their transient encounters. Wilmi- she went out, which was only to the

chapel; and on the fourth night after their meeting, Lady Home joined her lamented son in a happier world. Wilmina was removed to Balveny Castle, and all the inquiries she ventured to make, procured no information concerning the theme of her anxious recollections. She had been reared in seclusion. Some old ladies and gentlemen called on Lady Home; Lord Balveny was a frequent visitor; but to the fascinations of youth in a fine countenance and figure she had remained a stranger, until she beheld them on the stair of her mother's lodging, and the effect was irresistible. The superb and novel varieties that engaged her attention at Balveny Castle in a great measure counteracted her rising passion, which grief had violently supplanted, and Lord Balveny's extreme kindness gave rise to ambitious hopes, congenial to her earliest predilections. The potency of gold has been known since the time of Danaë, Atalanta, Proserpine, and other belles of pagan celebrity: our heroine was vanquished by the golden threads of embroidery. Aprons and tippets worked with threads overlaid by the precious metals were introduced at

na's only brother, in his nineteenth year, was stabbed in a night scuffle in the High-street of Edinburgh, || near to the entrance of a house consisting of twelve stories, a height by no means uncommon in the ancient capital of Scotland. The Master of Home escaped from his assailants up several flights of stairs, as they were then called, and he sunk with a heavy groan near the door of a vacant lodging. The owners of that lodging lived below, and searching with lights for the sufferer, found him alive, but unable to speak. They laid him on a bed in one of the waste chambers; it being reckoned unlucky to take a dying stranger to a dwelling-house. They staunched his wounds, and after a little time he could faintly beseech them to send for Lady Home and her daughter. They came. The Master of Home expired in a few hours, and Lady Home, who had been long an invalid, could not bear up against a shock so overwhelming. She perceived her approaching end, and desired to breathe her last sigh on the bed where the dearest object of her affections closed his earthly course. She never left the lodging until carried to her grave. During her ill-court by the queen and her Parisian ness Wilmina offered morning and evening supplications for her recovery at the chapel of Holy Rood.

The second week, as with downcast eyes and sorrowful heart she descended to her pious orisons, a small window at a narrow turn of the stair was so obscured, that she looked up to consider the way, and leaning on the window-sill, a handsome young man was intently gazing at her. Blushing deeply, she passed on; but he never failed to intercept her when

ladies in waiting. Lord Balveny had always studied to give his fair ward employments that might beguile the tedium of a retired life with her mother; and he sent her materials for the new mode of decoration but three hours previous to the untimely fate of her brother. The sad events which ensued banished all thoughts of this gift, till her spirits rose above the pressure of grief, and she began to prepare for a gayer style of dress. Laying aside the tent-stitch intend

employed a crowd of servants to ex- wish to be treated with the familiapedite preparations for the early re-rity his incognito seemed to demand. past: yet brief as she made their tête-à-tête, Lord Balveny obtained from Wilmina a promise to grant him the fondest claim to protect her.

Lord Balveny quickly returned to his castle, and was immediately united to Wilmina at his chapel, in the presence of only three witnesses, who were sworn not to divulge the event until the parties saw proper to give it publicity. Nearly a month elapsed in circulating invitations to the no

TIWO

Wilmina, however, kept her own secret, as Lord Balveny represented to her the propriety of strict reserve on that head, until he could have an interview with the king. His lord-bles and gentry within the circuit of ship was forced to postpone his jour- many miles, and in preparing viands ney to Edinburgh. His sons were for their entertainment; while so there; and as he did not think they little intercourse then subsisted bedeserved to be informed of his in- tween great families, that not a sur tended marriage, so neither could he mise of the tell-tale looks of Lord be reconciled to see them without Balveny and his ward transpired, making the communication. further than the gossip of the serAfter a tedious interval, Lord Bal-vants among themselves. Lord Balveny received notice that his sons veny sent a special messenger to call were gone to Angusshire, and he his sons to the revel; and, more from hastened to Edinburgh, to obviate curiosity than dutiful compliance, they objections, if any should arise in the attended the summons. They knew mind of his royal master, against his with what open-hearted hospitality marriage with the daughter of an their father welcomed every guest; attainted traitor. James gave his ap- but formal invitations to a feast had probation in terms of cordial good- never been given from any of his will; and commanded Lord Balveny castles since the death of his lady, to tell the bride, she might expect and at his years a second hymen was the gude man of Ballengeith to look not to be apprehended. Some poliin upon the nuptial dance. Few are tical stroke must be in contemplauninformed that, under the above tion, and they should attend to watch homely designation, King James V. the progress and result. joined in the merrimakings of his subjects; and they were aware of his

(To be continued.)

VILLAGE SKETCHES NEAR PARIS.

No. I.

You are not to suppose, good || but a town. Whether it really de reader, that ours is a common village: no indeed; we pride ourselves upon its being cleaner, better built, and more genteelly inhabited, than most of the villages near Paris. There are even some among us who insist, that it ought not to be called a village,

serves that honourable appellation or not, I shall not attempt to decide, my intention being merely to amuse, myself with sketching the place and its inhabitants.

If I could forget the tract of sea and land which separates me from

J

It

my favourite part of London, the led at the idea, and protested that, New-road, I should sometimes fan- however other magistrates might cy myself there as I walk down sanction such irreligious proceedings, our village. The houses are of the he, for his part, would never consent same size, are built nearly in the to such a profanation of the Sabbath. same manner, and have each a neat There are people in our village, as in little garden before the door. all villages, a little given to detrachas also another point of resemblance tion, who observed with a shrug, that to a part of the New-road, in the Mr. Mayor's reverence for the Sabnumber of short streets which branch bath is considerably augmented by from it on each side. The inhabit- his fear of diminishing the profits of ants of these streets, however, being his ball. This is mere ill-nature no mostly shopkeepers, must not be put doubt, though it must be owned, upon a footing with us residents in that his never appearing at church the main street, who are all, in our does give some small colour to it. own opinion at least, gens comme il faut.

Our only public building is a large handsome church, which, for the credit of the inhabitants be it spoken, is generally pretty well filled. The mayor, with a laudable attention to the amusement of his fellow-citizens, has fitted up a large hall in his own house as a public ball-room, where the genteel inhabitants of the village assemble every Sunday and holiday evening in grand costume, and caper away to the music of the village fidler, at the moderate prices of ten sous for every lady and twenty for every gentleman, refreshments (that is to say, a glass of sugar and water,) included.

Our little community, like many larger ones, is split into factions. Some of us pride ourselves upon our birth, and others upon our money. At the head of the first class is Mademoiselle Mont-Orgueil, a virgin of fifty-three, one of whose ancestors, as she tells us, was the bosom friend and privy-counsellor of Louis XI. A wag of the village had once the hardihood to ask her, whether the ancestor in question was his majesty's provost-marshal, or Oliver le Diable? This sally was the cause of the unlucky wag's expulsion from the party; for mademoiselle, who has no notion of a joke, would never suffer him in her presence afterwards. It is certain that the family revenues must have been for a long time in a state of decadence, for her immediate ancestors had no other possessions than a few acres of ground and an

We have also a theatre on the first floor of the blacksmith's house, which is fitted up, as the play-bills assure us, quite in the Parisian style, and where there is as little distinc-old house nearly in ruins, which she tion of pit, box, and gallery, as at chooses to call a chateau; but as Bartlemy-fair. A company of co- none of them could be convicted of medians, five in number, perform following any trade or profession, every Monday evening, and generally she piques herself upon having a treat the audience with the three noble and unblemished descent; and last new pieces. They strove hard pretty frequently hints, that if she for permission to open the house on could have stooped to contaminate Sundays; but Mr. Mayor was shock-it by an inferior alliance, our village

would never have enjoyed the honour of her presence, for she might have been married half-a-dozen times at least to some of the most distinguished among the new nobility.

to hear him talk, to be convinced that in comparison with him all the prime ministers in Europe are fools. He compliments the English ministry, however, with having upon the whole a much better notion of financial operations than their neighbours; and he has more than once assured me, that nothing but consideration for the welfare of France has prevented his offering them his services: but he patriotically declares, that his talents shall never be exerte ed to raise the glory and posperity of a rival nation; and unluckily he cannot, at present at least, exert them for the benefit of his own, since a certain great personage, who must be nameless, is too jealous of his abilities to think of employing him.

This good lady has taken upon herself the office of censor-general to the village; and certainly if we do not regulate our lives and expenses by the strictest rules of morality and economy, it will not be her fault. She knows to a liard the income that each of us possesses, and the uses we make of it. Not a single article of dress can appear in the village, from a handsome shawl to a sixpenny top-knot, without her sitting in judgment upon the right of the wearer to purchase such a thing; and if any of the inhabitants happen to have company, Mademoiselle Mont-Orgueil is sure to prognosticate the ruin of the donor of the feast, if she learns that there has been the least approach to good cheer. One can't help admiring the impartiality with which she acts upon these occasions, for her being invited never appears to have the ef-mittee of inquiry, regularly instituted fect of mitigating the indignation with which she declaims against such abominable extravagance.

He resolves therefore with the versatility of a true Frenchman, since he cannot turn his genius to account in one way, to employ it in another, and as he is prevented from regulating the affairs of the state, he occu pies himself with those of our village. He is always at the head of the com

for the purpose of ascertaining whether new-comers are visitable: it is peculiarly his province to impress them with a proper sense of the dig

Monsieur Gasconade is a staunch supporter and devoted humble ser-nity of his party, and more particuvant of Mademoiselle Mont-Orgueil, for a French lady must have an humble servant even at fifty-three. This gentleman formerlyheld a distinguished situation under government, so at least he says, though there are people who declare that he was only a commis; but this assertion doubtless springs from that envy which never fails to pursue persons of merit; and truly our village may well be proud of possessing a man of such transcendent abilities, for one has only

larly of his own. He is a universal referee in all matters of precedence, and remarkably useful to those who wish to be instructed in the art of proportioning their civilities to the rank of the person they address; an art which is perhaps more necessary among us than even in the capital, for our ancient captain of cavalry would never forgive you if you did not bow at least twice as low to him as to the mayor; who, for his part, would be extremely af