"Why I'm afraid we can hardly attain to such eminence as that, especially on such a subject." "I was thinking so. Oh, I see:--you'll pull your hive about my ears. Well, so be it. Adieu, Harry; I'll send you the books." "Adieu, honest Jack, jolliest of the myrmidons of 'young-eyed Massacre.

LEIGH HUNT.

LITTLE RACHEL.1

In one of the wild nooks of heath land, which are set so prettily amidst our richly timbered valleys, stands the cottage of Robert Ford, an industrious and substantial blacksmith. There is a striking appearance of dingy comfort about the whole demesne, forming as it does a sort of detached and isolated territory in the midst of the uninclosed common by which it is surrounded. The ample garden, whose thick, dusty, quickset hedge runs along the highroad; the snug cottage, whose gable-end abuts on the causeway; the neat court, which parts the house from the long, low-browed shop and forge; and the stable, cart-shed, and piggeries behind, have all an air of rustic opulence: even the clear, irregular pond, half covered with, ducks and geese that adjoins, and the old pollard oak, with a milestone leaning against it, that overhangs the dwelling, seem in accordance with its consequence and character, and give finish and harmony to the picture.

The inhabitants were also in excellent keep ing. Robert Ford, a stout, hearty middleaged man, sooty and grim as a collier, paced backward and forward between the house and the forge with the step of a man of substance -his very leather apron had an air of importance; his wife Dinah, a merry, comely woman, sat at the open door, in an amplitude of cap and gown and handkerchief, darning an eternal worsted stocking, and hailed the passers-by with the cheerful freedom of one well to do in the world; and their three sons, well-grown lads from sixteen to twenty, were the pride of the village for industry and good humour-to say nothing of their hereditary love of cricket. On a Sunday, when they had

1 From Our Village: Sketches of Rural Character and

1

on their best clothes and cleanest faces, they were the handsomest youths in the parish. Robert Ford was proud of his boys, as well he might be, and Dinah was still prouder.

Altogether it was a happy family and a pretty scene; especially of an evening, when the forge was at work, and when the bright firelight shone through the large unglazed window, illumining with its strange, red, unearthly light the group that stood round the anvil; showers of sparks flying from the heated iron, and the loud strokes of the sledge-hammer resounding over all the talking and laughing of the workmen, re-enforced by three or four idlers who were lounging about the shop. It formed a picture, which in a summer evening we could seldom pass without stopping to contemplate; beside, I had a roadside acquaintance with Mrs. Ford, had taken shelter in her cottage from thunder-storms and snow-storms, and even by daylight could not walk by without a friendly "How d'ye do?"

Late in last autumn we observed an addition to the family, in the person of a pretty little shy lass of some eight years old, a fair, slim, small-boned child, with delicate features, large blue eyes, a soft colour, light shining hair, and a remarkable neatness in her whole appearance. She seemed constantly busy, either sitting on a low stool by Dinah's side at needle-work, or gliding about the kitchen, engaged in some household employment for the wide open door generally favoured the passengers with a full view of the interior, from the fully stored bacon-rack to the nicely swept hearth; and the little girl, if she perceived herself to be looked at, would slip behind the clock-case, or creep under the dresser to avoid notice. Mrs. Ford, when questioned as to her new inmate, said that she was her husband's niece, the daughter of a younger brother, who had worked somewhere London-way, and had died lately, leaving a widow with eleven children in distressed circumstances. She added, that having no girl of their own, they had taken little Rachel for good and all; and vaunted much of her handiness, her seamstresship, and her scholarship, how she could read a chapter with the parish clerk, or make a shirt with the schoolmistress. Hereupon she called her to display her work, which was indeed extraordinary for so young a needle-woman; and would fain have had her exhibit her other ac

him.

maid hung down her head, and blushed up to her white temples, and almost cried, and though too frightened to run away, shrank back, till she was fairly hidden behind her

portly aunt; so that that performance was perforce pretermitted. Mrs. Ford was rather scandalized at this shyness; and expostulated, coaxed, and scolded, after the customary fashion on such occasions. "Shamefacedness was," she said. Rachel's only fault, and she be lieved the child could not help it. Her uncle and cousins were as fond of her as fond could be, but she was afraid of them all, and had never entered the shop since there she had been. Rachel," she added, "was singular in all her ways, and never spent a farthing on apples or gingerbread, though she had a bran new sixpence which her uncle had given her for hemming his cravats; she believed that she was saving it to send home."

A month passed away, during which time, from the mere habit of seeing us frequently, Rachel became so far tamed as to behold me and my usual walking companion without much dismay; would drop her little curtsey without colouring so very deeply, and was even won to accept a bun from that dear companion's pocket, and to answer yes or no to his questions.

At the end of that period, as we were returning home in the twilight from a round of morning visits, we perceived a sort of confusion in the forge, and heard loud sounds of scolding from within the shop, mixed with bitter lamentations from without. On a nearer approach, we discovered that the object in distress was an old acquaintance, a young Italian boy, such a wanderer from the Lake of Como as he whom Wordsworth has addressed so beautifully :

-"Or on thy head to poise a show
Of plaster craft in seemly row;
The graceful form of milk-white steed,
Or bird that soared with Ganymede;
Or through our hamlets thou wilt bear
The sightless Milton with his hair
Around his placid temples curled,
And Shakspeare at his sidea freight,
If clay could think and mind were weight,
For him who bore the world!"

He passed us almost every day, carrying his tray full of images into every quarter of the village. We had often wondered how he could find vent for his commodities; but our farmers' wives patronize that branch of art; and Stefano, with his light firm step, his upright carriage, his dancing eyes, and his broken English, was a universal favourite.

At present the poor boy's keen Italian features and bright dark eyes were disfigured by crying; and his loud wailings and southern gesticulations bore witness to the extremity of his distress. The cause of his grief was visible |

in the half empty tray that rested on the window of the forge, and the green parrot which lay in fragments on the footpath. The wrath of Robert Ford required some further explanation, which the presence of his worship instantly brought forth, although the enraged blacksmith was almost too angry to speak intelligibly.

It appeared that his youngest and favourite son, William, had been chaffering with Stefano for this identical green parrot, to present to Rachel, when a mischievous lad, running along the road, had knocked it from the window-sill, and reduced it to the state which we saw. So far was mere misfortune; and undoubtedly if left to himself our good neighbour would have indemnified the little merchant, but poor Stefano, startled at the suddenness of the accident, trembling at the anger of the severe master on whose account he travelled the country, and probably in the darkness really mistaking the offender, unluckily accused William Ford of the overthrow; which accusation, although the assertion was instantly and humbly retracted on William's denial, so aroused the English blood of the father, a complete John Bull, that he was raving, till black in the face, against cheats and foreigners, and threatening the young Italian with whipping, and the treadmill, and justices, and stocks, when we made our appearance, and the storm, having nearly exhausted its fury, gradually abated.

By this time, however, the clamour had attracted a little crowd of lookers-on from the house and the road, amongst the rest Mrs. Ford, and, peeping behind her aunt, little Rachel. Stefano continued to exclaim in his imperfect accent, "He will beat me!" and to sob and crouch and shiver, as if actually suffering under the impending chastisement. It was impossible not to sympathize with such a reality of distress, although we felt that an English boy, similarly situated, would have been too stout-hearted not to restrain its expression. "Sixpence!" and "my master will beat me," intermixed with fresh bursts of crying, were all his answers to the various inquiries as to the amount of his loss, with which he was assailed; and young William Ford, 'a lad of grace,' was approaching his hand to his pocket, and my dear companion had just drawn forth his purse, when the good intentions of the one were arrested by the stern commands of his father, and the other was stopped by the reappearance of Rachel, who had run back to the house, and now darted through the group holding out her own new sixpence her hoarded sixpence-and put it into Stefano's hand!

It may be imagined that the dear child was no loser by her generosity; she was loaded with caresses by every one, which, too much excited to feel her bashfulness, she not only endured but returned. Her uncle, thus rebuked by an infant, was touched almost to tears. He folded her in his arms, kissed her, and blessed her; gave Stefano half a crown for the precious sixpence, and swore to keep it as a relic and a lesson as long as he lived.

MISS MITFORD.

THE THREE AGES.

CHILDHOOD.

"Tis sweet to look on a new blown flower;
To watch the tints of the summer sky;
To lurk in the depths of a sylvan bower,
Lulled by the lone stream's lullaby.

'Tis sweet to view, at the opening day,
The pearls that gem the green-clad earth;
And hear the burst of the song-birds' lay-
The morning hymn of their love and mirth.

'Tis sweet to stand, at the dusky hour, By the pebbly rim of a glassy lake, While myriad stars, in a silent shower, Drop calmly down as a silv'ry flake.

But where's the sight, on the earth or sky,
By the garden bower, or woodland wild,
Where aught so sweet as the heavenward eye,
And fervent look, of a praying child?

The cherub form seems not of this land,
No tenant of earthly mould or clay,
But a stranger-come from the seraph band
On Zion's hill, in the realms of day,

.A dream of light,-a vision of might, -
A starbeam cased in a mortal urn,-
A soul of bliss from spheres of delight,-
An incense breath from the lamps that burn.
Around the throne of the Unseen Power
That ruleth beyond the depths of night,-
A sainted seer of the heavenly dower,
That waits the good in the land of light;

Come here to tell to the earthly mind
Of the hopes that spring where fears begin,
And rend in twain the fetters that bind
Poor man a slave to the ways of sin.

Then smile not thou at its lowly prayer,
Though short its cry for mercy appear;
An angel hand is hovering there,
And He that bled still deigneth to hear.

Round childhood's day shines many a ray,
Of beauteous gleam and of nameless dye;
But the hour the young heart strives to pray
Brings brightest joy to a parent's eye.

YOUTH.

O fairest season in the life of man!
Sweet noontide of his short and chequered day!
Who would not wish to live again that span
Of radiant hopes and feelings, ever gay,

Which round the heart, like sunbeams in the stream,
In many a glad and glittering halo ran!-
Such as of old young poets used to dream
Begirt the brow of her that led the van

Of merry maids, who danced on vine-clad hills
To the soft tinkling music of old Grecian rills.

That morn! the young mind breaks its golden cell, And finds its wings expand o'er trackless air; Oh what a gush of towering fancies swell In billowy madness, and a power that ne'er Would seem to bend beneath misfortune's gale! No new-fledged bird that roams the summer dell Is half so fond of earth's rich flowery valeSo vainly dreams in ceaseless joy to dwell Amid its sunny haunts and smiling flowers, Bathed in the blessed dew of heaven's balmy showers.

The song of birds-the lulling hum of beesThe bleat of lambs-the evening waterfallThe shepherd's pipe-the dulcet summer breezeThe milkmaid's merry lay-commingled, all In soft harmonious cadence charm the ear, And make earth seem but one vast music-hallOne choir of joy-this life a long career Of sweets whereon the heart should never pall: O happy time, O days of careless gleeÓf golden morning dreams-from pain and sorrow free!

But ah! what snares athwart its pathway lie, What fraud is used to lure it from the way Its fond heart seeks beyond yon spangled sky, And chain it under sin's corrosive sway! O youth, beware, for myriad unseen foes By night, by day, their ruthless trick'ries try Thy soul to rifle of its dower on high, And rob thy young heart of its soft reposeIts bed of peace-its hopes of high renownThen leave thee to the world's sneer and desolating frown.

But happy he! who, like that maiden fair, Whom painter's art has reared before our eyes, With willing heart receives a mother's care To lead him wisdom's way, and gain that prize So dearly won-so fraught with love and grace For all to seek, which all may win and share: O who would not this cold world's wiles efface, And, with a will deep-fixed, for ever dare To baffle all the snares that sin has wove, And lose earth's fleeting joy for deathless bliss above?