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colour, straight from Paris, which he insisted on Hester's retiring to assume, whilst he remained to arrange the table and receive the company, who, it being now about four o'clock, P. M.-our good rustics can never have enough of a good thing-were beginning to assemble for the ball.

A QUIET GENTLEWOMAN.

My present reminiscence will hardly be of the tenderest sort, since I am about to commemorate one of the oldest bores of my acquaintance, one of the few grievances of my happy youth. The person in question, my worthy friend Mrs. Aubrey, was a respectable widow lady, whose daughter having married a relation of my father's, just at the time that she herself came to settle in the town near which! we resided, constituted exactly that mixture! of juxtaposition and family connexion, which must of necessity lead to a certain degree of intimacy, whatever discrepancies might exist in the habits and characters of the parties. We were intimate accordingly; dined with her once a year, drank tea with her occasionally, and called on her every time that the carriage went into W-; visits which she returned in the lump, by a sojourn of at least a month every summer with us at the Lodge. How my dear mother endured this last infliction, I cannot imagine: I most undutifully contrived to evade it, by so timing an annual visit, which I was accustomed to pay, as to leave home on the day before her arrival, and return to it the day after her departure, quite content with the share of ennui which the morning calls and the tea-drinkings (evils which generally fell to my lot) entailed upon

The afternoon was fair and cold, and dry and frosty; and Matthews's, Bridgwater, Whites, and Jones's, in short the whole farmerage and shop-keepery of the place, with a goodly proportion of wives and daughters, came pouring in apace. Jacob received them with much gallantry, uncloaking and unbonneting the ladies, assisted by his two staring and awkward auxiliaries, welcoming their husbands and fathers, and apologising, as he best might, for the absence of his helpmate; who, "perplexed in the extreme" by her new finery, which happening to button down the back, she was fain to put on hind side before, did not make her appearance till the greater part of the company had arrived, and the music had struck up a country dance. An evil moment, alas! did poor Hester choose for her entry! for the first sound that met her ear was Timothy's fiddle, forming a strange trio with the bassoon and the clarionet: and the first persons whom she saw were Tom Higgs cracking walnuts at the chimney-side, and Sandy Frazer saluting the widow Glen under the misletoe. How she survived such sights and sounds does appear wonderful-but sur-me. vive them she did-for at three o'clock, A. M., when our reporter left the party, she was engaged in a sociable game at cards, which, by the description, seems to have been long whist, with the identical widow Glen, Sandy Frazer and William Ford, and had actually won fivepence-halfpenny of Martha's money; the young folks were still dancing gaily, to the sound of Timothy's fiddle, which fiddle had the good quality of going on almost as well drunk as sober, and it was now playing solo, the clarionet being hors-de-combat and the bassoon under the table. Tom Higgs, after showing off more tricks than a monkey, amongst the rest sewing the whole card-party together by the skirts, to the probable damage of Mrs. Frost's gay gown, had returned to his old post by the fire, and his old amusement of cracking walnuts, with the shells of which he was pelting the little parish girl, who sate fast asleep on the other side; and Jacob Frost in all his glory, sate in a cloud of tobacco smoke, roaring out catches with his old friend George Bridgwater, and half a dozen other "drowthy cronies," whilst "aye the ale was growing better," and the Christmas party went merrily on.

This grievance was the more grievous, inasmuch as it was one of those calamities which do not admit the great solace and consolation to be derived from complaint. Mrs. Aubrey, although the most tiresome person under the sun, without an idea, without a word, a mere inert mass of matter,was yet in the fullest sense of those "words of fear" a good sort of woman, well-born, well-bred, well-jointured, and well-conducted, a perfectly unexceptionable acquaintance. There were some who even envied me my intimacy with this human automaton, this most extraordinary specimen of still life.

In her youth she had been accounted pretty, a fair sleepy blue-eyed beauty, languid and languishing, and was much followed by that class of admirers, who like a woman the better the nearer she approaches to a picture in demeanour as well as in looks.* She had, however, with the disparity that so often attends upon matrimony, fallen to the lot of a most vivacious and mercurial country squire,

tude in the fair sex, adventured on a gentle admoniOne of her lovers, not quite so devoted to quie tion. He presented to her a superb copy of the

"Castle of Indolence," and requested her to read it. A few days after, he inquired of her sister if his fair mistress had condescended to look into the book. "No," was the answer, "No, but I read it to her as she lay on the sofa." The gentleman was a man of sense. He shrugged his shoulders, and six months after married this identical sister.

a thorough-paced foxhunter, whose pranks (some of them more daring than lawful) had obtained for him the cognomen of "mad Aubrey;" and having had the good fortune to lose this husband in the third year of their nuptials, she had never undergone the fatigue and trouble of marrying another.

When I became acquainted with her, she was a sleek round elderly lady, with very small features, very light eyes, invisible eyebrows, and a flaxen wig. She sat all day long on a sofa by the fireside, with her feet canted up on an ottoman; the ingenious machine called a pair of lazy tongs on one side of her, and a small table on the other, provided with every thing that she was likely or unlikely to want for the whole morning. The bell-pull was also within reach but she had an aversion to ringing the bell, a process which involved the subsequent exertion of speaking to the servant when he appeared. The dumb-waiter was her favourite attendant. There she sat, sofa-ridden; so immovable, that if the fire had been fierce enough to roast her into a fever, as once happened to some exquisitely silly king of Spain, I do think that she would have staid quiet, not from etiquette, but from sheer laziness. She was not however unemployed; your very idle people have generally some play-work, the more tedious and useless the better; hers was knitting with indefatigable perseverance little diamonds in white cotton, destined at some future period to dovetail into a counterpane. The diamonds were striped, and were intended to be sewed together so artistically, that the stripes should intersect each other, one row running perpendicularly and the next horizontally, so as to form a regular pattern; a bit of white mosaic, a tesselated quilt.

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hearth-rug, as impassible as his mistress; a cat so iniquitously quiet, that he would neither play, nor pur, nor scratch, nor give any token of existence beyond mere breathing. I don't think, if a mouse had come across him, that he would have condescended to notice it.

Such was the state of things within the room; without, it was nearly as bad. Her house, one of the best in W., was situate in a new street standing slant-wise to one of the entrances ef the town; a street of great gentility but of little resort, and, above all, no thoroughfare. So that after going to the window to look for a subject, and seeing nothing but the dead wall of an opposite chapel, we were driven back to the sofa to expatiate for the twentieth time on Selim's beauty, and admire once again the eternal knitting. Oh the horror of these morning visits!

One very great aggravation of the calamity, was the positive certainty of finding Mrs. Aubrey at home. The gentle satisfaction with which one takes a ticket from one's card-case, after hearing the welcome answer, "my mistress is just walked out!" never befell one at Mrs. Aubrey's. She never took a walk, although she did sometimes, moved by the. earnest advice of her apothecary, get so far as to talk of doing so. The weather was always too hot, or too cold; or it had been raining; or it looked likely to rain; or the streets were dirty; or the roads were dusty; or the sun shone; or the sun did not shine (either reason would serve her laziness was much indebted to that bright luminary); or somebody had called; or somebody might call; or (and this I believe was the excuse that she most commonly made to herself) she had not time to walk on account of her knitting, she wanted to get on with that.

The only time that I ever saw her equipped in out-of-door costume, was one unexceptionable morning in April, when the sun, the wind, the sky and the earth, were all as bright, and sweet, and balmy, as if they had put themselves in order on purpose to receive an unaccustomed visiter. I met her just as she was

At this work I regularly found Mrs. Aubrey when compelled to the sad civility" of a morning call, in which her unlucky visiter had all the trouble of keeping up the conversation. What a trouble it was! just like playing at battledore by one's self, or singing a duet with one's own single voice; not the lightest tap would mine hostess give to the shuttle-issuing slowly from the parlour, and enchanted cock;-not a note would she contribute to the concert. She might almost as well have been born dumb, and but for a few stray noes and yeses, and once in a quarter of an hour some savourless inquiry, she might certainly have passed for such. She would not even talk of the weather. Then her way of listening! One would have wagered that she was deaf. News was thrown away upon her; scandal did not rouse her; the edge of wit fell upon her dulness like the sword of Richard on the pillow of Saladin. There never was such a woman! Her drawing-room, too, lacked all the artificial aids of conversation; no books, no newspapers, no children, no dogs; nothing but Mrs. Aubrey and her knitted squares, and an old Persian cat, who lay stretched on the

at my good fortune, entreated, with equal truth, and politeness, that I might not keep her within. She entered into no contest of civility; but returned with far more than her usual alacrity into the parlour, rang the bell for her maid, sat down on her dear sofa, and was forthwith unclogged, unshawled, and unbonneted, seemingly as much rejoiced at the respite, as a school-boy reprieved from the rod, or a thief from the gallows. I never saw such an expression of relief, of escape from a great evil, on any human countenance. It would have been quite barbarous to have pressed her to take her intended walk: and, moreover, it! would have been altogether useless. She had satisfied her conscience with the attempt, and was now set in to her beloved knitting in con

tented obstinacy. The whole world would not have moved her from that sofa.

She did however exchange evening visits, in a quiet melancholy way, with two or three ladies her near neighbours, to whose houses she was carried in the stately ease of a sedanchair:for in those days flies were not; at which time the knitting was replaced by cassino. Those visits were, if not altogether so silent, yet very nearly as dull as the inflictions of the morning her companions (if companions they may be called) being for the most part persons of her own calibre, although somewhat more loquacious. They had a beau or two belonging to this West Street coterie, which even beaux failed to enliven; a powdered physician, rather pompous; a bald curate, very prim; and a simpering semi-bald apothecary, who brushed a few straggling locks up to the top of his crown and tried to make them pass for a head of hair; he was by far the most gallant man of the party, and amongst them might almost be reckoned amusing.

So passed the two first years of Mrs. Aubrey's residence in W. The third brought her a guest whose presence was felt as a relief by every body, perhaps the only woman who could have kept her company constantly, to the equal satisfaction of both parties.

Miss Dale was the daughter of a deceased officer, with a small independence, who boarded in the winter in Charter-House Square, and passed her summer in visiting her friends. She was what is called a genteel little woman, of an age that seemed to vary with the light and the hour; oldish in the morning, in the evening almost young, always very smartly dressed, very good-humoured, and very lively. Her spirits were really astonishing; how she could not only appear gay, but be gay in such an atmosphere of dulness, still puzzles me to think of. There was no French blood either, which might have accounted for the phenomenon; her paternal grandfather having been in his time high sheriff for the county of Notts; a genuine English country gentleman and her mother, strange to relate, a renegado quakeress, expelled from the Society of Friends for the misdemeanour of espousing an officer. Some sympathy might exist there; no doubt the daughter would have been as ready to escape from a community of lawn caps and drab gowns as the mother. Her love of pink ribbons was certainly hereditary; and, however derived, her temper was as thoroughly couleur de rose as her cap trimming. Through the long quiet mornings, the formal visits, the slow dull dinners, she preserved one unvarying gaiety, carried the innovation of smiles amongst the insipid gravities of the cassino table; and actually struck up an intermitting flirtation with the apothecary-which I, in my ignorance, expected to find issue in a marriage, and was simple enough to be astonished, when one morning the gentleman

brought home a cherry-cheeked bride, almost young enough to be his grand-daughter.

The loss of a lover, however, had no effect on Miss Dale's spirits. I have never known any thing more enviable than the buoyancy of her temper. She was not by any means too clever for her company, or too well-informed; never shocked their prejudices, or startled their ignorance, nor ever indeed said any thing remarkable at all. On the contrary, I think that her talk, if recollected, would seem, although always amiable and inoffensive, somewhat vapid and savourless; but her prattle was so effervescent, so up-the cheerfulness was so natural, so real-that contrary to the effect of most sprightly conversation, it was quite contagious, and even exhilarated, as much as any thing could exhilarate, the sober circle amongst whom she moved.

She had another powerful attraction in her extraordinary pliancy of mind. No sooner had the stage-coach conveyed her safely to the door of the large house in West Street, than all her Charter-House Square associations vanished from her mind; it seemed as if she had left locked up in her drawers with her winter apparel every idea not West Stretian. She was as if she had lived in W. all her days had been born there, and there meant to die. She even divested herself of the allowable London pride, which looks down so scornfully on country dignitaries, admired the Mayor, revered the corporation, preferred the powdered physician to Sir Henry Halford, and extolled the bald curate as the most eminent preacher in England, Mr. Harness and Mr. Benson notwithstanding.

So worthy a denizen of West Street was of course hailed there with great delight. Mrs. Aubrey, always in her silent way glad to receive her friends, went so far as to testify some pleasure at the sight of Miss Dale; and the Persian cat, going beyond his mistress in the activity of his welcome, fairly sprang into her lap. The visits grew longer and longer, more and more frequent, and at last, on some diminution of income, ended in her coming regularly to live with Mrs. Aubrey, partly as humble companion, partly as friend: a most desirable increase to that tranquil establishment, which was soon after enlarged by the accession of a far more important visiter.

Besides her daughter, whom she would have probably forgotten if our inquiries had not occasionally reminded her that such a person was in existence, Mrs. Aubrey had a son in India, who did certainly slip her memory, except just twice a year when letters arrived from Bengal. She herself never wrote to either of her children, nor did I ever hear her mention Mr. Aubrey till one day, when she announced, with rather more animation than common, that poor William had returned to England on account of ill health, and that she expected him in W. that evening.

In the course of a few days my father called | information, whilst tradesmen of all classes on the invalid, and we became acquainted. were won by his liberality, Mr. Aubrey was He was an elegant-looking man, in the prime of life, high in the Company's service, and already possessed of considerable wealth. His arrival excited a great sensation in W. and the neighbourhood. It was the eve of a general | election, and some speculating alderman did him the favour of making an attack upon his purse, by fixing on him as a candidate to oppose the popular member; whilst certain equally speculating mammas meditated a more covert attack on his heart, through the charms of their unmarried daughters. Both parties were fated to disappointment; he waved off either sort of address with equal disdain, and had the good luck to get quit of his popularity almost as rapidly as he had acquired it.

Sooth to say, a man with more eminent qualifications for rendering himself disagreeable than were possessed by Mr. Aubrey, seldom made his appearance in civilized society. He had nothing in common with his goodhumoured mother but her hatred of trouble and of talking; and having the misfortune to be very clever and very proud, tall and stately in his person, with a head habitually thrown back, bright black scornful eyes and a cold disdainful smile, did contrive to gratify his own self-love by looking down upon other people more affrontingly than the self-love of the said people could possibly endure. Nobody knew any harm of Mr. Aubrey, but nobody could abide him; so that it being perfectly clear that he would have nothing to say, either to the borough or the young ladies, the attentions offered to him by town and country suddenly ceased; it being to this hour a moot point whether he or the neighbourhood first sent the other to Coventry.

He, on his part, right glad, as it seemed, to be rid of their officious civility, remained quietly in his mother's house, very fanciful and a little ill; talking between whiles of an intended visit to Leamington or Cheltenham, but as easily diverted from a measure so unsuited to his habits as an abode at a public place, as Mrs. Aubrey herself had been from a morning walk. All the summer he lingered at W., and all the autumn; the winter found him still there; and at last, he declared that he had made up his mind to relinquish India altogether, and to purchase an estate in England.

By this time our little world had become accustomed to his haughty manner, which had the advantage of being equally ungracious to every one (people will put up with a great deal in good company; it is the insolence which selects its object that gives indelible offence); and a few who had access to him on business, such as lawyers and physicians, speaking in high terms of his intelligence and

in some danger of undergoing a second attack of popularity, when he completely destroyed his rising reputation by a measure the most unexpected and astonishing-he married Miss Dale, to the inexpressible affront of every young lady of fashion in the neighbourhood. He actually married Miss Dale, and all W. spoke of her as the artfulest woman that ever wore a wedding-ring, and pitied poor Mrs. Aubrey, whose humble companion had thus ensnared her unwary son. Nothing was heard but sympathy for her imputed sufferings on this melancholy cccasion, mixed with abuse of the unfortunate bride, whose extraordinary luck in making so brilliant an alliance had caused her popularity to vanish as speedily as

her husband's.

With these reports tingling in my ears, I went to pay the wedding visit to Mrs. Aubrey, senior, delighted at the event myself, both as securing much of good to Miss Dale, who was just the person to enjoy the blessings of her lot, and pass lightly over the evil; and as a most proper and fitting conclusion to the airs of her spouse; but a little doubtful how my old acquaintance might take the matter, especially as it involved the loss of her new daughter's company, and must of necessity cause her some little trouble. I was never more puzzled in my life, whether to assume a visage of condolence or of congratulation ;— and the certainty that her countenance would afford no indication either of joy or sorrow, enhanced my perplexity. I was, however, immediately relieved by the nature of her employment; - she was sitting surrounded by sempstresses, at a table covered with knitting and wedding-cake, whilst her maidens were putting together, under her inspection, that labour of her life, the tessellated quilt; the only wedding present by which she could sufficiently compliment her son, or adequately convey her sense of the merits and excellence of his fair bride! Her pleasure in this union was so great, that she actually talked about it, presented the cake herself, and poured out with her own hands the wine to be drunk to the health of the new-married couple.

Mr. Aubrey had purchased a place in Devonshire, and six months after, his mother quitted W. to go and live near him. But, poor dear lady, she did not live there-she died. The unsettling and the journey, and the settling again, terrible operations to one who seemed, like the Turkish women, to have roots to her feet, fairly killed her. She was as unfit to move as a two-year old cabbage, and drooped, and withered, and dropped down dead of the transplantation. Peace to her memory! the benediction that she would assuredly have preferred to all others. Peace to her ashes!

THE TWO VALENTINES.

fancy; another shall sit within doors, with her eyes shut, half the morning, until she hears the expected voice of the favourite swain; whilst, on their part, our country lads take care to place themselves each in the way of his chosen she; and a pretty lass would think herself overlooked, if she had not three or four standing round her door, or sauntering beneath her window, before sunrise.

VALENTINE'S Day is one of great stir and emotion in our little village. In large towns, -especially in London-the wicked habit of quizzing has entirely destroyed the romance and illusion of that tender anniversary. But we in the country are, for the most part, uninfected by "over-wiseness," or "over-nice- Now, one of the prettiest girls in our parish, ness," (to borrow two of Sir Walter Raleigh's is, undoubtedly, Sally North. Pretty is hardly quaint but expressive phrases), and are con- the proper phrase-Sally is a magnificent girl; tent to keep the gracious festival of love--tall, far above the common height of woman, making and billets-doux, as simply and con- and large in proportion-but formed with the fidingly as our ancestors of old. I do not mean most exact symmetry, and distinguished by to say, that every one of our youths and the firm, erect, and vigorous carriage, and the maidens pair on that day, like the "goldfinch, light, elastic step, peculiar to those who are bullfinch, greenfinch, and all the finches of the early accustomed to walk under burthens. grove."-Heaven forbid !-Nor that the spirit Sally's father is an eminent baker-the most of fun hath so utterly evaporated from us, that celebrated personage in our village; besides we have no display of innocent trick or harm- supplying half the next town with genuine less raillery on that licensed morn:-all that country bread, which he carries there himself I contend for is, that, in our parts, some truth in his huge tilted cart, he hath struck into may be found lurking amidst the fictions of other arts of the oven, and furnishes all the those annual rhymes-that many a village breakfast-tables, within five miles, with genubeau hath broken the ice of courtship-and ine London rolls. No family of gentility can that many a village belle hath felt her heart possibly get through the first meal without throb, as she glanced at the emblematic scroll, them. The rolls, to be sure, are—just like and tried to guess the sender, in spite of the other rolls-very good, and nothing more; but assumed carelessness, the saucy head-tossings, some whim of a great man, or caprice of a fine and the pretty poutings with which she at- lady, has put them in fashion; and so Sally tempted to veil her real interest. In short, walks round the parish every morning, with there is something like sincerity amongst us, her great basket, piled to the very brim, poised even in a Valentine;-as witness the number on her pretty head-now lending it the light of wooings begun on the Fourteenth of Feb- support of one slender hand, and now of anruary, and finished in that usual end of court- other; the dancing black eyes, and the bright ships and comedies-a wedding-before Whit-blushing smile, that flash from under her bursuntide. Our little lame clerk, who keeps a sort then, as well as the perfect ease and grace of catalogue raisonnée of marriages, as a companion to the parish-register, computes those that issue from the bursting Valentine-bag of our postman, at not less than three and a half per annum that is to say, seven between two years.

with which she trips along, entirely taking away all painful impression of drudgery or toil. She is quite a figure for a painter, is Sally North-and the gipsy knows it. There is a gay good-humoured consciousness of her power and her beauty, as she passes on her morning round, carolling as merrily as the lark over her head, that makes no small part of her charm. The lass is clever, too-sharp and shrewd in her dealings-and, although sufficiently civil and respectful to her superiors, and never actually wanting in decorum, is said to dismiss the compliments of some of her beaux with a repartee generally brusque, and frequently poignant.

But-besides the matches which spring, directly or indirectly, from the billets commonly called Valentines- there is another superstition connected with the day, which has no small influence on the destinies of our country maidens. They hold, that the first man whom they espy in the morning-provided that such man be neither of kin to them, nor married, nor an inmate of the same house -is to pass for their Valentine during the day; Of beaux-between the lacqueys of the and, perhaps (for this is the secret clause houses that she takes in her circuit, and the which makes the observation important,) to wayfarers whom she picks up on the road— prove their husband for life. It is strange Sally hath more than a court beauty; and two how much faith they put in this kind of sortes of them - Mr. Thompson, my lord's gentlevirgiliana-this turning over the living leaf man, a man of substance and gravity, not much of destiny; and how much pains they will turned of fifty; and Daniel Tubb, one of Sir take to cheat the fates, and see the man they John's gardeners, a strapping red-haired youth, like best first in spite of the stars! One dam- as comely and merry as herself-were sevesel, for instance, will go a quarter of a mile rally recommended, by the old and the young, about, in the course of her ordinary avocations, as fitting matches for the pretty mistress of the in order to avoid a youth whom she does not rolls. But Sally silenced Mr. Thompson's

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