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road is to-night! We have not seen a single | Some socially lying side by side; some acquaintance, except poor blind Robert, laden grouped in threes and fours; some quite apart. with his sack of grass plucked from the hedges, Ah! there are lambs amongst them-pretty, and the little boy that leads him. A singular pretty lambs!-nestled in by their mothers. division of labour! Little Jem guides Robert Soft, quiet, sleepy things! Not all so quiet to the spot where the long grass grows, and though! There is a party of these young tells him where it is most plentiful; and then lambs as wide awake as heart can desire; half the old man cuts it close to the roots, and be- a dozen of them playing together, frisking, tween them they fill the sack and sell the con- dancing, leaping, butting, and crying in the tents in the village. Half the cows in the young voice, which is so pretty a diminutive street-for our baker, our wheelwright, and of the full-grown bleat. How beautiful they our shoemaker, has each his Alderney--owe are with their innocent spotted faces, their the best part of their maintenance to blind mottled feet, their long curly tails, and their Robert's industry. light flexible forms, frolicking like so many kittens, but with a gentleness, an assurance of sweetness and innocence which no kitten, nothing that ever is to be a cat, can have. How complete and perfect is their enjoyment of existence! Ah! little rogues! your play has been too noisy; you have awakened your mammas; and two or three of the old ewes are getting up; and one of them marching gravely to the troop of lambs has selected her own, given her a gentle butt, and trotted off; the poor rebuked lamb following meekly, but every now and then stopping and casting a longing look at its playmates; who, after a moment's awed pause, had resumed their gambols; whilst the stately dam every now and then looked back in her turn, to see that her little one was following. At last she lay down and the lamb by her side. I never saw so pretty a pastoral scene in my life.*

Here we are at the entrance of the corn-field which leads to the dell, and which commands so fine a view of the Loddon, the mill, the great farm, with its picturesque outbuildings, and the range of woody hills beyond. It is impossible not to pause a moment at that gate, the landscape, always beautiful, is so suited to the season and the hour,-so bright, and gay, and spring-like. But May, who has the chance of another rabbit in her pretty head, has galloped forward to the dingle, and poor May, who follows me so faithfully in all my wanderings, has a right to a little indulgence in hers. So to the dingle we go.

Another turning of the dell gives a glimpse of the dark coppice by which it is backed, and from which we are separated by some marshy, rushy ground, where the springs have formed into a pool, and where the moor-hen loves to

At the end of the field, which when seen from the road seems terminated by a thick dark coppice, we come suddenly to the edge of a ravine, on one side fringed with a low growth of alder, birch, and willow, on the other mossy, turfy, and bare, or only broken by bright tufts of blossomed broom. One or two old pollards almost conceal the winding road that leads down the descent, by the side of which a spring as bright as crystal runs gurgling along. The dell itself is an irregular piece of broken ground, in some parts very deep, intersected *I have since seen one which affected me much by two or three high banks of equal irregular- more. Walking in the Church-lane with one of the ity, now abrupt and bare and rocklike, now young ladies of the vicarage, we met a large flock of crowned with tufts of the feathery willow or sheep with the usual retinue of shepherds and dogs. magnificent old thorns. Everywhere the earth Lingering after them and almost out of sight, we enis covered by short fine turf, mixed with walking, and every now and then stopping to look countered a straggling ewe, now trotting along, now mosses, soft, beautiful, and various, and em- back and bleating. A little behind her came a lame bossed with the speckled leaves and lilac flow-lamb, bleating occasionally, as if in answer to its dam, ers of the arum, the paler blossoms of the common orchis, the enamelled blue of the wild hyacinth, so splendid in this evening light, and large tufts of oxlips and cowslips rising like nosegays from the short turf.

The ground on the other side of the dell is much lower than the field through which we came, so that it is mainly to the labyrinthine intricacy of these high banks that it owes its singular character of wildness and variety. Now we seem hemmed in by those green cliffs, shut out from all the world, with nothing visible but those verdant mounds and the deep blue sky; now by some sudden turn we get a peep at an adjoining meadow where the sheep are lying, dappling its sloping surface like the small clouds on the summer heaven. Poor harmless quiet creatures, how still they are!

and doing its very best to keep up with her. It was a lameness of both the fore feet; the knees were bent, and it seemed to walk on the very edge of the hoofon tip-toe, if I may venture such an expression. My young friend thought that the lameness proceeded from original malformation: I am rather of opinion that it was accidental, and that the poor creature was pain and difficulty with which it took every step were wretchedly foot-sore. However that might be, the not to be mistaken; and the distress and fondness of the mother, her perplexity as the flock passed gradually out of sight, the effort with which the poor lamb contrived to keep up a sort of trot, and their mutual Ellen and I, although not at all larmoyante sort of calls and lamentations were really so affecting, that people, had much ado not to cry. We could not find a boy to carry the lamb, which was too big for us to manage; but I was quite sure that the ewe would not desert it, and as the dark was coming on, we both trusted that the shepherds on folding their flock would miss them and return for them; and so I am happy to say it proved.

build her nest. Ay, there is one scudding are surely as delightful in age as in youth. away now;-I can hear her plash into the Her face and figure are much like those which water, and the rustling of her wings amongst are stamped indelibly on the memory of every the rushes. This is the deepest part of the one who ever saw that grand specimen of wild dingle. How uneven the ground is! woman, Mrs. Siddons. The outline of Mrs. Surely these excavations, now so thoroughly Allen's face is exactly the same; but there is clothed with vegetation, must originally have more softness, more gentleness, a more femibeen huge gravel-pits; there is no other way nine composure in the eye and in the smile. of accounting for the labyrinth, for they do Mrs. Allen never played Lady Macbeth. Her dig gravel in such capricious meanders; but hair, almost as black as at twenty, is parted the quantity seems incredible. Well! there on her large fair forehead and combed under is no end of guessing! We are getting amongst her exquisitely neat and snowy cap. A muslin the springs, and must turn back. Round this neck-kerchief, a grey stuff gown, and a white corner, where on ledges like fairy terraces the apron complete the picture. orchises and arums grow, and we emerge suddenly on a new side of the dell, just fronting the small homestead of our good neighbour Farmer Allen.

This rustic dwelling belongs to what used to be called in this part of the country "a little bargain:" thirty or forty acres, perhaps, of arable land, which the owner and his sons cultivated themselves, whilst the wife and daughters assisted in the husbandry and eked out the slender earnings by the produce of the dairy, the poultry-yard and the orchard; an order of cultivators now passing rapidly away, but in which much of the best part of the English character, its industry, its frugality, its sound sense, and its kindness might be found. Farmer Allen himself is an excellent specimen, the cheerful venerable old man with his long white hair, and his bright grey eye; and his wife is a still finer. They have had a hard struggle to win through the world and keep their little property undivided; but good management and good principles and the assistance afforded them by an admirable son, who left our village a poor 'prentice boy, and is now a partner in a great house in London, have enabled them to overcome all the difficulties of these trying times, and they are now enjoying the peaceful evening of a well-spent life, as free from care and anxiety as their best friends could desire.

Ah! there is Mrs. Allen in the orchard, the beautiful orchard, with its glorious garlands 1 of pink and white, its pearly pear-blossoms and coral apple buds. What a flush of bloom itis! How brightly delicate it appears, thrown into strong relief by the dark house and the weather-stained barn, in this soft evening light. The very grass is strewed with the snowy petals of the pear and the cherry. And there sits Mrs. Allen, feeding her poultry, with her three little grand-daughters from London, pretty fairies from three years old to five (only two and twenty months elapsed between the birth of the eldest and the youngest) playing round her feet.

Mrs. Allen, my dear Mrs. Allen, has been that rare thing a beauty, and although she be now an old woman, I had almost said that she is so still. Why should I not say so? Nobleness of feature and sweetness of expression

There she sits under an old elder tree which flings its branches over her like a canopy, whilst the setting sun illumines her venerable figure and touches the leaves with an emerald light; there she sits placid and smiling, with her spectacles in her hand and a measure of barley on her lap, into which the little girls are dipping their chubby hands and scattering the corn amongst the ducks and chickens with unspeakable glee. But those ingrates the poultry don't seem so pleased and thankful as they ought to be; they mistrust their young feeders. All domestic animals dislike children, partly from an instinctive fear of their tricks and their thoughtlessness, partly, I suspect, from jealousy. Jealousy seems a strange tragic passion to attribute to the inmates of the basse cour, but only look at that strutting fellow of a bantam cock (evidently a favourite) who sidles up to his old mistress with an air half affronted and half tender, turning so scornfully from the barley-corns which Annie is flinging towards him, and say if he be not as jealous as Othello? Nothing can pacify him but Mrs. Allen's notice and a dole from her hand. See, she is calling to him and feeding him, and now how he swells out his feathers, and flutters his wings, and erects his glossy neck, and struts and crows and pecks, proudest and happiest of bantams, the pet and glory of the poultry-yard!

In the mean time my own pet May, who has all this while been peeping into every hole, and penetrating every nook and winding of the dell, in hopes to find another rabbit, has returned to my side and is sliding her snakelike head into my hand, at once to invite the caress which she likes so well, and to intimate with all due respect that it is time to go home. The setting sun gives the same warning; and in a moment we are through the dell, the field and the gate, past the farm and the mill, and hanging over the bridge that crosses the Loddon river.

What a sunset! how golden! how beautiful! The sun just disappearing, and the narrow liny clouds which a few minutes ago lay like soft vapoury streaks along the horizon lighted up with a golden splendour that the eye can scarcely endure, and those still softer clouds which floated above them wreathing

and curling into a thousand fantastic forms, as thin and changeful as summer smoke, now defined and deepened into grandeur and edged with ineffable, insufferable light! Another minute and the brilliant orb totally disappears, and the sky above grows every moment more varied and more beautiful as the dazzling golden lines are mixed with glowing red and gorgeous purple, dappled with small dark specks and mingled with such a blue as the egg of the hedge-sparrow. To look up at that glorious sky, and then to see that magnificent picture reflected in the clear and lovely Loddon water, is a pleasure never to be described and never forgotten. My heart swells and my eyes fill as I write of it, and think of the immeasurable majesty of nature, and the unspeakable goodness of God, who has spread an enjoyment so pure, so peaceful, and so intense, before the meanest and the lowliest of His creatures.

EARLY RECOLLECTIONS.

FRENCH EMIGRANTS.

DURING the time that I spent at school, I was in the habit of passing the interval, from Saturday afternoon to Monday morning, at the house of a female relative who resided in London. This lady had married a French emigrant of high family, who, being a man of sense and ability, applied himself with diligence to mercantile pursuits, dropped his title, anglicised his name and habits, and, by dint of his own talents and his wife's fortune, soon became a thriving man on 'Change. I believe he would have been very sorry to exchange his new station for his old, his credit at Lloyd's for his marquisate, his house in Brunswick-square for his Norman chateau, or his little wife for any thing. He was become at all points an Englishman, ate roastbeef and plum-pudding with a truly national relish, drank Port wine and porter, spoke our language almost like a native, read Pope, talked of Shakspeare, and pretended to read Milton. Could complaisance go farther?

He did not, however, in his love for his adopted country, forget that in which he was born: still less did he neglect the friends and countrymen, who, less fortunate than himself, languished in London and the suburbs in a miserable and apparently hopeless poverty. Nothing could exceed the kindness and politeness, with which all whom he had ever known, and many who were now first introduced to him, were received by himself and his good little wife at their hospitable table. Seldom a day passed without one or more guests dropping in, sure of the most cordial welcome; but Saturday was the regular French day; on that day there was always a petit souper for

Mr. S.'s especial coterie; and in the evening the conversation, music, games, manners, and cookery, were studiously and decidedly French. Trictrac superseded chess or backgammon, reversi took the place of whist, Gretry of Mozart, Racine of Shakspeare; omelettes and salads, Champagne moussu, and eau sucré, excluded sandwiches, oysters, and porter.

At these suppers their little school-girl visiter of course assisted, though at first rather in the French than the English sense of the word. I was present indeed, but had as little to do as possible either with speaking or eating. To talk French and to discuss French dishes (two evils which I constantly classed together) seemed to me an actual insult on that glorious piece of British freedom, a half-holiday,—a positive attack on the liberty of the subject. Accordingly, as far as a constant repetition of blushing noes (not nons) inwardly angry and outwardly shy, could proclaim my displeasure, I did not fail. Luckily the sentiment was entirely unsuspected by every one but my good cousin, a person of admirable sense, who by dint of practising the let-alone system (the best system of all when prejudice is to be overcome,) aided by a little innocent artifice on her part, and something of latent curiosity, abetted by the keenness of a girlish appetite, on mine, succeeded in passing off a slice of a superb tête du sanglier for a new sort of Oxford brawn; and then, as in the matter of heads and suppers ce n'est que le premier pas qui coûte, left it to my own senses to discover the merits of brioche and marrangles and eau de groseille. In less than three months I became an efficient consumer of good things, left off my noes and my sulkiness, and said "oui, monsieur," and, " merci, madame," as often as a little girl of twelve years old ought to say any thing.

I confess, however, that it took more time to reconcile me to the party round the table, than to the viands with which it was covered. In truth they formed a motley group, reminded me now of a masquerade and then of a puppet-show; and, although I had been brought up in habits of proper respect for rank and age and poverty, yet there were contrasts and combinations about these coteries too ridiculous not to strike irresistibly the fancy of an acute observing girl, whose perception of the ridiculous was rendered keener by an invincible shyness which confined the enjoyment entirely to her own breast. The etiquette, the rouge, the coquetry, the selfimportance of these poor draggle-tailed duchesses and countesses; the buttoned-up crosses, the bows and shrugs of their out-at-elbow dukes and counts; their matual flatteries, their court jealousies and court hatreds, buttoned up like the crosses, but like them peeping out from the breast, the total oblivion which pervaded the whole party of poor

England and all its concerns, the manner in which they formed a little nation in the midst of London, and the comfortable vanity which thought and called that little circle of emigrants the great nation; all this, together with the astounding rapidity and clatter of tongues, the vehemence of gesticulation, and the general sharp and withered look of so many foreign faces, working in every variety of strong expression, formed a picture so new and amusing, that I may be pardoned if I did not at first fully appreciate the good-humoured resignation, the cheerful philosophy, which bore all that they had lost so well, and found so much comfort in the little that remained; the happy art of making the best of things, which rendered even their harmless personal vanity, their pride in a lost station, and their love of a country which they might never see again, pleasant and respectable.

pleasant and affable towards her usual associates, and with strangers, condescending, protecting, gracious; making remarks and asking questions without waiting for answers, in the manner usual with crowned heads. She contracted this habit from having at one time of her life enjoyed great influence at court,— an influence which, with her other advantages of rank and fortune, had been used so kindly as to retain friends and secure gratitude even in the heat of the Revolution. Most amply did she repay this gratitude. It was beautiful to hear the ardent thankfulness with which she would relate the story of her escape, and the instances of goodness and devotion which met her at every step. She accounted herself the most fortunate of women, for having, in company with a faithful femme de chambre, at last contrived to reach England, with jewels enough concealed about their persons to purchase an annuity sufficient to secure them a snug apartment up two pair of stairs in a retired street, and to keep them in soups and salad, with rouge and snuff into the bargain. No small part of her good fortune was the vicinity of her old friend, the Marquis L., a little thin withered old man, with a prodigious mobility of shoulders and features, a face puckered with wrinkles, and a prodigious volubility of tongue. This gentleman had been madame's devoted beau for the last forty years;

had been, the breath of scandal never glanced on the fair fame of the duchess. They could not exist without an interchange of looks and sentiments, a mutual intelligence, a gentle gallantry on the one side, and a languishing listening on the other, which long habit had rendered as necessary to both as their snuffbox or their coffee. It really was a peculiar stroke of good fortune, that, after a separation of eight months, each fearing that the other had fallen by the guillotine, caused them to take lodgings in adjoining streets in the same parish.

At first I only looked on them in the group; but I soon learned to individualize the more constant visiters, those who had been, ten years before, accustomed to spend their evenings in the superb hotel of the Duchess D***, glittering with gilding and lined with mirrors, and whose gayest and most splendid meetings were now held in the plain undecorated drawing-room of a substantial merchant in Brunswick-square. I shall attempt to sketch a few of them as they then appeared to me, beginning, as etiquette demands, with the duchess. I speak it in all honour, for, beautiful as she She was a tall meagre woman, of a certain age (that is to say, on the wrong side of sixty), with the peculiarly bad unsteady walk, something between a trip and a totter, that Frenchwomen of rank used to acquire from their high heels and the habit of never using their feet. Her face bore the remains of beauty, and would still have been handsome, had not the thin cheeks and hollow eyes, and the pale trembling lips contrasted almost to ghastliness by a quantity of glaring rouge, and very white teeth, constantly displayed by a smile originally, perhaps, artificial, but which long habit had rendered natural. Her dress was always simple in its materials, and delicately clean. She meant the fashion to be English, I believe, at least she used often to say, "me voilà mise à l'Angloise;" but as neither herself, nor her faithful femme de chambre, could or would condescend to seek for patterns from les grosses bourgeoises de ce Londres là bas, they unconsciously relapsed into the old French shapes; and madame la duchesse, in her hideous shrouding cap, with frills like flounces, and her long-waisted, pigeon-breasted gown, might really have served for a model of the fashion of Paris at the epoch of the emigration. Notwithstanding these take-offs, our good duchess had still the air of a lady of rank and a gentlewoman,-a French gentlewoman; for there was too much coquetry and affectation, too pervading a consciousness, for A privilege annexed to the rank of duchess; that English gentility. Her manner was very of being seated in the royal presence.

The next person in importance to the duchess was Madame de V., sister to the marquis. Perhaps (though she had never filled a tabouret at Versailles,*) she was, in the existing state of things, rather the greater lady of the two. Her husband, who had acted in a diplomatic capacity in the stormy days preceding the Revolution, still maintained his station at the exiled court, and was, at the moment of which I write, employed on a secret embassy to an unnamed potentate; some thought one emperor or king, some another, some guessed the pope, and some the grand seignor; for, in the dearth of Bourbon news, this mysterious mission excited a lively and animated curiosity amongst these sprightly people. It was a pretty puzzle for them, a

conundrum to their taste. Madame kept the secret well, if she knew it. I rather suspect she did not; she talked so very much that it certainly would have escaped her. In person she was quite a contrast to the duchess; short, very crooked, with the sharp odd-looking face and keen eye that so often accompany deformity. She added to these good gifts a prodigious quantity of rouge and finery, mingling ribands, feathers, and beads of all the colours of the rainbow, with as little scruple as a belle of the South Seas would discover in the choice of her decorations. She was on excellent terms with all who knew her, unless, perhaps, there might be a little jealousy of station between her and the duchess, who had no great affection for one who seemed likely to "push her from her stool." She was also on the best possible terms with herself, in spite of the looking-glass, whose testimony, indeed, was so positively contradicted by certain couplets and acrostics addressed to her by M. le Comte de C., and the Chevalier des I., the poets of the party, that to believe one uncivil dumb thing against two witnesses of such undoubted honour, would have been a breach of politeness of which madame was incapable. - Notwithstanding this piece of womanish blindness, she was an excellent person, a good sister, good mother, and good wife.

the round of the supper-table, begging cakes and biscuits. He and I had established a great friendship; he regularly, after levying his contributions all round, came to me for a game at play, and sometimes carried his partiality so far, as on hearing my voice to pop his poor little black nose out of his hidingplace before the appointed time. It required several repetitions of Fi donc from his mistress to drive him back behind the scenes till she' gave him his cue.

No uncommon object of her wit was the mania of a smug and smooth-faced little abbé, the politician par eminence, where all were politicians, just as Madame de V. was the talker amongst a tribe of talkers. M. l'Abbé must have been an exceeding bore to our English ministers, whom by his own showing he pestered weekly with laboured memorials, plans for a rising in La Vendée, schemes for an invasion, proposals to destroy the French fleet, offers to take Antwerp, and plots for carrying off Buonaparte from the opera-house, and lodging him in the Tower of London. This last was his favourite project; | and well it might be, for a bolder idea never entered the mind of man. Imagine the ab-" duction of the emperor, in the midst of his court and guards and his good city of Paris! Fancy him carried off by the unassisted prowOf the Comte de C., I shall say nothing, ess and dexterity of M. l'Abbé, and deposited except that he was a poet, and the most re- in the Tower, like a piece of old armour, or a markable individual of the party, being more lion newly caught, whilst all France was starlike a personification of a German play, than a ing and running about in search of her ruler, living man of flesh and blood. His contra-like the Harlowe family after the enlèvement dictions and oddities quite posed me at the ripe age of twelve; but the gentleman was a poet, and that, as poor madame used to say, accounts for every thing.

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of Miss Clarissa! What a master-stroke would this have been! Ministers, as he used to complain, refused to avail themselves of this brilliant idea, thereby prolonging the war His wife was just such a person as Rubens and incurring a needless waste of lives and has often painted, tall, large, and finely com- treasure. Indeed any little misfortune that plexioned. She would have been very hand- befell our government, the sinking of an Eastsome but for one terrible drawback; - she Indiaman, the failure of an expedition, or the squinted; not much, not glaringly; it was a loss of a motion, was commonly ascribed by very little squint, the least in the world, but a him to the neglect of his advice; whilst, on squint it certainly was, quite enough to di- the other hand, any eminent success in the minish the lustre of her beauty. Even when cabinet, the parliament, or the field, was pretfrom the position of her face we happened not ty sure to be traced up by him to some one of to see it, the consciousness that there it was, his numerous suggestions. Of the victory at broke the charm. I cannot abide these "cross-Trafalgar, for instance, we English people eyes," as the country people call them; though I have heard of ladies who, from the spirit of partisanship, admired those of Mr. Wilkes. The French gentlemen did not seem to participate in my antipathy; for the countess was regarded as the beauty of the party. Agreeable she certainly was; lively, witty, abounding in repartee and innocent mischief, playing off a variety of amusing follies herself, and bearing with great philosophy the eccentricities of her husband. She had also an agreeable little dog called Amour; a pug, the smallest and ugliest of the species, who regularly after supper used to jump out of a muff, where he had lain perdu all the evening, and make

have generally attributed the merit to the great commander who fell in the fight; but (I do not exactly remember on what score) he claimed full half of the honour; and doubtless he ascribes the campaigns in Spain, the frost in Russia, the burning of Moscow, the capture of Paris, the crowning victory at Waterloo, and the restoration and establishment of the Bourbons, in a great measure, if not wholly, to the effect of his counsels. I would lay a wager that he is at this moment wasting reams of paper in memorialising the French government on this subject, as well as favouring them with hints on any other that falls in his way. In the matter of advice and projects, his libe

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