ken-hearted and forlorn, a second time I sought shelter on her maternal bosom! She first soothed her wayward child, by sharing his griefs; then weaned him from them by her bright example. She had buried husband, sons, and daughters, and stood in the world lonely, but unrepining. Could I, who had but been called on to resign an untasted good, look on her, and refuse to be comforted?

I roused myself to the strife of mutual kindness and good offices. When I was successful, she would tell me I resembled my father; and when her efforts triumphed, I could speak to her of Emma as of a daughter who would have been worthy of her. Surely there are few human ties so tender as that which unites a widowed mother to her widowed son! Both have known joys and griefs, which the other alone can perhaps adequately appreciate-both have just that surplus of chastened and sober feeling to bestow, which the other can afford in

return.

Nine happy, yes! happy years did we pass together; yet, when called to resign her, with all her affections unchilled, and her faculties unimpaired, and her talents undimmed by decay, I gathered from these very circumstances the strength requisite to support the trial, for where could I have found that necessary to enable me to see her the gradual prey of imbecility and decay? It pleased Heaven to spare us both the infliction. In the most literal sense of the beautiful language of Scripture," she fell asleep" -and her waking was doubtless with God!

For a period of perhaps more than forty years-excluding the brief feverish ten passed in the vortex of the busy world-my 25th of December had occasionally been passed under the same hospitable roof. When first its Christmas pies and Christmas gamgols awakened my childish anticipations, they were blended with vague and groundless fears of a stately and somewhat awful lady, whom the sense of her being my mother's bosomfriend, could not entirely divest of terror in the eyes of childhood.

She was one whose tall majestic form and penetrating eye did but reflect the energies within; and if fullgrown folly and titled insignificance

withered under her glance, it is not to be wondered that childhood cowered before it. It was not as now, when the presence of parents only animates and emboldens the revels of their emancipated children. Duty is a word grown obsolete-whether happily or not, remains to be seen. Love, in those days, was shrouded and almost stifled under a cold exterior veil of duty. Circumstances had, perhaps, given added stateliness to Lady Mary's deportment, and assumed sternness to her rule; for, left early a widow with a numerous progeny, she had to act a father's and a guardian's part to seven high-spirited youths, amid whom three lovely daughters grew, half unnoticed, like violets in a stately grove.

When I first joined their festive board, it was surrounded by all its olive branches;-hardy adventurers already launched on life's ocean, and returned to cheer the Christmas fire with tales of wonder from sea and land. The pale and pensive student, shuddering as he heard, and feeling that nature meant him for a man of peace; the rosy sparkling schoolboy, panting with eagerness to share the perils, and partake the joys of active life;-the gentle sisterhood of Graces, listening with rapt attention and varying emotions, legible on each soft fair countenance, to the soldier's foray, and the sailor's watch;—and, lastly, infant urchins like myself, half frightened, half enchanted with what we heard, and escaping from the awful presence of the elders, to re-enact it all-and play at least at men.

No after Christmas fireside boasted the same rich family blessings. One or other gallant boy was ever absent and in peril; and it was the silent tear that dimmed Lady Mary's usually keen blue eye, as it rested on their vacant place, that first knit my heart with filial veneration to my mother's friend. With the necessity, too, for absolute despotism, its foreign assumption gradually wore away. The elder ones became endeared and privileged friends; and the younger, objects of solicitude rather than discipline. More of Lady Mary's leisure could be devoted to her fair daughters, and towards them sternness would have been as impossible as misplaced. The anxious struggle occasioned by an encumbered property gave place to dearly-earned

ease and affluence; and the mother reposed upon her laurels, amid filial gratitude, and public veneration.

I went to school and college. Once only, during that busy period, did I Christmas at Dunbarrow. It was a joyous and festive meeting to appearance, for the band of heroes was nearly full, and the newly ordained and piously dedicated student had been summoned to give the hand of the most bewitching of the Graces to a man deemed worthy of the prize. Few have lived long in the world without learning that wedding laughter is the hollowest of all; but not even the thoughtlessness of youth could then render our gaiety spontaneous and sincere. Louisa was going away, probably for life, and with a stranger. Was not this enough to make a mother tremble, and sisters weep, and the very little children hang about her, and forget their gambols? My sympathy, for it was no more, though I was now a susceptible lad of eigh teen, found vent in a dislike to Mr B- which circumstances sadly justified. When Louisa returned to Dunbarrow, it was an early blighted flower, withered by unkindness and misfortune!

From that time, a long period intervened before I again joined the circle. My father died, and my mother removed from the family-seat in the same county with Dunbarrow, to preside over my sister's education in town, and cheer with her presence and counsel my legal studies. We returned no more to -shire, till my blighted hopes, and her repeated losses, made retirement precious to us both; and friendship, as well as a thousand pleasingly painful associa tions, bade us seek it in our old neighbourhood.

I shall not soon forget the Christmas that succeeded our return, after an absence of thirteen years. Lady Mary's erect and stately form had shrunk in dimensions, like the halls I once thought boundless. Her step was tottering and feeble, and her powerful mind, though unimpaired, had lost the light of memory to guide its path, and wandered without rudder or compass on the ocean of the past and present.

Her heart, however, was warm as ever, and clung the more tenaciously to early friendships, that much that

was more recent eluded its grasp. My mother was hailed with transportbut by that maiden-name, which, for. thirty long years, had not saluted her ear; and it was among her many causes for thankfulness, that Heaven had sent her, as a ministering angel, to cheer the benighted soul of her early friend with glimpses of youthful affection and joy. There was nothing painful or humiliating in Lady Mary's abstraction from the things of to-day and yesterday ;-those of fifty years back were related with her characte ristic energy and acuteness. She alone, of all who exceed their usual span, could people the desolate past with friends long buried and forgotten by their own nearest and dearest. She alone consigned all the painful visitations of the present to happy and merciful oblivion; and gradually learnt to dwell chiefly on a futurity which was not of earth, but heaven.

Grandchildren were now growing up to supply breaches in the circle of her goodly sons and blooming daughters, whose few survivors were now way-worn pilgrims in the various paths of life. These, fondly misled by similarity of name or personal resemblance, she would frequently identify with the "beautiful and brave,” over whom she had once wept; retaining, through all her aberrations, such a vague sense of their affinity, as made their presence and attentions delightful, though their absence was happily unmarked. I felt as if on the narrow isthmus between two states of existence, when I looked on Lady Mary's venerable form, and heard her discourse with my mother on events as present, which had become the province of history; and when, without a contemporary of my own to break the spell, I saw, on the other hand, a race of rosy infants (the orphans of long-lost sons) rising to usurp the places which I thought it seemed as yesterday since their sires had occupied.

These feelings have long since passed away. My mother was mercifully first summoned from her soon unconscious survivor, who, with the snows of near ninety winters on her head, looked like some hoary peak, whose base the storms of a century have slowly but surely undermined. It fell at length-but gently, as the ripe grain before the sickle. We laid her

mortal remains beside her friends, in the lovely woodland chapel sacred to her race; and rejoiced that her spirit was now presenting unfettered, at a throne of grace, the prayers which had long faltered on her aged lips, and the praises which had formed the chief solace of her closing ear. It was on Christmas day that her eyes first opened on the world she inhabited so long. It was about Christmas that she bade it adieu; and when the first rays of that hallowed morning beamed on the sweet spot where slept the mother of generations, I fancied they rested with a softer smile on the graves of those whom, "lovely in their lives," death had not long divided!

Such friendships could not fail to be hereditary; and I have long given to the generation that embellishes Dunbarrow a filial place in my heart. Sometimes I dream, like her who is no more; and see in the gay gallant soldier, and gentle soft-eyed maiden, the parents whom they meetly represent. Sometimes I feel like an interloper in a circle which has but a traditional knowledge of my joys and sorrows; but that very circumstance has lent them sacredness, and if kindness, filial kindness, and tender sympathy, can cheer the grey-haired man, they are and have been completely

mine.

Under their influence I often enter cheerily into the sober and chastened mirth which best suits the feelings and character of my children at Dunbarrow. They have been early mourners, but not as without hope,' and pursue the even tenor of their pious and duteous path, in all the sunshine which Heaven can shed on what is, at best, a pilgrimage.

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When sitting around their social and domestic Christmas fire, I often find amusement in the changes which even I have witnessed on the surface of society, and the character of its recreations. When I first knew Dunbarrow, it was, as now, an old-fashioned irregular mansion, capacious as the hearts of its owners, and hospitable as the times they lived in. The hall, with its sculptured ceiling, rich in scriptural and heraldic devices, remains unaltered; and the same grim visages frown over our heads as we demolish Christmas pies of puny modern dimensions. But then, my lady's parlour! It puzzles me to this day to reVOL. XXIII.

member how all the guests who surrounded the ample board, managed to find even standing room within its Lilliputian precincts. And yet it had afforded scope even to the hooped and furbelowed generation which preceded!

They enjoyed it, however, unencumbered by those ponderous pieces of furniture which usurp the dimensions even of our stately drawingrooms. No grand pianos, loaded bookcases, or claw-tables, redolent of literature and the arts, adorned the cedar parlour of Dunbarrow ;-the reason was obvious, they were not invented, nor could they, if invented, have got in, nor if got in, could they have stood there. To this day I recognize, with a degree of indignation, in a forlorn and neglected passage, the inlaid cabinet which formed the glory of that sanctum sanctorum ; but whose China pagodas, and fairy cups and saucers, have long since gone to swell the store of some antiquarian collector. This cabinet, a fly-table, capable of containing, with management, two bags for knotting, a fire-screen-whose gigantic and non-descript flowers, might have been worshipped as resembling nothing on earth beneath-and some chairs of the same elegant design, whose size and ponderosity chiefly confined them to the wall-formed, as far as I recollect, the only furniture of the apartment; while its stamped leather hangings had contracted, from age and their Eastern origin, a mingled mustiness and perfume, which it gladdened my nostrils to recognize lately in a Burmese letter of compli

ment.

The first happy evenings I had spent at Dunbarrow were passed in that little parlour; and when, on my return from College, I found that Lady Mary's favourite son had, with difficulty, achieved the erection of the large new drawing-room, I own I entered into the old lady's feelings of regret and dissatisfaction. The room had too, that year, the waste, uncomfortable air of one scarce fully inhabited, and the marriage of Louisa, which was then celebrated, contributed to leave an unfavourable impression on my mind.

Other, and more auspicious weddings, however, had redeemed its character, and ere my mother and I revisited Dunbarrow, the cedar parlour had been transformed into a green

C

house of gay exotics; and the old lady, like a stately transplanted evergreen, sat amid the flowers of a new soil and atmosphere. There was something in the new room very attractive to this rising generation. Its walls were covered with a gay Indian paper, whose birds of gorgeous plumage had called forth the infant wonder, and exercised the opening faculties, of all the rosy tribe. A spacious table groaned with choice prints, and books especially written for childhood, affording a feast of reason very different from the meagre fare which the well-thumbed and solitary picture Bible held out, on high days, and holidays, to our infant optics. Dissected maps were eagerly adjusted by unbreeched geographers-and the awful responsibilities of chess lent premature gravity to warriors and statesmen in embryo.

These intellectual toys have now long since given place to the elegant accomplishments and varied resources of modern youth. The harp of Erin, and the guitar of Spain, blend their tones with lays of many lands; and while the family concert sweetly beguiles the winter evening, I see the playful creature, who, in form, feature, and character, represents the youngest and most fortunate of the graces, stealing the portraits of the whole rapt musicians, and transferring them to paper, with a rapidity which, fifty years ago, would have been ascribed to magic. The theft is discovered-the laugh goes round-and a kiss from the brother, whose martial figure is so prominent in the group, is the punishment!

It is always a painful effort that transplants me, on the last day of the expiring year, from Dunbarrow, with its youthful dreams, its tender recollections, and its "sober certainty of waking bliss," to the anarchy and universal suffrage with which a troop of wild and lawless boys and girls are every year gradually overpowering the obsolete despotism of my cousin Jack Thornley's earlier sway. Whoever for the first time hears Jack and his stentorian sons, and shrill-voiced daughters, all talking at once, feels inclined to think that Chaos is come again," -and certainly concludes them to be all quarrelling; whereas, no family, differing, as they do on every minor affair of life, can possibly be on beter terms on all essential matters.

Jack, a little older than myself, was my comrade at school and college; fought my way through a thousand scrapes in both, and, being one of the best creatures alive, such a friendship as can subsist, independent of one congenial point in our characters, has always been kept up between us. Jack, who was, like myself, a younger brother, owed to the good offices of my mother, the Government situation, which enabled him to rear and support, though in comparative obscurity, the offspring of a marriage of consummate and characteristic imprudence; and now that Jack has succeeded to the family estate, I verily believe he could not enjoy it, if her son did not grace his board much oftener than his recluse habits and quiet disposition render agreeable.

Among the many sacrifices which a man of common good-nature is called upon to make, custom has hardly reconciled me to sit up till past twelve at Thornley, to see in the new year, while the obsequies of the old one are celebrated with a noise which may set at defiance the howl of an Irish wake, or the jabber of a Jew's synagogue. Noise seems here an essential element of happiness, nay even of existenceand the Eolian harps that whisper peace at Dunbarrow, are exchanged for a perpetual peal of alarum bells at Thornley. The contrast, in other respects, is not less sudden and striking. Hospitality at Dunbarrow is rather felt than seen. Meals seen to come and go by magic; and the minor details of life are lost in the harmonious result of the whole. But at Thornley everything is matter of discussion, from the fate of empires to the ingredients of a sauce; and a stranger is often led, erroneously, to feel himself unwelcome, from the debates to which his accommodation and entertainment give rise.

Breakfast passes amid stormy anticipations of the morning's amusement, when project succeeds project like waves in a troubled sea, and the forenoon is half spent before some philosophic stranger pours oil on the waters by his neutral and eagerly adopted suggestions. A party of young people, endowed with health and high spirits, would generally contrive in the end to be happy-but Jack likes every one to be happy in his own way, and by dictating the

mode of felicity, usually throws down the apple of discord. A general revolt against papa's tyranny is sue ceeded by the splitting of parties before alluded to. Fishing is voted a bore-shooting a nuisance, and coursing barbarous, in proportion as the several pastimes come recommended by parental authority. The out-voted grow sullen, and the victors clamorous-the sisters side with either party, as inclination or partiality prompts and even the passive languid mother, whose existence amid such an element seems miraculous-when referred to as an umpire, adds, by her uninterested verdict, new ardour to the combatants. The young men at length separate, to pursue their joint or separate pastimes; the girls debate about riding or walking till the time for both is past. They walk when they should be dressing-dinner is on the tableJack sits with his watch in his hand fretting the storm bursts, and the first course passes amid a chorus of scolding from papa, and recrimination among the culprits themselves.

There is something wonderfully pacific in a good dinner-and by the time the cloth is removed, all parties are in high good-humour, ready to devise the amusements of the evening. With the help of narrations of the day's sport from the lads, and some twenty times told tales of Jack's youth, I sometimes get the debate adjourned to the drawing-room; and that it does not languish there, a pretty thin partition, and ears too acute for my own happiness, generally convince me, were the clamorous appeals with which our entrance is hailed, ever wanting.

There is, in truth, no great variety of evening resources at Thornley. Few books are to be found except the Sporting Magazine and the last novel -and the piano is chiefly valued as a substitute for the fiddle. Dancing is a nightly expedient to kill time and drown clamour; but who shall play, always gives rise to a brisk contest; and the choice of the dancers is matter of life and death. Cards succeed, to relieve the heels at the expense of the head, and the game, whatever it is, was surely invented at Babel!

Such, without much exaggeration, is a picture of every day's tumultuous existence at Thornley-and yet father and mother, boys and girls, are all

worthy creatures, and would go through fire and water for each other. Much of the evil must be ascribed to the bluster with which Jack, from their infancy, covered his lack of authority; and the utter incapacity of a mother, weak in health and intellect, to restrain the high spirits of a brood of stout urchins, who scrambled as they best might for very short commons and scanty education. The unexpected possession of affluence came too late to afford polish-while it gave sudden scope to a host of ill-regulated desires and incompatible wishes. My young friends at Thornley are like children in a well-furnished toy-shop; they want everything at once, and don't well know what they want-and poor Jack is as bad as any of them.

His second son, whom, as senior wrangler of the family, he deemed eminently fitted for the bar, will be nothing but a cornet of dragoonswhile his eldest, whom he would gladly inoculate with military ardour, prefers the otium cum dignitate of his paternal mansion. His schemes for his daughters have been equally discomfited, by the youngest and prettiest being married before all her elder sisters-and to whom? A Nabob and a Whig!-two characters which Jack holds in nearly equal abhorrence.

It is impossible not to smile at the mingled emotions which Jack feels when Christmas brings Mrs her diamonds, her barouche and four, and her Whig husband, to Thornley. How he writhes when the Nabob sends away, untasted, his mother-inlaw's most elaborate curries, and makes faces at his father's West India Madeira! How the pollution of his breakfast table by the Morning Chronicle turns his toast to wormwood, and the sentiments of his radical son-inlaw, his tea into gall! Nay, how the very languor and nonchalance which so often provoked him in his own wife, and which Fanny inherits from her, appear, to his jaundiced eyes, the effect of her connexion with the sneering and supercilious Indian

His sneers and impertinence have always the good effect of putting me in Christian charity with the whole family. They reconcile me to all their good-humoured sparring, and openhearted roughness of deportment. My Toryism becomes ultra, as I support Jack in politics. I beat the bushes