nothing but enjoyment when they come to see their old granny. To my notion, there's too much knowledge now-a-days stuffed into young heads; and I think they get so grey all the quicker for it. In my young days, when we worked, we worked; when we learned, we learned; and when we played, we played. There was no jumbling up of arithmetic and dolls, or grammar and goodies, then. We learnt our lessons, and had our play afterwards; and I do think, what we did learn, was thoroughly taught and well mastered, though there was no royal road to learning with short cuts. And then we had real fairy tales-the White Cat and Cinderella, and Blue-beard. People can't write such things now-a-days without turning the giants into steam-engines, and explaining all the wonders, as Mr. What 's-his-name does his chemical experiments at the Polytechnic. Indeed, my dear, the fact is, that children are now all so fearfully clever, their elders must be half afraid to speak to them; and the old vulgar proverb, to have anything in it, ought now to

be revised as:- Teach your grand-child how to suck

eggs !'

She practised her own theory, too; and one of our chief delights in paying her a visit, was to hear her old-world tales and ballads. For she used to croon in the sweetest, trembling, pipe in the world, snatches of songs and ballads, like an aged blackbird. Those were such days to be sure not too often; and therefore the more eagerly longed for. We used to be dressed in bib and tucker certainly; but not in things too fine for mortals' daily wear, for she would not tolerate stiff collars and tight frocks in her house. First, we had sponge cake, and tiny wine glasses of old currant wine, so clear and syruppy, that we all had an indistinct tradition it was brewed for Cock Robin's nuptials. Then, if we were very good, we saw her make the pie with her own hands; for that was one of the institutions of the house. The snowy cloth was spread, and the equally white paste-board and tapering ebony rolling-pin set forth in the daintiest order. I never taste cherry-pie now

without a lump in my throat at the recollection. Ah, but they don't know how to make pies now —that art died with my Grandmother. Never since has been made such melting flaky crust, disdaining all soda, lemon, or other mean puffraising inventions-never such just proportion of fruit and sugar, such a delicious mingling of the whole. The delicate china cup put in for the juice, the graceful cutter that shaped such fleurs de lys, and roses for the edge, they are all lost to posterity with the hands that used them. When she rolled up her clear muslin apron for the last time, and sent it down with the pasteboard and rolling-pin, science lost a great light, and, with the last corner of the last of her pies, those delicious dainties became extinct.

Then, when that solemn operation was over, and every sign of it carefully removed, she sat installed in the corner of the sofa, in all the dignity of black silk mittens and brilliant, and emerald hoop rings, and beguiled the time while that ambrosial pie was acquiring a delicate hue in the oven, by tale and song. Many of them

are as lost to us as the departed generations of pies, but some few have been saved from the ravages of time, and these are offered to the young readers of the present day, in the hope that they may, at any rate, take some little interest in this feeble shadow of the dear old lady who lives in our fond memories as "My Grandmother."

TILDORF lies in a retired nook at the foot of a vast mountain, nestled into it like a wallflower in the crevice of an old stone, or a swallow's nest in a hole under the eaves. Thick woods of dark pines clothe the steep sides of the mountain to its summit, save here and there, where laborious toil has succeeded in clearing a space and planting a vineyard. The village, niched irregularly up and down as the need or fancy of the builder devised, overlooks a plateau of land, mapped out into rich corn-fields or luxuriant pastures sloping downwards, through which winds, with a stately curve, the arrowy rushing river, bearing on its broad breast many a heavy-laden barge, or picturesque raft of floating logs.

It is a secluded little spot, for the simple skill