amusement within doors, and a constant pleasure without. The enjoyment of a country walk is much enhanced when the checkered fritillary or the tinted wood anemone are to be sought, and found, and gathered, and made our own; and the dear domestic spots haunted by "Retired leisure, Who in trim gardens takes his pleasure," are doubly gardens when the dahlias and chinaasters, after flourishing there for their little day, are to re-blossom on paper. Then it supplies such pretty keepsakes, the uncostly remembrances which are so pleasant to give and to take; and, above all, it fosters and sharpens the habit of observation and the love of truth. How much of what is excellent in art, in literature, in conversation, and in conduct, is comprised in that little word! Ellen had great delight in comparing our Sylvan Flora with the minute and fairy blossoms of the South Downs, where she had passed the greater part of her life. She could not but admit the superior luxuriance and variety of our woodland plants, and yet she had a good deal to say in favour of the delicate, flowery carpet, which clothes the green hills of Sussex; and in fact was on that point of honour a little jealous-a little, a very little, the least in the world, touchy. She loved her former abode, the abode of childhood, with enthusiasm; the downs; the sea, whose sound as she said seemed to follow her to her inland home, to dwell within her as it does in the folds of the sea-shell; and, above all, she loved her old neighbours, high and low. I do not know whether Mrs. Mansfield or her daughters returned oftenest to the "simple annals of the Sussex poor." It was a subject of which they never wearied; and we to whom they came, liked them the more for their clinging and lingering affection for those whom they had left. We received it as a pledge of what they would feel for us when we became better acquainted,—a pledge which has been amply redeemed. I flatter myself that Aberleigh now almost rivals their dear old parish; only that Clara, who has been here three years, and is now eighteen, says, very gravely, that "people as they grow old, cannot be expected to form the very strong local attachments which they did when they were young." I wonder how old Clara will think herself when she comes to be eight-and-twenty? Between Ellen's stories and her mother's there is usually a characteristic difference; those of the one being merry, those of the other grave. One occurrence, however, was equally impressed on the mind of either. I shall try to tell it as shortly and simply as it was told to me; but it will want the charm of Mrs. Mansfield's touching voice, and of Ellen's glistening eyes. Toward the bottom of one of the green hills of the parish of Lanton, was a large deserted chalk-pit; a solemn and ghastly-looking place, blackened in one part by an old lime-kiln,, whose ruinous fragments still remained, and in others mossy and weather-stained, and tinted with every variety of colour-green, yellow, and brown. The excavation extended far within the sides of the hill, and the edges were fringed by briar and bramble and ivy, contrasting strongly with the smooth, level verdure of the turf above, whilst plants of a ranker growth, nettles, docks, and fumatory, sprang up beneath, adding to the wildness and desolation of the scene. The road that led by the pit was little frequented. The place had an evil name; none cared to pass it even in the glare of the noon-day sun; and the villagers would rather go a mile about than catch a glimpse of it when the pale moonlight brought into full relief those cavernous white walls, and the dark briars and ivy waved fitfully in the night wind. It was a vague and shuddering feeling. None knew why he feared, or what; but the awe and the avoidance were general, and the owls and the bats remained in undisturbed possession of Lanton chalk-pit. One October day, the lively work of ploughing, and wheat-sowing, and harrowing, was going on all at once in a great field just beyond the dreaded spot: a pretty and an interesting scene, especially on sloping ground, and under: a gleaming sun throwing an ever-shifting play of light and shadow over the landscape. Towards noon, however, the clouds began to gather, and one of the tremendous pelting showers, peculiar to the coast, came suddenly on. Seedsmen, ploughmen, and carters, hastened home with their team, leaving the boys to follow; and they, five in number, set out at their fullest speed. The storm increased apace; and it was evident that their thin jackets and old smock-frocks would be drenched through and through long before they could reach Lanton Great Farm. In this dilemma, James Goddard, a stout lad of fifteen, the biggest and boldest of the party, proposed to take shelter in the chalk-pit. Boys are naturally thoughtless and fearless; the real inconvenience was more than enough to counterbalance the imaginary danger, and they all willingly adopted the plan, except one timid child, eight years old, who shrunk and hung back. Harry Lee was a widow's son. His father, a fisherman, had perished at sea, a few months after the birth of this only child; and his mother, a fond and delicate woman, had reared him delicately and fondly, beyond her apparent means. Night and day had she laboured for her poor Harry; and nothing but a long illness and the known kindness of the farmer in whose service he was placed, had induced her to part with him at so early an age. Harry was, indeed, a sweet and gracious boy, noticed by every stranger for his gentleness and beauty. He had a fair, blooming, open countenance, large, mild, blue eyes, thousand times did he crave pardon of that which seemed to ask kindness in every glance; distracted mother, for the peril-the death of and a quantity of shining, light hair, curling her son; for James felt that there could be no in ringlets round his neck. He was the best hope for the helpless child, and tears, such as reader in Mrs. Mansfield's Sunday-school; and no personal calamity could have drawn from only the day before, Miss Clara had given him the strong-hearted lad, fell fast for his fate. a dinner to carry home to his mother, in reward Hour after hour the men of Lanton laboured, of his proficiency: indeed, although they tried and all was in vain. The mass seemed imto conceal it, Harry was the decided favourite penetrable, inexhaustible. Toward sunset one of both the young ladies. James Goddard, boy appeared, crushed and dead; another, who under whom he worked, and to whose care he showed some slight signs of life, and who had been tearfully committed by the widow still lives, a cripple; a third dead; and then, Lee, was equally fond of him, in a rougher last of all, Harry Lee. Alas! only by his way; and in the present instance, seeing the raiment could that fond mother know her delicate boy shivering between cold and fear child! His death must have been instantaat the outside of the pit, (for the same consti- neous. She did not linger long. The three tutional timidity which prevented his entering, boys were interred together in Lanton churchhindered him from going home by himself,) yard on the succeeding Sabbath; and before he caught him up in his arms, brought him in, the end of the year, the widow Lee was laid and deposited him in the snuggest recess, on by her son. a heap of dry chalk. "Well, Harry, is not this better than standing in the wet ?" said he kindly, sitting down by his protegé, and sharing with him a huge luncheon of bread and cheese; and the poor child smiled in his face, thanked him, and kissed him as he had been used to kiss his mother. Half an hour had passed away in boyish talk, and still the storm continued. At last James Goddard thought that he heard a strange and unaccustomed sound, as of bursting or cracking an awful and indescribable soundlow, and yet distinctly audible, although the wind and rain were raging, and the boys loud in mirth and laughter. He seemed to feel the sound, as he said afterwards; and was just about to question his companions if they too heard that unearthly noise; when a horseman passed along the road, making signs to them and shouting. His words were drowned in the tempest; James rushed out to inquire his meaning, and in that moment the side of the chalk-pit fell in! He heard a crash and a scream- the death scream!-felt his back grazed by the descending mass; and turning round, saw the hill rent, as by an earthquake, and the excavation which had sheltered them, filled, piled, heaped up, by the still quivering and gigantic fragments-no vestige left to tell where it was, or where his wretched companions lay buried! WHITSUN-EVE. THE pride of my heart and the delight of my eyes is my garden. Our house, which is in dimensions very much like a bird-cage, and might, with almost equal convenience, be laid on a shelf, or hung up in a tree, would be utterly unbearable in warm weather, were it not that we have a retreat out of doors,-and a very pleasant retreat it is. To make my readers fully comprehend it, I must describe our whole territories. Fancy a small plot of ground, with a pretty low irregular cottage at one end; a large granary, divided from the dwelling by a little court running along one side; and a long thatched shed open towards the garden, and supported by wooden pillars on the other. The bottom is bounded, half by an old wall, and half by an old paling, over which we see a pretty distance of woody hills. The house, granary, wall and paling, are covered with vines, cherrytrees, roses, honeysuckles, and jessamines, with great clusters of tall hollyhocks running up between them; a large elder overhanging the little gate, and a magnificent bay-tree, such a tree as shall scarcely be matched in these "Harry! Harry! the child! the child!" parts, breaking with its beautiful conical form was his first thought and his first exclamation; the horizontal lines of the buildings. This is "Help! instant help!" was the next, and, my garden; and the long pillared shed, the assisted by the stranger horseman, whose sort of rustic arcade which runs along one side, speed had been stayed by the awful catas- parted from the flower-beds by a row of rich trophe, the village of Lanton was quickly geraniums, is our out-of-door drawing-room. alarmed, and its inhabitants assembled on the I know nothing so pleasant as to sit there spot. Who may describe that scene? Fathers, on a summer afternoon, with the western sun brothers, kinsmen, friends, digging literally flickering through the great elder-tree, and for life! every nerve quivering with exertion, lighting up our gay parterres, where flowers and yet all exertion felt to be unavailing. Mo- and flowering shrubs are set as thick as grass thers and sisters looking on in agony; and the in a field, a wilderness of blossom, interpoor widow Lee, and poor, poor, James God- woven, intertwined, wreathy, garlandy, prodard, the self-accuser! A thousand and a fuse beyond all profusion, where we may guess that there is such a thing as mould, but never see it. I know nothing so pleasant as to sit in the shade of that dark bower, with the eye resting on that bright piece of colour, lighted so gloriously by the evening sun, now catching a glimpse of the little birds as they fly rapidly in and out of their nests for there are always two or three birds'-nests in the thick tapestry of cherry-trees, honeysuckles, and China-roses, which cover our walls-now tracing the gay gambols of the common butterflies as they sport around the dahlias; now watching that rarer moth, which the country people, fertile in pretty names, call the beebird; that bird-like insect, which flutters in the hottest days over the sweetest flowers, inserting its long proboscis into the small tube of the jessamine, and hovering over the scarlet blossoms of the geranium, whose bright colour seems reflected on its own feathery breast; that insect which seems so thoroughly a creature of the air, never at rest; always, even when feeding, self-poised, and self-supported, and whose wings, in their ceaseless motion, have a sound so deep, so full, so lulling, so musical. Nothing so pleasant as to sit amid that mixture of the flower and the leaf, watching the bee-bird! Nothing so pretty to look at as my garden! It is quite a picture; only unluckily it resembles a picture in more qualities than one, it is fit for nothing but to look at. One might as well think of walking in a bit of framed canvass. There are walks to be sure-tiny paths of smooth gravel, by courtesy called such-but they are so overhung by roses and lilies, and such gay encroachers-so overrun by convolvulus, and heart's-ease, and mignionette, and other sweet stragglers, that, except to edge through them occasionally, for the purposes of planting, or weeding, or watering, there might as well be no paths at all. Nobody thinks of walking in my garden. Even May glides along with a delicate and trackless step, like a swan through the water; and we, its two-footed denizens, are fain to treat it as if it were really a saloon, and go out for a walk towards sun-set, just as if we had not been sitting in the open air all day. on Monday, not played by the men, who, since a certain misadventure with the Beechhillers, are, I am sorry to say, rather chapfallen, but by the boys, who, zealous for the honour of their parish, and headed by their bold leader, Ben Kirby, marched in a body to our antagonists' ground the Sunday after our melancholy defeat, challenged the boys of that proud hamlet, and beat them out and out on the spot. Never was a more signal victory. Our boys enjoyed this triumph with so little moderation that it had like to have produced a very tragical catastrophe. The captain of the Beech-hill youngsters, a capital bowler, by name Amos Stone, enraged past all bearing by the crowing of his adversaries, flung the ball at Ben Kirby with so true an aim, that if that sagacious leader had not warily ducked his head when he saw it coming, there would probably have been a coroner's inquest on the case, and Amos Stone would have been tried for manslaughter. He let fly with such vengeance, that the cricketball was found embedded in a bank of clay one hundred yards off, as if it had been a cannot-shot. Tom Coper and Farmer Thackum, the umpires, both say that they never saw so tremendous a ball. If Amos Stone live to be a man, (I mean to say if he be not hanged first,) he'll be a pretty player. He is coming here on Monday with his party to play the return match, the umpires having respectively engaged Farmer Thackum that Amos shall keep the peace, Tom Coper that Ben shall give no unnecessary or wanton provocation a nicely-worded and lawyer-like clause, and one that proves that Tom Coper hath his doubts of the young gentleman's discretion; and, of a truth, so have I. I would not be Ben Kirby's surety, cautiously as the security is worded, -no! not for a white double dahlia, the present object of my ambition. This village of ours is swarming to-night like a hive of bees, and all the church-bells round are pouring out their merriest peals, as if to call them together. I must try to give some notion of the various figures. First there is a group suited to Teniers, a What a contrast from the quiet garden to cluster of out-of-door customers of the Rose, the lively street! Saturday night is always a old benchers of the inn, who sit round a table time of stir and bustle in our Village, and smoking and drinking in high solemnity to this is Whitsun-Eve, the pleasantest Saturday the sound of Timothy's fiddle. Next, a mass of all the year, when London journeymen of eager boys, the combatants of Monday, and servant lads and lasses snatch a short who are surrounding the shoemaker's shop, holiday to visit their families. A short and where an invisible hole in their ball is mended precious holiday, the happiest and liveliest by Master Keep himself, under the joint suof any; for even the gambols and merry-perintendence of Ben Kirby and Tom Coper. makings of Christmas offer but a poor enjoyment, compared with the rural diversions, the Mayings, revels, and cricket-matches of Whitsuntide. We ourselves are to have a cricket-match *Sphynx ligustri, privet hawk-moth. Ben showing much verbal respect and outward deference for his umpire's judgment and experience, but managing to get the ball done his own way after all; whilst outside the shop, the rest of the eleven, the lesstrusted commons, are shouting and bawling round Joel Brent, who is twisting the waxed twine round the handles of the bats-the poor | happiness, which makes her almost as enviabats, which please nobody, which the taller ble as they; and we pursue our walk amidst youths are despising as too little and too light, the moonshine and the nightingales, with Jacob and the smaller are abusing as too heavy Frost's cart looming in the distance, and the and too large. Happy critics! winning their merry sounds of Whitsun-tide, the shout, the match can hardly be a greater delight-even laugh, and the song echoing all around us, if to win it they be doomed! Farther down like "noises of the air." the street is the pretty black-eyed girl, Sally Wheeler, come home for a holiday from B., escorted by a tall footman in a dashing livery, whom she is trying to curtsy off before her deaf grandmother sees him. I wonder whether she will succeed! JESSY LUCAS. Ascending the hill are two couples of a dif- ABOUT the centre of a deep, winding, and ferent description. Daniel Tubb and his fair woody lane, in our neighbouring village of Valentine, walking boldly along like licensed Aberleigh, stands an old farm-house, whose lovers; they have been asked twice in church, stables, out-buildings, and ample barn-yard, and are to be married on Tuesday; and closely have a peculiarly forlorn and deserted appearfollowing that happy pair, near each other, ance; they can, in fact, scarcely be said to but not together, come Jem Tanner and Mabel be occupied; the person who rents the land, Green, the poor culprits of the wheat-hoeing. preferring to live at a large farm about a mile Ah! the little clerk hath not relented! The distant, leaving this lonely house to the care course of true-love doth not yet run smooth of a labourer and his wife, who reside in one in that quarter. Jem dodges along, whistling end, and have the charge of a few colts and "cherry-ripe," pretending to walk by himself, heifers, that run in the orchard and an adjoinand to be thinking of nobody; but every now ing meadow; while the vacant rooms are and then he pauses in his negligent saunter, tenanted by a widow in humble circumstances, and turns round outright to steal a glance at and her young family. Mabel, who, on her part, is making believe to walk with poor Olive Hathaway, the lame mantua-maker, and even affecting to talk and to listen to that gentle, humble creature, as she points to the wild flowers on the common, and the lambs and children disporting amongst the gorse, but whose thoughts and eyes are evidently fixed on Jem Tanner, as she meets his backward glance with a blushing smile, and half springs forward to meet him; whilst Olive has broken off the conversation as soon as she perceived the pre-occupation of her companion, and begun humming, perhaps unconsciously, two or three lines of Burns, whose "Whistle and I'll come to thee, my love," and "Gi'e me a glance of thy bonnie black ee," were never better exemplified than in the couple before her. Really it is curious to watch them, and to see how gradually the attraction of this tantalizing vicinity becomes irresistible, and the rustic lover rushes to his pretty mistress like the needle to the magnet. On they go, trusting to the deepening twilight, to the little clerk's absence, to the good-humour of the happy lads and lasses, who are passing and repassing on all sides-or rather, perhaps, in a happy oblivion of the cross uncle, the kind villagers, the squinting lover, and the whole world. On they trip, linked arm-inarm, he trying to catch a glimpse of her glowing face under her bonnet, and she hanging down her head and avoiding his gaze with a mixture of modesty and coquetry, which well becomes the rural beauty. On they go, with a reality and intensity of affection, which must overcome all obstacles; and poor Olive follows with an evident sympathy in their The house is beautifully situated; deep, as I have said, in a narrow woody lane, which winds between high banks, now feathered with hazel, now studded with pollards and forest trees; until opposite Kibe's farm, it widens sufficiently to admit a large clear pond, round which the hedge, closely and regularly set, with a row of tall elms, sweeps in a graceful curve, forming for that bright mirror, a rich leafy frame. A little way farther on, the lane widens, and makes an abrupt winding, as it is crossed by a broad shallow stream, a branch of the Loddon, which comes meandering along from a chain of beautiful meadows, then turns in a narrower channel, by the side of the road, and finally spreads itself into a large piece of water, almost a lakelet, amidst the rushes and willows of Hartley Moor. A foot-bridge is flung over the stream, where it crosses the lane, which, with a giant oak growing on the bank, and throwing its broad branches far on the opposite side, forms, in every season, a pretty rural picture. Kibe's farm is as picturesque as its situation; very old, very irregular, with gable-ends, clustered chimneys, casement windows, a large porch, and a sort of square wing, jutting out even with the porch, and covered with a luxuriant vine, which has quite the effect, especially when seen by moon-light, of an ivymantled tower. On one side, extend the ample, but disused farm-buildings, on the other, the old orchard, whose trees are so wild, so hoary, and so huge, as to convey the idea of a fruit forest. Behind the house is an ample kitchen garden, and before, a neat flower-court, the exclusive demesne of Mrs. Lucas and her family, to whom indeed, the labourer, John | no less charming, although in a very different Miles, and his good wife Dinah, served, in some sort, as domestics. Mrs. Lucas had known far better days; her husband had been an officer, and died fighting bravely in one of the great victories of the last war, leaving her with three children, one lovely boy, and two delicate girls, to struggle through the world, as best she might. She was an accomplished woman, and at first settled in a great town, and endeavoured to improve her small income by teaching music and languages. But she was country-bred; her children too had been born in the country, amidst the sweetest recesses of the New Forest, and pining herself for liberty, and solitude, and green fields, and fresh air, she soon began to fancy that her children were visibly deteriorating in health and appearance, and pining for them also; and finding that her old servant, Dinah Miles, was settled with her husband in this deserted farm-house, she applied to his master, to rent, for a few months, the untenanted apartments, came to Aberleigh, and fixed there apparently for life. We lived in different parishes, and she declined company, so that I seldom met Mrs. Lucas, and had lost sight of her for some time, retaining merely a general recollection of the mild, placid, elegant mother, surrounded by three rosy, romping, bright-eyed children, when the arrival of an intimate friend at Aberleigh vicarage, caused me frequently to pass the lonely farm-house, and threw this interesting family again under my observation. The first time that I saw them, was on a bright summer evening, when the nightingale was yet in the coppice, the briar-rose blossoming in the hedge, and the sweet scent of the bean-fields perfuming the air. Mrs. Lucas, still lovely and elegant, though somewhat faded and care-worn, was walking pensively up and down the grass-path of the pretty flower-court: her eldest daughter, a rosy bright brunette, with her dark hair floating in all directions, was darting about like a bird: now tying up the pinks, now watering the geraniums; now collecting the fallen rose-leaves into the straw bonnet, which dangled from her arm; and now feeding a brood of bantams from a little barley measure, which that sagacious and active colony seemed to recognise as if by instinct, coming, long before she called them, at their swiftest pace, between a run and a fly, to await with their usual noisy and bustling patience, the showers of grain, which she flung to them across the paling. It was a beautiful picture of youth, and health, and happiness; and her clear, gay voice, and brilliant smile, accorded well with her shape and motion, as light as a butterfly, and as wild as the wind. A beautiful picture was that rosy lass of fifteen, in her unconscious loveliness, and I might have continued gazing upon her longer, had I not been attracted by an object way. It was a slight elegant girl, apparently about a year younger than the pretty romp of the flower-garden, not unlike her in form and feature, but totally distinct in colouring and expression. She sate in the old porch, wreathed with jessamine and honeysuckle, with the western sun floating round her like a glory, and displaying the singular beauty of her chestnut hair, brown, with a golden light, and the exceeding delicacy of her smooth and finelygrained complexion, so pale, and yet so healthful. Her whole face and form had a bending and statue-like grace, increased by the adjustment of her splendid hair, which was parted on her white forehead, and gathered up behind in a large knot, a natural coronet. Her eyebrows, and long eye-lashes, were a few shades darker than her hair, and singularly rich and beautiful. She was plaiting straw, rapidly, and skilfully, and bent over her work with a mild and placid attention, a sedate pensiveness that did not belong to her age, and which contrasted strangely and sadly with the gaiety of her laughing and brilliant sister, who at this moment darted up to her with a handful of pinks and some groundsel. Jessy received them with a smile: such a smile! spoke a few sweet words, in a sweet sighing voice; put the flowers in her bosom, and the groundsel in the cage of a linnet that hung near her; and then resumed her seat, and her work, imitating, better than I have ever heard them imitated, the various notes of a nightingale, who was singing in the opposite hedge, whilst I, ashamed of loitering longer, passed on. The next time I saw her, my interest in this lovely creature was increased tenfold, for I then knew that Jessy was blind; a misfortune always so touching, especially in early youth, and in her case rendered peculiar affecting by the personal character of the individual. We soon became acquainted, and even intimate, under the benign auspices of the kind mistress of the vicarage, and every interview served to increase the interest excited by the whole family, and most of all, by the sweet blind girl. Never was any human being more gentle, generous and grateful, or more unfeignedly resigned to her great calamity; the pensiveness that marked her character arose, as I soon perceived, from a different source. Her blindness had been of recent occurrence, arising from inflammation, unskilfullý treated, and was pronounced incurable; but from coming on so lately, it admitted of several alleviations, of which she was accustomed to speak with a devout and tender gratitude. "She could work," she said, "as well as ever; and cut out, and write, and dress herself, and keep the keys, and run errands in the house she knew so well, without making any mistake or confusion. Reading, to be sure, she had been |