And fondly thinks that, as heaven's chaste bride,
She can freely resign the world beside.

But her melting voice was rarely heard,

And then it was more like the warbling bird,
When in its woods it melodiously ranges

From strain to strain-still sweet though its changes. She had forgotten the songs he loved

Whom fate had from her arms removed;

But if the notes of some favourite air

Would come unbid, she would start and listen, And her half-oped lip would be moveless there, And her heart would throb, and her eye would glisten:

Such once-loved sounds would seem to fall

Like the whispers of Hope on Despair's sad ear; And animation would lighten all

Her ineffable face; and she would appear,

For that enraptured minute, more

Than beauty ever attained before:

Her eye, lit by a ray of soul,

Though for such brief duration given,

Pure as the spark Prometheus stole,

To warm his imaged man, from heaven, Shone forth with such angelic love,

As blesses only those above:

Thus quick it would come, and thus quickly fly, Like the sunset gleam of an Indian sky.

PATTY'S NEW HAT.

A COUNTRY STORY.

BY MISS MITFORD.

WANDERING about the meadows one morning last May, absorbed in the pastoral beauty of the season and the scenery, I was overtaken by a heavy shower just as I passed old Mrs. Mathews's great farmhouse, and forced to run for shelter to her hospitable porch. A pleasant shelter in good truth I found there. The green pastures dotted with fine old trees stretching all around; the clear brook winding about them, turning and returning on its course, as if loath to depart; the rude cart-track leading through the ford; the neater pathway with its foot-bridge; the village spire rising amongst a cluster of cottages, all but the roofs and chimneys concealed by a grove of oaks; the woody back ground, and the blue hills in the distance, all so flowery and bowery in the pleasant month of May; the nightingales singing, the bells ringing, and the porch itself, around which a honeysuckle in full bloom was wreathing its sweet flowers, giving out such an odour in the rain, as in dry weather nothing but the twilight will bring forth - an atmosphere of fragrance. The whole porch was alive and musical

with bees, who, happy rogues, instead of being routed by the wet, only folded their wings the closer, and dived the deeper into the honey-tubes, enjoying, as it seemed, so good an excuse for creeping still farther within their flowery lodgement. It is hard to say which enjoyed the sweet breath of the shower and the honeysuckles most, the bees or I; but the rain began to drive so fast, that at the end of five minutes I was not sorry to be discovered by a little girl be longing to the family; and, first, ushered into the spacious kitchen, with its heavy oak table, its curtained chimney corner, its bacon rack loaded with enormous flitches, and its ample dresser, glittering with crockery ware; and, finally, conducted by Mrs. Mathews herself into her own comfortable parlour, and snugly settled there with herself and her eldest grand-daughter, a woman grown; whilst the younger sister, a smiling light-footed lass of eleven, or thereabouts, tripped off to find a boy to convey a message to my family, requesting them to send for me, the rain being now too decided to admit of any prospect of my walking home.

The sort of bustle which my reception had caused having subsided, I found great amusement in watching my hospitable hostess, and listening to a dialogue, if so it may be called, between her pretty grand-daughter and herself, which at once let me into a little love secret, and gave me an opportunity of observing one, of whose occasional oddities I had all my life heard a great deal.

Mrs. Mathews was one of the most remarkable

persons in these parts; a capital farmer, a most intelligent parish officer, and in her domestic government not a little resembling one of the finest sketches which Mr. Crabbe's graphical pen ever produced.

"Next died the widow Goe, an active dame,

Famed ten miles round and worthy all her fame;
She lost her husband when their loves were young,
But kept her farm, her credit, and her tongue :
Full thirty years she ruled with matchless skill,
With guiding judgment and resistless will;
Advice she scorned, rebellions she suppressed,
And sons and servants bowed at her behest.
No parish business in the place could stir
Without direction or assent from her;
In turn she took each office as it fell,

Knew all their duties and discharged them well.
She matched both sons and daughters to her mind,
And lent them eyes, for love she heard was blind."
Parish Register.

Great power of body and mind was visible in her robust person and massive countenance; and there was both humour and good-humour in her acute smile, and in the keen grey eye that glanced from under her spectacles. All that she said bore the stamp of sense; but at this time she was in no talking mood, and on my begging that I might cause no interruption, resumed her seat and her labours in silent composure. She sat at a little table mending a fustian jacket belonging to one of her sons—a sort of masculine job which suited her much better than a more delicate piece of sempstress-ship would probably have done; indeed the taylor's needle, which she brandished with great skill, the whity-brown

thread tied round her neck, and the huge dull-looking shears (one can't make up one's mind to call such a machine scissars), which in company with an enormous pincushion dangled from her apron-string, figuring as the pendant to a most formidable bunch of keys, formed altogether such a working apparatus as shall hardly be matched in these days of polished cutlery and cobwebby cotton-thread.

On the other side of the little table sat her pretty grand-daughter Patty, a black-eyed young woman, with a bright complexion, a neat trim figure, and a general air of gentility considerably above her station. She was trimming a very smart straw hat with pink ribbons; trimming and untrimming, for the bows were tied and untied, taken off and put on, and taken off again, with a look of impatience and discontent, not common to a damsel of seventeen when contemplating a new piece of finery. The poor little lass was evidently out of sorts. She sighed, and quirked, and fidgetted, and seemed ready to cry; whilst her grandmother just glanced at her from under her spectacles, pursed up her mouth, and contrived with some difficulty not to laugh. At last Patty spoke.

"Now, grandmother, you will let me go to Chapel Row revel this afternoon, won't you?" "Humph," said Mrs. Mathews.

“It hardly rains at all, grandmother!"

66

Humph!" again said Mrs. Mathews, opening the prodigious scissars with which she was amputating, so to say, a button, and directing the rounded