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A CASTLE IN THE AIR.

"CAN any one tell me of a house to be let hereabouts?" asked I, this afternoon, coming into the room, with an open letter in my hand, and an unusual animation of feeling and of manner. "Our friends, the Camdens, want to live amongst us again, and have commissioned me to make inquiries for a residence." This announcement, as I expected, gave general delight; for Mr. Camden is the most excellent and most agreeable person under the sun, except his wife, who is even more amiable than her amiable husband: to regain such neighbours was felt to be an universal benefit, more especially to us who were so happy as to call them friends. My own interest in the house question was participated by all around me, and the usual enumeration of vacant mansions, and the several objections to each (for where ever was a vacant mansion without its objection?) began with zeal and rapidity.

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high intellectual pleasure, the gratification to the taste and the affections, which our renewed intercourse with persons so accomplished and so amiable, could not fail to afford; both agreeing that Hatherden was the very place we wanted, the very situation, the very distance, the very size. In agreeing with me, however, my companion could not help reminding me rather maliciously, how very much, in our late worthy neighbours', the Norris's time, I had been used to hate and shun this paragon of places; how frequently I had declared Hatherden too distant for a walk, and too near for a drive; how constantly I had complained of fatigue in mounting the hill, and of cold in crossing the common; and how, finally, my half-yearly visits of civility had dwindled first into annual, then into biennial calls, and would doubtless have extended themselves into triennial marks of remembrance, if our neighbours had but remained long enough. "To be sure," added he, recollecting, probably, how he, with his stricter sense of politeness, used to stave off a call for a month together, taking shame to himself every evening for his neglect, retaining at once the conscience and the sin! "To be

"The White House at Hannonby-the Bel- sure, Norris was a sad bore! We shall find videre, as the late people called it?”

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"That might have done too, but it is not in the market. The Smiths intend to stay." "Lanton Abbey?"

"Too low; grievously damp."

By this time, however, we had arrived at the end of our list; nobody could remember another place to be let, or likely to be let, and confessing ourselves too fastidious, we went again over our catalogue raisonné with expectations much sobered, and objections much modified, and were beginning to find out that Cranley Hall was not so very large, nor Lanton Abbey so exceedingly damp, when one of our party exclaimed suddenly, "We never thought of Hatherden Hill! surely that is small enough and dry enough!" and it being immediately recollected that Hatherden was only a mile off, we lost sight of all faults in this great recommendation, and wrote immediately to the lawyer who had the charge of letting the place, whilst I myself and my most efficient assistant, sallied forth to survey it on the instant.

It was a bright cool afternoon about the middle of August, and we proceeded in high spirits towards our destination, talking as we went, of the excellence and agreeableness of our delightful friends, and anticipating the

the hill easier to climb when the Camdens live on the top of it." An observation to which I assented most heartily.

On we went gaily; just pausing to admire Master Keep, the shoemaker's farming, who having a bit of garden-ground to spare, sowed it with wheat instead of planting it with potatoes, and is now, aided by his lame apprentice, very literally carrying his crop. I fancy they mean to thresh their corn in the wood-house, at least there they are depositing the sheaves. The produce may amount to four bushels. My companion, a better judge, says to three; and it has cost the new farmer two superb scarecrows, and gunpowder enough for a review, to keep off the sparrows. Well, it has been amusement and variety, however! and gives him an interest in the agricultural corner of the county newspaper. Master Keep is well to do in the world, and can afford himself such : a diversion. For my part, I like these little experiments, even if they be not over-gainful. They show enterprise: a shoemaker of less genius would never have got beyond a crop of turnips.

On we went- - down the lane, over the bridge, up the hill-for there really is a hill, and one of some steepness for Berkshire, and across the common, once so dreary, but now bright and glittering, under the double influ ence of an August sun, and our own good spirits, until we were stopped by the gate of the lawn, which was of course locked, and obliged to wait until a boy should summon the old woman who had charge of the house, and who was now at work in a neighbouring harvest-field, to give us entrance.

The same happy disposition continued after I entered the house. And when left alone in the echoing empty breakfast-room, with only one shutter opened, whilst Dame Wheeler was guiding the companion of my survey to the stable-yard, I amused myself with making in my own mind, comparisons between what' had been, and what would be. There she used to sit, poor Mrs. Norris, in this large airy room, in the midst of its solid handsome

Boys in plenty were there. The fine black-lation flourishing. A good gardener can move headed lad, George Ropley-who, with his any thing now-a-days, whether in bloom or olive complexion, his bright dark eyes, and not," thought I, with much complacency, his keen intelligent features, looks so Italian," and Clarke's a man to transplant Windsor but who is yet in all his ways so thoroughly forest without withering a leaf. We'll have and genially English-had been gathering in him to-morrow." his father's crop of apples, and was amusing himself with tossing some twenty amongst as many urchins of either sex who had collected round him, to partake of the fruit and the sport. There he stood tossing the ripe ruddy apples; some high in the air for a catch, some low amongst the bushes for a hunt; some one way, some another, puzzling and perplexing the rogues, but taking care that none should go appleless in the midst of his fun. And what fun it was to them all, thrower and catch-furniture, in a great chair at a great table, ers! What infinite delight! How they laughed and shouted, and tumbled and ran! How they watched every motion of George Ropley's hand; the boys and the girls, and the "toddling wee things," of whom one could not distinctly make out whether they were the one or the other! And how often was that hand tossed up empty, flinging nothing, in order to cheat the wary watchers!-Now he threw an apple into the midst of the group, and what a scramble! Then at a distance, and what a race! The five nearest started; one, a great boy, stumbled over a mole-hill, and was flung out; two of the little ones were distanced; and it was a neck-and-neck heat between a girl in a pink frock (my acquaintance Liddy Wheeler) and a boy in a tattered jacket, name unknown. With fair play Liddy would have beaten, but he of the ragged jacket pulled her back by her new pink frock, rushed forward, and conquered,-George gallantly flinging his last apple into her lap to console her for her defeat.

By this time the aged portress (Dame Wheeler, Liddy's grandmother) had given us admittance, and we soon stood on the steps in front of the house, in calm survey of the scene before us. Hatherden was just the place to like or not to like, according to the feeling of the hour; a respectable, comfortable country house, with a lawn before, a paddock on one side, a shrubbery on the other; offices and a kitchen garden behind, and the usual ornaments of villas and advertisements, a green-house and a verandah. Now my thoughts were couleur de rose, and Hatherden was charming. Even the beds intended for flowers on the lawn, but which, under a summer's neglect, were now dismal receptacles of seeds and weeds, did not shock my gardening eye so much as my companion evidently expected. "We must get my factotum, Clarke, here tomorrow," so ran my thoughts, " to clear away that rubbish, and try a little bold transplanting: late hollyhocks, late dahlias, a few pots of lobelias and chrysanthemums, a few patches of coreopsis and china-asters, and plenty of scarlet geraniums, will soon make this deso

busily at work for one of her seven small children; the table piled with frocks, trousers, petticoats, shirts, pinafores, hats, bonnets, all sorts of children's gear, masculine and feminine, together with spelling-books, copybooks, ivory alphabets, dissected maps, dolls, toys, and gingerbread, for the same small people. There she sate, a careful mother, fretting over their naughtiness and their ailments; always in fear of the sun, or the wind, or the rain, of their running to heat themselves, or their standing still to catch cold: not a book in the house fit for a person turned of eight years old! not a grown-up idea! not a thought beyond the nursery! One wondered what she could have talked of before she had children. Good Mrs. Norris, such was she. Good Mr. Norris was, for all purposes of neighbourhood, worse still. He was gapy and fidgety, and prosy and dozy, kept a tool-chest and a medicine-chest, weighed out manna and magnesia, constructed fishing-flies, and nets for fruit-trees, turned nutmeg-graters, lined his wife's work-box, and dressed his little daughter's doll; and had a tone of conversation perfectly in keeping with his tastes and pursuits, abundantly tedious, thin and small. One talked down to him, worthy gentleman, as one would to his son Willy. These were the neighbours that had been. What wonder that the hill was steep, and the way long, and the common dreary? Then came pleasant thoughts of the neighbours that were to be. The lovely and accomplished wife, so sweet and womanly; the elegant and highly-informed husband, so spirited and manly! Art and literature, and wisdom and wit, adorning with a wreathy and garlandy splendour all that is noblest in mind and purest in heart! What wonder that, Hatherden became more and more interesting in its anticipated charms, and that I went gaily about the place, taking note of all that could contribute to the comfort of its future inhabitants.

Home I came, a glad and busy creature, revolving in my mind the wants of the house and their speediest remedies-new paper for

the drawing-room; new wainscoting for the dining parlour; a stove for the laundry; a lock for the wine-cellar; baizing the door of the library; and new painting the hall;-to say nothing of the grand design of Clarke and the flower-beds.

THE TWO SISTERS.

THE pretty square Farm-house, standing at the corner where Kibes Lane crosses the brook, or the brook crosses Kibes Lane, (for the first phrase, although giving by far the closest picture of the place, does, it must be confessed, look rather Irish,) and where the aforesaid brook winds away by the side of another lane, until it spread into a river-like dignity, as it meanders through the sunny plain of Hartley Common, and finally disap-! pears amidst the green recesses of Pinge Wood-that pretty square Farm-house, half hidden by the tall elms in the flower court before it, which, with the spacious garden and orchard behind, and the extensive barn-yards and out-buildings, so completely occupies one of the angles formed by the crossing of the lane and the stream,-that pretty Farm-house contains one of the happiest and most prosperous families in Aberleigh, the large and thriving family of Farmer Evans.

So full was I of busy thoughts, and so desirous to put my plans in train without the loss of a moment, that although the tossing of apples had now resolved itself into a most irregular game of cricket, George Ropley being batting at one wicket, with little Sam Coper for his mate at the other;-Sam, an urchin of seven years old, but the son of an old player, full of cricket blood, born, as it were, with a bat in his hand, getting double the notches of his tall partner, an indignity which that well-natured stripling bore with surprising good-humour: and although the opposite side consisted of Liddy Wheeler bowling at one end, her old competitor of the ragged jacket at the other, and one urchin in trousers, and one in petticoats, standing out; in spite of the temptation of watching this comical parody on that manly exercise, render- Whether from skill or from good fortune, or ed doubly amusing by the scientific manner as is most probable, from a lucky mixture of in which little Sam stood at his wicket, the both, every thing goes right in his great farm. perfect gravity of the fieldsman in petticoats, His crops are the best in the parish; his hay and the serious air with which those two is never spoiled; his cattle never die; his worthies called Liddy to order whenever she servants never thieve; his children are never transgressed any rule of the game:-Sam ill. He buys cheap, and sells dear: money will certainly be a great player some day or gathers about him like a snow-ball; and yet, other, and so (if he be not a girl, for really in spite of all this provoking and intolerable there's no telling) will the young gentleman prosperity, every body loves Farmer Evans. standing out. In spite, however, of the great He is so hospitable, so good-natured, so gentemptation of overlooking a favourite divertise- erous, so homely! There, after all, lies the ment, with variations so truly original, home charm. Riches have not only not spoilt the we went, hardly pausing to observe the hous- man, but they have not altered him. He is ing of Master Keep's wheat harvest. Home just the same in look, and word, and way, we went, adding at every step a fresh story to that he was thirty years ago, when he and his our Castle in the Air, anticipating happy wife, with two sorry horses, one cow, and mornings and joyous evenings at dear Hather- three pigs, began the world at Dean-Gate, a den; in love with the place and all about it, | little bargain of twenty acres, two miles off: and quite convinced that the hill was nothing,ay, and his wife is the same woman !—the the distance nothing, and the walk by far the same frugal, tidy, industrious, good-natured prettiest in this neighbourhood. Mrs. Evans, so noted for her activity of tongue and limb, her good looks, and her plain dressing: as frugal, as good-natured, as active, and as plain dressing a Mrs. Evans at forty-five as she was at nineteen, and, in a different way, almost as good-looking.

Home we came, and there we found two letters: one from Mr. Camden, sent per coach, to say that he found they must go abroad immediately, and that they could not therefore think of coming into Berkshire for a year or more; one from the lawyer left in charge of Hatherden, to say, that we could not have the place, as the Norris's were returning to their old house forthwith. And my Castle is knocked down, blown up-which is the right word for the demolishing of such airy edifices? And Hatherden is as far off, and the hill as steep, and the common as dreary as ever.

Their children-six "boys," as Farmer Evans promiscuously calls them, whose ages vary from eight to eight-and-twenty- and three girls, two grown up, and one not yet seven, the youngest of the family, are just what might be expected from parents so simple and so good. The young men, intelligent and well-conducted; the boys, docile and promising; and the little girl as pretty a curlyheaded, rosy-cheeked poppet, as ever was the pet and plaything of a large family. It is, however, with the eldest daughters that we have to do.

Jane and Fanny Evans were as much alike

as hath often befallen any two sisters not born at one time-for in the matter of twin children, there has been a series of puzzles ever since the days of the Dromios. Nearly of an age, (I believe that at this moment both are turned of nineteen, and neither have reached twenty,) exactly of a stature, (so high that Frederick would have coveted them for wives for his tall regiment)—with hazel eyes, large mouths, full lips, white teeth, brown hair. clear healthy complexions, and that sort of nose which is neither Grecian nor Roman, nor aquiline, nor le petit nez retroussé that some persons prefer to them all; but a nose which, moderately prominent, and sufficiently wellshaped, is yet, as far as I know, anonymous, although it be perhaps as common and as welllooking a feature as is to be seen on an English face.

In short, from their school-days, when Jane was chidden for Fanny's bad work, and Fanny slapped for Jane's bad spelling, down to this, their prime of womanhood, there had been no end to the confusion produced by this remarkable instance of family likeness.

And yet Nature, who sets some mark of individuality upon even her meanest productions, making some unnoted difference between the lambs dropped from one ewe, the robins bred in one nest, the flowers growing on one stalk, and the leaves hanging from one tree, had not left these young maidens without one great and permanent distinction-a natural and striking dissimilarity of temper. Equally industrious, affectionate, happy, and kind; each was kind, happy, affectionate, and industrious in a different way. Jane was grave; Fanny was gay. If you heard a laugh or song, be sure it was Fanny: she who smiled, for certain was Fanny: she who jumped the stile when her sister opened the gate, was Fanny: she who chased the pigs from the garden as merrily as if she were running a race, so that the very pigs did not mind her, was Fanny.

On the other hand, she that so carefully was

Altogether, they were a pair of tall and comely maidens, and being constantly attired in garments of the same colour and fashion, looked at all times so much alike, that no stranger ever dreamed of knowing them apart; and even their acquaintances were rather accustomed to think and speak of them generally as the Evans's" than as the separate indi-making, with its own ravelled threads, an inviduals, Jane and Fanny. Even those who did pretend to distinguish the one from the other, were not exempt from mistakes, which the sisters, Fanny especially, who delighted in the fun so often produced by the unusual resemblance, were apt to favour by changing places in a walk, or slipping from one side to the other at a country tea-party, or playing a hundred innocent tricks to occasion at once a grave blunder, and a merry laugh.

Old Tabitha Goodwin, for instance, who, being rather purblind, was jealous of being suspected of seeing less clearly than her neighbours, and had defied even the Evans's to puzzle her discernment-seeking in vain on Fanny's hand the cut finger which she had dressed on Jane's, ascribed the incredible cure to the merits of her own incomparable salve, and could hardly be undeceived, even by the pulling off of Jane's glove, and the exhibition of the lacerated digital sewed round by her own bandage.

Young George Bailey too, the greatest beau in the parish, having betted at a Christmas party that he would dance with every pretty girl in the room, lost his wager (which Fanny had overheard) by that saucy damsel's slipping into her sister's place, and persuading her to join her own unconscious partner; so that George danced twice with Fanny and not at all with Jane ;—a flattering piece of malice, which proved, as the young gentleman (a rustic exquisite of the first water) was pleased to assert, that Miss Fanny was not displeased with her partner. How little does a vain man know of woman-kind! If she had liked him, she would not have played the trick for the mines of Golconda.

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visible darn in her mother's handkerchief, and hearing her little sister read the while; she that so patiently was feeding, one by one, two broods of young turkeys; she that so pensively was watering her own bed of delicate and somewhat rare plants, the pale stars of the Alpine pink, or the alabaster blossoms of the white evening primrose, whose modest flowers, dying off into a blush, resembled her own character, was Jane.

Some of the gossips of Aberleigh used to assert, that Jane's sighing over the flowers, as well as the early steadiness of her character, arose from an engagement to my lord's head gardener, an intelligent, sedate, and sober young Scotchman. Of this I know nothing. Certain it is, that the prettiest and newest plants were always to be found in Jane's little flower-border, and if Mr. Archibald Maclane did sometimes come to look after them, I do not see that it was any business of anybody's.

In the mean time, a visiter of a different description arrived at the farm. A cousin of Mrs. Evans's had been as successful in trade as her husband had been in agriculture, and he had now sent his only son to become acquainted with his relations, and to spend some weeks in their family.

Charles Foster was a fine young man, whose father was neither more nor less than a rich linen-draper in a great town; but whose manners, education, mind, and character might have done honour to a far higher station. He was, in a word, one of nature's gentlemen; and in nothing did he more thoroughly show his own taste and good-breeding, than by entering entirely into the homely ways and old

fashioned habits of his country cousins. He was delighted with the simplicity, frugality, and industry, which blended well with the sterling goodness and genuine abundance of the great English farm-house. The young women especially pleased him much. They formed a strong contrast with anything that he had met with before. No finery! no coquetry! no French! no piano! It is impossible to describe the sensation of relief and comfort with which Charles Foster, sick of musical Misses, ascertained that the whole dwelling did not contain a single instrument, except the bassoon, on which George Evans was wont, every Sunday at church, to excruciate the ears of the whole congregation. He liked both sisters. Jane's softness and considerateness engaged his full esteem; but Fanny's innocent playfulness suited best with his own high spirits, and animated conversation. He had known them apart from the first; and indeed denied that the likeness was at all puzzling, or more than is usual between sisters, and secretly thought Fanny as much prettier than her sister, as she was avowedly merrier. In doors and out, he was constantly at her side; and before he had been a month in the house, all its inmates had given Charles Foster, as a lover, to his young cousin; and she, when rallied on the subject, cried fie! and pish! and pshaw! and wondered how people could talk such nonsense, and liked to have such nonsense talked to her better than any thing in the world.

Affairs were in this state, when one night Jane appeared even graver and more thoughtful than usual, and far, far sadder. She sighed deeply; and Fanny, for the two sisters shared the same little room, inquired tenderly, "What ailed her?" The inquiry seemed to make Jane worse. She burst into tears, whilst Fanny hung over her, and soothed her. At length, she roused herself by a strong effort; and turning away from her affectionate comforter, said in a low tone: "I have had a great vexation to-night, Fanny; Charles Foster has asked me to marry him."

"Charles Foster! Did you say Charles Foster?" asked poor Fanny, trembling, unwilling even to trust her own senses against the evidence of her heart; "Charles Foster?" "Yes, our cousin, Charles Foster." "And you have accepted him?" inquired Fanny, in a hoarse voice.

"Oh no! no! Do you think I have forgot ten poor Archibald? Besides I am not the person whom he ought to have asked to marry him; false and heartless as he is. I would not be his wife; cruel, unfeeling, unmanly as his conduct has been! No! not if he could make me queen of England ?"

"You refused him then ?"

"No, my father met us suddenly, just as I was recovering from the surprise and indignation, that at first struck me dumb. But I

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shall refuse him most certainly; the false, deceitful, ungrateful villain!"

"My dear father! He will be disappointed. So will my mother."

"They will both be disappointed, and both angry-but not at my refusal. Oh, how they will despise him!" added Jane; and poor Fanny, melted by her sister's sympathy, and touched by an indignation most unusual in that mild and gentle girl, could no longer command her feelings, but flung herself on the bed in that agony of passion and grief, which the first great sorrow seldom fails to excite in a young heart.

After a while she resumed the conversation. "We must not blame him too severely, Jane. Perhaps my vanity made me think his attentions meant more than they really did, and you had all taken up the notion. But you must not speak of him so unkindly. He has done nothing but what is natural. You are so much wiser, and better than I am, my own dear Jane! He laughed and talked with me: but he felt your goodness,-and he was right. I was never worthy of him, and you are; and if it were not for Archibald, I should rejoice from the bottom of my heart," continued Fanny, sobbing, "if you would accept"--but unable to finish her generous wish, she burst into a fresh flow of tears; and the sisters, mutually and strongly affected, wept in each other's arms, and were comforted.

That night Fanny cried herself to sleep: but such sleep is not of long duration. Before dawn she was up, and pacing, with restless irritability, the dewy grass-walks of the garden and orchard. In less than half an hour, a light elastic step (she knew the sound well!) came rapidly behind her; a hand, (oh, how often had she thrilled at the touch of that hand!) tried to draw hers under his own; whilst a well-known voice addressed her in the softest and tenderest accents: "Fanny, my own sweet Fanny! have you thought of what I said to you last night?"

"To me ?" replied Fanny with bitterness.

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Ay, to be sure, to your own dear self! Do you not remember the question I asked you, when your good father, for the first time unwelcome, joined us so suddenly that you had no time to say, Yes? And will you not say Yes now?"

"Mr. Foster!" replied Fanny, with some spirit, "you are under a mistake here. It was to Jane that you made a proposal yesterday evening; and you are taking me for her at this moment."

"Mistake you for your sister! Propose to Jane! Incredible! Impossible! You are jesting."

Then he mistook Jane for me, last night; and he is no deceiver!" thought Fanny to herself, as with smiles beaming brightly through her tears, she turned round at his reiterated prayers, and yielded the hand he sought to his

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