out with the bells on: it would be likely to frighten their horses; and were I to attempt it, it might involve me in unpleasant disputes, which might possibly lead to more unpleasant consequences. To my travelling cap the bells would be an inconvenient appendage; nor would they be a whit more comfortable upon my night-cap. Besides, my wife might object to them. It follows that if I would wear a cap and bells, I must have a cap made on purpose. But this would be rendering myself singular; and of all things a wise man will most avoid any ostentatious appearance of singularity. He had a female cousin about three years younger than himself, and in like manner an orphan, equally destitute, but far more forlorn. Man hath a fleece about him which enables him to bear the buffetings of the storm;—but woman when young, and lovely, and poor, is as a shorn lamb for which the wind has not been tempered. Leonard's father and Margaret's had been bosom friends. They were subalterns in the same regiment, and being for a long time stationed at Salisbury, had become intimate at the house of Mr. Trew body, a gentleman of one of the oldest families in Wiltshire. Mr. Trewbody had three daughters. Meli Now I am certainly not singular in play- cent, the eldest, was a celebrated beauty, ing the fool without one. And indeed if I possessed such a cap, it would not be proper to wear it in this part of my history. CHAPTER LXXIII. RASH MARRIAGES. AN EARLY WIDOWHOOD. AFFLICTION RENDERED A BLESSING TO THE SUFFERERS; AND TWO ORPHANS LEFT, THOUGH NOT DESTITUTE, YET FRIENDLESS. Love built a stately house; where Fortune came, And spinning fancies, she was heard to say That her fine cobwebs did support the frame; Whereas they were supported by the same. But Wisdom quickly swept them all away. HERBERT. MRS. Dove was the only child of a clergyman who held a small vicarage in the West Riding. Leonard Bacon, her father, had been left an orphan in early youth. He had some wealthy relations by whose contributions he was placed at an endowed grammar-school in the country, and having through their influence gained a scholarship to which his own deserts might have entitled him, they continued to assist him sparingly enough indeed- at the University, till he succeeded to a fellowship. Leonard was made of Nature's finest clay, and Nature had tempered it with the choicest dews of heaven. and the knowledge of this had not tended to improve a detestable temper. The two youngest, Deborah and Margaret, were lively, good-natured, thoughtless, and attractive. They danced with the two Lieutenants, played to them on the spinnet, sung with them and laughed with them,- till this mirthful intercourse became serious, and knowing that it would be impossible to obtain their father's consent, they married the men of their hearts without it. Palmer and Bacon were both without fortune, and without any other means of subsistence than their commissions. For four years they were as happy as love could make them; at the end of that time Palmer was seized with an infectious fever. Deborah was then far advanced in pregnancy, and no solicitations could induce Bacon to keep from his friend's bed-side. The disease proved fatal; it communicated to Bacon and his wife; the former only survived his friend ten days, and he and Deborah were then laid in the same grave. They left an only boy of three years old, and in less than a month the widow Palmer was delivered of a daughter. In the first impulse of anger at the flight of his daughters, and the degradation of his family, (for Bacon was the son of a tradesman, and Palmer was nobody knew who,) Mr. Trewbody had made his will, and left the whole sum, which he had designed for his three daughters, to the eldest. Whether the situation of Margaret and the two or phans might have touched him is, perhaps, doubtful, — for the family were either lighthearted or hard-hearted, and his heart was of the hard sort; but he died suddenly a few months before his sons-in-law. The only son, Trewman Trew body, Esq., a Wiltshire fox-hunter, like his father, succeeded to the estate; and as he and his eldest sister hated each other cordially, Miss Melicent left the manor-house, and established herself in the Close at Salisbury, where she lived in that style which a portion of 60007. enabled her | in those days to support. The circumstance which might appear so greatly to have aggravated Mrs. Palmer's distress, if such distress be capable of aggravation, prevented her perhaps from eventually sinking under it. If the birth of her child was no alleviation of her sorrow, it brought with it new feelings, new duties, new cause for exertion, and new strength for it. She wrote to Melicent and to her brother, simply stating her own destitute situation, and that of the orphan Leonard; she believed that their pride would not suffer them either to let her starve or go to the parish for support, and in this she was not disappointed. An answer was returned by Miss Trewbody, informing her that she had nobody to thank but herself for her misfortunes; but, that notwithstanding the disgrace which she had brought upon the family, she might expect an annual allowance of ten pounds from the writer, and a like sum from her brother; upon this she must retire into some obscure part of the country, and pray God to forgive her for the offence she had committed in marrying beneath her birth and against her father's consent. Mrs. Palmer had also written to the friends of Lieutenant Bacon, - her own husband had none who could assist her. She expressed her willingness and her anxiety to have the care of her sister's orphan, but represented her forlorn state. They behaved more liberally than her own kin had done, and promised five pounds a-year as long as the boy should require it. With this and her pension she took a cottage in a retired village. Grief had acted upon her heart like the rod of Moses upon the rock in the desert; it had opened it, and the well-spring of piety had gushed forth. Affliction made her religious, and religion brought with it consolation, and comfort, and joy. Leonard became as dear to her as Margaret. The sense of duty educed a pleasure from every privation to which she subjected herself for the sake of economy; and in endeavouring to fulfil her duties in that state of life to which it had pleased God to call her, she was happier than she had ever been in her father's house, and not less so than in her marriage state. Her happiness indeed was different in kind, but it was higher in degree. For the sake of these dear children she was contented to live, and even prayed for life; while, if it had respected herself only, Death had become to her rather an object of desire than of dread. In this manner she lived seven years after the loss of her husband, and was then carried off by an acute disease, to the irreparable loss of the orphans who were thus orphaned indeed. CHAPTER LXXIV. A LADY DESCRIBED WHOSE SINGLE LIFE WAS Beauty! my Lord, 'tis the worst part of woman! GOFF. Miss TREWBODY behaved with perfect propriety upon the news of her sister's death. She closed her front windows for two days; received no visitors for a week; was much indisposed, but resigned to the will of Providence, in reply to messages of condolence; put her servants in mourning, and sent for Margaret that she might do her duty to her sister's child by breeding her up under her own eye. Poor Margaret was transferred from the stone floor of her mother's cottage to the Turkey carpet of her aunt's parlour. She was too young to comprehend at once the whole evil of the exchange; but she learned to feel and understand it during years of bitter dependence, unalleviated by any hope, except that of one day seeing Leonard, the only creature on earth whom she remembered with affection. Seven years elapsed, and during all those years Leonard was left to pass his holidays, summer and winter, at the grammar-school where he had been placed at Mrs. Palmer's death for although the master regularly transmitted with his half-yearly bill the most favourable accounts of his disposition and general conduct, as well as of his progress in learning, no wish to see the boy had ever arisen in the hearts of his nearest relations; and no feeling of kindness, or sense of decent humanity, had ever induced either the foxhunter Trewman or Melicent his sister, to invite him for Midsummer or Christmas. At length in the seventh year a letter announced that his school-education had been completed, and that he was elected to a scholarship at —————— College, Oxford, which scholarship would entitle him to a fellowship in due course of time: in the intervening years some little assistance from his liberal benefactors would be required; and the libe- | rality of those kind friends would be well bestowed upon a youth who bade so fair to do honour to himself, and to reflect no disgrace upon his honourable connections. The head of the family promised his part, with an ungracious expression of satisfaction at thinking that "thank God, there would soon be an end of these demands upon him." Miss Trewbody signified her assent in the same amiable and religious spirit. However much her sister had disgraced her family, she replied, "please God it should never be said that she refused to do her duty." half came always with a brief note desiring that the receipt of the enclosed sum might be acknowledged without delay,—not a word of kindness or courtesy accompanied it: and Miss Trewbody never failed to administer with her remittance a few edifying remarks upon the folly of his mother in marrying beneath herself; and the improper conduct of his father in connecting himself with a woman of family, against the consent of her relations, the consequence of which was that he had left a child dependant upon those relations for support. Leonard received these pleasant preparations of charity only at distant intervals, when he regularly expected them, with his half-yearly allowance. But Margaret meantime was dieted upon the food of bitterness, without one circumstance to relieve the misery of her situation. At the time, of which I am now speaking, Miss Trewbody was a maiden lady of fortyseven, in the highest state of preservation. The whole business of her life had been to take care of a fine person, and in this she had succeeded admirably. Her library consisted of two books; Nelson's Festivals and Fasts was one, the other was "the Queen's Cabinet unlocked;" and there was not a cosmetic in the latter which she had not faithfully prepared. Thus by means, as she believed, of distilled waters of various kinds, May-dew and butter-milk, her skin retained its beautiful texture still, and much of its smoothness; and she knew at times how to give it the appearance of that brilliancy which it had lost. But that was a profound secret. Miss Trewbody, remembering the example of Jezebel, always felt conscious that she was committing a sin when she took the rouge-box in her hand, and generally ejaculated in a low voice, the Lord forgive me! when she laid it down: but looking in the glass at the same time, she indulged a hope that the nature of the temptation might be considered as an excuse for the transgression. Her other great business was to observe with the utmost precision all the punctilios of her situation in life; and the time which was not devoted to one or other of these worthy occupations, was employed in scolding her servants, and tormenting her niece. This employment, for it was so habitual that it deserved that name, agreed excellently with her constitution. She was troubled with no acrid humours, no fits of bile, no diseases of the spleen, no vapours or hysterics. The morbid matter was all collected in her temper, and found a regular vent at her tongue. This kept the lungs in vigorous health; nay, it even seemed to supply the place of wholesome exercise, and to stimulate the system like a perpetual blister, with this peculiar advantage, that instead of an inconvenience it was a pleasure to herself, and all the annoyance was to her dependents. Miss Trewbody lies buried in the Cathedral at Salisbury, where a monument was erected to her memory worthy of remembrance itself for its appropriate inscription and accompaniments. The epitaph recorded her as a woman eminently pious, virtuous, and charitable, who lived universally respected, and died sincerely lamented by all who had the happiness of knowing her. This inscription was upon a marble shield supported by two Cupids, who bent their heads over the edge, with marble tears larger than grey pease, and something of the same colour, upon their cheeks. These were the only tears which her death occasioned, and the only Cupids with whom she had ever any concern. CHAPTER LXXV. A SCENE WHICH WILL PUT SOME OF THOSE house, which happened to be within an easy ride of Salisbury. One morning, therefore, he rode to that city, rung at Miss Trewbody's door, and having sent in his name, was admitted into the parlour, where there was no one to receive him, while Miss Trew body adjusted her head-dress at the toilette, before she made her appearance. Her feelings while she was thus employed were not of the pleasantest kind toward this unexpected guest; and she was prepared to accost him with a reproof for his extravagance in undertaking so long a journey, and with some mortifying questions concerning the business which brought him there. But this amiable intention was put to flight, when Leonard, as soon as she entered the room, informed her that having accepted an invitation into that neighbourhood, from his friend and fellow-collegian, the son of Sir Lambert Bowles, he had taken the earliest opportunity of coming to pay his respects to her, and acknowledging his obligations, as bound alike by duty and inclination. The name of Sir Lambert Bowles acted upon Miss Trew body like a charm: and its mollifying effect was not a little aided by the tone of her nephew's address, and the sight of a fine youth in the first bloom of manhood, whose appearance and manners were such that she could not be surprised at the introduction he had obtained into one of the first families in the county. The scowl, therefore, which she brought into the room upon her brow, passed instantly away, and was succeeded by so gracious an aspect, that Leonard, if he had not divined the cause, might have mistaken this gleam of sunshine for fair weather. A cause which Miss Trewbody could not PATIENT WITH THE AUTHOR, IN THE BEST possibly suspect had rendered her nephew's address thus conciliatory. Had he expected HUMOUR WITH HIM. There is no argument of more antiquity and elegancy to see no other person in that house, the visit would have been performed as an irksome obligation, and his manner would have than is the matter of Love; for it seems to be as old as the world, and to bear date from the first time that man and woman was: therefore in this, as in the finest metal, the freshest wits have in all ages shown their best work- appeared as cold and formal as the reception manship. ROBERT WILMOT. WHEN Leonard had resided three years at Oxford, one of his college-friends invited him to pass the long vacation at his father's which he anticipated. But Leonard had not forgotten the playmate and companion with whom the happy years of his childhood had been passed. Young as he was at their | separation, his character had taken its stamp during those peaceful years, and the impression which it then received was indelible. Hitherto hope had never been to him so delightful as memory. His thoughts wandered back into the past more frequently than they took flight into the future; and the favourite form which his imagination called up was that of the sweet child, who in winter partook his bench in the chimney corner, and in summer sate with him in the porch, and strung the fallen blossoms of jessamine upon stalks of grass. The snowdrop and the crocus reminded him of their little garden, the primrose of their sunny orchard-bank, and the blue bells and the cowslip of the fields, wherein they were allowed to run wild, and gather them in the merry month of May. Such as she then was he saw her frequently in sleep, with her blue eyes, and rosy cheeks, and flaxen curls: and in his day-dreams he sometimes pictured her to himself such as he supposed she now might be, and dressed up the image with all the magic of ideal beauty. His heart, therefore, was at his lips when he inquired for his cousin. It was not without something like fear, and an apprehension of disappointment, that he awaited her appearance; and he was secretly condemning himself for the romantic folly which he had encouraged, when the door opened, and a creature came in, — less radiant, indeed, but more winning than his fancy had created, for the loveliness of earth and reality was about her. "Margaret," said Miss Trew body, "do you remember your cousin Leonard ?" Before she could answer, Leonard had taken her hand. "'Tis a long while, Margaret, since we parted! - ten years! - But I have not forgotten the parting, - nor the blessed days of our childhood." She stood trembling like an aspen leaf, and looked wistfully in his face for a moment, then hung down her head, without power to utter a word in reply. But he felt her tears fall fast upon his hand, and felt also that she returned its pressure. Leonard had some difficulty to command himself, so as to bear a part in conversation with his aunt, and keep his eyes and his thoughts from wandering. He accepted, however, her invitation to stay and dine with her with undissembled satisfaction, and the pleasure was not a little heightened when she left the room to give some necessary orders in consequence. Margaret still sate trembling and in silence. He took her hand, pressed it to his lips, and said in a low earnest voice, "dear dear Margaret!" She raised her eyes, and fixing them upon him with one of those looks the perfect remembrance of which can never be effaced from the heart to which they have been addressed, replied in a lower but not less earnest tone, "dear Leonard!” and from that moment their lot was sealed for time and for eternity. CHAPTER LXXVI. A STORY CONCERNING CUPID WHICH NOT ONE READER IN TEN THOUSAND HAS EVER HEARD BEFORE; A DEFENCE OF LOVE WHICH WILL BE VERY SATISFACTORY TO THE LADIES. They do lie, Lie grossly who say Love is blind, - by him BEAUMONT and FLETCHER. THE Stoics who called our good affections eupathies, did not manage those affections as well as they understood them. They kept them under too severe a discipline, and erroneously believed that the best way to strengthen the heart was by hardening it. The Monks carried this error to its utmost extent, falling indeed into the impious absurdity that our eupathies are sinful in them- ! selves. The Monks have been called the Stoics of Christianity; but the philosophy of the Cloister can no more bear comparison with that of the Porch, than Stoicism itself with Christianity pure and undefiled. Van Helmont compares even the Franciscans with the Stoics; paucis mutatis, he says, videbam Capucinum esse Stoicum Christianum. He might have found a closer |