he suffered through the dangerous illness of our mother. “I have a dim picture in my mind," she says, “of that event. Mamma was in great danger. It must have been in the month of March, I think. There was a great storm of wind and rain; the shutters were shut to keep out the raging of the storm, though it was morning. It was a Sunday morning. Papa gathered us little ones all together in the dining-room, and prayed with us kneeling close around him; he prayed for her. The impression remains on my mind still which was made upon me by seeing the father whom we looked up to as a model of strength and goodness, so strongly moved, and weeping. I believe we thought that only children cried. Our mother was shut away from our sight; a great red curtain, I remember, hung across the archway leading to the bedrooms. This, and his sorrow, filled me

with a mysterious awe."

Harriet Grey, a daughter of his sister Margaretta, was a great favourite with my father. He extended to her much of that grave and tender friendship which he felt for his own daughters. After a visit at Milfield Hill she wrote :—

"EDINBURGH, 1830.

“MY VERY DEAR UNCLE,—I must write to congratulate you on dear aunt's recovery. I always enter into her feelings about you with enthusiasm, and think if anything could reconcile her to frequent illness, it would be having discovered through them how kind and tender a nurse you could be. She has indeed found a friend for better and for worse. I am also pleased that an Englishman, full of business, and taking a deep interest in politics, should be as gentle and as minute in his care for his own family as some little Frenchmen I know. I used to think that I had never

seen a family so much attached in all its members as the Serviers in Paris; but I am happy to find my ideas enlarged, and that I now know a family or two quite as happy and united. Dear Franky is well, and often talks of you all and Charlie. I become more and more attached to her. She is certainly the most good-tempered, obedient, and warmhearted child I ever knew, and I hope she will be quite at home with us. I can scarcely yet trust myself to think of all your delightful family. I had not anticipated so much sorrow at the parting. hope my cousins will not forget me, and that you, dear uncle, forgetting all that was insipid in my society, will remember me only as a niece who, with all her faults, loves you devotedly. As for me, I shall ever remember my long sojourn in Northumberland, and the pleasant rambles we had among its sweet hills and dales.— Ever yours with much affection,

"HARRIET JANE GREY."

He sometimes took his elder boys with him to the meetings of the Highland Society, getting them in after dinner, "quietly, one on each side of him, to hear the speeches." They all inherited his good horsemanship.

FROM HIS WIFE, WHEN HE WAS FROM HOME.

"MILFIELD HILL, Feb., 1831.

"The boys had a glorious hunting day yesterday with the Colonel and Lord Falkland, who seem to have taken a liking for them. George says the Colonel is very goodhumoured and friendly; they had some good galloping. Just after we had dined, Margaret, Mary, and I were looking out and saw a few hunters (all who were not blown) coming over the hedge into our field, and away they came up the field and through Jenny's gate, past the house and up the

cow-loan; first came George on Gaudy, full gallop, looking so elegant and graceful that cousins Margaret and Mary were quite delighted; then after him came Colonel Fitz, riding like a bag of wool, with white trousers over his heels; next came the huntsman, and close after him, little Apple and her rough-rider, John; they kept on up the hill, and when it became steep, John jumped off and ran, pulling Apple after him, and George says they never drew bridle till they killed at Canna Mill. Lord Falkland's horse had tired long before, and the Colonel's horse could not manage the fences, so George thought his horse the best in the field. He says Lord Falkland admires Gaudy, and would like him, but he is a year too young; he said he heard his Lordship remarking to the Colonel upon John's beauty (I mean his face, not his pony)."

John's pony was beautiful, but his face was still more so. His elder brother was tenderly proud of him, and always eagerly recorded the appreciation of strangers in the mother's willing ears. Many are the names and traditions which live in our family still, of horses which were in their turn favourites friends, one might almost say-of the family. This same Apple Grey, a beautiful snow-white pony, lived to a great age, and surely no pony's life was ever so happy. One of my sisters wrote of her death

:

"Poor old Apple was shot to-day by the side of her grave in the wood. They say she died in a moment. Papa could not give the order for execution, but the men took it on themselves, as she could scarcely eat, or rise without help. It was the kindest thing to do. Think of the gallops and tumbles of our young days, and all her wisdom and all her charms! Emmy and I have got a large stone slab

on which Surtees, the mason, has carved 'In Memoriam, Apple,' and I shall beg a young weeping-ash from Beaufront to plant on her grave.

'Her right ear, that is filled with dust,

Hears little of the false or just

now, and if she is gone to the happy hunting-grounds, all the better for her, dear old pet!"

ΟΝ

CHAPTER V.

"O Heaven! I think that day had noble use
Among God's days. So near stood Right and Law,
Both mutually forborne Law would not bruise,
Nor Right deny; and each in reverent awe

Honoured the other."

N the 26th of June, 1830, the unhappy and obstructive King, George IV., died, and the long gloom of Tory domination broke up, like ice-fields when winter is past. I must pass over briefly the two years of excitement which followed, when the country was enduring those mighty throes which brought forth the new era, the year one of the people's liberties. That crisis has had its historians, and can never be forgotten. I have only to record the far-distant echoes, so to speak, of the conflict, which sounded in Northumberland, the county of the great leader of the Reform movement. A few months before the King's death and the entrance of the Whigs into office, he had written a note to my father from his quiet home at Howick, asking, "Do you see any symptoms of the improvement of which the Ministers and their supporters speak so confidently?" A few weeks later he wrote to him from London, "Every other interest is at this moment absorbed in the state of the King's health. The case, as you will probably have concluded from the bulletins, is, I believe, absolutely hopeless. Are there yet