the formation of catalogues of historical materials existing in England-catalogues containing a brief analysis of the documents they embraced; whereas the plan adopted was that of printing the documents themselves; or, rather, this was attempted, for the task proved impossible. In 1830, the publication of the correspondence of the reign of Henry VIII. began, was brought down to 1852, by which time eleven quarto volumes had appeared. There are seven hundred folio volumes of manuscripts belonging to that same reign. Who has a clue put into his hand to find the way through these manuscript catacombs, may well bless Mr Tytler's memory. We, with our lack of Dryasdust tendencies, turn away from them with a certain sense of relief, to the pleasant glimpses Miss Tytler affords us of family-life. Charming people have always charming servants. The Tytlers transported to London, spite of Sydney Smith's humorous denunciations, their Scotch furniture and an old Scotch woman-Allen. They could not get on without Allen. No wonder. The other day,' said Miss Tytler to Sydney Smith, 'we desired her to buy a large earthen pan to keep the bread in-she returned in high indignation. "Would you believe it, leddies! I asked in ane o' the shops if they had a big brown pig for keeping our bread, and no ane o' them could make out what I meant. O but they are a far-back nation! And when I priced a haddock this morning in the fish-shop, they telt me eighteenpence. I thought I would hae fainted." Allen was evidently a thorough patriot, and had her misgivings about English things in general. The house in Devonshire Place might look 'all very weel;' she is not to be taken in. She can see · that, in point o' substantiality, it's naething like what we hae left.' She discerns 'a hantle o' things that will soon need to be repaired.' And having been told that the houses in London are only built to last so many years, 'only hopes we hae nae connected ourselves wi' a frail tenement.' Frail or not, it was a happy home. Mr Tytler's enchanting playfulness made his every return to it from the State Paper Office or elsewhere a very rapture to his children. Spite of his engrossing pursuits, of the irreparable loss his heart had known, there was ever about him a 'spirit of delight,' a healthy pleasure in little things-the buoyant child surviving in the man,' which is one of Heaven's choicest gifts, and goes indeed further, perhaps, than any other towards brightening everyday-life and insuring affection. But we must not omit to notice what Mr Burgon impressively conveys, that Tytler's true life was spent neither in the State Paper Office nor among his relatives and friends. It was a hidden thing. So religious, so cheerful, so useful, so happy a career would leave us nothing to regret, did we not find that excessive application impaired bodily health, and led to a slight paralytic seizure two years before the close of his great work in 1843. In 1844, a letter from Sir Robert Peel announced that a pension of L.200 per annum had been granted to the laborious historian, who forwards the welcome intelligence in his own playful way to Mr Burgon; and we would willingly have quoted this letter, as well as many of those to his children, had our limits allowed it. In 1845, Tytler went into second nuptials with a lady he had long known, 'of great personal attractions, fine abilities, and many accomplishments.' He was at this time contemplating a History of the Reformation; and thus, with unimpaired devotion to study, and a renewal of domestic happiness, his life seemed about to brighten into a second summer. But the incessant labours of years past had not been pursued with impunity. When will good men learn that, with regard to our physical health, it is decreed that as a man soweth, so also he shall reap? When will their conscience plead for the more strict observance of the great laws that apply to the care of these temples of the soul, and denounce their violation as disobedience to the will of God concerning us? Tytler's physical and mental energies broke down suddenly and completely. The remaining years were years of wandering from place to place in the vain search for health; of inaction and despondency, over which it were painful to dwell. He died in 1849. Our short sketch can convey little notion of the charm of the character the biographer has so well portrayed; nor can a pen-and-ink outline give much idea of a Vandyck. But no one can, we think, have had even thus much insight into the nature of the book, without heartily agreeing with Mr Burgon that the life of a good man may be more instructive, and better deserving of attention, than many a more stirring biographical record. BENONI. SWEET earth, that holds my brightest prize, Be wept upon by gentle skies! Blest grave, that keeps the lovely thing, From his sweet dust let violets spring.' Dear winds, that sweep the tiny bed, Breathe lulling music o'er his head. Hush thy wild voice of fear, great storm! Fright not the little sleeping form. Beat not the turf to cause him pain; Weep quiet tears, soft summer rain ! Weave thou a fairy shroud, dear snow, For the bright flower that sleeps below! Drop richly here, sweet sunset light, And dress my boy in raiment bright. Green leaves make whisper o'er his rest, O gentle water, running near, Murmur sweet comfort to his ear. Build here thy nest, O ringdove mild, Talk softly to my lonely child; Dear dove, make, too, a plaintive moan, For the sad mother left alone. O white-winged angels, softly bear My darling up heaven's golden stair! Dear God, who lov'st the little child, Take to thyself my undefiled! Sweet Christ, who hear'st the widow's cry, Make haste to hear me, lest I die ! J. B. Printed and Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, 47 Paternoster Row, LONDON, and 339 High Street, EDINBURGH. Also sold by WILLIAM ROBERTSON, 23 Upper Sackville Street, Dublin, and all Booksellers. No. 284. OF POPULAR LITERATURE Science and Arts. CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBER S. SATURDAY, JUNE 11, 1859. OLD LONDON SHOPS AND SHOPKEEPERS. WHEN 'Ogier le Danois,' as the ancient romance tells us, returned from his two hundred years' sojourn in Faëryland to the court of his old lady-love, the French queen, we read how he stood all amazed and utterly bewildered-not at the new objects he saw around him, not at the changes which two hundred years, we should have thought, must have made in everything, but only at the unaccustomed faces that looked so wonderingly into his own. Only by the absence of those features which of yore he had so loved to look upon, only by the many strange and marvelling eyes that gazed upon him, did the aged Danish hero discover that more than six generations had passed away, and all that he had loved had long been dust. A strange romance of two hundred years does this seem to us. Only think of a sober citizen of the Protectorate walking along the Cheapside of to-day; only imagine an Ironside pausing before the Horse Guards, or visiting the United Service Club! Nay, reduce the long period one-half, take the hundred years of the Sleeping Beauty, and picture to yourself the wigged and ruffled gentleman of George II.'s reign, with his views of Mr Pitt's ministry, and French policy, and the Pretender, and the battle of Minden, riding along Regent Street-what street could that be? and on the top of an Atlas omnibus! Or the lady with flowered brocade and little chip-hat, taking her wandering way along St Paul's Churchyard, or down King William Street, seeking in vain after Great Eastcheap and Crooked Lane-where smuggled French fans were once sold, as well as bird-cages—and looking anxiously around, almost expecting to find that the Monument itself had taken its departure too! But wherefore go back a hundred years? Reduce the period to half, to less than half, and still changes sufficient to have scared the venerable sojourner in Faëryland out of his wits, might 'Ogier le Danois' have found in the streets of London. So I thought, passing along Cornhill the other day, impeded by alterations and 'improvements,' which seem as though they would never come to an end; and I thought on the changes that had passed over it since those Saxon times when the hill received its name from the Quern,' the mill that crowned its green summit. Not one of the most suggestive of London thoroughfares is Cornhill: no graceful cross ever reared its delicate pinnacles there, no 'fayre conduyte' gushing forth sweet water daily, and on high-days and holidays red wine; never did royal procession pass that way, scarcely ever civic; still Cornhill has its memories. Here-after 'the Quern,' PRICE 1d. we suppose, had been pulled down-stood the mansion of Reginald de Cornhill, that sheriff to whom King John and his son addressed so many precepts, commanding him to provide luxuries on a right royal scale for the Christmas or Whitsuntide feasts-the many pounds of costly spices, the fifty pounds of pepper, the hundredweight of almonds, and the thousand ells of linen' for table-cloths! What became of Reginald de Cornhill's mansion, we know not; but we next find the locality had become a general mart for 'household stuff' and apparel; and that towards the end of the same century, Henry Waleys, the lord mayor, with laudable zeal, built a structure called 'the Tunne,' which supplied the inhabitants with a double advantage, it being both a conduit and a 'cage' for disorderlies. The necessity for the latter, alas! seems to have been soon apparent, for during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Cornhill had but a bad name. Much stolen property, if undiscoverable elsewhere, was to be found here; and Lydgate, in his very curious poem of London Lyckpenny, tells us that here he discovered his hood, 'set to sale, other stolen goods among,' which had been snatched from his head at Westminster. Towards the close of the fifteenth century, Cornhill seems to have improved; and when, in the following century, Sir Thomas Gresham chose that locality for the site of his famous 'Bourse,' and royalty deigned to visit it, its character rose. Then substantial citizens took possession of their little shops, and their tall apprentices cried aloud: 'What do you lack?' and from generation to generation, still they kept to their little shops; and even when the great fire of London swept them all away, and there certainly was space enough to build larger, still the taste for little shops continued. Those little low-browed shops-what a contrast to the lofty plate-glass windowed 'establishments' towering four and five stories high! What would the hooded fathers of the city,' some five or six hundred years ago, have said to them? What would the sober citizens of Elizabeth's days-nay, what would our own grandfathers, accustomed as their forefathers to little shops and homeliest of fittings up, have said too? forefathers; and that their supply of fruit, too, was far more abundant than might have been supposed. Apples, pears, cherries, currants, gooseberries, were in common use in the twelfth century; and peaches, quinces, medlars, and apricots, among the higher classes; while there were few of the better class of houses during the middle ages with a sunny wall against which a vine was not trained. commodities kept a schoppe, homely as it was; for, from the ancient records of London, we find that fish, meat, and bread were always sold in open market. Thus, Fish Street Hill and Old Fish Street still mark the site of the old London fish-markets, even from Saxon times; and there the 'stock-fishmonger' sold his baconed herrings' and dried stock-fish to the lower classes during 'Black Lent;' and his pickled barbel and porpoise, and perhaps sturgeon, But where were the 'schoppes,' and what was sold to the wealthier; while the fishmonger proper spread in them? Well, good reader, taking you by the hand, out on his ample board mackerel, whiting, mullet, and leading you through London streets-London the highly-prized Thames salmon-unattainable streets five or six centuries ago-need I tell you there dainty now-and the huge conger eel, that chief deli- were many articles, in common use now, for which cacy of the convent feast. We may remark in you might look in vain. Tea and coffee, cabinet-ware, passing that our forefathers were remarkably well fancy stationery, of course you would not expect to supplied with fish. In the lists preserved by worthy find; nor glass, nor china; but it is curious to note Master Stow of the various kinds sold in the thirteenth how many things there are for which even the poorest century, we find every kind now sold; and although send to a shop in the present day, that during the taste which could fancy 'porpoise' seems coarse, the middle ages, were made at home. Candles, both still, we find our forefathers were also extremely fond wax and tallow-except those of beautiful white of roach, dace, and smelts. The chief market which or coloured wax, called 'Paris candles'-were of supplied old London with meat was that which has home manufacture; so was soap, when required; but survived every one of its less ancient competitors the housewives of the middle ages, like their descendNewgate Market. It is suggestive enough to walk ants in many parts of the country, chiefly used lye into that close, crowded, provision-crammed little made from wood-ashes. Brooms and such-like bousequadrangle, and remember that full seven centuries hold appliances were also home-made, and the ago, ere half the capitals of modern Europe had coarser kinds of linen cloth; for weaving as well as existence, this market, beside St Nicholas of the spinning was a female domestic employment. Still, Shambles, near the New-gate-it extended, however, the streets displayed a goodly array of schoppes,' not more towards Westcheap-had its regulations for only along the main thoroughfares, but in the less buyer and seller, its penalties for 'forestalling and frequented streets. In the curious list of property regrating;' and that one of the earliest London belonging to the almonry' of St Paul's, and which ballads represents the butchers standing there in bears the date of 1345, we find 'houses, with shops their blue frocks, with pole-axe in hand, selling adjoining,' in Bread Street; and in Sermon Lane, their meat. The ancient market for bread is still 'three shops;' and the rent for these 'tribus designated by the name Bread Street; and here the schoppis' is the large sum of six shillings per annum bakers brought their bread, hot from the oven, in each! Multiplied, to bring the sum to its present tumbrils, or baskets, and took their standings in the value, this would be only L.4, 10s. apiece; these open street. Very dainty were our London forefathers must, therefore, have been the mere wooden booths as to their bread. There were numerous kinds of the before alluded to. But even along the chief thoroughfiner sort-cocket, simmel, wastel-the last, so well fares, down to the days of Queen Elizabeth, such known by name, was, we think, sweet, and frequently were the shops; and on the slanting board in front, flavoured with spice or saffron. But the other kinds the goldsmith of Westcheap, and in after-times, of were not mere huge loaves, although white-the Ludgate, placed his tall drinking-cups, and his delireader will remember the many old sayings which refer cately chased salt-cellars, and the enamelled spiceto the eating of brown bread as a most severe priva- plate, and brooches and clasps of costliest workmantion-but fancy bread, and in a number of really ship; and along the 'Mercery' the mercer displayed pretty shapes. Indeed, so general was this taste for rich damasks and velvets, and precious 'gold baudedelicate bread among our forefathers, that in above a kin;' and the 'Milaner,' or haberdasher of those score of Saxon and early English illuminated manu- days, his miscellaneous collection of inlaid knives, and scripts that we have looked over, we have never once gold-wrought purses, and broidered gloves, and hawks' found either the huge loaf or the slice of bread. At bells of filigreed silver. No wonder that the prothe guest-table, the little roll, round or shuttle-prietor and his "prentices tall' walked constantly up shaped, is placed beside each plate; and in a marvel- and down in front, keeping guard over this precious lous illumination of Elijah fed by the ravens, his store. feathered purveyors are represented with what very much resembles the modern French roll. In passing, we may remark that poultry and vegetables were also sold in the streets-the former in the markets, but the latter from street to street. The supply of poultry was large; and every kind, except the turkey, was obtainable. That bird's place was, however, well supplied by the peacock, which, so far from being, as has been generally supposed, an aristocratic dish, was sold in the London market as early as the thirteenth century, and very probably earlier. There has been great misapprehension as to our forefathers' scanty supply of vegetables; but in one of the most interesting portions of the late Mr Turner's work on Domestic Architecture in England, from the Conquest to the End of the Thirteenth Century-his account of our horticulture at this early period-this notion is thoroughly disproved. From contemporary documents, he proves that every vegetable now in common use, except the cucumber, and of course the potato, was well known to our It could not be because our forefathers were but half-civilised, as we have been gravely told, that they occupied such homely 'schoppes.' With the beautiful conduit of Westcheap, and the still more beautiful cross constantly before their eyes; with the fair windows of the chapel of St Thomas reflecting the sunlight, surely the wealthy traders of Goldsmith's Row and the Mercery might have managed to construct a comfortable shop with glass windows; but they evidently did not care to do so. Good wine needs no bush' was a favourite proverb with them; and we think that they really considered that the beautiful and costly goods they proffered for sale required no setting off. The plate-glass window, the brass fittings, the French-polished counter of the nineteenth century, we doubt if they would have cared for; and, indeed, the utter trash sometimes to be seen within these splendid shop-windows would have made them stare. 'Flowers, 2d. a spray, heaped up behind a square of glass that could scarcely have cost less than twenty guineas! business. Forty-two pounds is the amount of the whole Towards the close of the fifteenth century, John Wood, citizen and goldsmith, caused a row of houses, richly decorated, to be built at the upper end of Westcheap for the brethren of his guild. But here, although quaint ornaments covered each story, and the lattice-windows extended along the whole width of the house, each shop was unglazed; and the pent-pair; one pair of these is charged for, but against the house, from whence hung the sign, alone protected the precious store from the weather. Perhaps our forefathers' love of fresh air might also have some share in continuing this fashion of unglazed shopwindows; for even after the fire of London, and when these tall, red brick-houses in Cheapside were built on the site of the Mercery, the shops, although intended for some of the chief city traders, were made open, exactly as though for a fishmonger. It has often been remarked how long old habits and old customs linger in remote places; for our own part, we have often remarked how persistingly old customs linger among inhabitants who have been long settled in cities-as though the antiquity of the place communicated its influence to those who had long dwelt there; and thus has it doubtless been that generation after generation of London traders went on quietly in their little unglazed shops, keeping to the thrifty motto, Keep your shop, and your shop will keep you,' and looking forward to the time when they should retire from business; perchance to a country-house, there to enjoy the 'otium cum dignitate' of the citizen a hundred years ago, that of smoking a comfortable pipe with an old friend in the little summer-house perched on the wall. Very slowly indeed did the glazed shop-window make its appearance. An aged relative of our own well remembers some eighty years ago being taken to a first-rate gloveshop in Sweetings Alley for gloves; she used to tell, when remarking upon the costly fittings-up of modern shops, how this was a mere wooden booth with a penthouse; and behind the wooden counter the proprietor, wearing his hat, and well wrapt up in winter, used to stand, while a broad bench fixed against the wall was the only accommodation for his customers. This was the genuine 'schoppe' of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; but scarcely superior were the booksellers' shops in St Paul's Churchyard and Little Britain, with the broad shelving board in front, on which the newest publications of the seventeenth and the earlier part of the eighteenth centuries were laid. A pleasant arrangement this for the poor scholar, who might thus, like Alton Locke,' glance at a book which the glass-window would have effectually kept from him. Perhaps the old fashion of the unclosed window lingered latest in this vicinity of any. Even some twenty or thirty years ago, most of the clothiers' shops in Cloth Fair were open to wind and weather. Among the earliest traders who adopted shop improvements, were the mercers and haberdashers; but what they gained in outward appearance, they must have well-nigh lost in the deteriorated appearance of their goods. How dull must the scarlets and orange-colours have looked, how faded the lilacs, behind those thick dingy, green glass panes, enclosed in their clumsy wooden frames. The reader may see the little shop of some hundred years ago and its wigged proprietor to the very life' in Mulready's pleasant Choosing the Wedding-gown.' And just such a shop was Lavie and Garth's, at the Blackamoor's Head, Cheapside,' when, in the year 1758, the young lady purchased her wedding-dress of white enamelled ducape,' as the bill, yellow with age, in its faded ink, before me records, with flourished capitals, and a marvellous feat of penmanship intended to typify received.' Those mean-looking shops, not worthy even to stand afar off in some by-street of the present day, did, however, a good Well, this politeness, formal as it was, was pleasant; and as past times were not go-ahead times, but the buyer bought, and the seller sold, with due deliberation, there was time for the low bow, or the courtesy, and the quiet remark about the weather, and some opinions about the spring-fashions too; and thus the purchase of half a yard of 'book-muslin' might fill up a pleasant half-hour; or the choice of a ribbon occupy-interspersed with a little gossip-almost an hour. People certainly must have taken both shopping and shop-keeping fair and softly in those good old times; for how deliberately did the old couple-the last of the ancient shopkeepers, I think they must have been-whose shop was the first I ever entered, welcome their customers, and inquire what they wished for, and open the drawer, or take down the box, while a modern white-neckclothed assistant, in some Crystal Palace Emporium,' would have sold half-a-dozen 'desperate bargains.' What contrast was that little, low shop, nestling under the old churchwall, like a martin's nest, to any of modern times! Some eight feet wide, it was with its little window of greenish glass, and its little counter of painted deal, and the old man in a bob-wig and brown coat, and his wife in a clear-starched muslin cap, bound round with a blue ribbon, and her gown of brownish colour, and the neckerchief fastened with the little gold pin-a quiet, worthy couple, who welcomed you with a pleasant smile, and fetched a chair out of the parlour for you, though you might only have called in for two rows of pins, or to match a skein of silk. How leisurely, after you were duly seated, would they put on their spectacles, and after some passing remark on the weather, at length ask what should they have the pleasure of serving you with. There was not much to serve, one might have thought, in that little shop, for small show was there in the little window. Some half-dozen pieces of galloon, some tapes peeping out of their dark-blue papers, pins in shining rows, some silk handkerchiefs, and a little shawl, hung cornerwise, to the serious darkening of the already dark shop. Still, somehow, there were few things you might ask for but from some unsuspected nook or corner they were forthcoming. It was a pleasant sight to me, as I sat on the counter, while my nurse, dear good Susan, had a pleasant bit of gossip with the old people, to see a whole drawerful of ribbons taken, as it seemed to me, out of the wall, or a roll of flannel produced from under the counter, though almost as large as the counter itself. But one day, what a beautiful sight was provided for me from the inmost recesses of that magical counter! How well do I remember the old lady stooping down, and drawing forth from that inex haustible receptacle a huge wash-leather bundle. Dingy enough, unattractive enough was it outside; but oh! when the bundle was opened, and silks of every shade and colour were spread out before me; and the coy sun, who did not too often visit that little shop, peeped in, giving a brighter tinge to the greens and the blues, and intensifying the rose-colours and crimsons -what a vision of fair colours' was that-what a feast for the wondering eyes of the child not three years old! It seemed as though the rainbow itself had been brought down, to be not only looked at, but to be touched and handled-to become a child's very plaything! Never has that vision of fair colours' faded from my mind; and heartily do I join with Mr Ruskin in his most eloquent denunciation of all drabs and stone-colours, and browns of every shade. And that worthy old couple-there they continued, almost until the introduction of plate-glass windows, quite contented in their little shop, and laying by money, too, even although some years afterwards a large new shop-no, emporium,' for so the handbills, with a splendid vignette at the top, displaying bales of Irish linen, and rolls of silk, bound together with wreaths of roses, designated it-was opened hard by. Marvellously were the two shop-windows decoratedribbons, lace, scarfs, and flowers; the last but seldom seen then, except at a milliner's, and great was the crowd outside. If only one-third had gone in to buy! Some ventured, but the result seemed scarcely satisfactory. It was a shop on the new plan;' and the old-fashioned people of this locality, accustomed to quieter doings, were put out' with the wide shop, and its two counters, and the staff of assistants, male and female, who bustled about, and asked if you wanted anything more,' before they had served you with what you came to purchase, and teased you with 'wonderful bargains' of gloves and flowers, when you were inquiring the price of flannel. So the old folk soon went back again to the little old shop for their haberdashery, and to the 'old-established shop,' with the sign of the Golden Sun, huge as a cart-wheel, over the door, for their linens and calicoes; and a speedy end might have been put to the emporium,' but for a bright thought of the proprietor, who just before Christmas half filled one of his windows with Berlin wool 'at reduced prices.' 'Berlin wool,' and the artistic abominations perpetrated by its means, were just then beginning to turn half the young ladies' heads. So to the emporium' they flocked, purchasing Berlin wool 'at reduced prices,' but all manner of other things at prices rather increased for the occasion. A capital hit was this; so the proprietor gave a ball at Christmas, and began to calculate how rich he should be by the end of the next year. But competition is a game that many can play at; and one fine spring morning he was startled by the apparition of workmen at the large house over the way-that huge, dirty house, which had belonged to the drysalter, and which had been long shut up; and there were the old windows taken out, and new put in, and a splendid mahogany counter soon made its appearance. Another emporium' was evidently about to be opened, and so, shortly after, it was, with wonderful bargains'-the days of 'dreadful sacrifices' were not as yet-and little boys stood on the foot-pavement thrusting lists of these bargains into everybody's hands. From henceforward there was 6 bitter strife between the rival shops-strife that would have awakened the astonishment and indignation of the old London shopkeepers, who saw in each member of the same trade a brother, and who, in recognition of that brotherhood, feasted with him in the hall of his guild, and aided him in sickness, and duly followed his remains to the grave. Meanwhile, the worthy old couple died, and were laid to rest in the adjoining church; and erelong, on both houses, "These Desirable Premises to Let,' told the neighbourhood the result of that reckless game of competition. The neighbourhood has altered since then; most of the shops have become wholesale houses, but the little low-browed shop still nestles against the old church-wall; and never do I pass that way, but I look with pleasant reminiscences upon it, for brightly again rises to my mind that child's 'vision of fair colours.' A WIFE'S DISTRESSES. CHAPTER I. He I was born an heiress. The day I entered the world, my poor dear mother left it. I was her first and only child; and my father, who loved her passionately, was sadly grieved at his loss. The very light of his eyes was gone, and in her place he had only me-a sickly, irritating baby, so poor a comfort, and so great a care. Mamma's property was secured to me, and till I came of age, papa was to enjoy the interest of it. Dear papa, how faithfully he carried out all the implied conditions of that will, how tenderly he loved me, not surely for my own sake, but for hers that was gone. He spared neither time nor expense to make me the most accomplished of my sex; everything that could possibly tend to improve me, mentally or physically, was freely granted, and I grew up fully prepared to support the position that came to me by birth. But as the sunshine seldom lasts through the day, my good, dear, self-sacrificing papa was taken from me when I was on the eve of womanhood, and at the most critical period of life. did his best to secure me from my inevitable dangers; he left for my guardians his two cousins and former companions, who were honest above suspicion, and only anxious to do their duty to me. Under their care I continued my studies, and still lived in seclusion, spending only the interest of the interest of my fortune; and so I grew and grew, and lived on in an ideal world, dreaming rather than acting, and feeding an already too active imagination. But there are few lives so quiet that have not some gay occasions, and so it happened to me when I was somewhat past twenty. I was staying with my aunt at Horngrave, which happened to be the head-quarters of the Wessex militia. Wherever there are military, there are sure to be music and dancing. A ball celebrated the conclusion of the period of annual training, and everybody in Horngrave was going. I protested to all my acquaintances that I did not care for balls-that I had never danced much-and that my guardians, I knew, did not think well of those promiscuous meetings in country towns. But flattery soon conquered all my scruples. I could not resist being told that with my beauty and my known wealth I should be the pride of the ball. And why, thought I, have these advantages, and not enjoy them? It was a mischievous spirit that urged me to such an exhibition of vanity; but who that has felt the pleasure of being admired, can refrain sometimes from indulging in it? I went to the ball with some friends, and dressed, I felt, to perfection; I wore some of my family jewels, which were valuable enough to shew every one my wealth, even if it were not known. |