lost upon him, and the friends he had made there were very different in degree from his companions in North Yorkshire. The Marquis of Albany, and Sir Harry Melford, of whom he was fond of talking, were any thing but the sons of decayed gentlemen.

I watched this, as I have said, with something like jealousy; but as I was his only companion, and he was both cheerful and naturally open, even jealousy had no fault to find; so that my love for him continued to indulge itself unrestrained, spite of a little quizzing, when growing, as he said I was, sentimental.

But Bertha, ever cheerful, ever animated, with a countenance all radiance, and a tongue all nature, seemed not to have a thought to conceal. Completely unsophisticated, she admitted me frankly as a sharer with her brother in all her Occupations, whether grave or gay, of study, or diversion. I was allowed to ride, read, and walk with her, to hear her play and sing, to tell her stories, and listen to hers in

return.

But it was Shakspeare that most promoted our intimacy. I had been fixed by his historical plays, even in my infancy, probably from the interest I took in Lord Bardolfe, Clifford, and York and Lancaster; and this had produced an admiration and love for his other wonder-moving works; so that, for my age, I was tolerably proficient in them, not to say enthusiastic. What joy to me, to see the young mind of Bertha tinged with the same taste, as I was allowed, nay, sometimes called upon by Mr. Hastings himself, to read some of his favourite dramas aloud.

All these to hear, would gentle Bertha seriously incline. But reading was by no means her only pleasure. She had a little garden, not merely of flowers, but of the prettiest potherbs, scarlet-beans, and the like, which she was proud to present to her father at table, as the product of her own labor. And very pleasing was it to me, to observe her pleasure in such natural tastes, and how playfully she would quote a letter of Gray to one of his friends: "And so you have a garding of your own, and plant and transplant, and are dirty and amused. Dear! how charming it must be, to walk out

in one's own garding, and sit on a bench in the open air. Have a care of sore throats, though; and the agoo. ""*

I was proud to be allowed to share the labor of this garden, and to dig, while she raked, or sowed seeds. To be sure, I did not think of Adam and Eve!

But my pleasure was not confined to this. Think of my increased and well-founded admiration at finding the mind of this lovely being, though so young, fraught, from nature alone, with what the best education sometimes fails to inspire -a taste in elegant literature, for example. Yet although she had a well-accomplished governess for the ornamental parts of instruction, she had been almost left to herself, and her mere feelings had led her to take pleasure in those parts of poetry which most strike a well-cultivated taste.

I was led to observe this by being shewn one day, by Foljambe himself a sort of essay she had voluntarily composed on the Pleasures of a Garden, in which, after many natural sentiments, prompted by the subject, she wound up an account of flowers with one of the most pleasing passages in the Lycidas.

"Return, Alpheus, the dread voice is past,

That shrank thy streams; return, Silician Muse,
And call the vales, and bid them hither cast
Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues.
Ye vallies low, where the wild whispers use
Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks,
On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks;
Throw hither all your quaint enamelled eyes,
That on the green turf suck the honied showers,
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers;
Bring the rath primrose, that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe and pale jessamine,

The white pink, and the pansy freakt with jet,
The glowing violet,

The musk rose, and the well-attired woodbine,

With cowslips wan that hang their pensive head."

To this extract was appended this note: My dear father has promised me a diamond necklace when I am presentedwhoever has these needs no diamonds."

"What a little blockhead!" said her brother, when we read it. I did not think so.

But with all this softness in her tastes, she had all the playful cheerfulness of her age.

* Gray to Nichols.

It was one of her amusements to teach French to Charles and me; and when she scolded us, as she often did for our bad accent, she did it so pleasingly, and looked so arch, that I often made blunders on purpose to be so corrected.

It was the same with dancing, a master in which came over twice a week from York, and we were allowed to witness and even join in the exercise. But here she gave me the palm over her brother, who was totally without ear for music, in which to me nature had been bountiful; so that the French lady, who acted the part of governess, said, that "pour la danse, le jeune Monsieur avoit les meilleurs dispositions du monde.”

Of her feelings,however, or whether she had anytowards me, I was ignorant. At least I observed nothing in her that bespoke interest not common to one of her age; gentle and complaisant to every body, but too easy to indicate any thing like interest for her new visitor.

Still in my secret heart, I felt, through every vein of it, a desire to please, and obtain her attention, if not something more. Thus, to be her friend at present, became, I thought, my only wish; as to be hereafter, by some turn of fortune, something better, was my only ambition.

O! how sweetly do youth and hope deceive us, and how happy are we to be so deceived.

But an end was too soon put to this happiness; for Foljambe, who had finished with Eton, as I had nearly with Sedbergh, was summoned to be matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford, whither I was to follow him in a few months, with my exhibition to Queen's.

We were all a little sad at the prospect of parting, and Bertha's beautiful smile was gone. It was exchanged for a gravity which was marked, and yet it became her, or was at least quite as touching, perhaps more so, than the smile itself. Serious or laughing, her features spoke. When mirthful, her eyes ran over with joy; when pensive, with feeling. In fact, they were eyes that could, and I thought often did, utter “a thousand nameless tender things."

Well; for two days before the visit expired, she was grave, nay, very grave. She no longer bounded like a fawn, but absolutely walked, musing and slow, "a pensive nun devout and pure."

Shall I own my self-flattery? (I am quite sure it was not vanity, for I was too sincerily humble to feel that ;) "I thought, but it might not be so," that I had some share in the change.

Fool! coxcomb! madman! I forgot that she was about to lose her brother, and I was rightly punished. Yet when, with a suppressed sigh, and an eye almost in tears, she said to that brother, "I don't know what we shall do when you are all gone," I could not help saying to myself that all certainly meant more than one.

But this was by no means the whole. The day before our departure, judge my surprise, my joy, when, escorted by Mademoiselle La Porte, her French governess, she entered the room where Charles and I usually sat, bearing a beautiful little volume of the French poet Gresset in her hand, saying, with a smile, that she had her father's, Mr. Hasting's, permission to present it to me, as a reward for my industry in French. It was richly bound, and with some archuess she said, Mind it is only as an encouragement to you to read it; but if it also puts you in mind of your teachers, Mademoiselle, and me, so much the better."

"C'est bien dit, la chere enfant," said Mademoiselle La Porte; " et pour le jeune Monsieur, avec le Francois, le sentiment, et la danse, il sera bientot un hero de Roman."

This "fooled me to the top of my bent," especially as Bertha smiled as if she assented; and, like the sentimental blockhead that I was, I gave myself (that is, in secret) the airs of a real lover; I vowed eternal constancy, and left Foljambe Park with far different notions, both of persons and things. from those with which I entered it.

The adieus of the family who had been so kind to me, were of a mixed character. Mr. Hastings was stately; not cold, but too evidently condescending, though intending to be kind. His son was careless and too full of Christ Church. But Bertha was frank and lovelier than ever.

Certainly the pressure of her finger, which I was allowed to touch at parting, thrilled through my veins; and I absolutely thought I heard the tongue of heaven, when, though in the stillest possible voice, she said, "I hope when Charles returns you will come again."

What wonder then if I left them with mixed and confused

emotions of misery and joy, which my young philosophy could not analyze. All that I was certain of was, as I walked with a servant bearing my bag to the place where the coach was to take me up, that my heart had a weight upon it like a load of lead, and the great gates at the end of the avenue closed upon me with a cre..king noise which I thought unusual to them. They sounded horrors, and I could not help calling to mind the pathetic lamentation of Eve, on her banishment from the abode of her happiness.

"Must I thus leave thee, Paradise? thus leave

Thee, native soil, these happy walks and shades,
Fit haunt of Gods?

How shall I part, and wither wander down
Into a lower world, to this obscure

And wild. How shall we breathe in other air
Less pure, accustomed to immortal fruits."

In the journey home, I passed in review everything that had so pleasingly, yet so tormentingly, absorbed me, and allowed my mind to become a tumult of the happiest as well as the most despairing recollections. And yet (mark it ye young!) such is the irrepressible buoyancy of youth (ah! how far beyond all that the world can give without it !), that my despair was not without alleviation, I was not in those regions of sorrow

No! amid my darkest gloom at leaving what I thought paradise, I could not part with the delight of thinking I might one day return to it, and a gleam of Bertha dressed in smiles, would sometimes dissipate all the black signs of hopelessness that otherwise surrounded me.

Thus, though sunk in grief, and often in despair, to think that I had no right to expect to see Bertha again, or, if I did, that it would be only as the wife of some higher and happier being, the coach could not pass a cottage in a retired nook, with a garden of neatness like her own, but I peopled it in imagination with all that my fond fancy could indulge ; in fact, with nothing short of what my wishes coveted, and my heart promised. That I might one day live in such a spot,