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tion of paste-board trellis-work, the painting them; I could read the play decently enough; and decorating of Urania's bower, the only but in acting I was really deplorable; shame part of the scenery we managed at home, (all and fear and awkwardness had set their mark the rest was hired from a private theatre) on me; there was no breaking the spell. My found full employment for little and great. hands and arms, especially, were intolerable The actresses were busy enough. Urania had burthens. I never knew what to do with her part to study and her dress; or rather she them; and should certainly have resigned in had to reconcile these perplexing contradic- despair, but for the relief of a fan in the protions, to submit her decorations to the sedate-logue, and a most comfortable promise from ness of her character, and to take away some- Florella, to pop a nosegay into my hand the what of age and gravity from her character to moment she came on the scene. Nothing less suit the elegance of her costume. Oh the could have reconciled me to remaining in the coquetry of her point-lace cap! and the pro- company. In proportion as I disappointed fusion and graceful folds of fine Indian mus- my own expectations, Urania exceeded them. lin in which she was enveloped! She looked She was, indeed, a consummate actress, in as much like a splendid young bride, and as voice, person, manner, and expression. little like a reduced elderly gentlewoman, as pervading and indescribable grace, a fine quick could be. Besides these weighty and opposing intelligence, and a modest confidence, distinconsiderations, Urania undertook the charge guishing every word and motion. I was never of teaching her daughters and the shepherdess weary of admiring her.-Perhaps I might alFlorella; and was extra-officially employed most have envied such powers in any one in giving hints to all parties, from the harp else; but she was so kind-hearted, bore her mistress, who composed our songs, down to faculties so meekly, was so ready to advise, the shoemaker who furnished our sandals, and so eager to encourage and assist, that she from the manager rehearsing, down to Laurin- quelled the evil spirit. She seemed perfectly da, trying to learn. The fair Euphelia, too, unconscious of her high superiority; except had a double difficulty to encounter, her dig- the natural desire not to look too old, she never nity and the th. Oh those terrible consonants! betrayed one spark of vanity through the whole she could manage all other English sounds. piece. We changed every word we could; but there was no dispensing with the thes and the thats; so she was forced to go on deing and dating so prettily! we scarcely wished to cure such an imperfection. Pastorella's cares were of a gentler sort. She was engaged in the pleasant task of selecting the tenderest Italian song, and the most romantic trimming that fashion would permit. With the first she was easily suited; the last was rather a puzzle. First she fixed upon the heart's-ease, whose sentimental names, the pensee, and the love in idleness, rendered it peculiarly appropriate; but the heart's-ease is a daylight flower; its colours require the sun; and the yellow looks white and the purple black by candle-light; so that was given up. Then she tried the lily of the valley; that was too limp, and hung awkwardly; then sprigs of myrtle; they were too stiff, and would not hang at all; so that she was fain to lay aside her softer emblems, and content herself with oak-leaves and acorns. My troubles lay in a different direction. At first I had inwardly grieved over the play and the part and the prologue (which also fell to my lot) as a sad waste of talent: I had fallen into the pretty general error of mistaking the love of an art, for the power of excelling in it, and had longed to come out in Milton or Shakspeare. But I soon discovered, to the great improvement of my humility, that The Search after Happiness was only too good for me; in short, that I was about as bad an actress as ever trod the stage. To be sure, I did know my speeches by rote, and I also understood the sense of

At last, after a whole month's busy preparation, the great day arrived, luckily one of the shortest in December; for such a day of confusion and unrest and useless bustle I have never encountered before or since. From sunrise to sunset we were all running after we knew not what, talking, spouting, singing, laughing, or crying, without a moment's intermission. My particular exercise was practising a circular curtsy, which I had been taught to make as prologue; I curtsied till I could hardly stand. Of course we had plenty of vexations, besides those which we chose to cultivate for our private diversion. First of all, the sandals were not finished. In spite of three several messsages to the faithless shoemaker, the sandals never made their appearance till just half an hour after the shepherdesses had accomplished their dance in slippers. The fancy dresses of Urania's daughters never came at all; they were forced to play in white frocks. Then the decorations that did arrive, contrived to be almost as provoking as those that did not. A stupid milliner sent Euphelia a sky-blue plume to wear with her pink robe! Pastorella's new stays were two inches too large; Florella's jacket was three inches too small! and the green curtain a quarter of a yard too short. There was no end to the letting down, the letting out, and the taking in of that disastrous day. But the most perplexing of all our perplexities was occasioned by the innocent but unfortunate Laurinda. She had no mother, and was to be furnished with a splendid dress by her father's sister, viscountess A. We were anxiously

looking out for the expected parcel, the lady nent. She did not foresee the calamity that aunt being in the country, when a letter which awaited us. Just as the company were enterarrived by post spread a general consternation ing, and our orchestra beginning a grand conand dismay. This letter, addressed to Lau- certo, Pastorella, who had succeeded in taking rinda, franked by the viscount, signed by the in her stays till she could scarcely breathe in viscountess, and written by her maid, an- them, between fright and tight lacing, fainted nounced that the promised dress would be sent away, and water was immediately called for. by the coach on Thursday, and they hoped The gardener, whose ideas appear to have been would fit and please the intended wearer. rather professional, immediately handed up an Thursday! and this "the great, the important enormous watering-pot, brimfull of the pure day" was Tuesday! Here was a calamity! element, which the housemaid was carrying We examined the letter again and again, spelt to the fainting lady, when Miss Jane, darting the word over and over, there it was plain and along with her usual officiousness, and more clear, T, h, u, the next letter was rather uncer- than her usual speed, in search of a bottle of tain, it looked most like an r, but it might have sal volatil, threw poor Pastorella's own harp passed for an e, without a loop, or an i, with- right against the well-loaded housemaid, and out a tittle. The Th was there as legible as housemaid, harp, and watering-pot all fell tocopperplate, and never did those two letters gether in the middle of the stage. The crash give greater perturbation to our dear countess, was startling: and our manager jumped over and to us the committee of management. the foot-lamps to investigate the cause. She One of us, however, on a closer perusal of the found the sick damsel roused by the shock in letter, found that "pleased" was spelt time to save her laces, and very wisely engaged "plased," and, on examining Laurinda, we in washing off her rouge and relieving her farther discovered that the waiting gentlewo- heart by a plentiful shower of tears. Houseman was Irish. It might therefore be purely maid and harp, too, had been picked up unan error in spelling, arising from a vicious hurt; but the watering-pot was rolling about pronunciation. But this conjecture was con- the stage, and the stage was floated, absolutesidered as rather super-subtle, and at all events ly under water. The actresses were scudding we could not comfortably rely even on a about to the dry places, full of care for their femme-de-chambre's false spelling. So we silks and satins, some clinging to the bower, held a council on the case, and had just re- others climbing the side-scenes, perched solved to omit the character altogether, when amidst boughs and branches, and in great danthe paraphernalia arrived, and restored the fair ger of bringing the whole forest about our ears. wearer to the honours of the play-bill. Such It was no time for scolding; so the whole a dress was worth a little fright; it was equal-chain of delinquents, from the gardener to ly superb and becoming: she looked like a peeress, in that magnificent birth-day suit; and within a few months she actually became one; -the earliest and best married of all our company was the gentle Laurinda.

Miss Jane, escaped unchidden; it was more "germane to the matter" to send for cloths and mops, and warming-pans, and more housemaids, and get the stage dry as soon as possible. The cold water had done us all good; At last the long and arduous duties of the it had diverted our thoughts. Even I, in the tiring-room were over; and plumed and trained midst of my tribulation, forgot for a moment and spangled, pearl-powdered, or rouged, as that I was to speak the prologue and to open fear and novelty made us look red or pale, we the play;-alas! only for a moment! Our were safely escorted behind the green curtain, manager rejoined the company, the curtain and left there by our manager, who resolved drew up, and I advanced to make the famous herself to join the company. Our theatre was curtsy, with just such a courage as a coward a lofty spacious saloon, built after the house may assume, who is placed in the van in batwas erected, for the purpose of a dancing-room. tle and cannot run away,-the desperate courIt was well adapted to our present object, as age of fear. I think I can feel my heart beat it opened into another apartment by large fold- now. There was no need of such palpitations. ing doors; and the two together accommo- The audience came to be indulgent, and they dated a very numerous and elegant audience. were so. The prologue went off well; and We behind the curtain had no way of com- the play on the whole still better. I have not municating with the rest of the house except left room for particular accidents and how through a window, which looked from a con- one scene would not go back, or another come siderable height into the garden. A ladder forward:-how Laurinda was stranded, and was placed at the window, and a maid servant Urania helped her off:-how Pastorella's harp stood within, and the gardener without, to was untuned by the fall and her voice by the perform any service that we might require. crying, and how that untuneable song and the Miss R. had been much pleased with this oak-leaf trimming won the heart of a young temporary non-intercourse, this secure caging post-captain, now her happy spouse:-how of her little birds; it was such an assurance Florella forgot her crook, and Cleora walked of their not flying away, of which, in one in- through her train :-these, with other notable stance at least, the danger had seemed immi-incidents, must remain untold. Suffice it that

fabric promised to be at least an inch smaller white; the coral blossoms of the whortle-berthan the pattern;-that point, however, had ry; the graceful wood-sorrel; the pendent been by dint of great ingenuity satisfactorily drops of the stately Solomon's seal, which adjusted, and I found the lady of the shears hang like waxen tassels under the full and and the lady of the rod in the midst of a dis- regular leaves; the bright wood-vetch; the pute on the question of buttons, which the tai- unobtrusive wood roof, whose scent is like loress insisted must be composed of metal or new hay, and which retains and communimother of pearl, or any thing but covered cates it when dried; and, lastly, those strange moles, inasmuch as there would be no stuff freaks of nature the orchises, where the porleft to cover them; whilst Lucy on her side trait of an insect is so quaintly depicted in a insisted that there was plenty, that any thing flower. The bee orchis abounds also in the (as all the world knew) would suffice to cover Maple-Durham woods-those woods where buttons if people were clever and careful, and whilome flourished the two stately but unthat certain most diminutive and irregular lovely flowers Martha and Teresa Blount of scraps, which she gathered from the table and Popish fame, and which are still in the posunder it, and displayed with great ostentation, session of their family. But, although it is were amply sufficient for the purpose. "If found at Maple-Durham as well as in these the pieces are not big enough," continued she, copses of North-Hampshire, yet, in the little "you have nothing to do but to join them." slip of Berks which divides Hants from OxAnd as Lucy had greatly the advantage both fordshire, I have never been able to discover in loudness of voice and fluency of thought it. The locality of flowers is a curious puzand word, over the itinerant seamstress, who zle. The field tulip, for instance, through was a woman of slow quiet speech, she car- whose superb pendent blossoms checkered ried her point in the argument most trium- with puce and lilac the sun shines as gloriphantly, although whether the unlucky waist- ously as through stained glass, and which, coat-maker will succeed in stretching her ma- blended with a still more elegant white variterials so as to do the impossible, remains to ety, covers whole acres of the Kennet meabe proved, the button question being still un-dows, can by no process be coaxed into andecided when I left S.

Her adversary being fairly silenced, Lucy laid aside her careful thoughts and busy looks; and leaving the poor woman to her sewing and stitching, and a little tidy lass (a sort of half-boarder, who acts half as servant, half as pupil,) to get all things ready for tea, she prepared to accompany me to a pleasant coppice in the neighbourhood, famous for wild lilies of the valley, to the love of which delicate flower, she, not perhaps quite unjustly, attributed my visit.

Nothing could be more beautiful than the wood where they are found, which we reached by crossing first the open common, with its golden waves of furze, and then a clover-field intensely green, deliciously fresh and cool to the eye and the tread. The copse was just in its pleasantest state, having luckily been cut last year, and being too thinly clothed with timber to obstruct the view. It goes sloping down a hill, till it is lost in the green depths of P. Forest, with an abruptness of descent which resembles a series of terraces or rather ledges, so narrow that it is sometimes difficult to find a space on which to walk. The footing is the more precarious, as even the broader paths are intersected and broken by hollows and caves, where the ground has given way and been undermined by fox earths. On the steepest and highest of these banks, in a very dry unsheltered situation, the lily of the valley grows so profusely, that the plants almost cover the ground with their beautiful broad leaves, and the snowy white bells, which envelope the most delicate of odours. All around grow the fragile wind-flowers, pink as well as

other habitation, however apparently similar in situation and soil. Treat them as you may, they pine and die and disappear. The duke of Marlborough only succeeded in naturalizing them at White-Knights by the magnificent operation of transplanting half an acre of meadow, grass and earth and all, to the depth of two feet! and even there they seem dwindling. The wood-sorrel, which I was ambitious of fixing in the shrubberies of our old place, served me the provoking trick of living a year or two, and bearing leaves, but never flowers; and that far rarer but less beautiful plant, the field-star of Bethlehem, a sort of large hyacinth of the hue of the misletoe, which, in its pale and shadowy stalk and blossom, has something to me awful, unearthly, ghastly, mystical, druidical,- used me still worse, not only refusing to grow in a corner of our orchard where I planted it, but vanishing from the spot where I procured the roots, although I left at least twenty times as many as I took.

Nothing is so difficult to tame as a wild flower; and wisely so, for they generally lose much of their characteristic_beauty by any change of soil or situation. That very woodsorrel now, which I coveted so much, I saw the other day in a green-house! By what chance my fellow amateur persuaded that swamp-loving, cold-braving, shade-seeking plant to blossom in the very region of light, and heat, and dryness, I cannot imagine: but there it was in full bloom, as ugly a little abortion as ever showed its poor face, smaller far than in its native woods, the flowers unveined and colourless, and bolt upright, the

leaves full spread and stiff,-no umbrella fold! no pendent grace! no changing hue! none but a lover's eye would have recognised the poor beauty of the woods in the faded prisoner of the green-house. No caged bird ever underwent such a change. I will never try to domesticate that pretty blossom again content to visit it in its own lovely haunts, the bed of moss or the beech-root sofa.

The lily of the valley we may perhaps try to transplant. The garden is its proper home; it seems thrown here by accident; we cannot help thinking it an abasement, a condescension. The lily must be transportable. For the present, however, we were content to carry away a basket of blossoms, reserving till the autumn our design of peopling a shady border in our own small territories, the identical border where in summer our geraniums flourish, with that simplest and sweetest of flowers.

cow, because she found she could be served with milk and butter by the wife of a small farmer who has four children at her school; and has parted with her poultry and pigs, and left off making bread, because the people of both shops are customers to her husband in his capacity of shoemaker, and she gets bread, and eggs, and bacon for nothing. On the same principle she has commenced brewing, because the malster's son and daughter attend her seminary, and she procured three new barrels, coolers, tubs, &c. from a cooper who was in debt to her husband for shoes. "Shoes," or "children," is indeed the constant answer to the civil notice which one is accustomed to take of any novelty in the house. "Shoes" produced the commodious dressing-table and washing-stand, coloured like rose-wood, which adorn her bed-chamber; "children" were the source of the good-as-new roller and wheelWe then trudged back to Lucy's to tea, barrow which stand in the court; and to talking by the way of old stories, old neigh-"shoes and children" united, are they indebtbours, and old friends-mixed on her part with a few notices of her new acquaintance, lively, shrewd, and good-humoured as usual. She is indeed a most agreeable and delightful person; I think the lately developed quality at which I hinted in my opening remarks, the slight tinge of Jenny-Dennison-ism, only renders her conversation more piquant and individualised, and throws her merits into sharper relief. We talked of old stories and new, and soon found she had lost none of her good gifts in gossipry; of her thousand and one lovers, about whom, although she has quite left off coquetry, she inquired with a kindly interest; of our domestic affairs, and above all of her own. She has no children-a circumstance which I sometimes think she regrets; I do not know why, except that my dear mother having given her on her marriage, amongst a variety of parting gifts, a considerable quantity of baby things, she probably thinks it a pity that they should not be used. And yet the expensiveness of children might console her on the one hand, and the superabundance of them with which she is blest in school-time on the other. Indeed she has now the care of a charity Sunday-school, in addition to her work-day labours-a circumstance which has by no means altered her opinion of the inefficacy and inexpediency of general education.

I suspect that the irregularity of payment is one cause of her dislike to the business; and yet she is so ingenious a contriver in the matter of extracting money's worth from those who have no money, that we can hardly think her unreasonable in requiring the hen-tailor to cover buttons out of nothing. Where she can get no cash, she takes the debt in kind; and, as most of her employers are in that predicament, she lives in this respect like the Loochooans, who never heard of a currency. She accommodates herself to this state of things with admirable facility. She has sold her

ed for the excellent double hedge-row of grubbed wood which she took me to see in returning from the copse-"a brand (as she observed) snatched out of the fire; for the poor man who owed them the money must break, and had nothing useful to give them except this wood, which was useless to him as he had not money to get it grubbed up. "If he holds on till the autumn," continued Lucy, “ we shall have a good crop of potatoes from the hedge-row. We have planted them on the chance." The ornamental part of her territory comes from the same fertile source. Even the thrift which adorns the garden (fit emblem of its mistress!) was a present from the drunken gardener of a gentleman in the neighbourhood. "He does not pay his little girl's schooling very regularly," quoth she,

but then he is so civil, poor man! anything in the garden is at our service."

"Shoes and children" are the burden of the song. The united professions re-act on each other in a remarkable manner;-shoes bring scholars, and scholars consume shoes. The very charity school before mentioned, a profitable concern, of which the payment depends on rich people and not on poor, springs indirectly from a certain pair of purple kid boots, a capital fit, (I must do our friend, the pedagogue, the justice to say that he understands the use of his awl, no man better!) which so pleased the vicar's lady, who is remarkable for a neat ankle, that she not only gave a magnificent order for herself, and caused him to measure her children, but actually prevailed on her husband to give the appointment of Sunday school-master to this matchless cordwainer. I should not wonder, if through her powerful patronage, he should one day rise to be parish-clerk.

Well, the tea and the bread and the butter were discussed with the appetite produced by a two hours' ride and a three hours' walk-to