the amiable character of Wilmina to | Wilmina; " and if but a small part concede a little, nay, very much, to of what I heard be true, Lord Orheal those breaches in the peace of mond is ill qualified for a peaceher father's family?" said Sylvester. maker." "But I should not call it concession; no, it would be elevation to accept the hand and fortune of Lord Ormond. I attempted to prepare you for this brilliant lot in our last interview, but you would not hear me. Why do you change countenance? Is matrimony so formidable, that the slightest intimation of love in a noble and valorous admirer should fade the roses, not only on your cheeks, but on your lips?" "O Sylvester, how can you so cruelly sport with my feelings?" said Wilmina. Lord Balveny's voice, in conver sation with Lord Ormond and Archibald, released Wilmina from this painful dialogue. The aged feel of how many advantages they have been divested by the course of time, and are flattered when the undeniable su periority resulting from experience is ascribed to them. Lord Ormond," with great artifice, took this method" of recommending himself to his su perannuated host. During breakfast, he affected to consult Lord Balveny on many points; and proposed a ride, since the weather promised to favour his receiving on the spot minute instruction how the thriving plantations had been managed. Lord Balveny ordered the horses with much pleasure; and while he and Ormond visited the sylvan creations on the moor, Archibald and Sylvester em-" "Sport with your feelings, foolish girl!" retorted Sylvester. "I tell you truths I am now fully authorized to communicate. Formerly, I only tried to sound you in regard to the splendid alliance; and I am willing to suppose that your repugnance to Lord Ormond was expressed, merely be-ployed every argument, every blancause the death of his wife happened to be very recent. Beware now of rejecting distinction and wealth for yourself, and frustrating the last hope of concord in this family. I beseech you, give encouragement to Lord Ormond; if not for your own sake, smile on him that Lord Balveny may be a happy parent."-"I cannot give encouragement, when I feel insurmountable repugnance to the manners of Lord Ormond," said Wilmi dishment, and ultimately had recourse to wrathful menaces, to shake the fixed determination which Wilmina reiterated against Lord Ormond's matrimonial proposals. At a time when brothers were so despotic, it required the fortitude of a heroine to withstand these mandatory counsels. Some of our fair readers may, not duly appreciate the steadiness of Wilmina in maintaining her own resolve in opposition to the advice of her brothers; but we entreat, that in contemplating her exalted, yet simple character, due allowance may be made for a rude period of female subjugation. Archibald and Sylvester saw, that for the present Wilmina was inflexible: however, they did not despair. Lord Ormond was evi dently rising in favour with Lord || resignation of the old, the wailings of childhood, the emaciated mother arrested by death in a journey undertaken to beg food for her young family, and the infant at her breast reduced to a skeleton, still exerting its feeble jaws to draw a cordial from the sources for ever stagnated and exhausted. He made a soul-harrowing the prime of life wasted by inanition, devouring wild roots they had hardly strength to dig from the earth; while some were unable to proceed in the labour, and laid them down to die: or still more shocking, he related the fierce combats that took place for gusting eatables; and he finished by extolling the goodness that had obviated much misery and guilt through very extensive territories. Wilmina did not return the compliment. Her brothers had elaborately Balveny, and Wilmina piqued herself on filial submission. Impatient to bring the treaty to a crisis, Archibald told Wilmina they had but one day more to stay at the castle, and wished to have her society while they viewed their father's new granaries, where, to accommodate his inland people, he intended to distribute pro-representation of men and women in visions. He would order her palfrey and attendants, at the same time that horses were brought out for Sylvester and himself. Wilmina agreed, little suspecting that her brothers had concerted with Lord Ormond to be at the most distant granary before them. She was dismayed when Archi-pig-nuts, roots of fern, or more disbald took his father aside, and Sylclimbed a scaffold to examine the upper part of a building, leaving her to entertain Lord Ormond. But she soon collected the powers of her mind, to evade, if possible, the dreaded explanation. Lord Ormond load-descanted on Lord Ormond's chari- ́ ed her with encomiums on the measures she adopted for alleviating the general distress. She referred the merit to Lord Balveny. Lord Ormond assured her he had Lord Balveny's authority for assigning to her the original suggestions; and he was proud and enraptured to find they coincided with his own efforts in the same cause. He pathetically described the scenes of suffering to be met with in districts where no systematic arrangements saved the poor from famishing: he never travelled without a horseload of nourishing pellets; and had the happiness to think, that by such a small matter as he produced from his pouch, he had saved many lives. He often found age and infancy expiring for want of sustenance; he portrayed the pious ties; but her understanding was not easily baffled: a tyrant at home might seek popularity by bounty to multi- ́ tudes. Genuine benevolence would never fail in kindness to the nearest connections. Lord Ormond construedthe silence of his fair companion, as encouragement to an explicit declaration of love; but his advantages of person, insinuating address, accomplishments, rank, and riches, made no impression on Wilmina's heart. She had no pre-engagement; she never had seen a gentleman so transcendently handsome, so gifted, so adorned as her brother Sylvester, nor such a delightful companion as her father; with these standards of excellence to direct her choice, and continually occupied in useful pursuits, she was fortified against the illusions of over heated imagination; and she had join his friends in the hall, and Lord Lord Ormond, the Master of Balveny, and Sylvester Douglas left the castle next morning, or rather soon after midnight, without bidding adieu to Lord Balveny or Wilmina. She was grieved at this sign of displeasure from her brothers; though conscious || she had no alternative but to offend them by declining Lord Ormond's hand, or to make herself miserable, Her father was, if possible, more than ever endeared to her. Were he a parent such as all she ever heard of among the nobility or gentry, she must have sacrificed her peace to Lord Ormond, or immured herself || gayest splendours with Lord Orfor life in a convent; and though she mond. had no desire to become a nun, she would prefer the black veil to the (To be continued.). VILLAGE SKETCHES NEAR PARIS. No. II. AT the head of the opposite fac-| greatness, when she had actually tion is Madame d'Agneau, the portly widow of a butcher in the Faubourg Saint Marceau, who, after being, as she herself informs us, at the head of le beau monde for many years in her neighbourhood, was obliged at last, from the delicacy of her health, to fix in the country; and the vicinity of our village to Paris procured it the honour of her residence. There are people who give a different version of the story, and if we are to believe them, we are indebted to other motives for the happiness of her presence among us. given a fete champetre to the prin cipal inhabitants of the faubourg in her own garden, which was got up with becoming taste and magnificence (she hired a tin cascade and two dozen of coloured lamps for the occasion), a competitor for celebrity started up in the person of Madame Girofle, the lady of a neighbouring grocer, who carried the day by a bold coup-de-main. She gave thé à l'Anglais, a thing never before heard of in the faubourg; and as she took care of having it noised about that the entertainment was to be given exactly in the Grosvenor-square style, the company found it amazingly ele gant, and did due honour to the ham and beef sandwiches, and slices of cold plumpudding, which were handed round, instead of biscuits and bread and butter. Emboldened by this triumph, Madame Girofle followed up her victotory by a variety of other successful attacks, which reduced our widow to the necessity of retreating, or of During the lifetime of her husband, and for some years afterwards, she was the grande dame of the faubourg; she led the fashions, sported three times the number of shawls, and twice as many colours, as any of her neighbours; attended all the fêtes within ten miles of Paris; was always the first person in the faubourg who saw the new pieces at the theatres Porte St. Martin and Ambigu Comique, and heard mass once a month at least at the Chapelle Roy-owning herself conquered. She chose ale; though, as she observed, it was the former alternative, and set up rather a bore to go to a church which her rest in our village, where her people seemed to frequent only to ambition is in a great measure grasay their prayers. tified; for though not the only grande. dame in the place, she is decidedly at the head of the most powerful, if not the most noble, party. 1 But, alas! all sublunary glories fade! and the fall of our fair widow furnishes a melancholy proof that they do for at the very moment She is the patroness of our comwhen she flattered herself with hav-pany of comedians, whose finances. ing reached the topmost pinnacle of she occasionally recruits by a bespeak. She is also the directress and promoter of all the fêtes which have eating and drinking for their basis; for as the other party generally confine their refreshments to dried cherrics and sugar and water, she takes care that hers shall be of the most substantial description. Her constant attendant and privy counsellor is Monsieur Sangsue, village Esculapius and proprietor of a maison de santé. This gentleman has two characters: among his friends he is a bon-vivant, knows the most approved receipts for made dishes, discusses the merits of sauces, and is unquestionably the best judge of wine in the village. It is very well known that Madame d'Agneau never gives an entertainment without consulting him on the choice and number of the dishes; and his opinion is also solicited as a matter of course on similar occasions by all who wish to stand well with her. People are rather puzzled to reconcile this with his practice in his own house: nothing can be more simple and frugal than his table; he harangues incessantly in praise of temperance, and never fails to assure his patients (I mean such of them as board with him), that most sick people do actually eat their way into the next world. It is to be presumed that he considers abstinence only necessary for the sick, since certainly nobody eats and drinks more heartily than he does at other people's tables. For the rest, he is a lively, chatty, little man, who has something civil to say to every body, and of whom nobody can say any thing worse than that he bleeds, drenches, and starves all the unfortunate patients who fall into his hands. notaire, is, next to the apothecary, in the confidence of Madame d'Ag, neau: this gentleman, who has picked up a pretty fortune during the Revolution by buying and selling national property, has quitted business for some years; but being naturally of an active turn, he devotes the time, which he does not know how otherwise to employ, to the public. business of the parish, and the private affairs of the inhabitants, in both of which he bestirs himself notably, as the public squabbles and private broils, which are daily occurring, attest. But though not cordially liked by any body, he is a man of too much consequence not to be gene-, rally courted. Besides, his knowledge makes him the wonder of the village: he seldom speaks without intermixing scraps of Latin in his discourse; and he has more than once declared, that if our curé was not such an odd, frumpish, unsocial kind of man, he would have been glad to be upon visiting terms with him, for the purpose of reviving his Greek. The wife and daughters of a wealthy sugar-refiner, the families of two or three opulent farmers, and some few retired tradespeople from Paris, form the remaining members of Madame d'Agneau's circle. The principal difference between them and their antagonists is, that they have, more money and less politeness; as to the rest, they occupy themselves pretty nearly in the same manner-7 * * B on ai sait I was interrupted by Mademoiselle Mont-Orgueil, who came to give me an account of an affair which has JE created a great sensation in our village. We have in it two patissiers, Monsieur Chicane, our soi-disant one a staunch royalist, the other a |