and before the conversation was finished, was invited to attend the wedding, on the succeeding Thursday. The next time that we saw the General, he was accompanied by a lovely little girl, whom he introduced as his wife, but who might readily have passed for his granddaughter. I wanted a month of sixteen; and I was then, and am now, perfectly convinced, that Mrs, Sanford was my junior. The fair bride had been a ward of the bridegroom's the orphan, and, I believe destitute daughter of a brother officer. He had placed her, many years back, at a respectable country boarding-school, where she remained until his new appointment; and, as he was pleased to say, his friends' suggestions induced him to resolve upon matrimony, and look about for a wife as a necessary appendage to his official situation.

It is probable that his wife's exceeding beauty might have had something to do with his resolution as well as with his choice. I have never seen a lovelier creature. Her figure was small, round and girlish; full of grace and symmetry. Her face had a child-like purity, and brilliancy of colouring; an alternation of blush and smile, a sweetness and innocence of expression, such as might become a Hebe only still more youthful than the goddess of youth. Her manners were exactly like those of a child come home for the holidays, shy and bashful, and shrinking from strangers; playful and affectionate with those whom she loved, especially her hubsand, who doted on her and of whom she was very fond, and shewing, in the midst of her timidity and childishness, considerable acuteness and powers of observation.

At first she seemed, as well she might be, quite

bewildered by the number of persons who came to visit her. For, living in a large town, and holding, in right of her husband's office, a station of no small importance in the county, every person, of the slightest gentility in the town and neighbourhood, the whole visiting population of these, in general, very distinct and separate societies, thought proper to wait upon Mrs. Sanford. Mrs. Sanford was the fashion of B., and of B. shire.,,Not to know her, argued yourself unknown." All the town and all the country called; and all the town invited her to tea, and all the country requested her company to dinner: and she, puzzled, perplexed, and amazed, hardly knowing by sight one individual of her immediate acquaintance; unable to distinguish between one person and another; often forgetting titles; never remembering names; and ignorant as an infant, of artificial distinctions, made twenty blunders in an hour; and kept the poor General, as punctilious an observer of the duties of society as of the duties of the service, in a perpetual state of fidget and alarm. Her mistakes were innumerable, — she mislaid invitations; forgot engagements; mismatched her company; gave the mayor of B. the precedence of the county member; and hath been heard to ask an old bachelor after his wife, and an old maid after her children. There was no end to Mrs. Sanford's blunders. The old Brigade-Major, a veteran of the General's own standing, lame of a leg, and with a prodigious scar across his forehead, was kept on the constant stump with explanatory messages and conciliatory embassies, and declared, that he underwent much harder dnty in that service, than ever he had in his official capacity of drilling the awkward squad. The General, not content

with dispatching his aide - de- camp, exhausted himself in elaborate apologies; but embassies, apologies, and explanations were all unnecessary. Nobody could be angry with Mrs. Sanford. There was no resisting the charm of her blushing youthfulness; her pleading voice; her ready confession of error; and her evident sorrow for all her little sins, whether of ignorance or heedlessness; notwithstanding her sweetness and simplicity. Even offended self-love, the hardest to appease of all the passions, yielded to the artlessness of Mrs. Sanford.

She, on her part, liked nothing so well as to steal away from her troublesome popularity, her visitors, and her fine clothes, to the ease and freedom of the country; to put on a white frock and a straw-bonnet, and run about the woods and fields with some young female friend, primrosing or birds'-nesting, according to the season. I was her usual companion in these rambles, and enjoyed them, perhaps, as much as she did; but in a far quieter way. Her animal spirits seemed inexhaustible; I never knew her weary; and strong, agile, and entirely devoid of bodily fear, the thought of danger never seemed to come across her. How she enjoyed spending a long day at our house! now bounding over a ditch, to gather a tuft of wild flowers; now climbing a pollard, to look for a bird's nest; now driving through the lanes in a donky - chaise ; now galloping across the common on a pony; now feeding the chickens; now milking the cows; now weeding the gravel walks; now making hay; and now reaping. These were her delights! All her pleasures were equally childish: she cherished abundance of pets, such as school-girls love; kept silkworms, dor-mice, and

canary birds; a parrot, a squirrel, and a monkey; three lap-dogs, and a Persian cat; enjoyed a fair, and was enchanted with a pantomime; always supposing that her party did not consist of fine people or of strangers, but was composed of those to whom she was accustomed, and who were as well disposed to merriment and goodhumour as herself.

With regard to accomplishments, she knew what was commonly taught in a country school above twenty years ago, and nothing more: played a little, sang a little, talked a little indifferent French; painted shells and roses, not particularly like nature, on card racks and hand screens; danced admirably; and was the best player at battledore and shuttlecock, hunt-the-slipper, and blind-man's-buff in the county. Nothing could exceed the glee with which, in any family where she was intimate, she would join the children in a game of romps, herself the gayest and happiest child of the party.

For cards, she had no genius. Even the noise and nonsense of a round table, could not reconcile her to those pieces of painted pasteboard; this was unlucky: it is true, that the General, who played a good rubber, and looked upon it, next to a review, or a battle, as the most serious business of his life, and who had moreover a settled opinion that no woman had intellect enough to master the game, would hardly have wished to have been her partner at the whist-table; but he also loved a snug party at piquet, just to keep him awake after dinner, and would have liked exceedingly that Mrs. Sanford should have known enough of the rules to become a decent antagonist. He was not unreasonable in his expectations, he did not desire that

she should play well enough to win. He only wanted her to understand sufficient of the game to lose in a creditable manner. But it would not do: she was unconquerably stupid; never dealt the right number of cards; never shewed her point; was ignorant even of the common terms of the art; did not know a quart from a quint, or a pique from a repique; could not tell when she was capotted. There was no comfort in beating her; so the poor General was fain to accept his old Brigade-Major as a substitute, who gave him three points and beat him.

In other respects, she was an excellent wife; gentle, affectionate, and sweet tempered. She accommodated herself admirably to all the General's ways; listened to his admonition with deference and to his stories with attention the formidable one, beginning, „When I was in Antigua," not excepted; was kind to the old Brigade-Major; and when he, a confirmed old bachelor, joined his patron in certain dissertations on the natural inferiority of the sex, heard them patiently, and if she smiled, took good care they should not find her out.

To be sure, her carelessness did occasionally get her husband into a scrape. Once, for instance, when he, being inspecting certain corps twenty miles off, she undertook to bring his dress clothes, for the purpose of attending a ball, given in his honour, and forgot his new inexpressibles, thereby putting the poor General to the trouble and expense of sending an express after the missing garment, and keeping him a close prisoner till midnight, in expectation of the return of his messenger. Another time, he being in London, and the trusty Major also absent, she was commissioned to inform him of the day fixed for a grand review;