!

when the sap mounts into the trees, and the primrose blossoms in the coppices, feels the impulse of the season irresistible, obeys literally the fine stage-direction of the piece, "The nightingale calls without," and sallies forth to join the gipsies, to ramble all day in the green lanes, and sleep at night under the hedges.*

Now one of the greatest proofs of the truth of these delineations was to be found in the fact, that the quiet old ladies of Belford, the demure spinsters and bustling widows, to say nothing of their attendant beaux, were themselves seized, two or three times in the course of the summer, with the desire of a country excursion. It is true that they were not penned up like the poor artisans of London, or even the equally pitiable official personage of the old dramatist-they were not literally eaged birds, and Belford was not London: on the contrary, most of them had little slips of garden-ground, dusty and smoky, where currants and gooseberries came to nothing, and even the sweet weed mignonette refused to blow; and many of them lived on the outskirts of the town, and might have walked country-ward if they would; but they were bound by the minute and strong chains of habit, and could turn no other way than to the street, the dull, darksome, dingy street. Their feet had been so used to the pavement, that they had lost all relish for the elastic turf of the greensward. Even the road-side paths were too soft for their tread. Flagstones for them; and turf, although smooth, and fine, and thick, and springy as a Persian carpet-although fragrant and aromatic as a bed of thyme,-turf for those who liked it!

apparent danger that would have discomposed their nerves and their dignity. Ladies of a certain age should not squall if they can help it. The spinsters of Belford had an instinetive perception of the truth of this axiom ; and although Mr. Singleton, who liked the diversion of gudgeon-fishing, (the only fishing, as far as I can perceive, which requires neither trouble, nor patience, nor skill, and in which, if you put the line in, you are pretty sure within a few minutes to pull a fish out)

although Mr. Singleton, who liked this quiet sport, often tried to tempt his female friends into a sober water-frolic, he never could succeed. Water-parties were reserved for the families of the neighbourhood.

And perhaps the ladies of Belford were the wiser of the two. Far be it from me to depreciate the water! writing as I am at 4 o'clock, P. M. on the twenty-sixth of this hot, sunny, droughty August, 1834, in my own little garden-which has already emptied two ponds, and is likely to empty the brook,-my garden, the watering of which takes up half the time of three people, and which, although watered twice a day, does yet, poor thing! look thirsty-and, for my garden, prematurely shabby and old;† and who, dearly as I love that paradise of flowers, have yet, under the influence of the drought, and the heat, and the glare of the sunshine, been longing all day to be lying under the great oak by the pool, at our own old place, looking through the green green leaves, at the blue blue sky, and listening to the cattle as they plashed in the water; or better still, to be in Mr. Lawson's little boat-that boat which is the very model of shape and make, rowed by that boatmen of Two or three times in the year, however, boatmen, and companion of companions, and even these street-loving ladies were visited friends of friends, up his own Loddon river, with a desire to breathe a freer air, and be- from the fishing-house at Aberleigh, his own come dames and damsel errants for the day. beautiful Aberleigh, under the turfy terraces The great river that glided so magnificently and majestic avenues of the park, and through under the ridge of the Upton hills, within a that world of still, peaceful and secluded wamile of the town, seemed to offer irresistible ter meadows, where even the shy kingfisher, temptations to a water-party, the more so as who retires before cultivation and population some very fine points of river scenery were with the instinct of the Red Indian, is not within reach, and the whole course of the afraid to make her nest, until we approach as stream, whether sweeping gradually along its nearly as in rowing we can approach to the own rich and open meadows, or shut in by main spring head (for, like the Nile, the Lodsteep woody banks, was marked with great don has many sources,) of that dark, clear, and varied beauty. But, somehow or other, and brimming river;-or, best perhaps of all, a water-party was too much for them. The to be tossing about as we were last Wednesriver was navigable; and in that strange and day, on the lake at Gore Mount, sailing, not almost startling process of being raised or rowing-that was too slow for our ambition— sunken in the locks, there was a real or an

A friend of mine, one of the most accomplished and eloquent preachers in London, says, that as the spring advances, he feels exactly the yearning for the Country described by the old dramatist. He does not join the gipsies; but he declares that it requires all the force of his mind, as well as the irresistible claims of the most binding of all professions, to detain him in London. Talk of slavery! Are we not all the bondsmen of circumstances, the thralls of conscience and of duty? Where is he that is free?

+ Besides the great evils of a drought in the flowergarden, of dwarfing the blossoms-especially of the autumnal plants, lobelias, dahlias, &c., which may almost be called semi-aquatic, so fond are they of water and robbing roses, honeysuckles, and even myrtles of their leaves,-the very watering, which is essential to their life, brings a host of enemies above ground and beneath, in the shape of birds of all sorts pecking after worms, and moles out of number following the watering-pot. We have caught four of these burrowing creatures to-day in my little garden.

to the Warren House they went- - the two Misses Morris, Miss Blackall, Miss Bates, Lady Dixon, Mrs. Colby herself, and the beaux of the party.

Mrs. Colby was one of those persons whose indomitable self-will does contrive to carry all before it. She was a little, bustling woman, neither young nor old, neither pretty nor ugly; not lady-like, and yet by no means vulgar; certainly not well-read, but getting on all the better for her want of information,-not, as is the usual way, by pleading ignorance, and exaggerating and lamenting her deficiency-but by a genuine and masterful contempt of acquirement in others, which made educated people, if they happened to be modest, actually ashamed of their own cultivation: "I'm no musician, thank God! Heaven be praised, I know nothing of poetry!" exclaimed Mrs. Colby; and her abashed hearers felt they had nothing to do but to "drown their books," and shut up the piano.

For this influence she was indebted entirely to her own force of character and her natural shrewdness of mind; since, so far were her pretensions to superiority from being borne out by fortune or position, that, moderately endowed with the gifts of fortune as her companions were, she was probably, by very much, the poorest amongst them, living in paltry lodgings with one solitary maid-servant; whilst upon the very ticklish points of birth and gentility, her claims were still more equivocal, she having now resided ten years at Belford without any one having yet discovered more of her history than that she was a widow: what her husband had been, or who was her father-whether she came from the east, the west, the north, or the south, still remained a mystery. Nobody had even been lucky enough to find out her maiden name.

Of one thing her acquaintances were pretty sure, that if her family and connexions had been such as to do her credit in society, Mrs. Colby was not the woman to keep them concealed. Another fact appears to me equally certain, that if any one of the gossiping sisterhood who applied themselves to the examination of her history, had been half as skilful in such inquiries as herself, the whole story of her life-her birth, parentage, and education would have been laid open in a month. But they were simple inquisitors, bunglers in the great art of meddling with other people's concerns, and Mrs. Colby baffled their curiosity in the best of all ways-by seeming perfectly unconscious of having excited such a feeling.

from any direct communication even to those with whom she was most intimate. Another fact was also inferred hy a few shrewd observers, who found amusement in watching the fair lady's manoeuvres,-namely, that although when occasionally speaking of " poor Mr. Colby's' tastes and habits-such as his love of 'schalots with his beef-steak, and his predilection for red mullet-she had never failed to accompany those tender reminiscences with a decorous accompaniment of sighs and pensive looks, yet that she was by no means so devoted to the memory of her first husband, as to render her at all averse to the notion of a second. On the contrary, she was apparently exceedingly well-disposed to pay that sort of compliment to the happiness she had enjoyed in one marriage, which is comprised in an evident desire to try her fate in another. Whatever might have been her original name, it was quite clear to nice observers, that she would not entertain the slightest objection to change that which she at present bore, as soon as might be, provided always, that the exchange were, in a pecuniary point of view, sufficiently advantageous.

Nice observers, as I have said, remarked this; but we are not to imagine that Mrs. Colby was of that common and vulgar race of husband-hunters, whose snares are so obvious, and whose traps are so glaring, that the simplest bird that ever was caught in a springe can hardly fail to be aware of his danger. Our widow had too much tact for that. She went cautiously and delicately to work, advancing as stealthily as a parlour cat who meditates an attack upon the cream-jug, and drawing back as demurely as the aforesaid sagacious quadruped, when she perceives that the treasure is too well guarded, and that her attempts will end in detection and discomfiture.

It was only by slight indications that Mrs. Colby's designs became suspected :-for instance, her neighbour, Mr. Selwood, the attorney, lost his wife, and Mrs. Colby immediately became fond of children, spent a world of money in dolls and gingerbread, and having made herself popular amongst all the young ladies and gentlemen of Belford between the ages of eight and two, established a peculiar intimacy with Misses Mary and, Eliza, and Masters John and Arthur Selwood; played at domino and cat's-cradle with the girls, at trap-ball and cricket with the boys: courted the nurse, was civil to the nurserymaid, and made as judicious an attack upon the papa's heart, through the medium of the So completely did she evade speaking of children, as could well be devised. She failher own concerns, (a subject which most peo-ed, probably because that worthy person, Mr. ple find particularly agreeable,) that the fact of her widowhood had been rather inferred from the plain gold circlet on the third finger of the left hand, and a very rare and very slight mention of "poor Mr. Colby," than

John Selwood, attorney-at-law, was not much troubled with the commodity commonly called a heart. He was a kind father and a goodhumoured man; but matrimony was with him as much a matter of business as with Mrs.

Colby, and, about fourteen months after the death of his wife, he brought home as his spouse a wealthy maiden from a distant county, who was far from professing any inordinate love for children in general, and had never set eyes upon his, but who, nevertheless, made as good a stepmother as if she had played at trap-ball and cat's-cradle all the days of her life.

Her next attempt was on a young physician, a bachelor, whose sister, who had hitherto kept his house, was on the point of marriage -an opportunity that seemed too good to be lost, there being no axiom more current in society than the necessity of a wife to a medical man. Accordingly, she had a severe illness and a miraculous recovery; declared that the doctor's skill and assiduity had saved her life, became his prôneuse in all the Belford coteries, got him two or three patients, and would certainly have caught her man, onky that he happened to be Scotch, and was saved from the peril matrimonial by his national caution.

Then she fixed her eye on a recruiting of ficer, a man of some family, and reputed fortune; but he was Irish, and the national instinct saved him.

Then she turned her attention towards Mr. Singleton, who, dear man, soon let her know, with his accustomed simplicity, that he could not possibly marry till he got a living.

Then she resuined her fondness for children, which had lain in abeyance since Mr. Selwood's affair, on the occasion of an ex-curate of St. Stephen's setting up a higher class of preparatory school; but it turned out that he took the school to enable him to marry a woman whom he loved-and so that card failed her.

that a desire to obtain a certain green shawl under prime cost, and a barrel of strong beer for nothing, in both which objects she succeeded, would supply a reasonable and characteristic motive for her puffery in both cases.

One thing is certain: that after the series of fruitless schemes which we have enumerated, Mrs. Colby seemed so far discouraged as to intermit, if not wholly relinquish, her designs on that ungrateful half of the creation called man, and to direct her entire attention to the softer-hearted and more impressible sex to which she herself belonged. Disappointed in love, she devoted herself, as the fashion is amongst ladies of her class, to an exclusive and by no means unprofitable friendship.

The friend on whom she pitched was one of the richest and simplest spinsters in all Belford. A good, harmless, comfortable woman, somewhat broader than she was high, round as a ball, smooth as satin, soft as silk, red as a rose, quiet as a dormouse, was Miss Blackall. Her age might be five-and-forty, or thereabout; and to any one who knew her small wit and easy fortune, it was matter of some surprise that she should have lived so many years in the world without becoming, in some form or other, the prey of one of the many swindlers with which the age abounds. She had, however, always been under some sort of tutelage, and had hitherto been lucky in her guardians. First of all, her father and mother took care of her; and, when they died, her brother and sister; they marrying, ' consigned her to a careful duenna, who bore the English title of lady's-maid; and, on her abdicating her post, Miss Blackall fell into the hands of Mrs. Colby.

The reason of Mrs. Tabitha's leaving a family over which she ruled with the absolute Then she turned sickly again, (delicate is sway that in this country of freedom is so the more lady-like phrase,) in order to be often conceded to a lady's-maid, ( a race far cured by the ale of a rich old bachelor brew-more our mistresses than we are theirs,) was er, and went about the town crying up his XX, a quarrel with her lady's favourite parrot. as she had formerly done the doctor's drugs; and then (for of course she did not catch the old bachelor) she carried all Belford to buy bargains of a smart linendraper just set up in the market-place, and extolled his ribands and muslin with as much unction as she had bestowed on the brewer's beer, or the physician's prescriptions, or Mr. Selwood's boys and girls; but all in vain! The linendraper played her the worst trick of all. He was married already married before ever he saw Belford, or was patronized by Mrs. Colby. N. B. -I cannot help thinking that these two last conjectures are rather super-subtle, and hold with another particular friend of the lady's, (for they could only have been her very particular friends who watched with such amusement and recorded with such fidelity her several failures and mortifications,) that her attentions to the XX and the linendrapery might be accounted for on other grounds; and

Vert-vert (for this accomplished feathered orator was named after the hero of Gresset's delightful poem) was a bird of singular acquirement and sagacity, almost rivalling the parrot of whom so curious and entertaining an account is given in Mr. Jesse's charming Gleanings in Natural History. There was a spirit of dialogue in Vert-vert's fluent talk which really implied his understanding what' was said to him. Not only did he, like the Irish echo in the story, answer “ Very well, I thank you," to "How d'ye do?" and so on with a hundred common questions-for that might proceed merely from an effort of memory-from his having (in theatrical phrase) a good study, and recollecting his cues as well as his part; but there was about him a power, of holding a sustained and apparently sponta neous conversation, which might have beca sioned much admiration, and some perplexity, in wiser women than Miss Blackall.