To get up on a cold winter's morning to hunt a timid animal to death, and pronounce ourselves rational and benevolent beings.

To see your agent amassing a large fortune, and suppose him to be honest and your tenantry happy.

To allow great actors the privilege of new-modelling the language, and of pronouncing it ridiculously.

To expect that your friends will remember you after you have thought proper to forget them.

To compose a speech for parliament, get it carefully by heart, and expect to be esteemed a great orator.

To call for bed-chamber candles at twelve o'clock, and remark to your friend, on a visit, that you forgot to ask him if he ever took supper.

Not to wear a great-coat when our joints are aching with rheumatism, lest we should be thought delicate.

A young parson thinking to recommend himself to a profligate patron by imitating his vices.

The more absurd an opinion is, the more pertinaciously it is adhered to.

Fasting on turbot and lobster-sauce.

To overrate our pretensions when we really are not devoid of merit. To make the grand tour, and associate only with your own country

men.

You cannot keep your own secret, and expect that another should do so for you.

all

You flatter the passions of the populace, and expect to be popular

your

life.

To subscribe to any indefatigable collector for public charities, who has no visible means of subsistence.

Not to drink when you are thirsty, or eat when you are hungry. To give any man wise in his own conceit, or superior to you in life, a candid opinion when he asks your advice.

To indulge in all manner of excess and vice, and imagine yourself cunning enough to conceal it from the world.

To fancy yourself a poet, because you can write verses.

Not to flatter the weaknesses of every man from whom you want a favour.

To persecute sectarians by way of extinguishing them.

The daughters of poor curates and farmers playing on the pianoforte and reading French novels.

You get into a bad line of inns, travelling, and quietly submit to the pleasure of your postboys.

To affect to be a man of pleasure and business at the same time. To live fifty years, and be surprised at anything.

THE COURTIER OF THE REIGN OF CHARLES II.1

BY MRS. C. GORE.

CHAPTER IX.

FIVE years had elapsed from the memorable period to which Lady Lovell still continued to revert, as the commencement of her time of tribulation. The Protectorate was now established; and saving when some imputation of a royalist or popish plot condemned new lives to the gibbet, and new lands to sequestration, the very name of Charles Stuart seemed scarcely to be had in remembrance in the land. Though the people of England had seen the liberties confirmed to them by their great charter more scandalously violated by the selfstyled upholders and reformers of the law than under the despotic sceptre of Charles the Martyr, they had learned to crouch to the lash; piously submitting to drink the vinegar and hyssop presented to them under such plausible pretences of divine sanction and grace.

But though the captivity of the nation seemed ordained, the time was come for Anne Lovell's emancipation from her dutiful thraldom. Her poor lethargic parent now slept to wake no more. Within a few months after his daughter's attainment of her majority, Mr. Heneage was laid in the parish church of Dalesdene, beside the fair young wife whom he had been so strangely sentenced to survive. On the occurrence of this event, it was the express desire of Lady Lovell that she might be left in unmolested solitude for the space of a month following the funeral; a ceremony which, unsought by the survivors, was honoured by the presence of the local magistrates, in deference to the good citizenship of a man whose estates contributed so largely to the maintenance of government, and who (paralytic and idiotic) opposed no obstacle to its course. But, at the expiration of the four appointed weeks, Master Wright proceeded as usual to the Grange, prepared to deliver to its young mistress his opinions and provisions touching the further ordering of her career.

But scarcely had he entered her presence, than the old notary discovered that he was there simply to receive the signification of her own; that the high-minded young woman of one-and-twenty was never more to be argued from her noble purposes into the narrow path of expediency.

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Having resolved to quit a spot wherein I have endured so many painful trials," said she, in a firm and composed voice, "let me be the first to inform my venerable friend that it is my intention to take up my abode at Lovell House. It is not fitting that so fine a seat should fall to ruin and decay. The sentence of banishment against Lord Lovell is for life. He hath repelled, as you well know, with scorn and indignity, our written offers to place the estate under his control by nominal redemption-the sequestration of his whole ancestral property having rendered all other means unattainable; and

1 Continued from vol. xxii. p. 400.

it is now my purpose to do honour to the name which (perforce) I wear, by maintaining fitting state and grace in the family mansion. Your wise counsels have, I trust, in some degree instructed me in ordering of my affairs; and yet the only regret I experience in quitting this ill-omened home of my youth, is the knowledge that it will remove me from the neighbourhood of my second father. To say to the aged tree, Uproot thyself, and come with me to overshadow my new dwelling,' were, I know, a mockery. Nevertheless, chambers will be set apart for you and yours at Lovell House; and if in its abandonment you will deign to find your summer pastime at the Grange, the old place will be kept up, to remain henceforward at your disposal. It will rejoice me that the faithful friend of my father and grandfather should occupy Dalesdene in my room."

Lady Lovell paused, overcome by emotion; but she would neither listen to the good man's thanks for securing a Goshen to his old age, nor to his remonstrances touching the cheerless life she must lead in a mansion like Lovell House, to which her present household establishment was wholly inadequate."

"You mistake my purpose," replied Lady Lovell. "It is my intention to adapt my modes of life to the limits of my noble fortune. My fate has been unhappily appointed; but all the happiness I am ever to enjoy all the duties I am ever to fulfil-are as much within my grasp at present, as ever they will become hereafter. Twelve months shall I devote to do homage to my father's memory; after which time, look to see me assume the place which I should occupy, were Lord Lovell already numbered with the dead."

For a moment the old man experienced some alarm at this announcement. His knowledge of the frivolous nature of womankind tempted a passing apprehension of purposed levity. But he soon checked himself with self-rebuke, on calling to mind the unerring prudence of Lady Lovell's afflicted career-her nobleness-her generosity-her forgiveness of injuries-her sympathy with the wants, miseries, and frailties of her fellow-creatures. She stood beside him, in her beauty and serenity, a superior being; and when, on the day appointed for her departure from the Grange, he saw her followed to the verge of her estate by the prayers and benedictions of the people among whom, from childhood, she had abided, he was fain to confess that their tears bore witness to her excellence. Not even her farewell benefactions could reconcile the poor people to the idea of losing sight of their guardian angel.

Lady Lovell, meanwhile, had affectionately declined the old gentleman's escort to Lovell House. She even ordered her measures for Mistress Corbet to remain some hours behind her at the Grange, so as to enable her to reach her new residence unaccompanied. Not that she indulged in the puerile vanity of wishing to present herself potentially to the people over whom her rule was appointed, and who, for years past, had loved her as an unknown benefactress; she wished only to enjoy unobserved the emotions likely to arise from her inauguration-the emotions of the contemned wife of a banished husband, about to consecrate her life to the fulfilment of duties in which choice and necessity alike forbade his participation.

Ten years before, she had visited the place, a wild, gamesome girl, accompanying her father in a visit of ceremony to the roof of his only friend, the formalities of which had been pain and grief to the insubordinate Anne. Yet, long as was the period intervening since that week of penance, every circumstance and every feature of the spot was indelibly impressed upon her memory. It was the only mansion, besides her own dull house, with which she was familiar. She remembered the stately hall; the old tapestry of the corridors, to the grim figures of which she went childishly curtseying along as she retired with Dame Audrey for the night; the armoury, the chapel, the falconry, and above all, a certain canal, embanked by a certain terrace, from whence, but for the uncouth aid afforded by her playmate, young Lovell, she must have slipped into the waters below, one day when they had escaped by stealth from the house, and were enjoying the graceless sport of pelting the old gray carp with quinces from an equally venerable tree, that twisted its hoary arms at one extremity of the canal.

She remembered, even now, the fierce reprimand they had jointly undergone from the imperious Lady Lovell, who chanced to encounter the young truants as, dripping and exhausted, they stole back to the hall. She remembered how the dear good lord had stood their advocate when their misdemeanour was recounted to the circle in the saloon, into which they were dragged for reprehension and judgment. She remembered-she remembered there was no end to those trivial but precious recollections!

She had purposely evaded the demonstrations of welcome, (which she was forewarned by Elias Wright her tenants were anxious to make in her honour,) by arriving at Lovell House several hours previous to her announcement; so that, when her old-fashioned equipage rolled into the park, the peasantry had not yet gathered together for the purposed procession.

"Let them not suppose me ungrateful," was her apology to her auditor, Master Shum, who came to tender his respects, as she entered the hall. "But the mourning dress I wear, and the respect due to the memory of the great and good man who last inhabited these walls, ought to forbid all tumultuous show of rejoicing."

Touched by this homage to the memory of his beloved lord, the gray-headed steward who was attending them quitted her in tears. All preparation of mirth and music was abandoned; and the lady was left, as she desired, to wander alone through the deserted galleries of the house, to seek the well-recollected saloon, the garden, the terrace, the all and everything that spake audibly to her soul of times of old.

For one circumstance, however, Lady Lovell had not prepared herself. Above the mantel-piece in that very saloon hung a portrait of her old playmate, limned at the instance of his adoring mother by the immortal Van Dyck-one of those speaking pictures, to which that matchless painter had the skill to impart a life-like resemblance, combined with an air of spirit and nobleness, in which the original might be deficient. Like the Creator of mankind, it was in the image of his own genius, that the artist had fashioned his work.

Alone with that breathing canvass, Lady Lovell stood riveted to the spot. There, then, was the living object of all her reveries, all her hopes the origin of all her sorrows, the source of all her humiliation! There was the lofty brow of him who disdained her-the glowing, the impressive, the commanding face by which, when seated by his side, she had been made to shrink into herself. She saw nothing of her old playmate in the picture, nothing of the scapegrace, the snarer of squirrels, and pelter of carp. It was her bridegroom!-the fiery youth, who, rebelling, even while he obeyed, against his father's mandate, had loathingly accepted her hand as a ransom for the prosperity of his king, and a pledge of his own inauguration into the loyal toils of war.

All the woman was roused in her heart as she gazed and gazed upon the picture, and the tears suffusing her eyes were alternately sweet with tenderness, and bitter with indignation. But what a prize had she obtained in an object thus capable of calling into existence the dearest emotions of her soul! What had the desolate walls of Dalesdene to boast of, comparable with that talisman of power?

Spell-bound by the charm, she stood contemplating the picture,— exquisite as a work of art,-priceless as a personal memento,-till she had made even its slightest details familiar to her eye; the very shaping of the satin vest and cloak of velvet, the very turn of the flowing feather gracing the beaver, held carelessly by the hand of the distinguished youth; when, as if she had gazed till gazing left her nothing further to recognise, she turned slowly away to quit the chamber. But no sooner had she reached the door, than, with a deep sigh, she retraced her steps, and took her station as before, having first assured herself, by glancing towards the windows and recesses of the chamber, that she was safe from the watchfulness of prying eyes. It was not till nearly an hour had elapsed that Lady Lovell found herself bending her steps along the stately gravel-walks intersecting the Dutch garden, which reached to the windows of the southern frontage of the house, while the green slopes of the park were overlooked by the porch of entrance that adorned the northern façade towards the terrace and canal, which, as she rightly recollected, formed the western boundary of the parterres. Nothing had been changed there since the period of her first visit. At that time the troubles of the times had left little leisure, either to king or subject, for the adornment of their native Sparta; and from the disastrous epoch which had placed the domain under the control of Heneage's daughter, it was her command that not a stone should be moved, or a shrub uprooted on the spot. The strictest order had been preserved; the gardens were in the most trimly array. It was not with Lovell House as with the sober herbary at Dalesdene Grange. All the horticultural arts and secrets transplanted from the fair gardens of St. Germain du Laye by the queenmother had been borrowed from Hampton Court by Lady Lovell, the daughter of one of Henrietta Maria's most favourite courtiers; and now, in the propitious month of June, the roses of Provins and Puteaux were intermingling their luxuriant blossoms with the heavy heads of rich carnations and fragrant clusters of many-coloured pinks and gillyflowers. So sweet, so variegated, so brilliant, was the aspect Sept. 1838.-VOL. XXIII.—NO. LXXXIX.

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