that her labor was little. In that department an old man-servant was her minister, the father of my Peter, who serves me not the less faithfully that we have gathered nuts together in my godmother's hazel-bank. This old butler (I call him by his title of honor, though in truth he had many subordinate offices) had originally enlisted with her husband, who went into the army a youth, though he afterwards married and became a country gentleman, had been his servant abroad, and attended him during his last illness at home. His best hat, which he wore a-Sundays, with a scarlet waistcoat of his master's, had still a cockade in it.

Her husband's books were in a room at the top of a screw staircase, which had scarce been opened since his death; but her own library for Sabbath or rainy days was ranged in a little book-press in the parlor. It consisted, as far as I can remember, of several volumes of sermons, a Concordance, Thomas a'Kempis, Antoninus's Meditations, the Works of the Author of the Whole Duty of Man, and a translation of Boethius; the original editions of the Spectator and Guardian, Cowley's Poems, Dryden's Works (of which I had lost a volume soon after I first came about her house), Baker's Chronicle, Burnet's History of his own Times, Lamb's Royal Cookery, Abercromby's Scots Warriors, and Nisbet's Heraldry.

The subject of the last-mentioned book was my godmother's strong ground; and she could

disentangle a point of genealogy beyond anybody I ever knew. She had an excellent memory for anecdote, and her stories, though sometimes long, were never tiresome; for she had been a woman of great beauty and accomplishments in her youth, and had kept such company as made the drama of her stories respectable and interesting. She spoke frequently of such of her own family as she remembered when a child, but scarcely ever of those she had lost, though one could see she thought of them often. She had buried a beloved husband and four children. Her youngest, Edward, "her beautiful, her brave," fell in Flanders, and was not entombed with his ancestors. His picture, done when a child, an artless red and white portrait, smelling at a nosegay, but very like withal, hung at her bedside, and his sword and gorget were crossed under it. When she spoke of a soldier, it was in a style above her usual simplicity; there was a sort of swell in her language, which sometimes a tear (for her age had not lost the privilege of tears) made still more eloquent. She kept her sorrows, like the devotions that solaced them, sacred to herself. They threw nothing of gloom over her deportment; a gentle shade only, like the fleckered clouds of summer, that increase, not diminish, the benignity of the season.

She had few neighbors, and still fewer visitors; but her reception of such as did visit her was cordial in the extreme. She pressed a little too much, perhaps; but there was so

much heart and good-will in her importunity, as made her good things seem better than those of any other table. Nor was her attention confined only to the good fare of her guests, though it might have flattered her vanity more than that of most exhibitors of good dinners, because the cookery was generally directed by herself. Their servants

lived as well in her hall, and their horses in her stable. She looked after the airing of their sheets, and saw their fires mended if the night was cold. Her old butler, who rose betimes, would never suffer anybody to mount his horse fasting.

The parson of the parish was her guest every Sunday, and said prayers in the evening. To say truth, he was no great genius, nor much a scholar. I believe my godmother knew rather more of divinity than he did; but she received from him information of another sort; he told her who were the poor, the sick, the dying of the parish, and she had some assistance, some comfort for them all.

I could draw the old lady at this moment! -dressed in gray, with a clean white hood nicely plaited (for she was somewhat finical about the neatness of her person), sitting in her straight-backed elbow-chair, which stood in a large window scooped out of the thickness of the ancient wall. The middle panes of the window were of painted glass, the story of Joseph and his brethren. On the outside waved a honeysuckle-tree, which often threw its shade across her book or her work; but

"It

she would not allow it to be cut down. has stood there many a day," said she, "and we old inhabitants should bear with one another." Methinks I see her thus seated, her spectacles on, but raised a little on her brow for a pause of explanation, their shagreen-case laid between the leaves of a silver-clasped family Bible. On one side her bell and snuffbox; on the other her knitting apparatus in a blue damask bag. Between her and the fire an old Spanish pointer, that had formerly been her son Edward's, teased but not teased out of his gravity, by a little terrier of mine. All this is before me, and I am a hundred miles from town, its inhabitants, and its business. In town I may have seen such a figure; but the country scenery around, like the tasteful frame of an excellent picture, gives it a heightening, a relief, which it would lose in any other situation.

Some of my readers, perhaps, will look with little relish on the portrait. I know it is an egotism in me to talk of its value; but over this dish of tea, and in such a temper of mind, one is given to egotism. It will be only adding another to say, that when I recall the rural scene of the good old lady's abode, her simple, her innocent, her useful employinents, the afflictions she sustained in this world, the comforts she drew from another, I feel a serenity of soul, a benignity of affections, which I am sure confer happiness, and I think must promote virtue.

SEPT. 30, 1786.

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES.

No. 1, page 19. Mr. Bickerstaff visits a Friend. For those to whom the touching domestic picture contained in this and the following paper is unfamiliar, it may be well to recall a passage from Mr. Forster's Steele (Historical and Biographical Essays, 1858, ii., 138): "In connection with it, too, it is to be remembered that at this time [1709], as Mr. Macaulay observes in his Essay, no such thing as the English novel existed. De Foe as yet was only an eager politician, Richardson an industrious compositor, Fielding a mischievous school-boy, and Smollett and Goldsmith were not born. For your circulating libraries (the first of which had been established some six years before, to the horror of sellers of books, and the ruin of its ingenious inventor), there was as yet nothing livelier, in that direction, than the interminable Grand Cyrus of Madame de Scudéri, or the long-winded Cassandra and Pharamond of the lord of La Calprenède, which Steele so heartily laughed at in his Tender Husband.'

دو

A "point of war (p. 24) is used by Shakespeare and the Elizabethans for a strain of military music. (See Henry IV., Act iv., Sc. 1.) "John Hickathrift" (p. 25) is generally styled "Thomas" in the "Pleasant and Delightful Histories," which record his adventures. But Sterne also calls him "Jack" in vol. i., ch. xiv. of Tristram Shandy.

No. 2, page 26. - Mr. Bickerstaff visits a Friend (continued). The latter part of this paper was written by Addison. "It would seem [to quote Mr. Forster once more] as though Steele felt himself unable to proceed, and his friend had taken the pen from his trembling hand.” —(Ib., p. 141.)