pressure. "He mistook her for me! He, that defied us to perplex him!" And so it was: an unconscious and unobserved change of place, as either sister resumed her station beside little Betsy, who had scampered away after a glow-worm, added to the deepening twilight, and the lovers' natural embarrassment, had produced the confusion which gave poor Fanny a night's misery, to be compensated by a lifetime of happiness. Jane was almost as glad to lose a lover as her sister was to regain one: Charles is gone home to his father's to make preparations for his bride; Archibald has taken a great nursery garden, and there is some talk in Aberleigh that the marriage of the two sisters is to be celebrated on the same day. CHILDREN OF THE VILLAGE. PRIDE SHALL HAVE A FALL. "So you Aberleigh boys are about to play Sandleford," said George Leslie to Horace Lucas:-" have you a good eleven ?" "Our players are pretty fair, I believe," replied Horace, "but the number is short. Both sides have agreed to take a mate or two from other parishes, and I rode over to ask your |cousin Charles and yourself to join our Aberleigh party." "Faith! you are in luck, my good friend," cried George Leslie, "you may look upon the game as won. Charles, to be sure, is no great hand; can't bowl; hits up; and a bad fielda slow awkward field. But I-Did you never see me play? And I am so much improved this season! I ought to be improved, for I have seen such play, and such players! I am just returned from my aunt's, who lives within a mile of Bramshill-Sir John's you know and there were all the great men of the day, all the Lord's men: Mr. Ward; and Mr. Budd-I'm thought to stand at my wicket very much like Mr. Budd; Saunders, who is reckoned, take him all in all, the best player in England; Saunders; and Broadbridge the Sussex bowler-I don't patronize their system, though, I stick to the old steady scientific game; Lord Frederick; and Mr. Knight he's a fine figure of a man is Mr. Knight, the finest figure of any of them, and very great in the field; old Howard the bowler, he's my model; and in short, almost every celebrated cricketer in England. I know that you Westminsters think that nobody can do any thing so well as yourselves; but as far as cricket goes-ask Charles, he'll tell you that you are in luck to have me." And off the young gentleman strutted to pay his compliments to some ladies who were talking to his mother on the other side of the lawn; for this conversation ⚫took place on a fine day in July, under the heavy shadow of some tall elms, in Mrs. Leslie's beautiful grounds. George's speech had been delivered in a high, solemn, vaunting tone, as grave as Don Quixote; but of the two who remained, Horace, a quick, arch, lively lad, laughed outright, and Charles, a mild, fair, delicate boy, could not help smiling. "He gives himself a comfortable character, however," said Horace, " rather too good to be true; whilst of you he speaks modestly enough. Are you so bad, Charles? And is he such a paragon of cricketers? Does he bat like Mr. Budd, and field like Mr. Knight, and bowl like Howard ?" 66 Why, not exactly," was the reply; "but there's more truth than you think for. He's a good, but uncertain player; and I am a bad one, a very bad one; shy and timid and awkward; always feeling when the game is over that I could have done better; just as I have felt when a clever man, your father for instance, has had the goodness to speak to me, how much better I ought to have talked. Somehow the power never comes at the right time, at either game; so that I may say, as some people say of cucumbers, that I like cricket, but that cricket does not like me." "Good or bad, my dear fellow, I'll take you," said Horace, "nervousness and all. It's a pity that you two cousins could not make over to one another some parcel of your several qualities; you would be much the happier for a dash of George's self-conceit, and he could spare enough to set up a whole regiment of dandies; whilst he would be all the better for your superfluous modesty. However, I'll take you both, right thankfully." And the arrangements were entered into forthwith. They were to meet on the ground the ensuing morning to play the match; different engagements preventing the Leslies from practising with the Aberleigh side that evening, as Horace had wished and intended; for our friend Horace, ardent and keen in every thing, whether of sport or study, had set his heart on winning this match, and was very desirous of trying the powers of his new allies. Fifty times during the evening did he count over his own good players, and the good players of the other side, and gravely conclude "It will all depend on the Leslies. How I wish to-morrow were come!" He said this so often that even his sister Emily, although the most indulgent person in the world, and very fond of her brother, grew so tired of hearing him that she could not help saying "I wish to-morrow were come too!" And at last, as generally happens, whether we wish for it or not, to-morrow did come, as brilliant a to-morrow as ever was anticipated, even by a school-boy in the holidays. The sun rose without a cloud; I speak from the best authority, for "scorning the scorner sleep" Horace was up before him; and the ball being twenty times weighed, and the bats fifty times examined, he repaired, by half-past nine, to Sandleford Common, where the match was to be played, and the wickets pitched precisely at ten o'clock. All parties were sufficiently punctual; and when the whole set had assembled, Horace found, that in spite of his calculations, a mistake had arisen in the amount of his forces; that reckoning himself there were ten Aberleigh boys on the ground, besides the two foreign allies, proceeding, perhaps, from the over-anxiety to collect recruits, whilst his Sandleford captain, on the contrary, had neglected to secure another mate as agreed on, and could only muster the original ten of his own parish, himself included. In this dilemma the umpires immediately proposed to divide the auxiliaries, a suggestion to which George assented with his usual sang froid, and Charles with his invariable good-humour. "You had better toss up for me," said the former. "For the choice," was Horace's civil amendment, and toss they did. "Heads!" cried he of Sandleford, and heads it was; and partly caught by the young gentleman's happy knack of puffing himself, partly by the knowing manner in which he was handling his bat, George was instantly claimed by the winner, and the game began. Sandleford went in, and it was desired that the stranger and the best of the home party should take the precedence. But our great player coquetted. "It might put their side out of spirits if by any accident he were out early in the game; he had seen a match lost, by Mr. Budd or Saunders having their wickets knocked down sooner than was expected. He would wait." Accordingly it was not till the first four had gone down with only twenty notches gained that he at last went in, "to retrieve," as he said, the fortune of the day. Nothing could be more imposing than his appearance. There he stood at the wicket striking his bat against the ground with impatience, pawing the earth as it were, like a race-horse at the starting-post, or a greyhound in the slips, and friends and foes admired and wondered. Even Horace Lucas felt the effect of the fine attitude and the brilliant animation, and delivered his ball less steadily than usual, anticipating that his opponent would get at least three runs. His fears were soon quieted. "By some accident" (to use the young gentleman's own phrase) Mr. George hit up; and that exceedingly bad field, his cousin Charles, caught him out without a notch. This misadventure sadly disconcerted Sandleford as well as the unfortunate champion, and put Aberleigh in high spirits. Horace bowled better than ever; the fielding was excellent; and the whole eleven were out for forty-seven notches- a wretched innings. Aberleigh then went in; Horace, and at Horace's request, his ally Charles:- George being one of the bowlers. But poor George (to borrow once more his own words) was out of luck, thoroughly out of luck," for in spite of all his efforts the two mates got fifty-' six before they parted, and the whole score was a hundred and nine. Eighty-two a-head in the first innings! Small hopes for Sandleford, even though George went in immediately, "determined,” | as he said, "to conquer fortune." Small hopes for Sandleford ! "Come, Charles," said Horace Lucas, "let us see whether your bowling may not be as good as your batting. Just give your cousin, one ball." And at the very first ball the stumps rattled, and the discomfited cricketer slunk away, amidst the crowing of his antag onists and the reproaches of his mates, so crest-fallen, that even Horace was touched by his disconsolate countenance and humbled air. His tender-hearted cousin felt a still deeper sympathy, and almost lamented his own success. "It is all luck, sir," said he, in answer to a compliment from General Lucas, who stood talking to him after the match had been triumphantly won; "It is all luck! Poor George is a far better player than I am; he was so yesterday, and will be so to-morrow. This is merely the fortune of a day, a trifle not worth a word or a thought!" "The object is trifling, I grant you, my good young friend," said the General, "and luck may have had some share in the victory; but I am much mistaken if your success and your cousin's mortification be not of essential benefit to both. It is one of the most salutary parts of the world's discipline, that modesty should triumph and that Pride should have a Fall." ROSEDALE. I DON'T know how it happened when we were house-hunting the other day, that nobody ever thought of Rosedale. I should have objected to it, both as out of distance — it's a good six miles off; and as being utterly unrecommendable by one rational person to another. Rosedale! the very name smacks of the Minerva Press, and gives token of the nonsense and trumpery thereunto belonging. Rosedale Cottage! the man who, under that portentous title takes that house, cannot complain of lack of warning. Nevertheless is Rosedale one of the prettiest cottages that ever sprung into existence in brick or on paper. All strangers go to see it, and few "cots of spruce gentility" are so well worth seeing. Fancy a low irregular white rough-cast building thatched with reeds, co vered with roses, clematis, and passion-flowers, standing on a knoll of fine turf, amidst flower-beds and shrubberies and magnificent elms, backed by an abrupt hill, and looking over lawny fields to a green common, which is intersected by a gay high road, dabbled with ponds of water, and terminated by a pretty village edging off into rich woodlands: imagine this picture of a place tricked out with ornaments of all sorts, conservatories, roseries, rustic seats, American borders, Gothic dairies, Spanish hermitages, and flowers stuck as close as pins in a pincushion, with every thing, in short, that might best become the walls of an exhibition room, or the back scene of a play conceive the interior adorned in a style of elegance still more fanciful, and it will hardly appear surprising that this "unique bijou," as the advertisement calls it, should seldom want a tenant. The rapid succession of these occupiers is the more extraordinary matter. Every body is willing to come to Rosedale, but nobody stays. it is overdone with frippery and finery, a toyshop in action, a Brobdignagian baby-house. Every room is in masquerade: the saloon Chinese, full of jars and mandarins and pagodas; the library Egyptian, all covered with hieroglyphics, and swarming with furniture crocodiles and sphynxes. Only think of a crocodile couch, and a sphynx sofa! They sleep in Turkish tents, and dine in a Gothie chapel.† Now English ladies and gentlemen in their every-day apparel look exceedingly out of place amongst such mummery. The costume wont do. It is not in keeping. Besides, the properties themselves are apt to get shifted from one scene to another, and all manner of anomalies are the consequence. The mitred chairs and screens of the chapel, for instance, so very upright, and tall, and carved, and priestly, were mixed up oddly enough with the squat Chinese bonzes; whilst by some strange transposition a pair of nodding mandarins figured amongst the Egyptian monsters, and by the aid of their supernatural ugliness really looked human. For this, however, it is not difficult to assign very sufficient cause. In the first place, Then the room taken up by the various the house has the original sin of most orna- knicknackery, the unnamed and unnameable mented cottages, that of being built on the generation of gew-gaws! It always seemed foundation of a real labourer's dwelling; by to me to require more house-maids than the which notable piece of economy the owner house would hold. And the same with the saved some thirty pounds, at the expense of garden. You are so begirt with garlands and making half his rooms mere nut-shells, and festoons, flowers above and flowers below, the house incurably damp,-to say nothing of that you walk about under a perpetual sense the inconvenience of the many apartments of trespass, of taking care, of doing mischief, which were erected as after-thoughts, the ad- now bobbing against a sweet-briar, in which denda of the work, and are only to be come at rencontre you have the worst; now flapped in by out-side passages and French window- the face by a woodbine to the discomfiture of doors. Secondly, that necessary part of a both parties, now revenging these vegetable two-story mansion, the staircase, was utterly wrongs by tripping up an unfortunate balsam ; forgotten by architect, proprietor, and builder, bonnets, coatskirts and flounces in equal peril! and never missed by any person, till the lad- The very gardeners step gingerly, and tuck der being one day taken away at the dinner their aprons tightly round them before they hour, an Irish labourer, accidentally left be- venture into that fair demesne of theirs, which hind, was discovered by the workmen on their is, so to say, over-peopled. In short, Rosereturn, perched like a bird on the top of the dale is a place to look at, rather than live in ; roof, he having taken the method of going up a fact which will be received without dispute the chimney as the quickest way of getting by some score of tenants, by the proprietor of down. This adventure occasioned a call for the county newspaper who keeps the adverthe staircase, which was at length inserted by tisement of this matchless villa constantly the by, and is as much like a step-ladder in a set, to his no small emolument, and by the dark corner as any thing well can be.* Third- neighbourhood at large, to whom the succesly and lastly, this beautiful abode is in every sion of new faces, new liveries, and new way most thoroughly inconvenient and un-equipages driving about our rustic lanes, and comfortable. In the winter one might find as much protection in the hollow of a tree-cold, gusty, sleety, wet; snow threatening from above like an avalanche; water gushing up from below like a fountain; a house of cardpaper would be the solider refuge, a gipsy's tent by far the more snug. In summer it is proportionably close and hot, giving little shade and no shelter; and all the year round sometimes occupying a very tasty pew in the parish church, has long supplied a source of conversation as unfailing and as various as the weather. The first person who ascertained, by pain + Some of the pleasantest days of my life have been spent in a house so furnished. But then it was of fitting dimensions, and the delightful persons to whom it belonged had a house in London, and a mansion in the country, and used their fancy villa much as one would use a marquee or a pleasure-boat, for gay parties in fine weather. Rosedale, unlucky place, was built to be lived in. ful experience, that Rosedale was uninhabitable, was the proprietor, a simple young man from the next town, who unluckily took it into his head that he had a taste for architecture and landscape gardening, and so forth; and falling into the hands of a London upholsterer and a country nurseryman, produced the effort of genius that I have endeavoured to describe. At the end of a month he found that nobody could live there; and with the advice of the nurseryman and the upholsterer began to talk of re-building and new-modelling; nay, he actually went so far as to send for the bricklayer; but fortunately for our man of taste he had a wife of more sense than himself, who seized the moment of disappointment to disgust him with improvements and improvers, in which feat she was greatly aided by the bills of his late associates; put a stop at once to his projects and his complaints: removed with all speed to their old residence, an ugly, roomy, comfortable red brick house in the market-place at B; drew up a flaming advertisement, and turned the grumbling occupant into a thriving landlord. Lucky for him was the day in which William Walker, Esquire, married Miss Bridget Tomkins, second daughter of Mr. Samuel Tomkins, attorney at law! And lucky for Mr. Samuel Tomkins was the hour in which he acquired a son-in-law more profitable in the article of leases than the two lords to whom he acted as steward both put together! First on the list of tenants was a bride and bridegroom come to spend the early months of their nuptial life in this sweet retirement. They arrived towards the end of August with a great retinue of servants, horses, dogs, and carriages, well bedecked with bridal favours. The very pointers had white ribbons round their necks, so splendid was their rejoicing, and had each, as we were credibly informed, eaten a huge slice of wedding-cake when the happy couple returned from church. The bride, whom every body except myself called plain, and whom I thought pretty, had been a great heiress, and had married for love the day she came of age. She was slight of form and pale of complexion, with a profusion of brown hair, mild hazel eyes, a sweet smile, a soft voice, and an air of modesty that clung about her like a veil. I never saw a more loveable creature. He was dark and tall and stout and bold, with an assured yet gentlemanly air, a loud voice, a confident manner, and a real passion for shooting. They stayed just a fortnight, during which time he contrived to get warned off half the manors in the neighbourhood, and cut down the finest elm in the lawn one wet morning to open a view of the high road. I hope the marriage has turned out a happy one, for she was a sweet gentle creature. I used to see her leaning over the gate watching his return from shooting with such a fond patience! And her bound to meet him when he did appear! And the pretty coaxing playfulness with which she patted and chided her rivals the dogs! Oh I hope she is happy! but I fear, I fear. Next succeeded a couple from India, before whom floated reports golden and gorgeous as the clouds at sunset. Inexhaustible riches; profuse expenditure; tremendous ostentation; unheard-of luxury; ortolans ; beccaficos; French-beans at Christmas; green-peas at Easter; strawberries always; a chariot and six; twelve black footmen; and parrots and monkeys beyond all count. These were amongst the most moderate of the rumours that preceded them; and every idle person in the country was preparing to be a hanger-on; and every shop-keeper in B. on the watch for a customer; when up drove a quiet-looking old gentleman in a pony-chaise, with a quietlooking old lady at his side, and took possession, their retinue following in a back postchaise. Whether the habits of this Eastern Cræsus corresponded with his modest debût, or his magnificent reputation, we had not time to discover, although from certain indications, I conceive that much might be said on both sides. They arrived in the middle of a fine October, while the China roses covered the walls, and the China-asters, and dahlias, and fuchsias, and geraniums in full blow, gave a summer brilliancy to the lawn; but scarcely had a pair of superb Common-prayer-books, bound in velvet, and a bible with gold clasps entered in possession of the pew at church, before "there came a frost, a nipping frost," which turned the China-asters, and the Chinaroses brown, and the dahlias and geraniums black, and the nabob and the nabobess blue. They disappeared the next day, and have never been seen or heard of since. Then arrived a fox-hunting Baronet, with a splendid stud and a splendid fortune. A young man, a single man, a handsome man! Every speculating mamma in the country fixed her eyes on Sir Robert for a son-in-law; papas were sent to call; brothers were enjoined to go out hunting, and get acquainted; nay, even certain of the young ladies themselves (I grieve to say it!) showed symptoms of condescension which might almost have made their grandmothers start from their graves. But what could they do? How could they help it, poor pretty things? The Baronet, with the instinct of a determined bachelor, avoided a young lady as a sparrow does a hawk, and discovering this shyness, they followed their instinct as the hawk would do in a similar case, and pursued the coy bird. It was what sportsmen call a fine open season, which being translated, means every variety of wintry weather except frost-dirty, foggy, sleety, wet; so such of our belles as looked, well on horse-back, took the opportunity to ride, to cover and see the hounds throw off; and such as shone more as pedestrians would How this enviable calamity befell her, I did not hear, but of course that din! The very jars and mandarins cracked under the incessant vibration; I only wonder that the poor house did not break the drum of its ears; did not burst from its own report, and explode like an overloaded gun. One could not see that unlucky habitation half a mile off, without such a feeling of noise as comes over one in looking at Hogarth's enraged musician. To pass it was really dangerous. One stagecoach was overturned, and two post-chaises ran away in consequence of their uproarious doings; and a sturdy old-fashioned country gentleman, who rode a particularly anti-musical, startlish, blood-horse, began to talk of indicting Rosedale as a nuisance, when just at the critical moment, its tenants had the good fortune to discover, that although the hermitage with its vaulted roof made a capital concert-room, yet that there was not space enough within doors for their several practisings, that the apartments were too small, and the partitions too thin, so that concord was turned into discord, and harmonies went crossing each other all over the house-Mozart jostled by Rossini, and Handel put down by Weber. And away they went also. take an early walk, exquisitely dressed, for their health's sake, towards the general rendezvous. Still Sir Robert was immovable. He made no morning calls, accepted no invitations, spoke to no mortal till he had ascertained that there was neither sister, daughter, aunt, nor cousin in the case. He kept from every petticoat as if it contained the contagion of the plague, shunned ball-rooms and drawing-rooms, as if they were pest-houses, and finally, had the comfort of leaving Rosedale without having even bowed to a female during his stay. The final cause of his departure has been differently reported; some hold that he was frightened away by Miss Amelia Singleton, who had nearly caused him to commit involuntary homicide, (is that the word for killing a woman?) by crossing and recrossing before his hunter in Sallow-field-lane, thereby putting him in danger of a coroner's inquest; whilst others assert that his landlord, Mr. Walker, happening to call one day, found his tenant in dirty boots on the sphynx sofa, and a Newfoundland dog, dripping with mud, on the crocodile couch, and gave him notice to quit on the spot. For my part I regard this legend as altogether apocryphal, invented to save the credit of the house by assuming that one of its many inhabitants was turned out, contrary to his own wish. My faith goes entirely with the Miss Amelia version of the history; the more so, as that gentle damsel was so inconsolable as to marry a former beau, a small Squire of the neighbourhood, rather weather-beaten, and not quite so young as he had been, within a month after she had the ill luck not to be run over by Sir Robert. However that may have been, "thence ensued a vacancy" in Rosedale, which was supplied the same week by a musical family, a travelling band, drums, trumpets, harps, pianos, violins, violincellos, trombones, and German flutes-noise personified! an incarnation of din! The family consisted of three young ladies who practised regularly six hours a day; a governess who played on some instrument or other from morning till night; one fluting brother; one fiddling ditto; a violincelloing music-master; and a singing papa. The only quiet person among them, the "one poor half-penny-worth of bread to this monstrous quantity of sack," was the unfortunate mamma, sole listener, as it seemed, of her innumerous choir. Oh, how we pitied her! She was a sweet placid-looking woman, and * I need not, I trust, disclaim any intention of castyounger in appearance than either of hering the lightest shade of ridicule on the remarkable daughters, with a fair open forehead, full dark instance of female friendship to which I have alluded eyes, lips that seemed waiting to smile, a deep from youth to age, adorned by rank, talent, and beauAn union enduring as that has done, yet cool colour, and a heavenly composure of countenance, resembling in features, expression, and complexion, the small Madonnas of Raphael. We never ceased to wonder at her happy serenity until we found out that the good lady was deaf, a discovery which somewhat diminished the ardour of our admiration. Our next neighbours were two ladies, not sisters, except as one of them said in soul; kindred spirits determined to retire from the world, and emulate in this sweet retreat the immortal friendship of the ladies of Llangollen.* The names of our pair of friends were Jackson and Jennings, Miss Laura Jackson (I wonder whether Laura really was her name! She signed herself so in prose and in verse, and would certainly for more reasons than one have disliked an appeal to the Register! besides, she ought to know; so Laura it shall be!) Miss Laura Jackson and Miss Barbara Jennings, commonly called Bab. Both were of that unfortunate class of young ladies, whom the malicious world is apt to call old maids; both rich, both independent, and both in the fullest sense of the word cockneys. Laura was tall and lean, and scraggy and yellow, dressing in an Arcadian sort of way, pretty much like an opera shepherdess without a crook, singing pastoral songs prodigiously out of tune, and talking in a deep voice, with much emphasis and astounding fluency all sorts of sentimentalities all the day long. in the text. ty, ceinented by cheerfulness and good-humour, and consecrated by benevolence and virtue, can fear no one's censure, and soars far beyond my feeble praise. Such a friendship is the very poetry of life. But the heartless imitation, the absurd parody of the noble and elevating romance, is surely fair game, the more so, as it tends like all parodies to bring the original into undeserved disrepute. |
