In person Sir Lancelot is tall, and alto-mode. Sir Lancelot was above this, as he gether devoid of that gentle bend of the was above all other methods of exhibiting shoulders which, in gentlemen not holding affectation; he would as soon have thought of commissions in the army, is rather graceful riding a steeple-chase, or turning methodist than otherwise of a bland and pleasing yet preacher, as of exhibiting himself in any dignified countenance, high and erect fore- garb which would have marked him out head, drawing additional majesty from the among gentlemen of his rank for its incongroup of silvery hairs that cluster on either gruity or eccentricity. At the same time he temple. His countenance is, in complexion, was no servile follower of the fashion-no rubicund, but it is the roseate hue of health, battered out beau-no overdressed old man, not the rouge that dissipation blazes o'er the than which nothing in the whole range of face; long as I recollect him, that face is animated nature can be more pathetically ever the same-as hale and as rubicund to- ridiculous. Sir Lancelot dressed up to, not day, as it was in the days of Sir Lancelot's beyond, his station; up to, not beyond, the manhood-the days of my hot youth- fashion; up to, not beyond, his years.

When George the Third was king."

Sir Lancelot dressed like himself-neither before nor behind the fashion, but, if at all, rather behind the fashion than before. He sported not on his shrunk shanks a pair of faded buckskins, nor wrapped his calfless legs in corrugated gallowgaskins, "nor invested his torso in that odious envelope patronised by elderly gentlemen"-a spencer. Nor did the worthy baronet affect slovenliness; on the contrary, a young lover, desirous to recommend himself in all his best attractions to his mistress's eyes, could not have been more scrupulously neat in his attire than was Sir Lancelot. His ordinary wear consisted of a blue body coat, deficient in velvet collar or satin skirts, shorn of all the extrinsic embellishments that set off to greatest advantage the tunic of a tailor-gilt buttons, unadorned with anchor, crown, or other warlike alto relievo, after the prevailing fashion of gentlemen who would seduce the public into a belief that they hold commissions in the land or sea service-plain gilt buttons Sir Lancelot wore on his coat, like, for want of a better illustration, let me say,— like a gentleman.

How it happened that old father Time and the elderly Sir Lancelot jogged on together with fewer than the ordinary number of rubs that fall out between gentlemen of their time of life, remains a mystery beyond my comprehension. It might be owing, on Sir Lancelot's part, to a constitution naturally strong, maintained in its pristine vigour by a regimen habitually temperate. Dr. Mansfield called it an idiosyncrasy, and the doctor ought to know.

Sir Lancelot himself attributed his happy temperament in mind and body to the habitual use, in winter and in summer, of cold water externally applied; not a mere indoor shower-bath with the chill off, nor a hipbath, nor any other half-and-half application of the invigorating element, but a bona fide head-over-heels immersion in a bathing pond at the foot of his garden, whence, looking from the window of my bedroom on a chilly December morning, shuddering at the bare idea of putting my foot over the threshold, 1 have seen the hearty old baronet emerge, rosy as Aurora ascending from the lap of Ocean.

I have said that there was no more of the querulousness of age about Sir Lancelot than there was of its decrepitude-no more there was. That petty, unprovoked, and still very provoking pettishness, in which elderly gentlemen consider themselves privileged to indulge, had no place in the constitution of this most amiable of men; as he grew older, his smile appeared to grow more bland and expansive-his cheerfulness became a habithe was exactly in the position described by the poet, where

"All his prospects brightening to the last,

His heaven commences ere this world be past."

His vest was a plain, rather old-fashioned stripe-I am not tailor enough to say whether the material might have been Valentia, Jacconet, or Marseilles let it suffice that the vest of Sir Lancelot was of the plainest make, but, like every part of his dress, of the exactest fit--the most simple pattern, and yet a pattern that nobody, somehow or other, could ever get hold of save the baronet himself. His inexpressibles were of the colour of his coat, and of the prevailing fashion: for Sir Lancelot, although standing out lustily against velvet collars, satin skirts, and swallow tails, gives ample credit to our de- Sir Lancelot delights in children. He is generate age for the rational innovation of their companion, friend, playfellow, their arthe trousers, which, he was accustomed to bitrator of disputes; if he showed selfishobserve, was the distinctive mark of the gen-ness in anything earthly, it was in the motleman as contrasted with the horse-jockey. nopoly of the society of his grandchildren. I have been thus particular in describing With his children, the eldest son especially, the outward man of my venerable friend, Sir Lancelot has established himself on the because I am aware of the usual affectation footing of a friend; he is not loved merely, of elderly gentlemen in opposing their reve- he is liked; not revered alone, but esteemed; rend sanction to the prevailing fashion of our not obeyed merely, but anticipated in every day in matters of dress, and of adhering to thought, word, look, or action, that can be their periwigs and laced pocket-holes, as if supposed capable of affording him gratificathey fondly imagined they were still young, tion or delight. How often has he exulted and their formal habiliments in the tip of our that he had made to himself friends of his

children-not that they regarded him barely gained in wealth, I might, as the world as a friend, but that there was superadded goes, have lost in honour."" to the instinctive affection of filial piety the rational respect due to a man of wisdoin and virtue-not that they obeyed him because they were his children, but because he was their father; and that his advice was followed less because it was paternal than because it was wise.

Nor did the worthy baronet make any particular mystery of his management in bringing about this desirable relation between parent and child; and his reason for his unreservedness on this subject may have been, that the secret implied an absence of all management whatever, and consisted only in bearing himself towards his children when they grew up, as he was accustomed to comport himself towards mankind in general, in manners complaisant, not compliant, and in conduct upright without austerity.

Sir Lancelot was the soul of honournot that he deserved any credit for this, nor do I speak it in the way of panegyric. I state it merely as an item in the descriptive catalogue of the virtues of the worthy baronet-the chivalrous pride of honour in Sir Lancelot was an instinct, not a principle-he could not control it; and if an equivocation could have gained him the garter, or saved him from the rack, the plain and downright truth would fall undisguisedly from his tongue.

The reader will not suppose, from this trait in his character, that my friend was a dogmatist, which is only another name for a bear, or that he blurted out the truth upon all occasions, regardless whose feelings it might hurt, or whose pride it might offend; or further, that he was one of those snarling beings who growl through life, openly No man was more highly gifted than hating all mankind, and hated secretly by was Sir Lancelot in everything essential all mankind in return. Not at all; the to worldly success, in everything, I should rigidity of Sir Lancelot was in his conscisay, with one only exception, the essential ence, not in his countenance, and I never exception of a worldly-minded selfishness, bent solely upon its own aggrandisement, and regarding the rest of the human race, their interests, their passions, their follies, and their vices, as means to that end, and to that end alone. The last thought of Sir Lancelot was of himself-the first of his fellow-creatures; he lamented this selfforgetfulness as a weakness-I reverenced it as a virtue.

There was another impediment, too, which kept Sir Lancelot back from the achievement of that splendid success in life that blazes awhile in newspaper paragraphs, and then goes out into the utter darkness of perpetual oblivion, and this was the stumbling-block of a small patrimony.

knew, long as I had the happiness of being known to him, that countenance deformed by a sneer.

For you, me, or anybody else, the baronet would ask any favour that did not involve a compromise of his independent course of action-for himself nothing of the kind.

He held as his rule of conduct the opinion of Marmontel upon the subject of obligations generally:" Favours bind us much oftener than we would choose. I am aware that it is not disgraceful to receive them, but I plainly perceive that it is much more creditable to do without them."

You will have perceived that Sir Lancelot was a favourable sample of the lowest order of the hereditary nobility-you will not, therefore, infer that Sir Lancelot was A small patrimony was all Sir Lancelot the phoenix of baronets-Sir Lancelot, let ever had, and he suffered under its blight- me assure you, was not a phoenix any ing influence from his boyhood-too large more than he was a jackdaw! He had for his mere necessities, too small for real his feelings, his follies, and, in his youth, independence; had it been splendid, Sir Lancelot would have enjoyed it splendidly -in doing good; had it been none at all, he would have achieved by his own exertion a fortune for himself, if splendid talents, virtue, and honour have anything to do in the acquisition of fortune; as it was, he swam down the stream of life on bladders, and lived to see men who went into the water with him, naked and unsupported, careering by in frigates, gondolas, and seventy-fours.

Better it had been for him, he used to say, constituted as he was, to have been turned into life from a charity school, than to have been born heir apparent to an old baronetcy, with a nominal rent-roll, and ten thousand pounds in the stocks; and yet he would often observe, taking the imprudent side of the question, "Perhaps it is as well as it is; that which I might have

for all I know to the contrary, his vices, like the rest of the baronetage. His vices, however, had vanished with his youth, his follies evaporated with his manhood, and his failings which remained were at least as harmless as the failings of elderly baronets usually are.

The most striking foible of the elderly Sir Lancelot is a propensity to gossip-a fine-drawing of his histories, and a propensity to da capo his old jokes once too often; a good listener with him is a good man, and might be trusted, if Sir Lancelot could be credited, with untold gold. Nor is there a total want of foundation for this somewhat singular confidence of a good talker in a good listener. A good listener must be a polite man, therefore a man of the world; a good listener must needs, too, be a patient man, therefore a follower of wisdom.

It is of the past that Sir Lancelot chiefly soon; the young and middle-aged, who delights to gossip-of the world when he had the happiness to share the friendship was young, the world not so old, and of the baronet, lament that so excellent a I can diseverything in it fresher and more vigorous man should have died at all. than in these degenerate days. cover no reasonable cause for the regrets He recollects John Kemble in Hamlet-of the aged, or the lamentations of the the scene with the grave-digger especially young. The death that arrives at the age of -and soliloquises the soliloquy. seventy-three can scarcely with justice be He remembers Garrick lording it tri-deplored as sudden, and his death is more umphantly over Drury Lane. He recollects, to be lamented than Sir Lancelot's, who is as it were of yesterday, how his childish not prepared, like Sir Lancelot, to die. mind was impressed by the horrors of the I am moralizing, I find, in spite of my. tent-scene in Richard, and how soon those self; my purpose being only to exhibit terrors were dispelled by the shouts of age in a brighter light, and to show, in the laughter that greeted the crooked-backed portrait of Sir Lancelot, that the picture of tyrant coming on again in Scrub. He wit-declining life may affect us, not only with nessed the triumphant début of the infant tender, but with pleasurable and cheerful Roscius, and wonders that any body who emotions; and that age may not only sucheard Billington can talk such nonsense ceed to manhood and to youth, as a conabout Grisi. dition to be honoured and revered, but as well to be admired and loved.

! He recollects Pitt and Fox, Sheridan and Burke, in their palmy days, and shakes his head when desired to read a splendid burst of eloquence in the senate of our time; he really thinks there is no senatorial talent now-a-days.

Not to weary you with his reminiscences, Sir Lancelot is, in short, a brief abstract and chronicle of the times of fifty years ago-of the times when, as the worthy baronet assures his captivated audience, he saw the drama classic, the literature Augustan, the senate eloquent, the people happy! Nor is it singular that the worthy baronet should regard the time for ever gone, with a complacency which he denies to the days now passing over his head; for they were the days less of a classic drama, an Augustan age of literature, a senate eloquent, and a people happy, than the days of his own hopes, loves, fears, ambition, passion, action-the days of his blooming youth and hopeful prime of manhood. Nor marvel, then, that Sir Lancelot proudly reverts to that time past, which was properly his life, compared with which the presentis, in feeling and action, mere existence; nor, that memory recalls its fancied perfections for ever to his tongue.

He was young and ardent then, now he is experienced and old-then he was an actor, he is a spectator now-then life was tinted with the rainbow hue of hope, and anticipation promised new pleasure in every successive scene-now hopes, one by one, have faded in the twilight of declining years

"And all the poetry of life is fled—”

his anticipations then bounded high of earthly felicity, his anticipations now are of happiness beyond the grave.

Sir Lancelot is dead.

MIDSUMMER EVE.

BY MRS. EDWARD THOMAS.

So sultry was the evening air,
Its heaviness was pain to bear;
A lassitude stole o'er each sense:
And luxury was indolence!

The flow'rets drooped-and each young
leaf

Flagg'd, as it felt an inward grief,
A sorrow coy-to be betray'd
By zephyr, who'd forsook his shade.
The moths in silence flitted by,
And languid beetles scarce could fly;
The brooks in hush'd meanders crept;
And echo once undreaming slept!
So holy was the calm around,
As if there never had been sound
To jar the muteness of the earth,
And usher discord into birth!
The stars, in the blue vaults above,
Held their assembly of love;
I heard them whisper their delight
To the felicitating night!

While one bright orb shot out afar
To visit some fair sister-star,
Methought I heard the crisp air ring,
Struck by the fleetness of its wing.
So still was all beneath the skies,
I heard the weeping dew-drops rise,
To hang their tears on leaf and spray,
Their votive off 'ring to young day.
Sound may intoxicate each sense,
But silence yields bliss more intense;
A sabbath ecstasy which fires
The soul, and holy thought inspires-
Such thought as Christians joy to feel,
To spur their faith, to prompt their zeal-
And lend repentance keener zest,
Too prone to languish in the breast;
Teaching that soul the path to heav'n,
And what it needs, to be forgiven.

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES.* nearest way to the summit of the hill; and

BY MRS. CRAWFORD.

THERE can be no doubt that the romance of real life lays the most permanent hold up. on the heart. A well-embodied fiction seizes on the fancy; but when the wizard steps out of the enchanted circle-when the wily Archimage throws aside the charmed rod, with which he conjured up the beings of air, Reason resumes her sway, and I find myself asking the same question which, after telling him some fairy tale, my little nephew was wont to put to me, "But is it all in real,

aunt?"

while he was in conversation with the hostess, a tall and respectable-looking man passed by, apparently about forty years of age, whose dress, though not exactly that of a gentleman, was superior, as well as his air and general appearance, to that of the peasantry of the district.

66

Eh, sir!" exclaimed the hostess, with evident looks of sympathy and respect, "that man was born to be a gentleman." "Indeed!" said my friend," what do you mean?"

Why, sir, I means that if all had their own, he would be a great man. They say he has a right to a fine castle and great estates in Scotland."

she did not exactly comprehend,)" how do you know, or how can any one tell, that this person is really entitled to the castle and estates you speak of? It may be all a mere delusion, for I have known many cases of the kind, where men have foolishly deceived both themselves and others, without at all intending it."

"Nay, but they say, sir, that he has a right to be a great lord as well."

"Indeed!" exclaimed her interrogator, with increasing incredulity.

I was never more forcibly struck with this, than on my recently learning some interest- "But you know they say' is very often ing particulars respecting a family residing wrong, and about nothing oftener than the in a humble cottage in a small village or right to fine castles and great estates. They hamlet in the north of England. A friend generally turn out to be castles in the air, of mine was some short time ago travelling and estates in fairy land. I mean, my good in that part, and being in the immediate woman," (perceiving that she looked as if neighbourhood of Lumley Castle,t a place with which he had been familiar in his boyish days, he felt a great desire to renew his acquaintance with it, and with the umbrageous park which surrounded it, where he had formerly passed many pleasant hours. was much gratified with the account he gave me of his visit to the castle, where to his great surprise, he found the self-same venerable housekeeper who held the keys of office, when he was a schoolboy, upwards of thirty years before, and who appeared to him, even at that time, to be a very ancient dame. He wandered through the spacious apartments, which recalled to him so many old associations, surveyed the collection of paintings, some of them extremely fine, though few, to his mind, more interesting than the various family and other portraits, commencing from an early date, which had fascinated his boyish and less critical eye; and after taking leave of his old friend,-a final leave, as he now considered it,-he quitted the castle, and proceeded to the parish church of Chester-le-Street, about half a mile distant, chiefly for the purpose of there inspecting the monumental effigies, cut in stone, of the long baronial line of Lumley. But I purposely hasten over these particulars to come at once to the little cottage in the retired hamlet, and the romantic history

attached to its inmates.

My friend having a great wish to revisit Painshaw Hill, a remarkable eminence about three miles off, from which, he remembered, there was a most extensive and beautiful prospect over the surrounding country, and eastward as far as the sea, he had occasion to pass through Biddick on his way, a small but populous village on the banks of the Wear, inhabited chiefly by the men who work in the coal-mines, or, as they are local. ły styled, pitmen. He halted at the little inn" of the place, for the purpose of inquiring the

* Continued from vol. vii. p. 31.

+ The beautiful seat of the Earl of Scarborough.

"Yes, indeed! there's Mr. Thurlow, the rector of Houghton, and many other highly respectable gentleman, I can assure you, sir, that believes it all, and has assisted poor Drummond with money to try for his rights. An' they tell me it's to be tried afore the great lords up in Lunnon, sir."

"Drummond, did you say?" with somewhat more both of attention and curiosity on hearing the highly respectable authority of the rector of Houghton quoted, and on learning for the first time the patronymic, as ancient and honourable as any in Scotland, which the claimant bore. "Did you say the

man's name was Drummond ?"

"Yes, sir, that's his name-Thomas Drummond. He has got a large family, and little to keep them with, though some folks say that the lord as now has the property allows him two hundred a year to keep him quiet; but I thinks that if he had half that, he might do better for his family than he does. Others say that it's a Frenchman, a Popish priest, that has the allowance, for that his right is better than the present lord's, but that poor Drummond's is the strongest of all."

"And pray where does Drummond live?" "Why, about half a mile from here-just up at New Painshaw, yonder," pointing out with her hand the direction in which it lay. It's as good a way as any you can take to get upon the hill."

"Thank you; I'll give him a call, and have a little conversation with him."

And shortly afterwards, taking his leave of

|jected enterprise in favour of the pretender, which had always been secretly encouraged, both by the courts of France and Rome, he raised a regiment called "The Royal Scots," of which he was constituted colonel. He arrived with his regiment at Montrose, about the end of the year 1745, to join his brother and the rest of the Stuart chiefs, and was present at the decisive bat tle of Culloden a few months afterwards, which ended in the final ruin of all their long-cherished hopes, while most of those who were taken expiated their temerity shortly afterwards by the forfeiture of their lives and fortunes.

his worthy hostess, my friend proceeded on his way. A walk of less than ten minutes brought him to New Painshaw, which he found to be a small, mean-looking place, inhabited almost entirely by the pitmen employed in the neighbouring colliery of the Marquis of Londonderry. Having been directed to the cottage of which he was in search, he knocked at the door, which was opened by a female, rather meanly attired, who proved to be the wife of Drummond. Her husband was not yet returned; but she expected him very shortly, and requested the stranger to walk in. He found the cottage and its furniture to be of very humble pretensions: and with the exception of a The Earl of Perth commanded, on this small engraved picture, framed and glazed, occasion, the left wing of the rebel army. which contained about half a dozen minia. He was severely wounded in the face and ture likenesses of the unfortunate Stuarts hands in the course of the engagement; and their adherents, he did not observe any- and when the rout of the Jacobite forces thing which indicated the peculiar position became general and irretrievable, and of its owner, in respect of his alleged claims he saw that all were flying in disorder and expectations. My friend had just time from the fatal field, he began to think of to take a survey of the apartment, and to providing for his own personal safety. He make a few preliminary inquiries, when was seen galloping, towards the close of Drummond himself entered. He received that eventful day, his clothes and his perhis visiter with great frankness and cordiali- son still besmeared with blood, at a conty, and entered, at his request, upon a most siderable distance from the field of battle. romantic family history, with which he soon His brother, Lord John, contrived to get on found himself deeply interested. He assured shipboard, and escaped to France; but the him that he was the grandson and sole re- earl himself took refuge, in the first inpresentative of James Drummond, Duke of stance, amongst his own faithful friends Perth, who, taking part in the rebellion of and retainers, in the immediate neighbour1745, was wounded at the battle of Culloden, hood of Drummond Castle. When the and narrowly escaped falling into the hands first heat of the pursuit and search after of the king's troops. He produced several the fugitives was in some degree abated, papers and documents which left not a doubt he ventured to return to his castle privateof his accuracy; and he gave various parti- ly, where his mother had chiefly resided culars of his distinguished ancestor's life and since the death of his father, nearly thirty remarkable adventures, of which the follow-years before. Here he remained in close ing is the substance.

concealment for several weeks, during The Duke, or more correctly speaking which time he got his wounds healed, and the Earl of Perth, (as the ducal patent was waited for a favourable opportunity to ef granted to his grandfather, the fourth earl, fect his escape beyond the reach of danger. by James II., subsequently to his abdica- Sometimes he was disguised in female attion of the throne,) was one of the most tire; and more than once he was in immipowerful and devoted adherents of the nent danger of being taken by the king's house of Stuart. He was one of the seven troops. On one occasion in particular, a persons who, some time previously to the party came very unexpectedly to search breaking out of the last rebellion, entered the castle; and so sudden was their apinto and subscribed a solemn engagement proach, that the earl had only just time to to take up arms on behalf of the exiled fam- get into a wall-press, (as it was there callily, provided that the king of France would ed,) or enclosed recess, as the soldiers support the attempt, by sending over a rushed from the hall to carry on the search body of troops to co-operate with them. upstairs. The woman who had apprised Accordingly, when Prince Charles Edward, him of his danger, and had just shut him the son of the old pretender, as he was up in the concealed closet, pretended to be styled, landed in Scotland, to make a last busily occupied in front of it about her effort for the recovery of the crown by a household duties, of sweeping or some such personal appeal to the zeal and fidelity of occupation, until the unwelcome visiters his friends, the Earl of Perth, true to his had left the apartment. plighted faith, immediately repaired to his After some time, the earl quitted, in the standard, with all the followers and retain- silence and secrecy of night, and with a ers he could raise. His brother John, com- heavy heart, the walls of his paternal manmonly called Lord John Drummond, had sion, which were to know him again no been educated abroad, and continued to more. He had left them, but a few short reside there, having attached himself warm- months before, under circumstances how ly to the Jacobite cause. He entered into different, when, in the midst of his numerthe service of the French monarch; and ous host of retainers, a gallant and a faithlooking forward, doubtless, to the long pro-ful band, and in the open day, he sallied