66 and esteem went hand in hand together. This was very pleasant to my father, whose motto, strangely enough, was "Honestas et Fidelitas," and whose favourite axiom was, Honesty is the best policy." The Dowager Countess of Hereditaments thought she could not do a wiser thing than make him her steward: appointments, like honours, “ fell thick upon him;” step by step he ascended fortune's ladder, and as he was wont to say, 66 never lost an opportunity or missed a chance." Clerk to the magistrates, ditto to the union, ditto to the turnpike trusts-town-clerk, a commissioner for taking affidavits, a master-extraordinary in Chancery, and steward of several manors, it is not surprising that his exchequer rose swiftly and considerably. The effects of these numerous offices of emolument—“little work and heavy pay”soon became discoverable. As steward of the Dowager Countess of Hereditaments alone, he managed to put by some two or three thousand a-year; and as steward of the other manors I have mentioned, perhaps a thousand more for fees. He then began to think it high time to "settle in life;" and accordingly took unto himself a wife, in the person of Anne Churchill, the daughter of the village physician. A year after, she presented him with myself as a pledge of her affection; and, as poor Tom Sheridan said, "she could only give another thing in this life," and that was, "she gave up the ghost! Reader, smile not, nor think it a jest, for it was a bitter voice from a heart wrung with sorrow; albeit, in his deep strong affliction, his nature could not utterly forget its instinctive habit and passion, “ for quips and cranks, and wreathed smiles!" Alas, my mother, that it was never mine to experience the wondrous love which would have been showered on me, had the decree of the Eternal not willed otherwise! But human life is, verily, a strange jumble of smiles and tears, of joys and sorrows, with less of the joys and more of the sorrows--a chalice in which the few smiles that awhile float at the top soon sink and turn to tears-tears of care and worldly griefs. Shortly after my mother's decease, my father began to take a more active part in the confined circle where the radii of his ambition shone. By degrees he became lord of one or two manors-was made a justice of the peace of his county; so that the assize judges, and other persons of distinction, did not in the least hesitate to visit him when they passed that way. His desire was to bring me up to his own profession; but, after the first initiatory month, I felt a most extreme distaste and repugnance for the monotonous machinery and routine of the law. There was something in it, to me, so cramped, so detrimental to the growth of those feelings which are the adornment of our natures, that I imbibed a most unconquerable disgust at the very outset. The law as it should be, seemed the most wonderful and beneficial organic construction to administer and to temper justice: but as it existed it was marked with the unnatural hectic of wrong and oppression; and I sickened when I observed how every common sense of right, though it was so clear to the mind, that the voice of a child would have proclaimed its truth, was blighted and obscured, and crushed by the horrid darkness of bigoted ignorance, and by the impure and selfish administration of that which its founders and arbiters termed Law--of law, which should only be the active organ and executive of Justice. I had imbibed a remarkable taste for the study of medicine; and as my father saw that it was not to be overcome, he yielded with the best grace he could to my proceeding to London, in order to study under Doctor Carrington, an intimate friend. I accordingly went. The doctor's family consisted of himself, a son-Frederick, a year older than myself, and a daughter-Julia, some few months my junior. It was a not unnatural consequence that a mutual attachment should spring up between the latter and myself; and this was blessed by the entire sanction of both our parents. I will not stop to pourtray the course of our love, for, in truth, it is not to the general reader that these secret and intricate emotions of the heart should be displayed. It was arranged that, after we were married, I should commence practice as a surgeon for a few years, preparatory to my obtaining my diploma as a physician; and as I had a predilection for the neighbourhood of Sheen, in Surrey, on the banks of the Thames, where many friends, and, I hoped, many future patients, resided, I engaged a house commanding one of the prettiest prospects in that leafy region; and it was from the window of my sleeping-room in that house (where I had been domiciled a week previously, in order that I might take my bride home) that I gazed forth on the face of nature as before described, and rhapsodied, with all the ardour which my bright-winged anticipations lent, on the beauteous scene that met my eyes. Breakfast was, as my readers will well believe, rapidly dispatched; for the perturbation of my spirits prevented me from doing justice to it. It was with a heart bounding with gladness, over which no speck lowered to obscure its horizon, that I jumped into my cabriolet and drove swiftly away to Grosvenor-square. "Ha!" thought I, as I saw the square tenantless of a single carriage, good heaven, the blinds are not drawn. Surely I am not dreaming; I cannot have mistaken the day. Two or three bounds and I was at the drawing-room door. I entered : and there there in the group before me-did I read that something extraordinary had occurred. Julia Carrington was in a bitter paroxysm of tears. Her mother was bending over her, endeavouring to soothe her with the gentle ministering and the soft words of blandishment which only a mother's lips can utter. Albeit she turned towards me with an expression I had never beheld on her countenance before. A reproachful sorrow seemed struggling for the mastery; though the former was the predominant emotion. The doctor bore visible traces of inward agitation, and Frederick seemed to be in a perfect tempest of ire; he cast a furious glance on me as I entered, 66 "What is the meaning of this?" I exclaimed ; | language of affection, unto the vacillating and "Julia, what has happened? Tell me, I entreat- timorous heart, weak in faith, "Submit, but be I implore of you!" I bent low as I addressed the weeping girl; she only answered with a struggle of sobs. I approached Mrs. Carrington with a mute look; she was too much absorbed in her child's grief, or possessed of too little fortitude, to reply. "Cannot any one give me an explanation of this?" I repeated, in a bewildered tone. "What am I to understand by this affliction and this extraordinary silence?" Frederick walked up to me with a look of hauteur and subdued rage, and replied-while the words grated through his clenched teeth"I will answer you, liar and monster!" resigned! Struggle, but hope!" Oh! when the God of all worlds, in the beginning, as from chaotic disorder, and that which was not, called forth at His word Order, beautiful and majestic, and things that are, all creatures living and breathing, and sustained but by His divine will; when that bountiful Creator bade Man walk forth erect and tall, marked with the symmetry of form, and stamped with the invisible and imperishable sign, of His own Godhead; when from that Creation, lord, by His decree, of the earth, super-eminent over the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, the fishes of the sea, and the creeping things under the earth, He fashioned "Liar?" echoed I, as I trembled beneath the thee, O Woman! from a particle of His former shock and surprise which the words created; work! thou wert made of that which possessed "I do not comprehend your drift, Frederick." thee, but robbed us of all loveliness, and the "No?" interrogated that irate personage, with benignant Virtues, fleeing from our grosser cutting irony; "no? Well, then, if Mr. Dray-frame, found a fitting home in the sanctuary of ton will accompany me into the next room My fiancée started up and clung passionately to the speaker, as she weepingly and entreatingly exclaimed 66 "Oh! no! no! you shall not quarrel. Let not anger lead you into the commission of aught for which the penitence of an eternity, the sorrowing remorse of the future can never atone; and you, Churchill," she continued, turning to me with a look of the profoundest grief, promise me you will forgive any harsh words Frederick may use towards you; promise me this. He is rash and he is indignant at a circumstance which I feel assured you will be able to clear up. Promise me this, by the memory of our past happy hours; by the hopes which we nourish and are centred in the future; promise me this by the faith and trust I have placed in you, by the reliance with which I still cling to you, by the affection which has never been shaken for a moment. I know that this will be only a temporary cloud dimming our sunlight; it will fade like the white mists of morning; it will wander away like the deep gloom of night before the radiant visage of day! Oh! promise me this, Churchill, and I shall yet feel a comfort in my present sorrow, which shall soothe the pang that has pained my very heart." I listened to the impassioned address of the dear girl, usually so calm, so gentle, and so retiring; now it seemed that all the hidden energy and poetry of her character had been aroused, and as I gazed on the upturned beauty of her face mantling with the fast heightening colour, and on which her pleading look sate like the shadow of something more akin to immortality than our earthy coil, I endeavoured to collect my thoughts, and felt an anguish at beholding its expression of strong grief, mingled with a profound reverence for her womanly and touching appeal. Oh, Woman! so resigned in affliction, so devoted amid suffering, so unselfish and so trusting! who sheddest a halo of peace and love and holy happiness over the else cheerless daily walks of life! who tellest, with the warm, glad thy heart! (To be continued.) THE DEPARTURE. BY MRS. PONSONBY. Life wanes-its sands are sinking fast, Thou dost not come again. I leave the world without a sigh, My kindred stand unheeded by, I cannot rest, I cannot die, For thou return'st no more; Close-close upon my fading breast Whose quenchless lustre may not share My spirit struggles to be free, Yet cannot burst its chain; Oh! loose these bonds that hold me fast; Return!- my eyes are strain'd for thine, Taking into consideration my home-staying habits, you will at once understand that it was more than an every-day friendship which beguiled me into such a trip. The object of my four days' journey, Harriet Ellery, had been the most intimate companion and confidante of my young ladyhood, as well as the favorite playmate of my earlier years-a gay, sanguine, warmhearted, affectionate girl, in whom I had never recognized a single fault, unless it was that she possessed rather too much of what Colonel Mannering calls a genius for friendship"-an extent of that endowment which sometimes made one feel that her attachment sprang more from her own "strong necessity of loving" than from any peculiar lovabilities in oneself. Moons. Afterwards our enmity increased for still more weighty reasons. We had been heard to laugh clear across the street-a very wide street, too-heard by Melinda Moon whilst she was sitting inside of a Venetian blind making a woman pincushion, which looked-for that reason, no doubt-when it was offered at a fairtable, precisely like an inverted note of exclamation; we were reported to have been peeped at by Melinda Moon while we were at a pic-nic, executing desperate flirtations upon two indeterminate victims, secluded and screened by a thicket of alders and swamp willows, when we had the innocent consciousness of having been merely drying our draggled dresses in a covert patch of sunshine, kindly guarded by a dear Hal had married very young-at eighteen or young uncle of my own and poor Frank Hardie, so--and I had been her bridesmaid. Her hus- who, however much he was in love with Hal, band, Fred Ellery, was a merry, boyish fellow, nobody ever considered a beau. But, worse whom no one would have supposed to be twenty- than all, Melinda Moon was said to have disfive, and together they made their honey-year an covered us stealing along a back lane to old unclouded holiday. At the end of it he died- Phillis Roy's, the fortune-teller's, with cups of poor Frederick !-and five years afterward it was coffee-grounds in a basket, when-on our word that I undertook that trip to see his widow. -we had been engaged in a romantic work of charity, as we thought, carrying to the poor old sibyl a pot of butter and a custard," like a pair of Red Ridinghoods, for which we had been too magnanimous to take a single word of prophecy in return. In vain we had protested against misrepresentation and injustice. For a whole year we had been frowned down by the circle of which Melinda Moon was the focusthe Thorns, who were too refined to "make tracks" when they walked, always going on acute tiptoe; the Huffs, who never parted their lips that they did not say shocking!" and the Thwackereys, who all made a merit of always "speaking their minds," of course modestly presuming their minds to be infallible. I had been placed beyond the reach of frequent communications from my friend since before the death of her husband, and therefore the pleasant recollections of girlhood, more than any others, furnished material for my imagination to work upon during my journey. Among the subjects which it amused me the most to think of, was the cherished aversion of us both ---a certain Miss Melinda Moon, the most captious, meddlesome, primmest spinster of a certain age that ever screwed her mouth to one side at witnessing any deviation from the very narrow, straight track on which she expected everybody to walk. How early our dislike to her had its origin I could not remember, but for years we had always found the Argus-eyed, echo-tongued As I drew near the termination of my jourMelinda Moon at the bottom of all our serious ney, my thoughts concentrated themselves upon troubles. Melinda Moon had "fied" at us for the probable changes of time in and around my torn aprons and bent sun-bonnets, when any friend. I fancied her as having laid aside the one else would have been kind enough to look first sombre weeds of widowhood, and as appearover our heads-Melinda Moon had shaken her ing in those mellow shades of gray, which would finger at us in church when she ought to have render still more pure and brilliant by their harbeen listening to the sermon-Melinda Moon monious contrast the red and white of her had got us down to the foot of the class, by stop-charming complexion, and more lustrous than ping at the school-house door, and reporting that we were playing truant, like two tomboys, locked in a summer-house with jackstraws and battledores, when we were great tall girls, entirely too old to be punished. And at that time we drew her profile on slates and fly-leaves, and dressed dolls for the younger children in scant, dullcoloured habiliments, and called them Melinda even her ringlets of gold. I fancied how much more lovely she would be than in her earlier days, with her manners softened by the experience of sorrow, and her mind matured by necessity and opportunity for thought. And then about the pretty residence in which I had last seen her, I had a variety of pleasant anticipations-that its trees would have attained to a what had been once the showiest and most elegant of little drawing-rooms. I had hoped that the carpet, with its clustering roses, would have been gone; so it was; but instead of it was a heavy-looking fabric of two or three dingy colours, all in medium shades; and instead of the fluttering curtains, were equally ugly, dingy window-blinds. The costly display of books with butterfly wings had been removed from the tables, on each of which lay a few octavos, not even in fancy-muslin gilt, but in the stout and time-tarnished calf coverings of another era-Rollin, Johnson, Locke! Certainly Hal must have arisen in the scale of intellect, and she must also have sobered down to "fancy-work," which she once detested, for on the mantelpiece, crowded among the delicate alabaster ornaments that I had so often ad more noble growth-that the shrubbery would have been cultivated to greater luxuriance, and though kept in a proper state of nature by Hal's innate love for the picturesque, would be rather more decorously trim than in the time of her fun-seeking, work-despising husband--that the household fopperies of the honeymoon would have been somewhat chastened; the coquettish curtains, for instance, have given place to something, though equally rich, yet less flaunting and transparent; and the floors have been covered with something less trying to the eyes and the complexion, than_snow-white carpets with bouquets of roses. I thought, too, of Tartar, the yearling Newfoundland, Fred's gigantic pet, and wondered if he had yet learned, as Harriet often wished, to lie soberly and gracefully in the shade of the oleanders on the portico, instead of putting his paws on the shoulders of visitors,mired, were crooked cigar-boxes, flimsy cardrubbing his nose over gilt-edged books, and overturning vases and lamps on the tables; and I remembered the glittering little cages hanging here and there, and took it for granted that the original stock of goldfinches and canary-birds had trained a matchles band of chorus-singers of their own progeny for parlour music. I expected improvement in all things in which it could have been effected by wealth, taste, and care-for Harriet had the two first; and as to care-taking, she was now old enough, and of sufficient experience, to have got into the way of that. racks of crimped paper, and hand-screens spotted with wood-cut scraps that must have been clipped out of newspapers. A pair of ottomans of worsted-work, in most incomprehensible designs, stood at each side of the fireplace, and a pair of patchwork rocking-chairs in the middle of the floor, all the other furniture being closely muffled in brown cotton, and placed with rectangular precision against the walls. I had had more than time to make a survey before I was interrupted; but at length I heard an approaching step, and a female figure appeared in the doorway-a prim figure, with a demure face, flushed by the unmistakable in smoothly to the head, a stiff, tight collar round the neck, and a narrow-skirted dress, sadcoloured, though not of a hue pertaining to a widow's garb. The whole ensemble was one of confirmed spinsterhood; yet it was that of Harriet. She welcomed me, though, as if there had been no change-more warmly I could not have desired. At length the carriage brought me to a turn of the road, from which I could have a close view of the house, and like the sultan at the disap-fluence of the kitchen fire, the hair pasted pearance of Aladdin's palace, I rubbed my eyes in astonishment-not that the edifice was gone, indeed, but it was so transfigured: every vine was torn away, of the profusion of honeysuckles, passion-flowers, jasmines, and multiflora roses that once draped the walls and latticed the portico all the trees were mutilated into the stumpiest, most unsightly roundheads: the beautiful green lawn, which had sloped away from the "I shall show you up to your room, my dear house for several acres, dotted with shrubbery Mary," said she, wiping her face and fanning and clumps of shade-trees, until its rich grass herself with her handkerchief, after we had covered the glades of a piece of woodland--a talked, both at once, for five minutes; and then pleasure-ground that the domain could well af- I must ask you to excuse me for a short time. ford-was ploughed up and planted with various I have an invalid in the house-a friend who is "truck" pertaining to the kitchen and the cat-kind enough to make her home with me-and tle stall; while inside of a plain, clumsy palisade fence, was left a narrow strip of yard, scarcely wider than the portico, cut up into little beds, among which meandered numerous ungravelled walks, so narrow, that even a gentleman could not possibly have traced his way among them without carrying off upon his garments the dust and down of straggling lady's slippers and seedy marigolds. The cages had vanished from the columns and window-sills; the familiar form of Tartar was absent; and what would Hal herself be like? I felt almost relieved by an idea that the place had a new owner, but the servant maid of whom I made inquiry from the carriage window, replied that Mrs. Ellery still lived there, and was at home. So I got out, and was shown into when the servant brought me your name I was preparing a bowl of gruel to tempt her to eat; for, though I have an excellent cook-Rachel, you remember old Rachel ?—I know she would prefer that I should attend to it myself." Of course I was properly sympathetic. "Not that she is dangerously ill," concluded Harriet : "she has a face-ache." She disappeared, and I felt more at home to find the bouquet-covered carpet and the gossamer curtains in my chamber. In a few minutes I heard a high-pitched, complaining voice, with Harriet's softer tones, in the adjoining room. "Do take it; just a little of it, dear," said my friend, coaxingly; "you must eat something, and you know you always recommmend gruel to invalids." 'Oh, no; not more than ten minutes." 'Well, that was long enough to smoke it. Just take it away; I'll wait for tea. Oh, dear!" "Then I'll go and make a hop-poultice for your poor face. But first let me bring Mary Allanby to you; I am sure it will be a pleasure to her to assist in amusing and nursing you." Hereupon the door between the rooms was opened, and a form was revealed after which the little widow seemed to have remodelled hers, in a wrapper of the same dull calico; a collar of the same cut, and with the same stiff arrangement of the hair. The face, however, wanted the youthful beauty which my friend still retained; I could see that it was faded, sallow, and sour, notwithstanding that it was partially tied up in a handkerchief. "I have an agreeable surprise for you, Mary," said Harriet; here is an old friend whom I hope you will be able to recognize without an introduction." I advanced with extended hand, and then stopped short in amazement inexpressible— those shrewish grey eyes, that sharp nose and that plaited mouth, surely they could have belonged to no other than Melinda Moon! I must leave you to entertain each other, which I know will be pleasantly done, while I make a poultice for poor Melinda's face," said Harriet, as she left the room. So Melinda it was without grounds for further doubt. My hand was taken with a strained, jerking motion, and then I wondered how I should open a conversation with my ancient enemy. She saved me the trouble, however, without loss of time. "Is that a silk dress you are putting on?" asked she; and in spite of the sharp, abrupt tone, and the sidelong glance that had been so hateful to me when a child, I answered politely in the affirmative. She smiled dryly. "It is hardly worth while for you to be dressing up that way this afternoon. For my own part, I think I am extravagant enough if I wear silk to church and on extra occasions, and Harriet Ellery has come over to my opinion." "This is merely a half-worn dress," said I, pacifically. "Then you must give your dresses very little wear," she returned, with a repetition of the sarcastic smile; and then followed a flow of questions about my journey; had I company the whole way, or how far; who were they and what sort of people; did I eat three times a day while on the road, and what had been my expenses; the winding up being a brief comment of "something of an expedition!" Harriet at length returned with a steaming poultice, and having placed her patient on a low seat, knelt before her and applied it tenderly to her face, bearing, with the humility of a devotee at a feet-washing, the groans and frowns with which her kindness was received. "Now do lie down, Melinda dear, and try to get a nap," said she; "the fumes of the hops will compose you;" and after caressingly drawing her refractory charge to the bedside and fussily arranging the counterpane over her, she accompanied me down stairs. Curious as I was to have an explanation of this strange intimacy, I did not feel quite at liberty to ask it, for the fair widow, kind and gentle as she appeared, was too little like the Harriet of former times not to make me feel something of the constraint of a stranger. So I concluded to wait until circumstances should resolve the mystery. The sun had now got round so as to leave the front of the house in shade, and we stepped out upon the portico, but the flooring was still so heated with the afternoon glare, that a cooler place for our feet was desirable, and we returned to the parlour and seated ourselves at a window. "What has become of all the vines amidst which we used to sit so snug and cool?" I asked. "I knew you were missing them," returned Harriet; and, to tell the truth, I often regret them myself, though, as they were removed for good reasons, I ought to be satisfied. They made the house damp, so Melinda discovered, which I never would have done myself; for, as she says, I am provokingly careless and unobservant of such things. And also, she found that they harboured insects, to which she has an aversion. Altogether, they interfered so much with her comfort that I consented to have them torn away." An unladylike ejaculation of "humph!" rose in my throat, but I suppressed it and substituted an observation upon the clipping and amputations of the trees. "It certainly has not improved their beauty," she rejoined; "but our safety seemed to require it. I am never easily alarmed-indeed, I believe I am imprudently heedless of danger-but Melinda is very timid. Every time the wind blew a little harder than common or a thunder shower came up, she grew almost frantic with terror lest those trees should be blown down upon the house or should attract lightning to it. The Thorns told me of so many shocking accidents that had happened from tall trees standing near dwellings, and the Thwackereys thought it so unfeeling that I should allow her to suffer so much from fright, that I did not like to be obstinate, and though I rebelled against having them cut down, I consented that Melinda should superintend their being trimmed as you see. But take a rocking-chair," she continued, rising and drawing one forward, and appropriating the other to herself; " you will find it very easy and comfortable. The covers of both are Melinda's work. She took a great deal of pains to collect scraps of silk from our different friends as keepsakes, and if you had been within reach, I should have laid you under contribution. I have learned |