jected; the bells stopped of themselves, and for the rest, a good sort of woman, and un we heard no more of the pretty pastry-cook. très bon parti for Master Sims, who seemed For three months after that rebuff, mine host, to consider it a profitable speculation, and albeit not addicted to aversions, testified an made love to her whenever she happened to equal dislike to women and tartlets, widows come into his head, which, it must be conand plum-cake. Even poor Alice Taylor, fessed, was hardly so often as her merits and whose travelling basket of lollypops and gin- her annuity deserved. Remiss as he was, gerbread he had whilome patronized, was he had no lack of encouragement to complain forbidden the house; and not a bun or a bis-of-for she "to hear would seriously incline," cuit could be had at the Rose, for love or money.

The morning rose more quietly—I had alThe rival lady was Miss Lydia Day, the most said more dully-and promised ill for the carpenter's sister; a slim, upright maiden, fête. The sky was gloomy, the wind cold, not remarkable for beauty, and not quite so and the green filled as slowly as a balloon young as she had been, who, on inheriting a seems to do when one is watching it. The small annuity from the mistress with whom entertainments of the day were to begin with she had spent the best of her days, retired to a cricket-match (two elevens to be chosen on her native village to live on her means. A gen- the ground), and the wickets pitched at twelve teel, demure, quiet personage, was Miss Lydia | o'clock precisely. Twelve o'clock cameDay; much addicted to snuff and green tea, but no cricketers-except, indeed, some two and not averse from a little gentle scandal- or three punctual and impatient gentlemen;

world began to be gay at Whitley-wood. Carts and gigs, and horses and carriages, and people of all sorts, arrived from all quarters; and, lastly, "the blessed sun himself" made his appearance, adding a triple lustre to the scene. Fiddlers, ballad-singers, cake-baskets

Frenchman with dancing dogs-a Bavarian woman selling brooms. half-a-dozen stalls with fruit and frippery and twenty noisy games of quoits, and bowls, and ninepinsboys throwing at boxes-girls playing at ball -gave to the assemblage the bustle, clatter, and gaiety of a Dutch fair, as one sees it in Teniers' pictures. Plenty of drinking and smoking on the green-plenty of eating in the booths: the gentlemen cricketers, at one end, dining off a round of beef, which made the table totter-the players, at the other, supping off a gammon of bacon-Amos Stone crammed at both-and Landlord Sims bustling everywhere with an activity that seemed to confer upon him the gift of ubiquity, assisted by the little light-footed maidens, his daughters, all smiles and curtsies, and by a pretty black-eyed young woman-name unknown, with whom, even in the midst of his hurry, he found time, as it seemed to me, for a little philandering. What would the widow and Miss Lydia have said? But they remained in happy ignorance

one o'clock came, and brought no other reinforcement than two or three more of our young Etonians and Wykhamites-less punctual than their precursors, but not a whit less impatient. Very provoking, certainly-but not very uncommon. Your country cricketer, the peasant, the mere rustic, does love, on these Punch-Master Frost, crying cherries-a occasions, to keep his betters waiting, if only to display his power; and when we consider that it is the one solitary opportunity in which importance can be felt and vanity gratified, we must acknowledge it to be perfectly in human nature that a few airs should be shown. Accordingly, our best players held aloof. Tom Coper would not come to the ground; Joel Brent came, indeed, but would not play; Samuel long coquetted - he would and he would not. Very provoking, certainly! Then two young farmers, a tall brother and a short, Hampshire men, cricketers born, whose goodhumour and love of the game rendered them sure cards, had been compelled to go on business-the one, ten miles south-the other, fifteen north-that very morning. No playing without the Goddards! No sign of either of them on the Broad or the F. Most intolerably provoking, beyond a doubt! Master Sims tried his best coaxing and his best double X on the recusant players; but all in vain. In short, there was great danger of the match going off altogether; when, about two o'clock, Amos Stone, who was there with the crown of his straw hat sewed in wrong side outward-new thatched, as it were-and who had been set to watch the B-highway, gave notice that something was coming as tall as the Maypole which something turned out to be the long Goddard, and his brother approaching at the same moment in the opposite direction, hope, gaiety, and good-humour revived again; and two elevens, including Amos and another urchin of his calibre, were formed on the spot.

I never saw a prettier match. The gentlemen, the Goddards, and the boys being equally divided, the strength and luck of the parties were so well balanced, that it produced quite a néck-and-neck race, won only by two notches. Amos was completely the hero of the day, standing out half of his side, and getting five notches at one hit. His side lost-but so many of his opponents gave him their ribbons (have not I said that Master Sims bestowed a set of ribbons?) that the straw hat was quite covered with purple trophies; and Amos, stalking about the ground, with a shy and awkward vanity, looked with his decorations like the sole conqueror. -the Alexander or Napoleon of the day. The boy did not speak a word; but every now and then he displayed a set of huge white teeth in a grin of inexpressible delight. By far the happiest and proudest personage at that Maying was Amos Stone.

By the time the cricket-match was over, the

the one drinking tea in most decorous primness in a distant marquée, disliking to mingle with so mixed an assembly,-the other in full chase after the most unlucky of all her urchins, the boy called Sam, who had gotten into a démêlé with a showman, in consequence of mimicking the wooden gentleman Punch, and his wife Judy-thus, as the showman observed, bringing his exhibition into disrepute.

Meanwhile, the band struck up in the Mayhouse, and the dance, after a little demur, was fairly set afloat-an honest English country dance (there had been some danger of waltzing and quadrilling)—with ladies and gentlemen at the top, and country lads and lasses at the bottom; a happy mixture of cordial kindness on the one hand, and pleased respect on the other. It was droll though to see the beplumed and beflowered French hats, the silks and the furbelows sailing and rustling amidst the straw bonnets and cotton gowns of the humbler dancers; and not less so to catch a glimpse of the little lame clerk, shabbier than ever, peeping through the canvass opening of the booth, with a grin of ineffable delight, over the shoulder of our vicar's pretty wife. Really, considering that Mabel Green and Jem Tanner were standing together at that moment at the top of the set, so deeply engaged in making love that they forgot when they ought to begin, and that the little clerk must have seen them, I cannot help taking his grin for a favourable omen to those faithful lovers.

Well, the dance finished, the sun went down, and we departed. The Maying is over, the

booths carried away, and the May-house demolished. Every thing has fallen into its old position, except the love affairs of Landlord Sims. The pretty lass with the black eyes, who first made her appearance at Whitleywood, is actually staying at the Rose Inn, on a visit to his daughters; and the village talk | goes that she is to be the mistress of that thriving hostelry, and the wife of its master; and both her rivals are jealous, after their several fashions-the widow in the tantrums, the maiden in the dumps. Nobody knows exactly who the black-eyed damsel may be, but she's young, and pretty, and civil, and modest; and, without intending to depreciate the merits of either of her competitors, I cannot help thinking that our good neighbour has shown his taste.

By that standard his calculations were regulated; all the furniture of the White House at Hannonby was adapted to the proportions of His Majesty's ship the Mermaiden. The great drawing-room was fitted up exactly on the model of her cabin, and the whole of that spacious and commodious mansion made to resemble, as much as possible, that wonderfully inconvenient-abode, the inside of a ship; every thing crammed into the smallest possible compass; space most unnecessarily economized, and contrivances devised for all those matters which need no contriving at all. He victualled the house as for an East-India voyage, served out the provisions in rations, and swung the whole family in hammocks.

and unexpected. My first impulse was to run away, and I had actually made some motions towards a retreat, when, struck with the ludicrous nature of the sport, and the folly of being frightened at a sort of squibbery, which even the unusual game (though the admiral was a capital marksman, and seldom failed to knock down his insect) did not seem to regard, I faced about manfully, and contenting myself with putting my hands to my ears to keep out the sound, remained at a very safe distance to survey the scene. There, under the shade of the tall elms, sate the veteran, a little old withered man, very like a pocketpistol himself, brown, succinct, grave, and fiery. He wore an old-fashioned naval uniform of blue, faced with white, which set off his mahogany countenance, drawn into a thousand deep wrinkles, so that his face was as full of lines as if it had been tattooed, with the full force of contrast. At his side stood a very tall, masculine, large-boned middleaged woman, something like a man in petticoats, whose face, in spite of a quantity of rouge and a small portion of modest assurance, might still be called handsome, and could never be mistaken for belonging to other than an Irish woman. There was a touch of the brogue in her very look. She, evidently his wife, stood by marking the covies, and enjoying as it seemed to me, the smell of gunpowder, to which she had the air of being The most unmanageable of these complainquite as well accustomed as the admiral. A ers were of course the servants: with the men, younger lady was watching them at a little after a little while, he got on tolerably, sterndistance, apparently as much amused as my-ness and grog (the wind and sun of the fable) self, and far less frightened; on her advancing to meet me, the pistol was put down, and the admiral joined us. This was my first introduction; we were acquainted in a moment, and before the end of my visit he had shown me all over his house, and told me the whole history of his life and adventures.

In these there was nothing remarkable, excepting their being so entirely of the sea. Some sixty-five years before, he had come into the world in the middle of the British channel, whilst his mother was taking a little trip from Portsmouth to Plymouth on board her husband's flag-ship, (for he too had been an admiral,) when, rather before he was expected, our admiral was born. This début fixed his destiny. At twelve years old he went to sea, and had remained there ever since, till now, when an unlucky promotion sent him ashore, and seemed likely to keep him there. I never saw a man so unaffectedly displeased with his own title. He forbade any of his family from calling him by it, and took it as a sort of affront from strangers. Being, however, on land, his first object was to make his residence as much like a man-of-war as possible, or rather as much like that beau-idéal of a habitation his last frigate, the Mermaiden, in which he had by different prizes made above sixty thousand pounds.

It will easily be believed that these innovations, in a small village in a midland county, where nineteen-twentieths of the inhabitants had never seen a piece of water larger than Hannonby great pond, occasioned no small commotion. The poor admiral had his own troubles. At first every living thing about the place rebelled-there was a general mutiny; the very cocks and hens whom he had crammed up in coops in the poultry-yard screamed aloud for liberty; and the pigs, ducks, and geese, equally prisoners, squeaked and gabbled for water; the cows lowed in their stall -the sheep bleated in their pens, the whole live stock of Hannonby was in durance.

conquered them; his stanchest opponents were of the other sex, the whole tribe of housemaids and kitchenmaids abhorred him to a woman, and plagued and thwarted him every hour of the day. He, on his part, returned their aversion with interest; talked of female stupidity, female awkwardness, and female dirt, and threatened to compound an household of the crew of the Mermaiden, that should shame all the twirlers of mops and brandishers of brooms in the county. Especially, he used to vaunt the abilities of a certain Bill Jones, as the best laundress, sempstress, cook, and housemaid in the navy; him he was determined to procure, to keep his refractory household in some order; accordingly, he wrote to desire his presence; and Bill, unable to resist the summons of his old commander, arrived accordingly.

This Avatar, which had been anticipated by the revolted damsels with no small dismay, tended considerably to ameliorate matters. The dreaded major-domo turned out to be a smart young sailor, of four or five-and-twenty, with an arch smile, a bright merry eye, and a most knowing nod, by no means insensible to female objurgation, or indiferent to female; charms. The women of the house, particu larly the pretty ones, soon perceived their power; and as this Admirable Crichton of his Majesty's ship the Mermaiden, had, amongst

his other accomplishments, the address completely to govern his master, all was soon in the smoothest track possible. Neither, universal genius though he were, was Bill Jones at all disdainful of female assistance, or averse to the theory of a division of labour. Under his wise direction and discreet patronage, a peace was patched up between the admiral and his rebellious handmaids. A general amnesty was proclaimed, with the solitary exception of an old crone of a she-cook, who had, on some occasion of culinary interference, turned her master out of his own kitch-out the luckiest of his life, he having carried en, and garnished Bill Jones's jacket with an unseemly rag yclept a dish-clout. She was dismissed by mutual consent; and Sally the kitchenmaid, a pretty black-eyed girl, promoted to the vacant post, which she filled with eminent ability.

a delightful simplicity of belief; pitied them; relieved them; fought their battles at the bench and the vestry, and got into two or three scrapes with constables and magistrates, | by the activity of his protection. Only one counterfeit sailor with a sham wooden-leg, he! found out at a question, and, by aid of Bill Jones, ducked in the horse-pond, for an impostor, till the unlucky wretch, who was, as the worthy seaman suspected, totally unused to the water, a thorough land-lubber, was nearly drowned; an adventure which turned

Soothed, guided, and humoured by his trusty adherent, and influenced perhaps a little by the force of example and the effect of the land breeze, which he had never breathed so long before, our worthy veteran soon began to show symptoms of a man of this world. The earth became, so to say, his native element. He took to gardening, to farming, for which Bill Jones had also a taste; set free his prisoners in the basse-cour, to the unutterable glorification and crowing of cock and hen, and cackling and gabbling of goose and turkey, and enlarged his own walk from pacing backwards and forwards in the dining-room, followed by his old shipmates, a Newfoundland dog and a tame goat, into a stroll round his own grounds, to the great delight of those faithful attendants. He even talked of going pheasant shooting, bought a hunter, and was only saved from following the fox-hounds by accidentally taking up Peregrine Pickle, which, by a kind of Sortes Virgiliana, opened on the mischances of Lieutenant Hatchway and Commodore Trunnion in a similar expedi

tion.

After this warning which he considered as nothing less than providential, he relinquished any attempt at mounting that formidable animal, a horse, but having found his land legs, he was afoot all day long in his farm or his garden, setting people to rights in all quarters, and keeping up the place with the same scrupulous nicety that he was wont to bestow on the planks and rigging of his dear Mermaiden. Amongst the country people, he soon became popular. They liked the testy little gentleman, who dispensed his beer and grog so bountifully, and talked to them so freely. He would have his own way, to be sure, but then he paid for it; besides, he entered into their tastes and amusements, promoted May-games, revels, and other country sports, patronized dancing-dogs and monkeys, and bespoke plays in barns. Above all, he had an exceeding partiality to vagrants, strollers, gipsies, and such like persons; listened to their tales with

his case to an attorney, who forced the admiral to pay fifty pounds for the exploit.

Our good veteran was equally populari amongst the gentry of the neighbourhood. His own hospitality was irresistible, and his frankness and simplicity, mixed with a sort of petulant vivacity, combined to make him a most welcome relief to the dulness of a country dinner party. He enjoyed society extremely, and even had a spare bed erected for company; moved thereunto by an accident which befel the fat Rector of Kinton, who having unfortunately consented to sleep at Hannonby one wet night, had alarmed the whole house, and nearly broken his own neck, by a fall from his hammock. The admiral would have put up twenty spare beds, if he could have been sure of filling them, for besides his natural sociability, he was, it must be confessed, in spite of his farming, and gardening, and keeping a log-book, a good deal at a loss how to fill up his time. His reading was none of the most extensive: Robinson Crusoe, the Naval Chronicle, Southey's admirable life of Nelson, and Smol-j let's novels, formed the greater part of his library; and for other books he cared little; though he liked well enough to pore over maps and charts, and to look at modern voyages, especially if written by landsmen or ladies; and his remarks on those occasions often displayed a talent for criticism, which, under different circumstances, might have ripened into a very considerable reviewer.

For the rest, he was a most kind and excellent person, although a little testy and not a little absolute; and a capital disciplinarian, although addicted to the reverse sins of making other people tipsy whilst he kept himself sober, and of sending forth oaths in volleys, whilst he suffered none other to swear. He had besides a few prejudices incident to his condition-loved his country to the point of hating all the rest of the world, especially the French; and regarded his own profession with a pride which made him intolerant of every other. To the army he had an intense and growing hatred, much augmented since victory upon victory had deprived him of the comfortable feeling of scorn. The battle of Waterloo fairly posed him. "To be sure to have drubbed the French was a fine thing-a