was her attention confined only to the good fare of her guests, though it might have flattered her vanity more than that of most exhibitors of good dinners, because the cookery was generally directed by herself. Their servants lived as well in her hall, and their horses in her stable. She looked after the airing of their sheets, and saw their fires mended if the night was cold. Her old butler, who rose betimes, would never suffer any body to mount his horse fasting.

The parson of the parish was her guest every Sunday, and said prayers in the evening. To say truth, he was no great genius, nor much a scholar. I believe my godmother knew rather more of divinity than he did; but she received from him information of another sort; he told her who were the poor, the sick, the dying of the parish, and she had some assistance, some comfort for them all.

I could draw the old lady at this moment!-dressed in grey, with a clean white hood nicely plaited, (for she was somewhat finical about the neatness of her person,) sitting in her straight-backed elbow-chair, which stood in a large window, scooped out of the thickness of the ancient wall. The middle panes of the window were of painted glass, the story of Joseph and his brethren. On the outside waved a honeysuckle-tree, which often threw its shade across her book or her work; but she would not allow it to be cut down. "It has stood there many a day," said she, "and we old inhabitants should bear with one another." Methinks I see her thus seated, her spectacles on, but raised a little on her brow for a pause of explanation, their shagreen-case laid between the leaves of a silver-clasped family-bible. On one side, her bell and snuff-box; on the other, her knitting apparatus in a blue damask bag.-Between her and the fire,

an oid Spanish pointer, that had formerly been her son Edward's, teased, but not teased out of his gravity, by a little terrier of mine. All this is before me, and I am a hundred miles from town, its inhabitants, and its business. In town I may have seen such a figure; but the country scenery around, like the tasteful frame of an excellent picture, gives it a heightening, a relief, which it would lose in any other situation.

Some of my readers, perhaps, will look with little relish on the portrait. I know it is an egotism in me to talk of its value; but over this dish of tea, and in such a temper of mind, one is given to egotism. It will be only adding another to say, that when I recal the rural scene of the good old lady's abode, her simple, her innocent, her useful employments, the afflictions she sustained in this world, the comforts she drew from another; I

feel a serenity of soul, a benignity of affections, which I am sure confer happiness, and I think must promote virtue.

No. 89. SATURDAY, October 14, 1786.

TO THE AUTHOR OF THE LOUNGER.

SIR,

I READ with infinite satisfaction your 87th number, on the pleasures of the country, and the moral use of that "rural sentiment," the effects of which you know so well how to paint. But thus it is that brilliant fiction ever delights us; while you were describing in town, I was witnessing in the country. I have just returned from an excursion into a distant county," a hundred miles from town, its inhabitants, and its business." It was at the house of Mr L, a relation and intimate acquaintance of mine, where I have been pressingly invited these several