She was born of his second wife, Susanna Newman, and her mother felt her loss so severely that it was feared she would not survive it. In March, the following year, Mr. Paice gave up his business to his two sons, Joseph and Nathanael-two-thirds to the eldest, one-third and a thousand pounds to the youngest; and having settled a thousand pounds on each of his surviving daughters, retired into private life, not "wickedly rich," but with four hundred pounds a-year.

In 1727 his daughter Anne married Mr. Samuel Rodbard, a hop merchant (whose daughter was my grandfather's mother); and his son Nathanael married Mary, daughter of Counsellor Edwards, a sweet and fair young lady, who died untimely, leaving one only child-the Joseph Paice whom Charles Lamb, nearly a century afterwards, called "the most consistent living model of modern politeness." His grandfather speaks of him as "a pleasant and delightful child."

The concluding entries in the journal speak of much bodily suffering, borne with Christian resignation and hopefulness. The good old man

died in 1735, aged seventy-eight.

His eldest

son Joseph died the following year. There remained only Nathanael the widower and his young son

'Joseph, the worthy son of worthy sire."

FAMILY PICTURES.

II.

FATHER AND SON.

"Why, that Joseph Paice was as real a person as Joseph Hume, and a great deal pleasanter! A careful observer of life, my dear Bernard, has no need to invent-Nature romances it for him." CHARLES LAMB.

It is now my delightful task to speak of this Joseph.

As I write these words, I glance at the sweet miniature now lying before me, painted of him as a boy of fifteen or sixteen. I see a fair, high, open brow, pear-shaped face, delicately formed nose, dark blue thoughtful eyes, pleasant mouth, nut-brown hair, turned back from his forehead, and dressed in two rolls of curls behind, and a complexion which, as Sir Joshua Reynolds would say, reminds one of a pearl and a peach. And now I remove the jeweller's cotton, scented with

attar of roses, which protects the miniature, in enamel, set in gold for a locket, of his father, Nathanael Paice, and probably designed by him to be worn by his wife. This gentleman is a handsome man about forty; dark, with hazel eyes; dressed in a court suit of pale brown velvet, with a finely laced shirt.

Then I think of this father and son, sitting by their lonely hearth, the wife and mother long dead; and the father, looking earnestly at the ingenuous, thoughtful boy, begins, after a little pause, to tell him that, partly to afford him a more cheerful home, he has been revolving thoughts of a second marriage; and proceeds to lay before him the character and circumstances of the lady, the various pros and cons of the match, just as he might have done to a tried friend of mature age.

"A goodness so above the proportion of what generally attaches our gratitude in the common experience of life," wrote that son long afterwards to his dear and tender friend, the first Lady Baring, " was greatly enhanced by its gratifying

an earnest desire of my own; a desire so earnest,

C

that I had resolved to ask the kind office of my father's most confidential friend, to convey to him from me, in terms of the profoundest duty, how inexpressibly it would conduce to my happiness, if he would please to consult his own, by the renewal of that endearing relation which made me his son."

However, the offer was never made; and if the father consulted his own disposition in remaining as he was, we have his son's own word for it that, "blessed with his society and friendship, my happiness was so complete, as to leave me little inclination to associate from home."

In later life, he thought that some moderate extension of his companionships beyond his father's circle, chiefly of elderly friends, might have been of service to him. One of these household friends was the young man's mother's brother, Thomas Edwards, of Lincoln's Inn; a man of elegant tastes, and some powers of criticism and versification, no longer remembered by his commentaries on Shakespeare. He introduced his nephew to the notice of characters eminent for worth and refinement, who insensibly assisted in the forma