is all this other, a merry group of little boys, at an to compare with the solid parts of John Wilbumble distance, for whom even cricket is son? Whose clock hath Robert Ellis cleanscarcely lively enough, shouting, leaping, and ed?-whose windows hath he mended? enjoying themselves to their hearts' content. whose dog hath he broken?-whose pigs hath But cricketers and country boys are too im- he rung? whose pond hath he fished?portant persons in our village to be talked of whose hay hath he saved?-whose cow hath merely as figures in the landscape. They he cured?-whose calf hath he killed ? — deserve an individual introduction-an essay whose teeth hath he drawn - whom hath he to themselves-and they shall have it. No bled? Tell me that, irreverent whipsters! fear of forgetting the good-humoured faces No! John Wilson is not to be replaced. He that meet us in our walks every day. was missed by the whole parish; and most of all he was missed at home. His excellent wife was left the sole guardian and protector of two fatherless girls; one an infant at her knee, the other a pretty handy lass about nine years old. Cast thus upon the world, there must have been much to endure, much to suffer; but it was borne with a smiling patience, a hopeful cheeriness of spirit, and a decent pride, which seemed to command success as well as respect in their struggle for independence. Without assistance of any sort, by needle-work, by washing and mending lace and fine linen, and other skilful and profitable labours, and by the produce of her orchard and poultry, Dame Wilson contrived to main HANNAH. THE prettiest cottage on our village-green is the little dwelling of Dame Wilson. It stands in a corner of the common, where the hedge-rows go curving off into a sort of bay round a clear bright pond, the earliest haunt of the swallow. A deep, woody, green lane, such as Hobbima or Ruydsdael might have painted, a lane that hints of nightingales, forms one boundary of the garden, and a sloping meadow of the other: whilst the cottage itself, a low thatched irregular build In tain herself and her children in their own prudence was equal to either. Except to be no fairs, or revels, or Mayings; went no Since the new marriage act,* we, who belong to country magistrates, have gained a priority over the rest of the parish in matrimonial news. We (the privileged) see on a work-day the names which the sabbath announces to the generality. Many a blushing awkward pair hath our little lame clerk (a sorry Cupid) ushered in between dark and light to stammer and hacker, to bow and curtsey, to sign or make a mark, as it pleases Heaven. One Saturday, at the usual hour, the limping clerk made his appearance; and, walking through our little hall, I saw a fine athletic young man, the very image of health and vigour, mental and bodily, holding the hand of a young woman, who, with her head half buried in a geranium in the window, was turning bashfully away, listening, and yet not seeming to listen, to his tender whispers. The shrinking grace of that bending figure was not to be mistaken. "Hannah!" and she walked aside with me, and a rapid series of questions and answers conveyed the story of the courtship. "William was," said Hannah, "a journeyman hatter in B. He had walked over one Sunday evening to see the cricketing, and then he came again. Her mother liked him. Every body liked her William-and she had promised - she was going-was it wrong?". "Oh no!-and where are you to live ?"-" William has got a room in B. He works for Mr. Smith, the rich hatter in the market-place, and Mr. Smith speaks of him-oh, so well! But William will not tell me where our room is. I suppose in some narrow street or lane, which he is afraid I shall not like, as our common is so story was written during the short life of that whim* It is almost unnecessary to observe that this little sical experiment in legislation. 66 And I was right. Hannah has survived the shock. She is returned to B., and I have been to call on her. I never saw any thing so delicate and bride-like as she looked in her white gown and her lace mob, in a room light and simple, and tasteful and elegant, with nothing fine except some beautiful green pleasant. He little thinks-any where." "Oh no! Hannah loves her husband too She stopped suddenly; but her blush and her well. Any where with him!" clasped hands finished the sentence, "any where with him!"-" And when is the happy day?"—"On Monday fortnight, Madam," said the bridegroom elect, advancing with the little clerk to summon Hannah to the parlour, "the earliest day possible." He drew her arm through his, and we parted. The Monday fortnight was a glorious morn-house plants. Her reception was a charming ing; one of those rare November days when the sky and the air are soft and bright as in April. What a beautiful day for Hannah !" was the first exclamation of the breakfast table. Did she tell you where they should dine?"-"No, Ma'am; I forgot to ask.""I can tell you," said the master of the house, with somewhat of good-humoured importance in his air, somewhat of the look of a man who, having kept a secret as long as it was necessary, is not sorry to get rid of the burthen.I can tell you: in London."-"In London!"-"Yes. Your little favourite has been in high luck. She has married the only son of one of the best and richest men in B., Mr. Smith, the great hatter. It is quite a romance," continued he: "William Smith walked over one Sunday evening to see a match at cricket. He saw our pretty Hannah, and forgot to look at the cricketers. After having gazed his fill, he approached to address her, and the little damsel was off like a bird. William did not like her the less for that, and thought of her the more. He came again and again; and at last contrived to tame this wild dove, and even to get the entrée of the cot⚫tage. Hearing Hannah talk, is not the way to fall out of love with her. So William, at last finding his case serious, laid the matter before his father, and requested his consent to the marriage. Mr. Smith was at first a little startled; but William is an only son, and an excellent son; and, after talking with me, and looking at Hannah, (I believe her sweet face was the more eloquent advocate of the two,) he relented; and having a spice of his son's romance, finding that he had not mentioned his situation in life, he made a point of its being kept secret till the wedding-day. We have managed the business of settlements; and William, having discovered that his fair bride has some curiosity to see London (a curiosity, by the by, which I suspect she owes to you or poor Lucy), intends taking her thither for a fortnight. He will then bring her home to one of the best houses in B., a fine garden, fine furniture, fine clothes, fine servants, and more money than she will know what to do with. Really the surprise of Lord E.'s farmer's daughter, when, thinking she had married his steward, he brought her to Burleigh, and installed her as its mistress, could hardly have been greater. I hope the shock will not kill Hannah though, as is said to have been the case with that poor lady." mixture of sweetness and modesty, a little more respectful than usual, and far more shamefaced! Poor thing! her cheeks must have pained her! But this was the only difference. In every thing else she is still the same Hannah, and has lost none of her old habits of kindness and gratitude. She was making a handsome matronly cap, evidently for her mother; and spoke, even with tears, of her new father's goodness to her and to Susan. She would fetch the cake and wine herself, and would gather, in spite of all remonstrance, some of her choicest flowers as a parting nosegay. She did, indeed, just hint at her troubles with visiters and servants how strange and sad it was! seemed distressed at ringing the bell, and visibly shrank from the sound of a double knock. But, in spite of these calamities, Hannah is a happy woman. The double rap was her husband's, and the glow on her cheek, and the smile of her lips and eyes when he appeared, spoke more plainly than ever, "Any where with him!" WALKS IN THE COUNTRY. FROST. JANUARY 23d. At noon to-day, I and my white greyhound, May-flower, set out for a walk into a very beautiful world, a sort of silent fairy land, a creation of that matchless magician the hoar-frost. There had been just snow enough to cover the earth and all its colours with one sheet of pure and uniform white, and just time enough since the snow had fallen to allow the hedges to be freed of their fleecy load, and clothed with a delicate coating of rime. The atmosphere was deliciously calm; soft, even mild, in spite of the thermometer; no perceptible air, but a stillness that might almost be felt; the sky, rather grey than blue, throwing out in bold relief the snow-covered roofs of our village, and the rimy trees that rise above them, and the sun shining dimly as through a veil, giving a pale fair light, like the moon, only brighter. There was a silence, too, that might become the moon, as we stood at our little gate looking up the quiet street; a sabbath-like pause of work and play, rare on a work-day; nothing was audible but the pleasant hum of frost, that low monotonous sound, which is perhaps |
