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that it was a bit of scenery more like the burns of the North Countrie (my visiter was a Northumbrian) than anything he had seen in the south. Surely I had seen it? I was half ashamed to confess that I had not-(how often are we obliged to confess that we have not seen the beauties which lie close to our doors, too near for observation!)-and the next day proving fine, I determined to repair my omission.

It was a soft balmy April morning, just at that point of the flowery spring when violets and primroses are lingering under the northern hedgerows, and cowslips and orchises peeping out upon sunny banks. My driver was the clever, shrewd, arch boy Dick; and the first part of our way lay along the green winding lanes which lead to Everly; we then turned to the left, and putting up our phaeton at a small farm-house, where my attendant (who found acquaintances everywhere) was intimate, we proceeded to the wood; Dick accompanying me, carrying my flower-basket, opening the gates, and taking care of my dog Dash, a very beautiful thorough-bred Old English spaniel, who was a little apt, when he got into a wood, to run after the game, and forget to come out again.

of the spring still remained concealed, although the rapid gushing of the water made a pleasant music in that pleasant place; and here and there a sunbeam, striking upon the sparkling stream, shone with a bright and glancing light amidst the dark ivies, and brambles, and mossy stumps of trees, that grew around.

This mound had apparently been cut a year or two ago, so that it presented an appearance of mingled wildness and gaiety, that contrasted very agreeably with the rest of the coppice; whose trodden-down flowers I had grieved over, even whilst admiring the picturesque effect of the woodcutters and their several operations. Here, however, reigned the flowery spring in all her glory. Violets, pansies, orchises, oxslips, the elegant wood-sorrel, the delicate wood anemone, and the enamelled wild hyacinth, were sprinkled profusely amongst the mosses, and lichens, and dead leaves, which formed so rich a carpet beneath our feet. Primroses, above all, were there of almost every hue, from the rare and pearly white, to the deepest pinkish purple, coloured by some diversity of soil, the pretty freak of nature's gardening; whilst the common yellow blossom-commonest and prettiest of all -peeped out from amongst the boughs in the stump of an old willow, like (to borrow the simile of a dear friend, now no more) a canary bird from its cage. The wild geranium was already showing its pink stem and scarletedged leaves, themselves almost gorgeous enough to pass for flowers; the periwinkle, with its wreaths of shining foliage, was hanging in garlands over the precipitous descent; and the lily of the valley, the fragrant woodroof, and the silvery wild garlic, were just peeping from the earth in the most sheltered nooks. Charmed to find myself surrounded by so much beauty, I had scrambled, with much ado, to the top of the woody cliff, (no other word can convey an idea of its precipitous abruptness,) and was vainly attempting to trace by my eye the actual course of the spring, which was, by the clearest evidence of sound, gushing from the fount many feet The surface of the ground was prettily tum- below me; when a peculiar whistle of delight bled about, comprehending as pleasant a va- (for whistling was to Dick, although no ordiriety of hill and dale as could well be com-nary proficient in our common tongue, another prised in some thirty acres. It declined, how-language,) and a tremendous scrambling ever, generally speaking, towards the centre amongst the bushes, gave token that my faithof the coppice, along which a small, very ful attendant had met with something as agreesmall rivulet, scarcely more than a runlet, able to his fancy, as the primroses and orchises wound its way in a thousand graceful mean- had proved to mine. ders. Tracking upward the course of the little stream, we soon arrived at that which had been the ostensible object of our drive— the spot whence it sprung.

I have seldom seen any thing in woodland scenery more picturesque and attractive than the old coppice of Lanton, on that soft and balmy April morning. The underwood was nearly cut, and bundles of long split poles for hooping barrels were piled together against the tall oak trees, bursting with their sap; whilst piles of fagots were built up in other parts of the copse, and one or two saw-pits, with light open sheds erected over them, whence issued the measured sound of the saw and the occasional voices of the workmen, almost concealed by their subterranean position, were placed in the hollows. At the far side of the coppice, the operation of hewing down the underwood was still proceeding, and the sharp strokes of the axe and the bill, softened by distance, came across the monotonous jar of the never-ceasing saw.

It was a steep irregular acclivity on the highest side of the wood, a mound, I had almost said a rock, of earth, cloven in two about the middle, but with so narrow a fissure that the brushwood which grew on either side nearly filled up the opening, so that the source

Guided by a repetition of the whistle, I soon saw my trusty adherent spanning the chasm like a Colossus, one foot on one bank, the other on the opposite-each of which appeared to me to be resting, so to say, on nothing-tugging away at a long twig that grew on the brink of the precipice, and exceedingly likely to resolve the inquiry as to the source of the Loddon, by plumping souse into the fountain-head. I, of course, called out to

white primroses, and immediately recognised my old acquaintance, Bessy Leigh.

warn him; and he equally, of course, went on with his labour without paying the slightest attention to my caution. On the contrary, She was, as before, clean and healthy, and having possessed himself of one straight slen- tidy, and unaffectedly glad to see me; but the der twig, which, to my great astonishment, joyousness and buoyancy which had made so he wound round his fingers, and deposited in much of her original charm, were greatly dihis pocket, as one should do by a bit of pack-minished. It was clear that poor Bessy had thread, he apparently, during the operation, suffered worse griefs than those of cold and caught sight of another. Testifying his de- hunger; and upon questioning her, so it turned light by a second whistle, which, having his out. knife in his mouth, one wonders how he could accomplish; and scrambling with the fearless daring of a monkey up the perpendicular bank, supported by strings of ivy, or ledges of roots, and clinging by hand and foot to the frail bramble or the slippery moss, leaping like a squirrel from bough to bough, and yet, by happy boldness, escaping all danger, he attained his object as easily as if he had been upon level ground. Three, four, five times was the knowing, joyous, triumphant whistle sounded, and every time with a fresh peril and a fresh escape. At last, the young gentleman, panting and breathless, stood at my side, and I began to question him as to the treasure he had been pursuing.

"It's the ground-ash, ma'am," responded master Dick, taking one of the coils from his pocket; "the best riding-switch in the world. All the whips that ever were made are nothing to it. Only see how strong it is, how light, and how supple! You may twist it a thousand ways without breaking. It won't break, do what you will. Each of these, now, is worth half-a-crown or three shillings, for they are the scarcest things possible. They grow up at a little distance from the root of an old tree, like a sucker from a rose-bush. Great luck, indeed!" continued Dick, putting up his treasure with another joyful whistle; it was but t'other day that Jack Barlow offered me half-a-guinea for four, if I could but come by them. I shall certainly keep the best, though, for myself unless ma'am, you would be pleased to accept it for the purpose of whipping Dash." Whipping Dash!!! Well have I said that Dick was as saucy as a lady's page or a king's jester. Talk of whipping Dash! Why, the young gentleman knew perfectly well that I had rather be whipt myself twenty times over. The very sound seemed a profanation. Whip my Dash! Of course I read master Dick a lecture for this irreverent mention of my pet, who, poor fellow, hearing his name called in question, came up in all innocence to fondle me; to which grave remonstrance the hopeful youth replied by another whistle, half of penitence, half of amusement.

These discourses brought us to the bottom of the mound, and turning round a clump of hawthorn and holly, we espied a little damsel with a basket at her side, and a large knife in her hand, carefully digging up a large root of

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Her father had died, and her mother had been ill, and the long hard winter had been hard to get through; and then the rent had come upon her, and the steward (for the young gentleman himself was a minor) had threatened to turn them out if it were not paid to a day-the very next day after that on which we were speaking; and her mother had been afraid they must go to the workhouse, which would have been a sad thing, because now she had got so much washing to do, and Harry was so clever at basket-making, that there was every chance, this rent once paid, of their getting on comfortably. "And the rent will be paid now, ma'am, thank God!" added Bessy, her sweet face brightening; "for we want only a guinea of the whole sum, and Lady Denys has employed me to get scarce wild-flowers for her wood, and has promised me half-a-guinea for what I have carried her, and this last parcel, which I am to take to the lodge to-night; and Mr. John Barlow, her groom, has offered Harry twelve-and-sixpence for five ground-ashes that Harry has been so lucky as to find by the spring, and Harry is gone to cut them: so that now we shall get on bravely, and mother need not fret any longer. I hope no harm will befall Harry in getting the ground-ash, though, for it's a noted dangerous place. But he's a careful boy." |

Just at this point of her little speech, poor Bessy was interrupted by her brother, who ran down the declivity exclaiming, "They're gone, Bessy!-they're gone! somebody has taken them! the ground-ashes are gone!"

Dick put his hand irresolutely to his pocket, and then, uttering a dismal whistle, pulled it resolutely out again, with a hardness, or an affectation of hardness, common to all lads, from the prince to the stable-boy.

I also put my hand into my pocket, and found, with the deep disappointment which often punishes such carelessness, that I had left my purse at home. All that I could do,. therefore, was to bid the poor children be comforted, and ascertain at what time Bessy intended to take her roots, which in the midst of her distress she continued to dig up, to my excellent friend Lady Denys. I then, exhorting them to hope the best, made my way quickly out of the wood.

Arriving at the gate, I missed my attendant. Before, however, I had reached the farm at which we had left our phaeton, I heard his

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gayest and most triumphant whistle behind me. Thinking of the poor children, it jarred upon my feelings. "Where have you been loitering, Sir?" I asked, in a sterner voice than he had probably ever heard from me before.

"Where have I been?" replied he; "giving little Harry the ground-ashes, to be sure: I felt just as if I had stolen them. And now, I do believe," continued he, with a prodigious burst of whistling, which seemed to me as melodious as the song of the nightingale, "I do believe," quoth Dick, "that I am happier than they are. I would not have kept those ground-ashes, no, not for fifty pounds!"

MR. JOSEPH HANSON, THE

HABERDASHER.

THESE are good days for great heroes; so far at least as regards the general spread and universal diffusion of celebrity. In the matter of fame, indeed, that grand bill upon posterity which is to be found written in the page of history, and the changes of empires, Alexander may, for aught I know, be nearly on a par with the Duke of Wellington; but in point of local and temporary tributes to reputation, the great ancient, king though he were, must have been far behind the great modern. Even that comparatively recent warrior, the Duke of Marlborough, made but a slight approach to the popular honours paid to the conqueror of Napoleon. A few alehouse signs and the ballad of Marlbrook s'en va't en guerre," (for we are not talking now of the titles, and pensions, and palaces, granted to him by the Sovereign and the Parliament,) seem to have been the chief if not the only popular demonstrations vouchsafed by friends and enemies to the hero of Blenheim.

The name of Wellington, on the other hand, is necessarily in every man's mouth at every hour of every day. He is the universal godfather of every novelty, whether in art, in literature, or in science. Streets, bridges, places, crescents, terraces, and rail-ways, on the land; steam-boats on the water; balloons in the air, are all distinguished by that honoured appellation. We live in Wellington squares, we travel in Wellington coaches, we dine in Wellington hotels, we are educated in Wellington establishments, and are clothed from top to toe (that is to say the male half of the nation) in Wellington boots, Wellington cloaks, Wellington hats, each of which shall have been severally purchased at a warehouse bearing the same distinguished title.

Since every market town and almost every village in the kingdom, could boast a Wellington house, or a Waterloo house, emulous to catch some gilded ray from the blaze of

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their great namesake's glory, it would have been strange indeed if the linen-drapers and haberdashers of our good town of Belford Regis had been so much in the rear of fashion as to neglect this easy method of puffing off their wares. On the contrary, so much did our shopkeepers rely upon the influence of an illustrious appellation, that they seemed to despair of success unless sheltered by the laurels of the great commander, and would press his name into the service, even after its accustomed and legitimate forms of use seemed exhausted. Accordingly we had not only a Wellington house and a Waterloo house, but a new Waterloo establishment, and a genuine and original Duke of Wellington warehouse.

The new Waterloo establishment, a flashy, dashy shop in the market-place, occupying a considerable extent of frontage, and "conducted (as the advertisements have it) by Mr. Joseph Hanson, late of London," put forth by far the boldest pretensions of any magazine of finery and frippery in the town; and it is with that magnificent store, and with that only, that I intend to deal in the present story.

If the celebrated Mr. Puff, he of the Critic, who, although Sheridan probably borrowed the idea of that most amusing personage from the auctioneers and picture-dealers of Foote's admirable farces, first reduced to system the art of profitable lying, setting forth methodically (scientifically it would be called in these days) the different genera and species of that flourishing craft-if Mr. Puff himself were to revisit this mortal stage, he would lift up his hands and eyes in admiration and astonishment at the improvements which have taken place in the art from whence he took, or to which he gave, a name (for the fact is doubtful) the renowned art of Puffing!

Talk of the progress of society, indeed! of the march of intellect, and the diffusion of knowledge, of infant schools and adult colleges, of gas-lights and rail-roads, of steamboats and steam-coaches, of literature for nothing, and science for less! What are they and fifty other such knick-knacks compared with the vast strides made by this improving age in the grand art of puffing? Nay, are they not for the most part mere implements and accessories of that mighty engine of trade? What is half the march of intellect, but puffery? Why do little children learn their letters at school, but that they may come hereafter to read puffs at college? Why but for the propagation of puffs do honorary lecturers hold forth upon science, and gratuitous editors circulate literature? Are not gas-lights chiefly used for their illumination, and steam-boats for their speed? And shall not history, which has given to one era the name of the age of gold, and has entitled another the age of silver, call this present nineteenth century the age of puffs?

Take up the first thing upon your table, the | guished by a greater number of occupants and newspaper for instance, or the magazine, the a more rapid succession of failures in the same decorated drawing-box, the Brahma pen, and line than any other in the town. twenty to one but a puff niore or less direct sball lurk in the patent of the one, while a whole congeries of puffs shall swarm in bare and undisguised effrontery between the pages of the other.

Walk into the streets;—and what meet you there? Puffs! puffs! puffs! From the dead walls, chalked over with recommendations to purchase Mr. Such-an-one's blacking, to the walking placard insinuating the excellences of Mr. What-d'ye-call-him's Cream Gin* from the bright resplendent brass-knob, garnished with the significant words "Office Bell," beside the door of an obscure surveyor, to the spruce carriage of a newly-arrived physician driving empty up and down the street, everything whether moveable or stationary is a puff.

But shops form, of course, the chief locality of the craft of puffing. The getting off of goods is its grand aim and object. And of all shops those which are devoted to the thousand and one articles of female decoration, the few things which women do, and the many which they do not want, stand pre-eminent in this great art of the nineteenth century.

The last tenant, save one, of that celebrated warehouse-the penultimate bankrupt—had followed the beaten road of puffing, and announced his goods as the cheapest ever manufactured. According to himself, his handbills, and his advertisements, everything contained in that shop was so very much under prime cost, that the more he sold the sooner he must be ruined. To hear him, you would expect not only that he should give his ribbons and muslins for nothing, but that he should offer you a premium for consenting to accept of them. Gloves, handkerchiefs, night-caps, gown-pieces, every article at the door and in the window was covered with tickets, each nearly as large as itself, tickets that might be read across the market-place; and towns-people and country-people came flocking round about, some to stare and some to buy. The starers were, however, it is to be presumed, more numerous than the buyers, for notwithstanding his tickets, his handbills, and his advertisements, in less than six months the advertiser had failed, and that stock, never, as its luckless owner used to say, approached for cheapness, was sold off at half its original' price.

Not to enter upon the grand manoeuvres of the London establishments, the doors for car- Warned by his predecessor's fate, the next riages to set down and the doors for carriages comer adopted a newer and a nobler style of to take up, indicating an affluence of custom- attracting public attention. He called himself ers, a degree of crowd and inconvenience a steady trader of the old school, abjured equal to the King's Theatre on a Saturday cheapness as synonymous with cheating, disnight, or the queen's drawing-room on a birth- claimed everything that savoured of a puff, day, and attracting the whole female world by denounced handbills and advertisements, and that which in a fashionable cause the whole had not a ticket in his whole shop. He cited female world loves so dearly, confusion, pres- the high price of his articles as proofs of their sure, heat and noise;-to say nothing of those goodness, and would have held himself disbold schemes which require the multitudes of graced for ever if he had been detected in sellthe metropolis to afford them the slightest ing a reasonable piece of goods. He could chance of success, we in our good borough of not,” he observed, "expect to attract the rabBelford Regis, simple as it stands, had, as I ble by such a mode of transacting business; have said, as pretty a show of speculating his aim was to secure a select body of customhaberdashers as any country town of its inch-ers amongst the nobility and gentry, persons es could well desire; the most eminent of whom was beyond all question or competition, the proprietor of the New Waterloo Establishment, Mr. Joseph Hanson, late of London.

His shop displayed, as I have already intimated, one of the largest and showiest frontages in the market-place, and had been distin

*He was a genius in his line (I had almost written an evil genius) who invented that rare epithet, that singular combination of the sweetest and purest of all luxuries, the most healthful and innocent of dainties, redolent of association so rural and poetical, with the vilest abominations of great cities, the impure and disgusting source of misery and crime. Cream Gin! The union of such words is really a desecration of one of nature's most genial gifts, as well as a burlesque on the charming old pastoral poets; a flagrant offence against morals, and against that which in its highest sense may almost be considered a branch of morality

-taste.

who looked to quality and durability in their purchases, and were capable of estimating the solid advantages of dealing with a tradesman who despised the trumpery artifices of the day."

So high-minded a declaration, enforced too by much solemnity of utterance and appearance the speaker being a solid, substantial.. middle-aged man, equipped in a full suit of black, with a head nicely powdered, and a pen stuck behind his ear-such a declaration from so important a personage ought to have succeeded; but somehow or other it did not. His customers, gentle and simple, were more select than numerous, and in another six months the high-price man failed just as the low-price man had failed before him.

Their successor, Mr. Joseph Hanson, claimed to unite in his own person the several mer

1

its of both his antecedents. Cheaper than the cheapest, better, finer, more durable, than the best, nothing at all approaching his assortment of linen-drapery had, as he swore, and his head shopman, Mr. Thomas Long, asseverated, ever been seen before in the streets of Belford Regis; and the oaths of the master and the asseverations of the man, together with a very grand display of fashions and finery, did really seem, in the first instance at least, to attract more customers than had of late visited those unfortunate premises.

Mr. Joseph Hanson and Mr. Thomas Long were a pair admirably suited to the concern, and to one another. Each possessed pre-eminently the various requisites and qualifications in which the other happened to be deficient. Tall, slender, elderly, with a fine bald head, a mild countenance, a most insinuating address, and a general air of faded gentility, Mr. Thomas Long was exactly the foreman to give respectability to his employer; whilst bold, fluent, rapid, loud, dashing in aspect and manner, with a great fund of animal spirits, and a prodigious stock of assurance and conceit, respectability was, to say the truth, the precise qualification which Mr. Joseph Hanson most I needed.

men in the town of Belford, was old John Parsons, the tinman. His spacious shop, crowded with its glittering and rattling commodities, pots, pans, kettles, meat-covers, in a word, the whole patterie de cuisine, was situate in the narrow, inconvenient lane called Oriel Street, which I have already done myself the honour of introducing to the courteous reader, standing betwixt a great chemist on one side, his windows filled with coloured jars, red, blue, and green, looking like painted glass, or like the fruit made of gems in Aladdin's garden, (I am as much taken myself with those jars in a chemist's window as ever was Miss Edgeworth's Rosamond,) and an eminent china warehouse on the other; our tinman having the honour to be next-door neighbour to no less a lady than Mrs. Philadelphia Tyler. Many a thriving tradesman might be found in Oriel Street, and many a blooming damsel amongst the tradesmen's daughters; but if the town gossip might be believed, the richest of all the rich shopkeepers was old John Parsons, and the prettiest girl (even without reference to her father's money-bags) was his fair daughter Harriet.

John Parsons was one of those loud, violent, blustering, boisterous personages who always Then the good town of Belford being divid- put me in mind of the description so often aped, like most other country towns, into two pended to characters of that sort in the draprevailing factions, theological and political, matis personæ of Beaumont and Fletcher's the worthies whom I am attempting to de-plays, where one constantly meets with Ernulscribe prudently endeavoured to catch all pho or Bertoldo, or some such Italianised apparties by embracing different sides; Mr. pellation, "an old angry gentleman." The Joseph Hanson being a tory and high-church-" old angry gentleman" of the fine old dramaman of the very first water, who showed his loyalty according to the most approved fashion, by abusing his Majesty's ministers as revolutionary, thwarting the town-council, getting tipsy at conservative dinners, and riding twenty miles to attend an eminent preacher who wielded in a neighbouring county all the thunders of orthodoxy; whilst the soft-spoken Mr. Thomas Long was a Dissenter and a radical, who proved his allegiance to the house of Brunswick (for both claimed to be amongst the best wishers to the present dynasty and the reigning sovereign) by denouncing the government as weak and aristocratic, advocating the abolition of the peerage, getting up an operative reform club, and going to chapel three times every Sunday.

These measures succeeded so well, that the allotted six months (the general period of failure in that concern) elapsed, and still found Mr. Joseph Hanson as flourishing as ever in manner, and apparently flourishing in trade; they stood him, too, in no small stead, in a matter which promised to be still more condueive to his prosperity than buying and selling feminine gear, in the grand matter (for Joseph jocosely professed to be a forlorn bachelor upon the look-out for a wife) of a wealthy marriage.

One of the most thrifty and thriving trades

tists generally keeps the promise of the playbills. He storms and rails during the whole five acts, scolding those the most whom he loves the best, making all around him uncomfortable, and yet meaning fully to do right, and firmly convinced that he is himself the injured party: and after quarrelling with cause or without to the end of the comedy, makes friends all round at the conclusion;-a sort of person whose good intentions everybody appreciates, but from whose violence everybody that can is sure to get away.

Now such men are just as common in the real work-a-day world as in the old drama; and precisely such a man was John Parsons.

His daughter was exactly the sort of creature that such training was calculated to produce; gentle, timid, shrinking, fond of her father, who indeed doted upon her, and would have sacrificed his whole substance, his right arm, his life, anything except his will or his humour, to give her a moment's pleasure; gratefully fond of her father, but yet more afraid than fond.

The youngest and only surviving child of a large family, and brought up without a mother's care, since Mrs. Parsons had died in her infancy, there was a delicacy and fragility, a slenderness of form and transparency of complexion, which, added to her gentleness and

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