Full thirty years she ruled with matchless skill, Great power of body and mind was visible in her robust person and massive countenance; and there was both humour and intelligence in her acute smile, and in the keen grey eye that glanced from under her spectacles. All that she said bore the stamp of sense; but at this time she was in no talking mood, and on my begging that I might cause no interruption, resumed her seat and her labours in silent composure. She sat at a little table mending a fustian jacket belonging to one of her sons -a sort of masculine job which suited her much better than a more delicate piece of sempstress-ship would probably have done; indeed the tailors' needle; which she brandished with great skill, the whity-brown thread tied round her neck, and the huge dull-looking shears (one can't make up one's mind to call such a machine scissors), which in company with an enormous pincushion dangled from her apron-string, figuring as the pendant to a most formidable bunch of keys, formed altogether such a working apparatus as shall hardly be matched in these days of polished cutlery and cobwebby cotton-thread. On the other side of the little table sat her pretty grand-daughter Patty, a black-eyed young woman, with a bright complexion, a neat trim figure, and a general air of gentility considerably above her station. She was trimming a very smart straw hat with pink ribbons; trimming and untrimming, for the bows were tied and untied, taken off and put on, and taken off again, with a look of impatience and discontent, not common to a damsel of seventeen when contemplating a new piece of finery. The poor little lass was evidently out of sorts. She sighed, and quirked, and fidgeted, and seemed ready to cry; whilst her grandmother just glanced at her from under her spectacles, pursed up her mouth, and contrived with some difficulty not to laugh. At last Patty spoke. "Now, grandmother, you will let me go to Chapel-Row revel this afternoon, won't you?" "Humph!" said Mrs. Matthews. "It hardly rains at all, grandmother!" "Humph!" again said Mrs. Matthews, opening the prodigious scissors with which she was amputating, so to say, a button, and directing the rounded end significantly to my wet shawl, whilst the sharp point was reverted towards the dripping honeysuckle. Humph!" "Poor William! Oh, grandmother, do let me go! And I've got my new hat and alljust such a hat as William likes! Poor William! You will let me go, grandmother?" And receiving no answer but a very unequivocal "Humph!" poor Patty threw down. her straw hat, fetched a deep sigh, and sate in a most disconsolate attitude, snipping her pink ribbon to pieces; Mrs. Matthews went on manfully with her "stitchery;" and for ten minutes there was a dead pause. It was at length broken by my little friend and introducer, Susan, who was standing at the window, and exclaimed-" Who is this riding up the meadow all through the rain? Look! see!-I do think-no, it can't be—yes, it is -it is certainly my cousin William Ellis! Look, grandmother!" 66 Humph!" said Mrs. Matthews. "What can cousin William be coming for?" continued Susan. 66 Humph!" quoth Mrs. Matthews. "Oh, I know!-I know!" screamed Susan, clapping her hands and jumping for joy as she saw the changed expression of Patty's countenance, the beaming delight, succeeded by a pretty downcast shamefacedness, as she turned away from her grandmother's arch smile and archer nod. "I know!-I know!" shouted Susan. "Humph?" said Mrs. Matthews. "For shame, Susan! Pray don't, grandmother!" said Patty, imploringly. "For shame! Why I did not say he was coming to court Patty! Did I, grandmother?" returned Susan. "And I take this good lady to witness," replied Mrs. Matthews, as Patty, gathering up her hat and her scraps of ribbon, prepared to make her escape-"I take you all to wit ness that I have said nothing of any sort. Get along with you, Patty!" added she, "you have spoiled your pink trimming; but I think you are likely to want white ribbons next, and, if you put me in mind, I'll buy them for you!" And, smiling in spite of herself, the happy girl ran out of the room. CHILDREN OF THE VILLAGE. THE MAGPIES. "COME along, girls! Helen! Caroline! I say don't stand jabbering there upon the stairs, but come down this instant, or Dash and I will be off without you." This elegant speech was shouted from the bottom of the great staircase at DinelyHall, by young George Dinely, an Etonian of eleven years old, just come home for the holidays, to his two younger sisters who stood disputing very ardently in French at the top. The cause of contention was, to say the truth, no greater an object than the colour of a workbag, which they were about to make for their mamma: slate lined with pink being the choice of Miss Caroline, whilst Miss Helen preferred drab with a blue lining. "Don't stand quarrelling there about the colour of your trumpery," ," added George, "but come along!" sisters, had lately abdicated her throne on the arrival of a French governess, and was now comfortably settled at a cottage of her own in the village street. George Dinely and Dash had already that morning visited George's own pony, and his father's brood mares, the garden, the stables, the pheasantry, the green-house and the farmyard; had seen a brood of curious bantams, two litters of pigs, and a family of greyhound puppies, and had few friends, old or new, left to visit except Nurse Simmons, her cottage and her magpie, a bird of such accomplishments, that his sisters had even made it the subject of a letter to Eton. The magpie might perhaps claim an equal share with his mistress in George's impatience; and Dash, always eager to get out of doors, seemed nearly as fidgety as his young master. Dash was as beautiful a dog as one should see in a summer's day; one of the large old English spaniels, which are now so rare, with a superb head like those that you see in Spanish pictures, and such ears! they more than met over his pretty spotted nose, and when he lapped his milk dipped into the pan at least two inches. His hair was long and shiny and wavy, not curly, partly of a rich dark liver colour, partly of a silvery white, and beautifully feathered about the legs and thighs. Every body used to wonder that Dash, who apparently ate so little, should be in such good case; but the marvel was by no means so great as it seemed, for his being George's peculiar pet and property did not hinder his being the universal favourite of the whole house, from the drawing-room to the kitchen. Not a creature could resist Dash's silent sup Now George would have scorned to know a syllable of any language except Latin and Greek, but neither of the young ladies being Frenchwoman enough to construe the appellation of the leading article, the words "drab" and "slate," which came forth in native Eng-plications at meal-times, when he sat upon his lish pretty frequently, as well as the silk dangling in their hands, had enlightened him as to the matter in dispute. George was a true schoolboy, rough and kind; affecting perhaps more roughness than naturally belonged to him, from a mistaken notion that it made him look bold, and English, and manly. There cannot be a greater mistake, since the boldest man is commonly the mildest, thus realizing in every way the expression of Shakspeare, which has been the subject of a somewhat unnecessary commentary, "He's gentle and not fearful." For the rest our hero loved his sisters, which was very right; and loved to teaze them, which was very wrong; and now he and his dog Dash, both wild with spirits and with happiness, were waiting most impatiently to go down to the village on a visit to old Nurse Simmons and her magpie. Nurse Simmons was a very good and very cross old woman, who after ruling in the nursery of Dinely-Hall for two generations, scolding and spoiling Sir Edward and his brothers, and performing thirty years afterwards the same good office for Master George and his haunches looking amiable, with his large ears brought into their most becoming position, his head a little on one side, and his beautiful eyes fixed on your face, with as near an ap proach to speech as ever eyes made in the world. From Sir Edward and her Ladyship down to the stable-boy and the kitchen-maid, no inhabitant of Dinely-Hall could resist Dash! So that being a dog of most apprehensive sagacity with regard to the hours appropriated to the several refections of the family, he usually contrived, between the dining parlour, the school-room, and the servants' hall, to partake of three breakfasts and as many dinners every day, to say nothing of an occasional snap at luncheon or supper-time. No! wonder that Dash was in high condition. His good plight, however, had by no means impaired his activity. On the contrary, he was extremely lively as well as intelligent, and had a sort of circular motion, a way of flinging himself quite round on his hind feet, something after the fashion in which the French dancers twirl themselves round on one leg, which not only showed unusual agility in a dog of his size, but gave token of the same spirit and animation which sparkled in his bright hazel eye. Any thing of eagerness or impatience was sure to excite this motion, and George Dinely gravely assured his sisters, when they at length joined him in the hall, that Dash had flung himself round six-andtwenty times whilst waiting the conclusion of their quarrel. Getting out into the lawn and the open air, did not tend to diminish Dash's glee or his capers, and the young party walked merrily on; George telling of school pranks and school misfortunes the having lost or spoilt four hats since Easter seemed rather to belong to the first class of adventures than the second, -his sisters listening dutifully and wonderingly; and Dash following his own devices, now turning up a mouse's nest from a water furrow in the park,-now springing a covey of young partridges in a corn-field, now plunging his whole hairy person in the brook, -and now splashing Miss Helen from head to foot by ungallantly jumping over her whilst crossing a stile, being thereunto prompted by a whistle from his young master, who had with equal want of gallantry, leapt the stile first himself, and left his sisters to get over as they could; until at last the whole party, having passed the stile, and crossed the bridge, and turned the Church-yard corner, found themselves in the shady recesses of the Vicarage-lane, and in full view of the vine-covered cottage of Nurse Simmons. As they advanced they heard a prodigious chattering and jabbering, and soon got near enough to ascertain that the sound proceeded mainly from one of the parties they were come to visit-Nurse Simmons's magpie. He was perched in the middle of the road, defending a long dirty bare bone of mutton, doubtless his property, on one end of which he stood, whilst the other extremity was occupied by a wild bird of the same species, who, between pecking at the bone, and fighting, and scolding, found full employment. The wild magpie was a beautiful creature, as wild magpies are, of a snowy white and a fine blue black, perfect in shape and plumage, and so superior in appearance to the tame bird, ragged, draggled and dirty, that they hardly seemed of the same kind. Both were chattering away most furiously; the one in his natural and unintelligible gibberish, the other partly in his native tongue, and partly in that, for his skill in which he was so eminent,-thus turning his accomplishments to an unexpected account, and larding his own lean speech with divers foreign garnishes, such as "What's o'clock ?" and How do you do!" and "Very well I thank you," and "Poor pretty Mag!" and Mag's a good bird,”—all delivered in the most vehement accent, and all doubtless understood by the unlearned adversary as terms of reproach. "What can those two magpies be quarreling about?" said Caroline, as soon as she could speak for laughing; for on the children's approach the birds had abandoned the mutton bone, which had been quietly borne away by Dash, who in spite of his usual sumptuous fare had no objection to such a windfall, and was lying in great state on a mossy bank, discussing and enjoying the stolen morsel. "What a fury they are in! I wish I knew what they were saying," pursued Caroline, as the squabble grew every moment more angry and less intelligible. "They are talking nonsense, doubtless, as people commonly do when they quarrel," quoth George, "and act wisely to clothe it in a foreign tongue; perhaps they may be disputing about colours." "What an odd noise it is!" continued Caroline, by no means disposed to acknowledge her brother's compliment; "I never heard any thing like it." "I have," said George, drily. "I wonder whether they comprehend each other!" ejaculated Miss Helen, following her sister's example, and taking no notice of the provoking George; "they really do seem to understand." "As well as other magpies," observed the young gentleman, "why should they not?" "But what strange gibberish!" added poor Helen. 66 Gibberish, Miss Helen! Don't you hear that the birds are sputtering magpie French, sprinkled with a little magpie English? I was just going to ask you to explain it to me," replied the uninerciful George. "It is quite a parody upon your work-bag squabble," pursued their tormentor; "only that the birds are the wiser, for I see they are parting,-the wild one flying away, the tame gentleman hopping towards us. Quite the scene of the work-bag over again," continued George, "only with less noise, and much shortened-an abridged and corrected edition! Really, young ladies, the magpies have the best of it," said the Etonian, and off he stalked into Nurse Simmons's Cottage. COTTAGE NAMES. Why Lonicera wilt thou name thy child?" A commodity of good names" SHAKSPEARE. FROM the time of Goldsmith down to the present day, fine names have been the ridicule of comic authors and the aversion of sensible people, notwithstanding which the evil has increased almost in proportion to its reprobation. Miss Clementina Wilhelmina Stubbs was but a type of the Julias, the Isabels, and I the Helens of this accomplished age. should not, however, so much mind if this folly were comprised in that domain of cold gentility, to which affectation usually confines itself. One does not regard seeing Miss Arabella seated at the piano, or her little sister Leonora tottling across the carpet to show her new pink shoes. That is in the usual course of events. But the fashion spreads deeper and wider; the village is infected and the village green; Amelias and Claras sweep your rooms and cook your dinners, gentle Sophias milk your cows, and if you ask a pretty smiling girl at a cottage door to tell you her name, the rosy lips lisp out Caroline.* It was but the other day that I went into a neighbour's to procure a messenger, and found the errand disputed by a gentle Georgina without a shoe, and a fair Augusta with half a frock. Now this is a sad thing. One looks upon cottage names as a part of cottage furniture, of the costume, and is as much discomposed by the change as a painter of interiors would be who should find a Grecian couch instead of an oaken settle by the wide open hearth. In fine houses fine names do not signify; though I would humbly suggest to godfathers and godmothers, papas, mammas, maiden aunts, nurses, and gossips in general, the unconscious injury that they are doing to novelists, poets, dramatic writers, and the whole fraternity of authors, by trespassing on their (nominal) property, infringing their patent, encroaching on their privilege, underselling their stock in trade, depreciating their currency, and finally robbing poor heroes and heroines of their solitary possession, the only thing they can call their own. Shakspeare has an admonition much to the purpose, he who filches from me my good name,' and so forth. Did they never hear that? never see Othello? never read Elegant Extracts? never learn the speech by rote out of Enfield's Speaker? If they did, I must say the lesson has been as completely thrown away as lessons of morality commonly are. Sponsors in these days think no more harm of filching a name' than a sparrow does of robbing a cherry-tree. This, however, is an affair of conscience or of taste, and conscience and taste are delicate points to meddle with, especially the latter. People will please their fancies, and every lady has her favourite names. I myself have several, and they are mostly short and simple. Jane, that queenly name! Jane Seymour, Jane Grey, the noble Jane de Montford;'-Anne, to which lady seems to belong as of right, 6 A great number of children, amongst the lower orders, are Carolines. That does not, however, wholly proceed from a love of the appellation; though I believe that a queen Margery or a queen Sarah would have had fewer namesakes. A clergyman in my neighbourhood used to mistake the sound, and christen the babies Catharine-a wise error, for Kate is a noble abbreviation. a late celebrated Scottish duke is said to have caused an illegitimate daughter to be so baptized, Lady-Anne, and my friend Allan Cunningham's beautiful ballad has joined the name and the title still more inseparably; Mary, which is as common as a white violet, and like that has something indestructibly sweet and simple, and fit for all wear, high or low, suits the cottage or the palace, the garden or the field, the pretty or the ugly, the old or the young;-Margaret, Marguerite-the pearl! the daisy! Oh name of romance and of minstrelsy, which brings the days of chivalry to mind, and the worship of flowers and of ladies fair! -Emily, in which all womanly sweetness seems bound up-perhaps this is the effect of the association of ideas*-I know so many charming Emilys ;—and Susan, the sprightly, the gentle, the home-loving, the kind;-association again! But certainly there are some names which seem to belong to particular classes of character, to form the mind and even to influence the destiny: Louisa, now; is not your Louisa necessarily a die-away damsel, who reads novels, and holds her head on one side, languishing and given to love? Is not Lucy a pretty soubrette, a wearer of cast gowns and cast smiles, smart and coquettish? Must not Emma, as a matter of course, prove epistolary, if only for the sake of her signature? And is there not great danger that Laura may go a step farther, write poetry and publish? Oh beware, dear godmammas, when you call an innocent baby after Petrarch's muse! Think of the peril! Beware. Next to names simple in themselves, those which fall easily into diminutives seem to be most desirable. All abbreviations are pretty -Lizzy, Bessy, Sophy, Fanny the prettiest of all! There is something so familiar, so homelike, so affectionate in the sound, -it seems to tell in one short word a story of family love, to vouch for the amiableness of both parties. I never thought one of the most brilliant and elegant women in England quite so charming as she really is, till I heard her call her younger sister 'Annie.' It seemed to remove at once the almost repellant quality which belongs to extreme polish,-gave a genial warmth to her brightness, became her like a smile. There was a tenderness in the voice too, a delay, a dwelling on the double consonant, giving to English something of the charm of Italian pronunciation, which I have noticed only in two persons, who are, I think, the most graceful speakers and readers of my acquaintance. Annie!' If she had called her sister Anna-Maria according to the register, I should have admired, and feared, and shunned her to my dying day. That little word *There is another association which cannot be forgotten in speaking of Emily. It belongs to Palamon and Arcite, that most fortunate of stories, which comes to us consecrated by the genius of Chaucer and of Dryden, of Fletcher and of Shakspeare. made us friends immediately. I like manly is a fatality in those christian sirnames, those abbreviations too,-who does not ?-they say baptized heathens; they are sure never to fit, so much for character. You may know what never run well with other names. In the case one man thinks of another by his manner of of females especially there is a double dancalling him. Thomas and James and Richard ger; even if they seem to mark evenly at first, and William are stupid young gentlemen; see how they end. The most remarkable inTom and Jem and Dick and Will are fine stance of this acquired incongruity I ever spirited fellows. Henry now, what a soft knew befell a fair Highlander, one of my swain your Henry is! the proper theme of schoolfellows. Her mother, claiming to be gentle poesy; a name to fall in love withal; sprung from the Bruce family, would call her devoted at the font to song and sonnet, and daughter after the good king Robert, and nothe tender passion; a baptized inamorato; a thing could be better matched than her two christened hero. Call him Harry, and see noble Scottish names, Bruce Campbell; they how you ameliorate his condition. The man suited her like her tartan dress. She was a is free again, turned out of song and son- tall, graceful blue-eyed girl, with high spirits net and romance, and young ladies' hearts. and some pride, an air compounded of the paShakspeare understood this well, when he lace and the mountain, a sort of wild royalty, wrote of prince Hal and Harry Hotspur. To and a step that puzzled alike our French have called them Henry would have spoiled dancing-master and our English drill-serjeant, both characters. George and Charles are un-it was so unlike what either of them taught, lucky in this respect; they have no diminutives, and what mouthfuls of monosyllables they are! names royal too, and therefore unshortened. A king must be of a very rare class who could afford to be called by shorthand; very popular to tempt the rogues, well-conditioned to endure it, wise and strong to afford it. Our Harry the Fifth, the conqueror of Azincourt, might and did; and the French Henri Quatre; and now and then a usurper. Niccola Rienzi, Oliver Cromwell, and Napoleon, the noblest of names, have all undergone such transformation; and indeed the Roman tribune, the least known but not perhaps the least remarkable of the three; he who, born of an innkeeper and a washerwoman, restored for a while the free republic of Rome; the friend of Petrarch, the arbiter of princes, the summoner of emperors, the arraigner of popes-is scarcely known even in the grave page of history by any other appellation than that of Cola Rienzi-as who should say Nick. I have said that names sometimes form the character. Sometimes, on the other hand, they are like dreams, and become true by contraries; especially if you christen after the virtues. Thus the wildest flirt of my acquaintance happens to be a Miss Prudentiaa second sister, too, whose elder is not likely to marry, so that the misnomer is palpable; and the greatest scold I ever encountered, the errantest virago, was a Mrs. Patience. The Graces are usually awkward gawkies, and the Belles all through the alphabet, from Annabelle downward, are a generation of frights. The Floras are sure to be pale puny girls, and the Roses are apt to wither on the virgin stalk. Call a boy after some distinguished character, and the contradiction grows still more glaring. Your Foxes and Hampdens and Sidneys range themselves on the ministerial benches, your Pitts and Melvilles turn out rank radicals, your Andrew Marvels take bribes, and your Nelsons run away. There so un-French, so un-English, and yet so bounding and free. She left school, and for some years I heard nothing more of her than that she was happily married. Last summer I had the pleasure of meeting a cousin of hers (as near I should think as within the eighth degree), and began immediately to inquire for my fair friend. "I understand," said I, "that she married early and well?”—“ Yes, very," was the reply; "but she had the misfortune to lose Mr. Smith in the second year of their nuptials. She is now, however, re-married to a Mr. Brown."-I heard no more! I was petrified. Bruce Smith! Imagine such a conjunction! And now Bruce Brown! fancy that! There is an "apt alliteration" for you! And even if she should take refuge in initials, think of B. B.! "P. P., clerk of this parish," has the advantage both in look and sound. Oh, your proper names are dangerous! It is the practice of the Americans, and with them it may perhaps be politic and patriotic to diffuse and perpetuate the memory of their Washingtons and Jeffersons among the descendants of the people whom they freed, to give the new generation a sort of personal interest in their fame. But why should we adopt the fashion? And why should it spread? as spread it does. Those papas and mammas, who labour under the misfortune of a plebeian sirname, do the best to lighten the calamity to their offspring by an harmonious and dignified prænomen, sometimes taken from friends or acquaintance chosen as sponsors for the good gift of a seemly appellation; sometimes culled from history; sometimes from that pseudo-history called a novel; sometimes from the peerage; sometimes from the racing calendar, which, by the by, does not fail to return the compliment. One ingenious gentleman, in a northern county, even christened his eldest hope after the village in which he was born,-Allonby of Allonby!- How well it looks! and what a pity that the wretched little word "Short" should have a right to in |