the archery-ground proved a capital flirting place, and hearts were pierced there in reality, as well as in metaphor. For the rest, arrows were lost, and prizes won, and dinners eaten, and toasts drunk, and speeches made, and dances danced; and all the world at Oakley was merry, if not wise.

So passed the first three meetings. The fourth, at the very end of August, was anticipated with growing and still increasing delight by the members of the Club, whose incessant practice had much sharpened their desire of exhibition and competition; and to none was it more an object of delighted expectation than to Frances Vernon, a shy and timid girl who generally shrank from public amusements, but who looked forward to this with a quite different feeling, since she was to be accompanied thither by her only brother Horace, a young man of considerable talents and acquirements, who, after spending several years abroad, had just returned to take possession of his paternal mansion in the neighbourhood of Oakley.

Horace and Frances Vernon were the only children of a very gallant officer of high family and moderate fortune, who had during his lifetime been one of the most zealous follow

ers of the two factions (the English Montecchi and Capuletti) who divided H-shire, and had bequeathed to his son as abundant a legacy of prejudices and feuds as would have done honour to a border chieftain of the fifteenth

century. The good general's prime aversion, his pet hatred, had of course fallen upon his nearest opponent, his next neighbour, who besides the sin of espousing one interest in H—shire, as the general espoused another -of being an uncompromising whig, (radical his opponent was fain to call him,) as the general was a determined tory-had committed the unpardonable crime of making his own large fortune as a Russia merchant; and, not content with purchasing a considerable estate, which the general, to clear off old mortgages, had found it convenient to sell, had erected a huge staring red house within sight of the Hall windows, where he kept twice as many horses, carriages, and servants, and saw at least three times as much company as his aristocratic neighbour. If ever one good sort

*It has often been a puzzle what becomes of the innumerable pins that are scattered over the wide world; but it is much more difficult to guess the fate of the lost arrows, and it is really astounding how many are lost. The gentlemen's shafts are often, probably, lodged in the tree-tops, but those of the ladies are not likely lo fly so far or so high, and generally, it is to be presumed, drop to the ground, and (to use the technical phrase) go snaking about in the grass; and the fair proprietors wander poring about in search of them with admirable perseverance, but very indifferent success. Nobody that has not had experience of the fact would believe that so large an

object should be so frequently and so completely un

discoverable.

of man hated another, (for they were both excellent persons in their way,) General Vernon hated John Page.

John Page, on his side, who scorned to be outdone in an honest English aversion by any tory in Christendom, detested the general with equal cordiality; and a warfare of the most. inveterate animosity ensued between them at all places where it was possible that disputes should be introduced, at vestries and county meetings, at quarter-sessions, and at the weekly bench. In these skirmishes the general had much the best of the battle. Not only was his party more powerful and influential, but his hatred, being of the cold, courtly, provoking sort that never comes to words, gave him much advantage over an adversary hot, angry, and petulant, whose friends had great difficulty in restraining him within the permitted bounds of civil disputation. An ordinary champion would have been driven from the field by such a succession of defeats; but our reformer (so he delighted to style himself) had qualities, good and bad, which prevented his bone. Let him be beaten on a question fifty yielding an inch. He was game to the backtimes, and he would advance to the combat the fifty-first as stoutly as ever. disputant whom there was no tiring down. in his class in this age and country. Acute John Page was of a character not uncommon and shrewd on many subjects, he was yet on some favourite topics prejudiced, obstinate, ucated man is often apt to be: add to this that opinionated, and conceited, as your self-edhe was irritable, impetuous and violent, and we have all the elements of a good hater. On the other hand, he was a liberal master, a hospitable neighbour, a warm and generous friend, a kind brother, an affectionate husband, and a doting father: note, beside, that he was a square-made little man, with a bluff but eagle eye, a loud voice, and a frank and ungood-humoured countenance, a bald head, an polished but by no means vulgar manner, and the courteous reader will have a pretty correct idea of Mr. John Page.

He was a

Whether he or his aristocratic adversary would finally have gained the mastery at the bench and in the vestry, time only could have shown. Death stepped in and decided the question. The general, a spare, pale, temperate man, to whom such a disease seemed impossible, was carried off by apoplexy; leaving a sickly gentle-tempered widow and two children; a son of high promise, who had just left College, and set out on a long tour through half of Europe and much of Asia; and one daughter, a delicate girl of fourteen, whom her mother, in consideration of her own low spirits and declining health, sent immediately to school.

Six years had elapsed between the general's death and the date of my little story, when Horace Vernon, returning home to his affec

tionate relations, embrowned by long travel, but manly, graceful, spirited, and intelligent, even beyond their expectations, found them on the eve of the archery meeting, and was prevailed upon by his mother, far too ailing a woman to attend public places, to escort his sister and her chaperone-a female cousin on a visit at the house-to the appointed scene of amusement.

A happy party were they that evening! Horace, restored to his own country and his own home, his birthplace, and the scene of his earliest and happiest recollections, seated between his mild, placid, gracious mother, and the pretty timid sister, with whose simplicity and singleness of mind he was enchanted, seemed to have nothing more to desire on earth. He was, however, sensible to something like a revulsion of feeling; for, besides being a dutiful inheritor of his father's aversions and prejudices, he had certain ancient quarrels of his own-démêlés with gamekeepers, and shooting and fishing squabbles, and such like questions, to settle with Mr. Page. He did certainly feel something like disappointment when, on inquiring into those family details which his long absence had rendered so interesting, he found this their old hereditary enemy, the man whom he thought it meritorious to hate, transmuted into their chief adviser and friend. Mr. Page had put a stop to a lawsuit in which his mother's dower and his sister's small fortune were involved, and had settled the matter for them so advantageously that they were better off than before; Mr. Page had discovered and recovered the family plate abstracted by a thieving butler, and had moreover contrived, to the unspeakable comfort of both ladies, that the thief should not be hanged; Mr. Page had sent out to Russia, in a most advantageous situation, the pet and protégé of the family; Mr. Page had transported to the Swan River a vautrien cousin, the family plague; Mr. Page had new-filled the conservatory; Mr. Page had new-clothed the garden wall; and, finally, as Frances declared with tears in her eyes, Mr. Page had saved her dear mother's life by fetching Mr. Brodie in the crisis of a quinsy, in a space of time which, considering the distance, would seem incredible. This last assertion completely silenced Horace, who, to the previous feats, had exhibited a mingled incredulity of the benefits being really conferred, and an annoyance at receiving benefits from such a quarter, supposing them to be as great as their glowing gratitude represented. He said no more; but the feeling continued, and when poor Frances began to talk of her dear friend and schoolfellow, Lucy, Mr. Page's only child of her talent and beauty, and her thousand amiable qualities and when Mrs. Vernon added a gentle hint as to the large fortune that she would inherit, Horace smiled and said nothing, but went to

bed as thoroughly determined to hate Mr. Page, and to find his daughter plain and disagreeable, as his deceased father, the general, could have done for the life of him. "I see your aim, my dear mother and sister," thought he to himself; "but if my fortune be limited, so are my wishes; and I am not the man to enact Master Fenton to this Anne Page of yours, or Lucy, or whatever her name may be, though she were the richest tallow-merchant's daughter in all Russia."

So thinking he went to bed, and so thinking he arose the next morning-the great morning of the archery meeting; and his spleen was by no means diminished when, on looking out of his window, the great ugly red house of his rich neighbour stared him in the face; and on looking to the other side of the park, he was differently but almost as unpleasantly affected by an object on which most persons would have gazed with delight,his pretty little sister, light and agile as a bird, practising at the target, and almost dancing with joy as she lodged an arrow within the gold:-for Horace, just arrived from the continent, was not only quite free from the prevailing mania, but had imbibed a strong prejudice against the amusement, which he considered too frivolous for men, and too full of attitude and display for women,-effeminate in the one sex, and masculine in the other.

He loved his sister, however, too well to entertain the slightest idea of interrupting a diversion in which she took so much pleasure, and which was approved by her mother and sanctioned by general usage. He joined her, therefore, not intending to say a word in disapprobation of the sport, with a kind observation on her proficiency and a prognostic that she would win the Silver Arrow, when all his good resolutions were overset by her reply.

"Oh, brother!" said Frances in a melancholy tone, "what a pity it is that you should have stayed all the summer in Germany, where you had no opportunity of target practice, or else you too might have won a silver arrow, the gentleman's prize!"

"I win a silver arrow!" exclaimed Horace, nearly as much astonished, and quite as much scandalized, as Miss Arabella Morris when threatened by Poor Jack to be made a first lieutenant:-"I win a silver arrow!"

"Why not?" rejoined Frances. "I am sure you were always cleverer than anybody; you always carried away the prizes at school and the honours at College; and I don't suppose you have lost your ambition."

"Ambition!" again echoed Horace, who, a very clever young man, and by no means devoid of that high quality, thought of it only in its large and true sense, as the inspiration which impels the conqueror of nations, or, better still, the conqueror of arts, the painter, the sculptor, the poet, the orator,

tion! And what is Philoctetes' about, from first to last, but the bow and arrows of Hercules? And where in all Homer-all Pope's Homer, I mean, (for I do not know the original-I wish I did,) can we find more beautiful lines than those which describe Ulysses bending the bow. I will match my quotation against yours, brother, if you will consent to rest the cause upon that issue," continued Frances, beginning to repeat, with great animation and gracefulness, the verses to which she had alluded:

And now his well-known bow the master bore,
Turn'd on all sides, and view'd it o'er and o'er:
Lest time or worms had done the weapon wrong,
Its owner absent, and untried so long.

While some deriding;-How he turns the bow!
Some other like it sure the man must know,
Or else would copy; or in bows he deals;
Perhaps he makes them-or perhaps he steals.

Heedless he heard them, but disdained reply;
The bow perusing with exactest eye.
Then, as some heavenly minstrel, taught to sing
High notes responsive to the trembling string,
To some new strain when he adapts the lyre,
Or the dumb lute refits with vocal wire,
Relaxes, strains, and draws them to and fro;
So the great master drew the mighty bow:
And drew with ease. One hand aloft display'd
The bending horns, and one the string essay'd.
From his essaying hand the string let fly
Twang'd short and sharp, like the shrill swallow's cry.
A general horror ran through all the race,
Sunk was each heart, and pale was every face.
Signs from above ensued: th' unfolding sky
In lighting burst; Jove thunder'd from on high.
Fired at the call of Heaven's almighty lord,
He snatch'd the shaft that glitter'd on the board:
(Fast by, the rest lay sleeping in the sheath,
But soon to fly, the messengers of death.)

Now, sitting as he was, the cord he drew, Through every ringlet levelling his view; Then notch'd the shaft, released, and gave it wing; The whizzing arrow vanish'd from the string, Sung on direct and threaded every ring. The solid gate its fury scarcely bounds; Pierced through and through, the solid gate resounds.'

"Bravo, Fanchon!" exclaimed Horace, as his sister paused, half blushing at the display into which the energy of her defence had provoked her," Bravo! my own dear little sister! Beautiful lines they are, and most beautifully recited; and Pope's, sure enoughnone of Broome's or Fenton's botchery. One may know the handiwork of that most delicate artist, meet it where one will.

"Or the dumb lute refits with vocal wire.' Who but the tuneful hunchback of Twickenham could have put such words to such a thought? Then the repetition of the same phrase, like the repetitions in Milton, or the returns upon the air in Handel! Thank you a thousand times, my dearest Fanny, for such a proof of your good taste. I'll forgive the archery, upon the strength of it.”

"And the Apollo, brother," pursued Fan

chon, following up her victory," was not he an archer, the Apollo Belvidere ?" "Nay, Fanchon," replied her brother, laugh"do not claim too much; that's uncer

ing,

tain."

"Uncertain! How can you say so? Don't you remember the first line of Mr. Milman's poem, - that matchless prize-poem, which Mrs. Siddons is said to have recited in the Louvre, at the foot of the statue, and in presence of the author; one of the finest compliments, as I have heard you say, ever paid to man or to poet:

Heard ye the arrow hurtle in the sky?

Heard ye the dragon monster's deathful cry?'

"Is not hurtle' a fine word? And are not these great authorities?"

"But will you go to the archery with me?" "Yes; for I wish to see many old friends -amongst the rest, the kind and excellent owner of Oakley, and his noble and charming lady: and, as I said before, you have my full permission to bring home the Silver Arrow."

"I should like to do so, of all things," replied Fanchon, "in spite of your contempt; from which I would lay my best arrow that you will soon be converted, and my second-best that I could name the converter. But my winning the prize is quite out of hope," continued the young lady, who, thoroughly unlucky in her choice of subjects, had no sooner run to earth one of Horace's prejudices, than she contrived to start another: "there is no hope whatever of my winning the prize; for though I can shoot very well here and at the other house-"

"At the other house," thought Horace, almost starting, as the staring red mansion, of which he had lost sight during the archery dispute, and Mr. Page, with all his iniquities, passed before his mind's eye," the other house! Are they as intimate as that comes to ?"

"And can even beat Lucy," pursued poor Fanchon.

66

Lucy again!" thought her brother. "When we are by ourselves," continued she; "but before strangers I am so awkward, and nervous, and frightened, that I always fail. I should like dearly to win the arrow, though, and you would like that I should win it, I am sure you would," added she; "and Lucy says, that if I could but think of something else, and forget that people were looking at me, she is sure I should succeed. I do

really believe that Lucy would rather I should win it than herself, because she knows it would give so much pleasure, not only to me, but to mamma."

race.

"Nothing but Lucy!" again thought Ho"It seems as if there were nothing to do in this life but to shoot at a target, and nobody in the world but Miss Lucy Page. Pray, Fanchette," said he aloud, "what brought about the reconciliation between Mr. Page's family and ours? When I left England, we had not spoken for years."

"Why, very luckily, brother, just after you went abroad," rejoined Fanchette, "one of the tenants behaved very unjustly, and insolently, and ungratefully to mamma; and when the steward threatened to punish him for his misconduct, he went immediately to Mr. Page, knowing that he had been at variance with our poor father, to claim his patronage and protection. However, Mr. Page was not the man to see a woman and a widow, an unprotected female, as he said-"

"He might have said, a lady, Miss Fanny!" again thought the ungrateful Horace

"A

"Yes, a true country beauty, a full-blown cabbage-rose," again thought Horace; who had not condescended to observe that the halfblown flower which his sister had presented to him, and which he was at that instant swinging unconsciously in his hand, was of the delicate maiden blush, made to blow out of its season, as every gardener knows how, by cutting off the buds in the spring. full-blown blowzy beauty, as vulgar and as forward as both her parents, encouraging and patronizing my sister, forsooth!-she, the daughter of a tallow-merchant!-just as the father protects my dear mother. Really," thought Mr. Vernon, "our family is much indebted to them!" And with these thoughts in his mind, and contempt in his heart, he set off with Frances to the archery-ground.

On arriving at the destined spot, all other feelings were suspended in admiration of the extraordinary beauty of the scene. Horace, a traveller of no ordinary taste, felt its charm the more strongly from the decided English character impressed on every object. The

sun was rather veiled than shrouded by light vapoury clouds, from which he every now and then emerged in his fullest glory, casting all the magic of light and shadow on the majestic oaks of the park,-oaks scarcely to be rivalled in the royal forests, and on the venerable old English mansion which stood embosomed amongst its own rich woodland. The house was of the days of Elizabeth, and one of the most beautiful erections of that age of picturesque domestic architecture. Deep baywindows of various shapes were surmounted by steep intersecting roofs and bits of gableends, and quaint fantastic cornices and high turret-like chimneys, which gave a singular grace and lightness to the building. Two of those chimneys, high and diamond-shaped, divided so as to admit the long line of sky between them, and yet united at distant intervals, linked together as it were by a chainwork of old masonry, might be a study at once for the painter and the architect. The old open porch too, almost a room, and the hall with its carved chimney-piece and its arched benches, the wainscoted chambers, the oak staircases, the upstair chapel, (perhaps oratory might be the fitter word,) the almost conventual architecture of some of the arched passages and the cloistered inner courts, were in perfect keeping; and the admirable taste, which had abstained from admitting anything like modern ornament was felt by the whole party, and by none more strongly than by our fastidious traveller. He immediately fell into conversation with Mr. Oakley, the kind and liberal proprietor of the place, and his charming lady, (old friends of his family,) and was listening with interest to his detail of the iniquities of some former Duke of St. Albans, who, renting the mansion as being convenient for the exercise of his function of hereditary grand falconer, had, in a series of quarrels with another powerful nobleman (the then Duke of Beaufort), extirpated the moor-fow! which had previously abounded on the neighbouring heath, when a startling clap on the shoulders roused his attention, and that night

nected with Oakley. An ancestor of the present proprietor was lost, bewildered, benighted, during some tremendous storm on the heath before alluded to, and, being of delicate health and nervous habits, had fairly given up all hopes of reaching his own house alive; when suddenly the church clock of the neighbouring town of W striking four, happened to make itself heard through the wintry storm, and gave him sufficient intimation of his position to guide him safely home. In memory of this interposition, which he considered as nothing less than providential, Mr. Oakley assigned forty shillings a year in payment of a man to ring a bell at four o'clock every morning in the parish church of W: and by that tenure the estate is still held. This is literally true. A circumstance somewhat similar occurring to the proprietor of Bamborough Castle, in Northumberland. famous lighthouse which has warned so many vessels from that dangerous coast.

*There is another still more interesting story con

is said to have been the cause of the erection of the