a month the young couple were married, and | the very next day Mr. Samuel Vicars ran away from his creditors, whom till then he had pacified by the expectation of his making a wealthy match, and was never heard of in Belford again. BELLES OF THE BALL-ROOM. THE WILL. I Now proceed to record some of the most aristocratic belles of the Belford assemblies, the young ladies of the neighbourhood, who, if not prettier than their compeers of the town, were at least more fashionable and more admired. Nothing in the whole routine of country life seems to me more capricious and unaccountable than the choice of a county beauty. Every shire in the kingdom, from Brobdignaggian York to Lilliputian Rutland, can boast of one. The existence of such a personage seems as essential to the well-being of a provincial community as that of the queen-bee in a hive; and except by some rare accident, when two fair sisters, for instance, of nearly equal pretensions appear in similar dresses at the same balls and the same archery meetings, you as seldom see two queens of Brentford in the one society as the other. Both are elective monarchies, and both tolerably despotic; but so far I must say for the little winged people, that one comprehends the impulse which guides them in the choice of a sovereign far better than the motives which influence their brother-insects, the beaux: and the reason of this superior sagacity in the lesser swarms is obvious. With them the election rests in a natural instinct, an unerring sense of fitness, which never fails to discover with admirable discrimination the one only she who suits their purpose; whilst the other set of voluntary subjects, the plumeless bipeds, are unluckily abandoned to their own wild will, and, although from long habits of imitation almost as unanimous as the bees, seem guided in their admiration by the merest caprice, the veriest chance, and select their goddess, the goddess of beauty, blindfold-as the Bluecoat boys draw, or used to draw, the tickets in a lottery. Nothing is so difficult to define as the customary qualification of the belle of a country assembly. Face or figure it certainly is not; for take a stranger into the room, and it is at least two to one but he will fix on twenty damsels prettier than the county queen; nor, to do the young gentlemen justice, is it fortune or connexion; for, so as the lady come within the prescribed limits of county gentility, (which, by the way, are sufficiently arbitrary and exclusive,) nothing more is required in a beauty-whatever might be expected in a wife; fortune it is not, still less is it rank, and least of all accomplishments. In short, it seems to me equally difficult to define what is the requisite and what is not; for, on looking back through twenty years to the successive belles of the Belford balls, I cannot fix on any one definite qualification. One damsel seemed to me chosen for gaiety and goodhumour, a merry, laughing girl; another for haughtiness and airs; one because her father was hospitable, another because her mother was pleasant; one became fashionable because related to a fashionable poet, whilst another stood on her own independent merits as one of the boldest riders in the hunt, and earned her popularity at night by her exploits in the morning. Among the whole list, the one who commanded the most universal admiration, and seemed to me to approach nearest to the common notion of a pretty woman, was the highborn and graceful Constance Lisle. Besides being a tall, elegant figure, with finely chiselled features and a pale but delicate complexion, relieved by large dark eyes, full of sensibility, and a profusion of glossy black hair, her whole air and person were eminently distinguished by that undefinable look of fashion and high breeding, that indisputable stamp of superiority, which, for want of a better word, we are content to call style. Her manners were in admirable keeping with her appearance. Gentle, gracious, and selfpossessed; courteous to all and courting none, she received the flattery, to which she had been accustomed from her cradle, as mere words of course, and stimulated the ardour of her admirers by her calm non-notice, infinitely more than a finished coquette would have done by all the agaceries of the most consummate vanity. Nothing is commoner than the affectation of indifference. But the indifference of Miss Lisle was so obviously genuine, that the most superficial coxcomb that buzzed around her could hardly suspect its reality. She heeded admiration no more than that queen of the garden, the lady lily, whom she so much resembled in modest dignity. It played around her as the sunny air of June around the snowwhite flower, her common and natural atmosphere. This was, perhaps, one reason for the number of beaux who fluttered round Constance. It puzzled and piqued them. They were unused to be of so little consequence to a young lady, and could not make it out. Another cause might, perhaps, be found in the splendid fortune which she inherited from her mother, and which, independently of her expectations from her father, rendered her the greatest match and richest heiress in the county. Richard Lisle, her father, a second son of the ancient family of Lisle of Lisle-End, had been one of those men born, as it seems, to | cient in pride after his own fashion; and no one doubted but a reconciliation would take place, and a part of the nabob's rupees be applied to the restoration of the fallen glories of Lisle-End. With that object in view, a distant relation contrived to produce a seem between the two brothers, who had had no sort of intercourse, except an interchange of cold letters on their father's death since the hour of their separation. fortune, with whom every undertaking prospers through a busy life. Of an ardent and enterprising temper, at once impetuous and obstinate, he had mortally offended his father and elder brother by refusing to take orders, and to accept, in due season, the family livingly accidental interview at his own house ings, which, time out of mind, had been the provision of the second sons of their illustrious house. Rejected by his relations, he had gone out as an adventurer to India, had been taken into favour by the head-partner of a great commercial house, married his daughter, entered the civil service of the Company, been resident at the court of one native prince and governor of the forfeited territory of another, had accumulated wealth through all the various means by which, in India, money has been found to make money, and finally returned to England a widower, with an only daughter, and one of the largest fortunes ever brought from the gorgeous East. Very different had been the destiny of the family at home. Old Sir Rowland Lisle, (for the name was to be found in one of the earliest pages of the Baronetage,) an expensive, ostentatious man, proud of his old ancestry, of his old place, and of his old English hospitality, was exactly the person to involve any estate, however large its amount; and, when two contests for the county had brought in their train debt and mortgages, and he had recourse to horse-racing and hazard to deaden the sense of his previous imprudence, nobody was astonished to find him dying of grief and shame, a heart-broken and almost ruined man. His eldest son, Sir Everard, was perfectly free from either of these destructive vices; but he, besides an abundant portion of irritability, obstinacy, and family pride, had one quality quite as fatal to the chance of redeeming his embarrassed fortunes as the election eering and gambling propensities of his father -to wit, a love of litigation so strong and predominant that it assumed the form of a passion. He plunged at once into incessant law-suits with creditor and neighbour, and, in despite of the successive remonstrances of his wife, a high-born and gentle-spirited woman, who died a few years after their marriage,-of his daughter, a strong-minded girl, who, moderately provided for by a female relation, married at eighteen a respectable clergyman, and of his son, a young man of remarkable promise still at college, he had contrived, by the time his brother returned from India, not only to mortgage nearly the whole of his estate, but to get into dispute or litigation with almost every gentleman for ten miles round. The arrival of the governor afforded some ground of hope to the few remaining friends of the family. He was known to be a man of sense and probity, and by no means defi Never was mediation more completely unsuccessful. They met as cold and reluctant friends; they parted as confirmed and bitter enemies. Both, of course, were to blame; and equally, of course, each laid the blame on the other. Perhaps the governor's intentions might be the kindest. Undoubtedly his manner was the worst: for, scolding, haranguing, and laying down the law, as he had been accustomed to do in India, he at once offered to send his nephew abroad with the certainty of accumulating an ample fortune, and to relieve his brother's estate from mortgage, and allow him a handsome income on the small condition of taking possession himself of the family mansion and the family property-a proposal coldly and stiffly refused by the elder brother, who, without deigning to notice the second proposition, declined his son's entering into the service of a commercial eompany, much in the spirit and almost in the words of Rob Roy, when the good Baillie Nicol Jarvie proposed to apprentice his hopeful offspring to! the mechanical occupation of a weaver. The real misfortune of the interview was, that the parties were too much alike, both proud, both irritable, both obstinate, and both too much accustomed to deal chiefly with their inferiors. The negotiation failed completely; but the governor, clinging to his native place with a mixed feeling, compounded of love for the spot and hatred to its proprietor, purchased at an exorbitant price an estate close at hand, built a villa, and laid out grounds with the usual magnificence of an Indian, bought every acre of land that came under sale for miles around, was shrewdly suspected of having secured some of Sir Everard's numerous mortgages, and, in short, proceeded to invest LisleEnd just as formally as the besieging army sat down before the citadel of Antwerp. He spared no pains to annoy his enemy; defended all the actions brought by his brother, the lord of many manors, against trespassers and poachers; disputed his motions at the vestry; quar relled with his decisions on the bench; turned whig because Sir Everard was a tory; and set the whole parish and half the county by the ears by his incessant squabbles. Amongst the gentry, his splendid hospitality, his charming daughter, and the exceeding unpopularity of his adversary, who, at one time or other, had been at law with nearly all of them, commanded many partisans. But the common people, frequently great sticklers for hereditary right, adhered for the most part to the cause of their landlord-ay, even those with whom he had been disputing all his life long. This might be partly ascribed to their universal love for the young squire Henry, whose influence among the poor fairly balanced that of Constance among the rich; but the chief cause was certainly to be found in the character of the governor himself. the interest of the mortgages; and to live among his old tenantry in his own old halls so long as the ancient structure would yield him shelter. "Do this, my beloved son,' pursued the letter, "and take your father's tenderest blessing; and believe that a higher blessing will follow on the sacrifice of interest, ambition, and worldly enterprise, to the will of a dying parent. You have obeyed my injunctions living-do not scorn them dead. Again and again I bless you, prime solace of a life of struggle - my dear, my dutiful son!" "Could I disobey ?" inquired Sir Henry, as his uncle returned him the letter; "could it even be a question?" "No!" replied the governor, peevishly. "It will not be for long," returned Sir Henry, gently. "Short as it is, my race is almost run. And then, thanks to the unbroken entail-the entail which I never could prevail to have broken, when it might have spared him so much misery-the park, mansion, and estate, even the old armour and the family pictures, will pass into much better handsinto yours. Lisle-End will once more flourish in splendour and in hospitality." At first it seemed a fine thing to have obtained so powerful a champion in every little scrape. They found, however, and pretty quickly, that in gaining this new and magnificent protector they had also gained a master. Obedience was a necessary of life to our Indian, who, although he talked about liberty and equality, and so forth, and looked on them" But to mew you up with the deer and pheaabstractedly as excellent things, had no very sants in this wild oak park, to immure a fine exact practical idea of their operation, and spirited lad in this huge old mansion along claimed in England the same "awful rule and with family pictures and suits of armour, and just supremacy" which he had exercised in all for a whim, a crotchet, which can answer the East. Every thing must bend to his no purpose upon earth-it's enough to drive sovereign will and pleasure, from the laws a man mad!" of cricket to the laws of the land; so that the sturdy farmers were beginning to grumble, and his protégés, the poachers, to rebel, when the sudden death of Sir Everard put an immediate stop to his operations and his enmity. } For the new Sir Henry, a young man beloved by every body, studious and thoughtful, but most amiably gentle and kind, his uncle had always entertained an involuntary respect -a respect due at once to his admirable conduct and his high-toned and interesting character. They knew each other by sight, but had never met until a few days after the funeral, when the governor repaired to Lisle-End in deep mourning, shook his nephew heartily by the hand, condoled with him on his loss, begged to know in what way he could be of service to him, and finally renewed the offer to send him out to India, with the same advantages that would have attended his own son, which he had previously made to Sir Everard. The young heir thanked him with that smile, rather tender than glad, which gave its sweet expression to his countenance, sighed deeply, and put into his hands a letter which he had found,' he said, amongst his poor father's papers, and which must be taken for his answer to his uncle's generous and too tempting offers.' "You refuse me, then?" asked the governor. "Read that letter, and tell me if I can do otherwise. Only read that letter," resumed Sir Henry; and his uncle, curbing with some difficulty his natural impatience, opened and read the paper. It was a letter from a dying father to a beloved son, conjuring him by the duty he had ever shown to obey his last injunction, and neither to sell, let, alienate, nor leave LisleEnd; to preserve the estate entire and undiminished so long as the rent sufficed to pay The young baronet smiled as he said this; but the governor, looking on his tall, slender figure, and pallid cheek, felt that it was likely to be true, and, wringing his hand in silence, was about to depart, when Sir Henry begged him to remain a moment longer. "I have still one favour to beg of you, my dear uncle- one favour which I may beg. When last I saw Miss Lisle at the house of my sister Mrs. Beauchamp, (for I have twice accidentally had the happiness to meet her there,) she expressed a wish that you had such a piece of water in your grounds as that at the east end of the park, which luckily adjoins your demesne. She would like, she said, a pleasure-vessel on that pretty lake. Now, I may not sell, or let, or alienate-but surely I may lend. And if you will accept this key, and she will deign to use as her own the Lisle-End mere, I need not, I trust, say how sacred from all intrusion from me or mine the spot would prove, or how honoured I should feel myself if it could contribute, however slightly, to her pleasure. Will you tell her this ?" "You had better come and tell her yourself." "No! Oh no!" “Well, then, I suppose I must." And the governor went slowly home whistling, not "for want of thought,” but as a fre quent custom of his when any thing vexed him. About a month after this conversation, the father and daughter were walking through a narrow piece of woodland, which divided the highly ornamented gardens of the governor, with their miles of gravel-walks and acres of American borders, from the magnificent park of Lisle-End. The scene was beautiful, and the weather, a sunny day in early May, showed the landscape to an advantage belonging, perhaps, to no other season: on the one hand, the gorgeous shrubs, trees, and young plantations of the new place, the larch in its tenderest green, lilacs, laburnums, and horse-chestnuts, in their flowery glory, and the villa, with its irregular and oriental architecture, rising above all; on the other, the magnificent oaks and beeches of the park, now stretching into avenues, now clumped on its swelling lawns, (for the ground was remarkable for its inequality of surface,) now reflected in the clear water of the lake, into which the woods sometimes advanced in mimic promontories, receding again into tiny bays, by the side of which the dappled deer lay in herds beneath the old thorns; whilst, on an eminence, at a considerable distance, the mansion, a magnificent structure of Elizabeth's day, with its gable-ends and clustered chimneys, stood silent and majestic as a pyramid in the desert. The spot on which they stood had a character of extraordinary beauty, and yet different from either scene. It was a wild glen, through which an irregular footpath led to the small gate in the park, of which Sir Henry had sent Constance the key; the shelving banks on either side clothed with furze in the fullest blossom, which scented the air with its rich fragrance, and would almost have dazzled the eye with its golden lustre but for a few scattered firs and hollies, and some straggling clumps of the feathery birch. The nightingales were singing around, the wood-pigeons cooing overhead, and the father and daughter passed slowly and silently along, as if engrossed by the sweetness of the morning and the loveliness of the scene. They were thinking of nothing less; as was proved by the first question of the governor, who, always impatient of any pause in conversation, demanded of his daughter "what answer he was to return to the offer of Lord Fitzallan." "A courteous refusal, my dear father, if you please," answered Constance. "I do not expect to live to be an old maid,” sighed Constance; "but nothing is so unlikely as my marrying." "Whew!" ejaculated the governor. "So she means to die as well as her cousin! What has put that notion into your head, Constance? Are you ill?" "Not particularly," replied the daughter. "But yet I am persuaded that my life will be a short one. And so, my dear father, as you! told me the other day that now that I am of age I ought to make my will, I have just been following your advice." "Oh! that accounts for your thinking of dying. Every body after first making a will expects not to survive above a week or two. I did not, myself, I remember, some forty years ago, when, having scraped a few hundreds together, I thought it a duty to leave them to somebody. But I got used to the operation as I became richer and older. Well, Constance! you have a pretty little fortune to bequeath about three hundred thousand pounds, as I take it. What have you done with your money?-not left it to me, I hope?" No, dear father, you desired me not.' "That's right. But whom have you made your heir? Your maid, Nannette? or your lap-dog, Fido?-they are your prime pets-or the County Hospital? or the Literary Fund? or the National Gallery or the British Museum ?-eh, Constance ?" "None of these, my dear father. I have left my property where it will certainly be useful; and, I think, well used-to my cousin Henry of Lisle-End." "Her cousin Henry of Lisle-End ?" reechoed the father, smiling, and then sending forth a short loud whistle, eloquent of pleasure and astonishment. "So, so! Her cousin! Henry!' "But keep my secret, I conjure you, dear! father?" pursued Constance, eagerly. "Her cousin Henry!" said the governor to himself, sitting down on the side of the bank to calculate: "her cousin Henry! And she may be queen of Lisle-End as this key proves, queen of the lake, and the land, and the land's master. And the three hundred thousand pounds will more than clear away the mortgages, and I can take care of her jointure and the younger children. I like your choice exceedingly, Constance," continued her father, drawing her to him on the bank. "Oh, my dear father, I beseech you keep my secret!" "Yes, yes, we'll keep the secret quite as long as it shall be necessary. Don't blush so, my charmer, for you have no need. Let me see-there must be a six months' mourning-but the preparations may be going on just the same. And in spite of my foolish brother and his foolish will, my Constance will be lady of Lisle-End." And within six months the wedding did take place; and if there could be a happier THE GREEK PLAYS. 363 even ;) but might also, if curious in such matters, have an opportunity of deciding whether the Dissenters under Mr. Lancaster's system, or the Church of England children under Dr. Bell's, succeeded best in producing a given quantity of noise, and whether the din of shouting boys or the clamour of squalling girls, in the ecstatic uproariousness of their tolerable to ears of any delicacy. release from the school-room, be the more in Besides these comparatively modern estab of those old picturesque foundations, a bluecoat school for boys, and a green-school for girls,-proofs of the charity and piety of our ancestors, who, on the abolition of monasteries, so frequently bestowed their posthumous AFTER speaking of the excellent air and healthy situation of Belford, as well as its central position with regard to Bath, South-lishments for education, Belford boasted two ampton, Brighton, and Oxford, and its convenient distance from the metropolis, the fact of its abounding in boarding-schools might almost be assumed; since in a country-town with these recommendations you are as sure to find a colony of schoolmasters and school-bounty on endowments for the godly bringing mistresses, as you are to meet with a rookery in a grove of oaks. It is the natural habitation of the species. Accordingly, all the principal streets in Belford, especially the different entrances to the town, were furnished with classical, commercial, and mathematical academies for young gentlemen, or polite seminaries for young ladies. Showy and spacious-looking mansions they were for the most part, generally a little removed from the high road, and garnished with the captivating titles of Clarence House, Sussex House, York House, and Gloucester House; it being, as every one knows, the approved fashion of the loyal fraternity of schoolmasters to call their respective residences after one or other of the princes, dead or alive, of the royal House of Brunswick. Not a hundred yards could you walk, without stumbling on some such rural academy; and you could hardly proceed half a mile on any of the main roads, without encountering a train of twenty or thirty prim misses, arranged in orderly couplets like steps in a ladder, beginning with the shortest, and followed by two or three demure and neatly-arrayed governesses; or some more irregular procession of straggling boys, for whom the wide footpath was all too narrow, some loitering behind, some scampering before one side, some on the other-dirty, merry, some straying on untidy and unruly, as if Eton,* or Westminster, or the London University itself had the honour of their education; nay, if you chanced to pass the Lancasterian School, or the National School, towards four in the evening, or twelve at noon, you might not only witness the turbulent outpouring of that most boisterous mob of small people, with a fair prospect of being yourself knocked down, or at best of upsetting some urchin in the rush, (the chance of playing knocker or knockee being almost *Every body remembers the poet Gray's description of the youthful members of the aristocracy, the future peers and incipient senators at Eton: "dirty boys playing at cricket." up of poor children, and whose munificence, if less extended in the numbers taught, was with regard to the selected objects; including so much more comprehensive and complete ing during the period of instruction, but even not only bed and board, and lodging and clothapprentice fees for placing them out when they had been taught the simple and useful knowledge which their benefactors thought necessary. For my own part, I confess myself somewhat old-fashioned in these matters, and admitting the necessity of as wide a diffusion of education as possible, cannot help entertaining a strong predilection for these limited and orderly charity-schools, where good principles and good conduct, and the value of character, both in the children and their teachers, form the first consideration. I certainly do not like them the less for the pleasant associations belonging to their picturesque old-fashioned dress-the long-waisted bodies and petticoat-like skirt of the bluecoat boys, their round tasselled caps, and monkish leathern girdles; or the little green stuff gowns of the girls, with their snow-white tippets, their bibs and aprons, and mobs. I know nothing prettier than to view on a Sunday morning the train of these primitive-looking little maidens, (the children of "Mr. steps of their equally picturesque and oldWest's charity") pacing demurely down the fashioned dwelling, on their way to church, the house itself a complete relique of the domestic architecture of Elizabeth's day, in excellent preservation, and the deep bay-windows adorned with geraniums (the only modern things about the place,) which even my kind friend, Mr. Fostert need not be ashamed perhaps, I may say certainly, the greatest geranium |