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noons, sitting under the blossomed limes, with the sun shedding a golden light through the broad branches, the bees murmuring overhead, roses and lilies all about us, and the choicest fruit served up in wicker baskets of her own making-itself a picture! the guests looking so pleased and happy, and the kind hostess the gayest and happiest of all. Those are pleasant meetings; nor are her little winter parties less agreeable, when two or three female friends assembled round their coffee, she will tell thrilling stories of that terrible Revolution, so fertile in great crimes and great virtues; or gayer anecdotes of the brilliant days preceding that convulsion, the days which Madame de Genlis has described so well, when Paris was the capital of pleasure, and amusement the business of life; illustrating her descriptions by a series of spirited drawings of costumes and characters done by herself, and always finishing by producing a group of Louis Seize, Marie Antoinette, the Dauphin, and Madame Elizabeth, as she had last seen them at Versailles-the only recollection that ever brings tears into her smiling

eyes.

man he had not seen her for these thirty years;) Paris was a new city; the French were a new people; she missed the sea-coal fires; and for the stunted orange-trees at the Thuilleries, what were they compared with the blossomed limes of Burley-Hatch!

LOST AND FOUND.

thing not unlike the good fairy herself, in the pleasant earthly guise of an old friend. But I may as well begin my story.

ANY body may be lost in a wood. It is well for me to have so good an excuse for my wanderings; for I am rather famous for such misadventures, and have sometimes been accused by my kindest friends of committing intentional blunders, and going astray out of malice prepense. To be sure, when in two successive rambles, I contrived to get mazed on Burghfield Common, and bewildered in Kibe's Lane, those exploits did seem to overpass the common limits of stupidity. But in a wood, and a strange wood, a new place, a fresh country, untrodden ground beneath the feet, unknown landmarks before the eyes, wiser folks than I might require the silken Mademoiselle Thérèse's loyalty to the clue of Rosamond, or the bag of ashes given Bourbons, was in truth a very real feeling. to Finette Cendron (Anglice, Cinderella) by Her family had been about the court, and she the good fairy her godmother, to help them had imbibed an enthusiasm for the royal suf- home again. Now my luck exceeded even ferers natural to a young and a warm heart-hers of the Glass Slipper, for I found someshe loved the Bourbons, and hated Napoleon with like ardour. All her other French feelings had for some time been a little modified. She was not quite so sure as she had been, About two years ago we had the misfortune that France was the only country, and Paris to lose one of the most useful and popular inthe only city of the world; that Shakspeare bitants of our village, Mrs. Bond, the butterwas a barbarian, and Milton no poet; that the woman. She-for although there was a very perfume of English limes was nothing com- honest and hard-working Farmer Bond, who pared to French orange trees; that the sun had the honour to be Mrs. Bond's husband, never shone in England; and that sea-coal she was so completely the personage of the fires were bad things. She still, indeed, family, that nobody ever thought of himwould occasionally make these assertions, es- she lived on a small dairy-farm, at the other pecially if dared to make them; but her faith side of the parish, where she had reared ten in them was shaken. Her loyalty to her le- children in comfort and respectability, congitimate king, was, however, as strong as triving, in all years, and in all seasons, to ever, and that loyalty had nearly cost us our be flourishing, happy, and contented, and to dear Mademoiselle. After the Restoration, drive her tilted cart twice a week into B., she hastened as fast as a steam-boat and dili-laden with the richest butter, the freshest gence could carry her, to enjoy the delight of seeing once more the Bourbons at the Thuilleries; took leave, between smiles and tears, of her friends, and of Burley-Hatch, carrying with her a branch of the lime-tree, then in blossom, and commissioning her old lover, Mr. Foreclose, to dispose of the cottage: but in less than three months, luckily before Mr. Foreclose had found a purchaser, Mademoiselle Thérèse came home again. She complained of nobody; but times were altered. The house in which she was born was pulled down; her friends were scattered; her kindred dead; Madame did not remember her (she had probably never heard of her in her life;) the king did not know her again (poor

eggs, and the finest poultry of the county. Never was a market-woman so reliable as Mrs. Bond, so safe to deal with, or so pleasant to look at. She was a neat comely woman of five-and-forty, or thereabout, with dark hair, laughing eyes, a bright smile, and a brighter complexion- red and white like a daisy. People used to say how pretty she must have been; but I think she was then in the prime of her good looks; just as a fullblown damask rose is more beautiful than the same flower in the bud.

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Very pleasant she was to look at, and still pleasanter to talk to; she was so gentle, so cheerful, so respectful, and so kind. Every body in the village loved Mrs. Bond. Even

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 dairy woman 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 like no other coppices, or rather none that can be compared with them. The young beechen stems, perfectly free from underwood, go arching and intertwining over-head, forming a thousand mazy paths, covered by a natural trellis; the shining green leaves, just bursting from their golden sheaths, contrasting with the smooth silvery bark, shedding a cool green light around, and casting a thousand dancing shadows on the mossy flowery path, pleasant to the eye and to the tread, a fit haunt for wood-nymph or fairy. There is always much of interest in the mystery of a wood; the uncertainty produced by the confined boundary; the objects which crowd together, and prevent the eye from penetrating to distance; the strange flickering mixture of shadow and sunshine, the sudden flight of birds

Nor was Mrs. Bond's bounty confined to largesses of so suspicious a nature, as presents to the pets of a good customer. I have never known any human being more thoroughly and universally generous, more delicate in her little gifts, or with so entire an absence of design or artifice in her attentions. It was a prodigality of kindness that seemed never weary of well-doing. What posies of pinks and sweetwilliams, backed by marjoram and rosemary, she used to carry to the two poor old ladies who lodged at the pastry-cook's at B.! What fagots of lilac and laburnum she would bring to deck the poor widow Hay's open hearth! What baskets of water-cresses, the brownest, the bitterest, and the crispest of the year, for our fair neighbour, the nymph of the shoe-shop, a delicate girl, who could only be tempted into her breakfast by that pleasant-oh, it was enchanting! I wandered on, 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

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 gar lands, 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.

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 petticoats tucked up to her knees, stood in the water where it was pent between two hurdles, ducking, sousing, and holding down by main force, the poor, frightened, struggling sheep, who kicked, and plunged, and bleated, and butted, and in spite of their imputed inno

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.

A few of the stories were composed purposely for children; but as people do not, now-a-days, write down to those little folks, and as the Authoress has herself, in common with her wisers and betters, a strong propen

INTRODUCTORY LETTER.

cence, 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

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, im, provement 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.

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, 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 a

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!

on the ground than he communicated in very chosen terms to his obdurate mistress, his opinion of the escape which he had had in not 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 her 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 he 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 vain
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-

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