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Lizzy and May, the two most aristocratical | freshness and brilliancy of the gay and smilof its inhabitants, and the most tenacious of ing prospect-too gay perhaps! I gazed till the distinctions of rank, would run to meet I became dazzled with the glare of the sunthe butter-cart, as if it were a carriage and shine, oppressed by the very brightness, and four. A mark of preference which the good- turned into a beech-wood by the side of the humoured dairywoman did not fail to ac- road, to seek relief from the overpowering knowledge and confirm by gifts suited to their radiance. These beech-woods should rather respective tastes, an occasional pitcher of but- be called coppices. They are cut down occatermilk to May, and a stick with cherries tied sionally, and consist of long flexible stems, around it to poor Lizzy. growing out of the old roots. But they are Nor was Mrs. Bond's bounty confined to like no other coppices, or rather none that can largesses of so suspicious a nature, as pre- be compared with them. The young beechen sents to the pets of a good customer. I have stems, perfectly free from underwood, go never known any human being more thorough- arching and intertwining over-head, forming ly and universally generous, more delicate in a thousand mazy paths, covered by a natural her little gifts, or with so entire an absence trellis; the shining green leaves, just bursting of design or artifice in her attentions. It was from their golden sheaths, contrasting with a prodigality of kindness that seemed never the smooth silvery bark, shedding a cool weary of well-doing. What posies of pinks green light around, and casting a thousand and sweetwilliams, backed by marjoram and dancing shadows on the mossy flowery path, rosemary, she used to carry to the two poor pleasant to the eye and to the tread, a fit haunt old ladies who lodged at the pastry-cook's at for wood-nymph or fairy. There is always B.! What fagots of lilac and laburnum she much of interest in the mystery of a wood; would bring to deck the poor widow Hay's the uncertainty produced by the confined open hearth! What baskets of water-cresses, boundary; the objects which crowd together, the brownest, the bitterest, and the crispest of and prevent the eye from penetrating to disthe year, for our fair neighbour, the nymph of tance; the strange flickering mixture of shathe shoe-shop, a delicate girl, who could only dow and sunshine, the sudden flight of birds be tempted into her breakfast by that pleasant-oh, it was enchanting! herb! What pots of honey for John Brown's cough! What gooseberries and currants for the baker's little children! And as soon as her great vine ripened, what grapes for every body! No wonder that when Mrs. Bond left the parish, to occupy a larger farm in a distant county, her absence was felt as a misfortune by the whole village; that poor Lizzy inquired after her every day for a week, and that May watched for the tilted cart every Wednesday and Friday for a month or more.

I myself joined very heartily in the general lamentation. But time and habit reconcile us to most privations, and I must confess, that much as I liked her, I had nearly forgotten our good butter-woman, until an adventure which befell me last week, placed me once more in the way of her ready kindness.

I was on a visit at a considerable distance from home, in one of the most retired parts of Oxfordshire. Nothing could be more beautiful than the situation, or less accessible; shut in amongst woody hills, remote from great towns, with deep chalky roads, almost impassable, and a broad bridgeless river, coming, as if to intercept your steps, whenever you did seem to have fallen into a beaten track. It was exactly the country and the season in which to wander about all day long. One fair morning I set out on my accustomed ramble. The sun was intensely hot; the sky almost cloudless; I had climbed a long abrupt ascent, to enjoy the sight of the magnificent river, winding like a snake amidst the richly-clothed hills; the pretty village, with its tapering spire, and the universal

I wandered on,

quite regardless of time or distance, now admiring the beautiful wood-sorrel which sprang up amongst the old roots-now plucking the fragrant wood-roof-now trying to count the countless varieties of woodland-moss, till, at length, roused by my foot's catching in a rich trail of the white-veined ivy, which crept, wreathing and interlaced, over the ground, I became aware that I was completely lost, had entirely forsaken all track, and out-travelled all land-marks. The wood was, I knew, extensive, and the ground so tumbled about, that every hundred yards presented some flowery slope or broken dell, which added greatly to the picturesqueness of the scenery, but very much diminished my chance of discovery or extrication.

In this emergency, I determined to proceed straight onward, trusting in this way to reach at last one side of the wood, although I could not at all guess which; and I was greatly solaced, after having walked about a quarter of a mile, to find myself crossed by a rude cart-track; and still more delighted, on proceeding a short distance farther, to hear sounds of merriment and business; none of the softest, certainly, but which gave tokens of rustic habitation; and to emerge suddenly from the close wood, amongst an open grove of huge old trees, oaks, with their brown plaited leaves, cherries, covered with snowy garlands, and beeches, almost as gigantic as those of Windsor Park, contrasting, with their enormous trunks and majestic spread of bough, the light and flexible stems of the coppice I had left.

I had come out at one of the highest points of the wood, and now stood on a platform overlooking a scene of extraordinary beauty. A little to the right, in a very narrow valley, stood an old farm-house, with pointed roofs and porch and pinnacles, backed by a splendid orchard, which lay bathed in the sunshine, exhaling its fresh aromatic fragrance, all one flower; just under me was a strip of rich meadow land, through which a stream ran sparkling, and directly opposite a ridge of hanging coppices, surrounding and crowning, as it were, an immense old chalk-pit, which, overhung by bramble, ivy, and a hundred pendent weeds, irregular and weather-stained, had an air as venerable and romantic as some grey ruin. Seen in the gloom and stillness of evening, or by the pale glimpses of the moon, it would have required but little aid from the fancy to picture out the broken shafts and mouldering arches of some antique abbey. But, besides that daylight is the sworn enemy of such illusions, my attention was imperiously claimed by a reality of a very different kind. One of the gayest and noisiest operations of rural life-sheep-washing-was going on in the valley below

"the turmoil that unites

Clamour of boys with innocent despites

Of barking dogs, and bleatings from strange fear."
WORDSWORTH.

already to have reached the highest possible pitch.

The only quiet persons in the field were a delicate child of nine years old, and a blooming woman of forty-five-a comely blooming woman, with dark hair, bright eyes, and a complexion like a daisy, who stood watching the sheep-washers with the happiest smiles, and was evidently the mother of half the lads and lasses in the melée. It could be, and it was no other than my friend Mrs. Bond, and resolving to make myself and my difficulties known to her, I scrambled down no very smooth or convenient path, and keeping a gate between me and the scene of action, contrived, after sundry efforts, to attract her attention.

Here of course my difficulties ceased. But if I were to tell how glad she was to see her old neighbour, how full of kind questions and of hospitable cares,-how she would cut the great cake intended for the next day's sheepshearing, would tap her two-year-old currant wine, would gather a whole bush of early honeysuckles, and, finally, would see me home herself, I being, as she observed, rather given to losing my way;-if I were to tell all these things, when should I have done? I will rather conclude in the words of an old French Fairy tale-Je crains déjà d'avoir abusé de la patience du lecteur. Je finis avant qu'il me dise de finir.

PREFACE.*

THE Continued encouragement afforded by the Public to her successive series of Village Sketches, has induced the Writer to bring forward a Fourth Volume, on nearly the same plan, which she earnestly hopes may prove as fortunate as its predecessors.

All the inhabitants of the farm seemed assembled in the meadow. I counted a dozen at least of men and boys of all ages, from the stout, sun-burnt, vigorous farmer of fifty, who presided over the operation, down to the eightyear-old urchin, who, screaming, running, and shaking his ineffectual stick after an eloped sheep, served as a sort of aide-de-camp to the sheep-dog. What a glorious scene of confusion it was! what shouting! what scuffling! what glee! Four or five young men, and one amazon of a barefooted girl, with her pettiA few of the stories were composed purcoats tucked up to her knees, stood in the water where it was pent between two hur- posely for children; but as people do not, dles, ducking, sousing, and holding down by now-a-days, write down to those little folks, main force, the poor, frightened, struggling and as the Authoress has herself, in common sheep, who kicked, and plunged, and bleated, with her wisers and betters, a strong propenand butted, and in spite of their imputed innocence, would certainly, in the ardour of self- sity to dip into children's books when they defence, have committed half-a-dozen homi- happen to fall in her way, she by no means cides, if their power had equalled their incli- thought it necessary to omit them. nation. The rest of the party were fully ocThree Mile Cross, April 23, 1830. cupied; some in conducting the purified sheep, who showed a strong disposition to go the wrong way back to their quarters; others in leading the uncleansed part of the flock to their destined ablution, from which they also testified a very ardent and active desire to escape. Dogs, men, boys, and girls were engaged in marshalling these double processions, the order of which was constantly interrupted by the outbreaking of some runaway sheep, who turned the march into a pursuit, to the momentary increase of the din, which seemed

INTRODUCTORY LETTER.

TO MISS W.

Feb. 20, 1830.

No, my dearest Mary, the severe domestic calamity which we have experienced will not, as you expect, and as many of our other

*To the fourth volume, as originally published.

friends seem to anticipate, drive us from our favourite village. On the contrary, the cottage home, in which she, used to such very different accommodation, closed her peaceful and blameless life, the country church in which her remains lie buried, and the kind neighbours by whom she was so universally respected and beloved, are now doubly endeared to us by their connexion with her whom we have lost. There is no running away from a great grief. Happy are they to whom, as in our case, it comes softened and sanctified by the recollection of the highest and most amiable virtues clothed in manners the most feminine and the most ladylike. To them memory will be the best comforter, for such memories are rare. No, dearest Mary, we certainly shall not think of removing on this account.

But, besides that our affliction is too real and too recent to dwell upon, I have no right to sadden you with my sadness. I will rather try to escape from it myself and to answer, as best I may, your kind questions on other subjects, particularly those respecting the place in which you take so kind a concern, and such of its inhabitants as have had the good fortune to interest you.

Our Village, (many thanks for your polite inquiry) continues to stand pretty much where it did, and has undergone as little change in the last two years as any hamlet of its inches in the county. Just now it is in an awful state of dirt and dinginess, the white nuisance of snow having subsided into the brown nuisance of mud in the roads, whilst the slippery treachery of ice is converted into the less dangerous but more deplorable misery of sloppiness on the footway. They talk of the snow as having been so many feet deep. I wonder if any one has undertaken to sound the depth of the dirt. Over-pattens and over-boots give but a faint and modified notion of the discomforts of a country-walk during the present fine thaw, to say nothing of the heavy clinging dripping annoyance, called draggled-tails.

We feel these evils the more since they are of a kind from which our light dry gravelly soil generally protects us. And even now we have the comfort of knowing, not so much that we are better off than our neighbours, but that they are worse off than ourselves-a comfort, the value of which nobody who has not had cause to feel it can duly appreciate. Their superior calamity, arises not merely from the snow and the thaw, grievances which we endured in common, but from the Loddon on one side of us, and the Kennet and Thames on the other, having embraced so fair an opportunity of playing their usual pranks and overflowed the country round, as if governed by the malicious water sprite, (I forget the

My beloved and excellent mother died on the morning of New Year's day.

gentleman's name) who popped his head out of a well and flooded the heroine's castle and territory in Undine. So far as all the meadows and half the cellars North, South, East, and West, of our village being under water may afford us comfort, we possess it in perfection. Another consolation, although rather prospective than present, may be found in the fact, that to judge from certain islands of gravel rising at intervals through the mud, our road is about to undergo the operation of mending that excruciating operation which horses, drivers, and passengers hate so thoroughly in its progress, and like so well in its consequences. In our village proper, other changes have we none.

On the outskirts of the parish, indeed, improvement hath not been idle. The fine place on the top of the hill, the Park as it is called, hath undergone no less a transmogrification than that of Grecian to Gothic, one of those changes which people hold themselves privileged to criticise; and they are seldom slack to exercise that privilege, because to discover faults looks wise, but which in richness and variety generally contrives to please the eye, and to be quite as pretty as if all the world were agreed to call it so. I have no doubt, judging from the praise and the blame, but I shall like the building. By the way, the Park, our only point of change, hath undergone in its own person alteration enough to serve the whole parish. Besides the Gothic casing of the mansion, the grounds have been improved; plantations of twenty years' growth transplanted; trees double that age made to change sides, according to the bold practice of nowa-days; and the hill on which the house stands pared off to let in the water, by a body of excavators (navigators our villagers by an ingenious slip-slopism were pleased to call them) imported from afar. Altogether the Park is a new place.

Amongst our inhabitants we have the usual portion of mutability. Besides those graver changes of which the Parish Register keeps account, there has been considerable movement and fluctuation in our little colony. Many of the old settlers have migrated and some new ones have arrived. The most notable of these changes is the departure of the female blacksmith and her noisy progeny, who are now dispersed over half the forges in the county, to the probable improvement of their din and the certain abatement of ours. Not that we are particularly quiet now-that would be too much to say, but the village clamour has changed its character. Before there was a sort of contest in loudness between the geese and the boys; now, the geese have it hollow. Nobody thinks of complaining of the children, or even of hearing them, whilst their rivals are railed at from morning to night, and have even become of note enough to be threatened with an indictment.

The present occupier of the forge is John Ford, the civil intelligent husband of our pretty neighbour, the lass of the shoe-shop. They are fairly settled in the blacksmith's territories with their little girl, who, being the only child of an only child, and having two grandfathers, two grandmothers, and one greatgrandfather, is of course cried up for the most wonderful wonder of wonders that ever trod the earth; and really without being her grand-crest in heraldry;-no sooner was he fairly mother or her great-grandmother, I cannot help admiring the little damsel myself, it's such a delicate fairy, so merry and so full of glee. In addition to our new blacksmith, we have a new shoemaker, a new collar-maker, a new carpenter, and a new baker, although the last mentioned personage is non-resident, and only perambulates the village in his cart, to say nothing of the newest of all our novelties, a new schoolmaster, elected yesterday. Each of these functionaries is of some note in his particular calling, especially the baker, who is eminent for his loaves which are crusty, and his temper which is not; but the acquisition which interests me most, is the new occupant of the wheelwright's pretty apartments, a lady whom you must know some day or other, and who is to me a delightful companion and a most valuable friend. She must never go away, for what would our village do without her!

ticular aversion for hoydens and tomboys and women who trespassed against the delicacy of their sex; and no sooner was he safely dismounted from the fair head on which he had remained perched in most ludicrous wrath, i restrained from jumping down by a mingled fear of hurting Sally and hurting himself, and looking much like one of those non-descript animals rampant which so often serve as

on the ground than he communicated in very chosen terms to his obdurate mistress, his opinion of the escape which he had had in net marrying her, and bowed himself off. It is said that our rural coquet, for as little as she' cared for her cockney lover, was somewhat piqued at this cool resignation; and that his portly and good-humoured rival, her chosen Valentine, had a good deal of huffing and brusquerie to endure on the occasion, Sally having followed the example of her betters, by revenging on the innocent object in ber power the affronts offered her by the culprit who was not;-nay, so much did she take his defection to heart, that it was even whispered in the village, that a tender speech, or a copy of verses, or a new ribbon from Stephen, might have replaced their love affair in statu quo.

None such arrived. Stephen had done with her. "It had been a boyish choice," as be said to himself, with all the importance of a young gentleman, who has just entered his nineteenth year, "a boyish mistake; his next choice should be wiser, wise and deliberate; he had plenty of time before him." Accord

Now to the rustic lovers after whom you inquired with so kind an interest: Jem and Mabel are married; Joel and Harriet are not; their affair stands much as it did, a regular engagement with intermitting fits of flirtation on the lady's side and of jealousy on the part of the gentleman. Some day or other I sup-ingly he walked round the parish, and fell in pose they will marry; but really they are such a handsome couple and their little quarrels are so amusing, that it will be quite a pity to put an end to the courtship. The third and last pair of turtle-doves, Daniel Tubb and Sally North, remain also unwedded in spite of the indications on Valentine's day, which even the experience of the lame clerk deemed infallible. Somehow or other the affair went off. Poor Stephen Long the other hero of that adventure How like you it is to take pity on one whom nobody else thinks worth caring for!-Poor Master Stephen, our small London apprentice met during that very visit with another misfortune in the same line, and as the poor little person seems rather to have taken your fancy, I may as well tell you the

story now.

Before his adventure with Miss Sally North was fairly over, that is to say before that relentless damsel had set him free from her basket, Master Stephen Long began to discover, as rejected lovers sometimes do, that he would not have been accepted for the world; not that he bore any ill will to the young person, but that he had no taste for giantesses, and a par

• See page 170.

love again, or thought he fell in love, before,
noon on the same day. Nothing so easy as
catching a heart on the rebound; especially
such a heart as Master Stephen's, who, in
spite of his being the very cleverest boy in
Aberleigh School, and one of the cleverest
'prentices in Cheapside, a proser, a poet, an.
orator, and a critic, was between conceit and
kind-heartedness and a spice of romance, one
of the simplest persons that ever existed. It
was a good-natured mannikin too, and a gen-
erous; and would not have seemed so very
ugly or so very small, or so ridiculously like
the picture of the monkey that has seen the
world in the older editions of Gay's Fables,
but for the caricature of fashion exhibited in
its dress, and the perking strutting air, the
elevated chin, the tiptoe walk, and the varn
endeavour to pass for tall, which pervaded the
whole little person, producing exactly such a
copy of the gait and mien of a full-grown
man, as that ambitious bird a he bantam ex-
hibits of the size and actions of the great cock
of the farm-yard. A kind youth nevertheless
was Stephen Long, a kind and well-disposed
youth; dutiful to his grandmother who was
very fond of him, and being nearly blind, ap-
proached nearer his own estimate of his per-¦

sonal graces than any body else; respectful to the most advantageous contrast to the positive his father; affectionate to his brothers and duncicality of Sally North. Mrs. Selby being sisters; and civil to the whole world. He a literary lady, Peggy had heard the names made the tour of the village that very morning, of authors and the titles of books; she had and it was on a visit to his old acquaintance even a personal acquaintance with the outside the mistress of the shop, that he had the good of periodical literature, knew the colours of luck to lose over again the heart which would magazines, the backs of reviews, and the otherwise have hung so heavily on his hands. shapes of newspapers; could tell at a glance Peggy Norman, his new lady-love, was a the Edinburgh from the Quarterly, and the little serving maiden, living at Captain Selby's, John Bull from the Literary Gazette; was faa family of some gentility in Aberleigh, and miliar with the grim face on Blackwood, and had the neatness of dress, and the general knew at a touch the Old Monthly from the gentillesse of appearance belonging almost New. Stephen was in raptures. In another exclusively to the class of soubrettes. Pretty respect too, they met on even terms. Peggy she could hardly be called; and yet there was had recently accompanied her mistress to Lonmuch attraction in her trim girlish figure, so don, had spent a whole fortnight there, and light and round and youthful, her thick curling was so charmed with the gaiety and hurly- | brown hair, the dazzling red and white of her burly of that great noisy good-for-nothing brilliant complexion, as brightly contrasted as pleasant place, always delightful to healthy the colours in an apple-blossom, the broad and lively youth, that she could talk of nosmile disclosing a set of white even teeth, to thing else, and had certainly brought back say nothing of a very pretty dimple, and the with her a slight feeling of contempt (pity whole expression of her bright blue eyes, she was pleased to call it) for the less fortuwhose arch glance when suddenly thrown up, nate bumpkins who had never heard the sound formed an excellent accompaniment to the of Bow Bell. True it is that in talking of broad dimpled smile, and harmonized well London, Peggy and Stephen meant very dif with the naiveté and espièglerie of her voice ferent places,-Stephen spoke of his home, and manner. It was the most agreeable man- the city; Peggy of hers, the west end;-and ner that could be conceived, very gentle, very a few mistakes and cross-readings ensued, esrespectful, and very gay. Mrs. Selby, pleased pecially on Peggy's part, who took Oxfordwith her young liquid voice, her pretty ac- street for Cheapside, and Westminster Abbey cent, her constant simplicity and occasional for St. Paul's. But all passed under the acuteness, and exceedingly amused by the general denomination of Town."There is new form in which her own opinions and re- a river in London, and also, moreover, there marks were sometimes returned to her by her is a river in Westminster, and there is salmons docile attendant, had encouraged her light-in both." And Peggy talked and listened and hearted prattle, so that without any touch of smiled; and Stephen went home and wrote a presumption or pertness, Peggy felt the secu- sonnet to "his mistress's eye-brow." rity of pleasing, proper to a spoilt child, joined to a constitutional desire to please which spoilt children are seldom lucky enough to possess. She was a perfect little rosebud of fifteen, and all the more dangerous to Stephen Long because she was little, he having contracted a remarkable aversion to the entire race of gi

antesses.

The errand on which Peggy had been sent to the territories of Mrs. White, being of a nature to detain her a considerable time, she having been ordered to match unmatchable silk with unprocurable cotton, Stephen had ample opportunity for falling in love, and even for making love; and before the grand question was decided whether the yellow, the blue, or the brown balls, of which Mrs. White's | stock was composed, made the nearest approach to her green pattern, a very promising flirtation had commenced, greatly promoted by the complaisant mistress of the shop, who invited both parties to drink tea with her on the succeeding evening.

They met accordingly, and the love-affair proceeded most prosperously. Stephen had the happiness to find in this new flame a degree of literary acquirement which stood in

The next day (Sunday,) they met again after church, and took a walk together in the evening, in the course of which they discovered another subject common to both, that subject which those who like it at all find so delightful - the Theatre. Stephen, certainly the most literary of hosiers' apprentices, was especially enthusiastic on the drama, had twice appeared at a private theatre, and entertained a strong desire to embrace the stage as a profession as soon as he was out of his time. Now Peggy had herself been at three plays, and talked of them with some discretion; knew Comedy from Opera, and Tragedy from Farce. But it was not a talker that Stephen required on this theme; a listener was what he wanted; and no one ever acted audience whilst he rehearsed the story of his two appearances in Romeo and Richard the Third, better than the little blue-eyed girl who hung on his arm so admiringly as they walked round Aberleigh Green. Nothing, he said,, could exceed the applause with which his debût in Romeo had been greeted by a large audience of city 'prentices, and shopwomen, troubled only by the astounding height of a bouncing Juliet, half as tall again as himself,

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