OR

No. 100.]

FAMILY PORTRAIT.

GOOD SIR WALTER.

"with

"I HAVE been looking," said I to Mr. St. John, great delight, at the picture of a middle-aged gentleman, of about the date, and nearly in the costume, of 'Squire Western-but, judging from physiognomy, as unlike that worthy in other respects as can well be conceived. The utmost good humour and single-mindedness pervades his whole countenance. He has the most benevolent eye possible, and the merriest mouth, ready alike to imbibe a bumper, or to utter a joke. Who is the worthy baronet ?— for I am sure he was the head of the house of his day, he looks so like a man of lands and beeves."

"There is no mistaking which picture you mean,” answered St. John. "It is that of one who is called now by tradition, as he was always most deservedly during his life'Good Sir Walter.' He was the most popular man in the country, the favourite companion of his equals, and the beloved benefactor of the poor. He was, indeed, as you have surmised, most single-hearted and kind-natured; but try your physiognomical skill a little farther, and see whether you can discover in what fashion he figures in the pen-andink portrait I have drawn of him."

"Come to the gallery, then, that I may look at him again." We went, accordingly-and I placed myself in a due attitude of investigation before the excellent gentleman's picture. The hair was a little thin on the brow, and in the mildness of the eye, upon looking very minutely, I every now and then thought I traced a slight expression of softer feeling; and yet the general aspect of the countenance collectively was happy, even to the very English quality, heartiness while its bland, as well as frank, good humour prevented it from being, in the least, coarse.

"I am rather puzzled," I said, turning to St. John—“ I should take him to have been a man most benevolent in his nature, lively and social in his habits, and of a strong affection towards his family, and extreme enjoyment of his home."

"All that is perfectly true-but still you do not in the least divine the nature of the tale I am about to give you. And, indeed, I do not wonder: you have read all that appearance gives-but a man's biography is not always written on his brow. What think you of good Sir Walter being the hero of one of the daintiest love-stories in my whole collection ?"

"Truly, I should not have guessed it: for though I doubt not he loved strongly, as well as fondly and truly, yet I should have taken him to have married a daughter of some old friendly family, he being seven, and she one, and twenty --and to have then passed his life in the midst of a happy family, increasing in number and in size every year."

"You are quite out," answered St. John-" but, as I said before, I do not wonder at it. I will send you up my manuscript, as soon as I get home; and I think you will

[VOL. 9.

acknowledge that it well deserves the name of a love-story, and that there is no denying that Sir Walter is its hero." THE STORY OF GOOD SIR WALTER. Sir Walter Meynell was born in the last year of the seventeenth century, and was an only son, although he had several sisters. He went through the education which was then becoming fixed as the course proper for the Meynells, and which, in fact, has descended as regularly as the familyplate ever since. Eton, Oxford, and the Grand Tour formed this worthy system of training, which was continued unremittingly till the French revolution, together with one or two other slight changes that it wrought, took away from the rising Meynell of the day the power of travelling with a bear-leader through the principal parts of Europe.

But no such naughty doings existed in the days of Sir Walter's adolescence. He was accordingly presented at the court of the Regent, Duke of Orleans, where nothing naughty was ever heard of, and thence duly performed the whole of that itinerary which has been named the Grand Tour, from the circumstance, I suppose, of the traveller going straight on end, and returning almost precisely the way he came. Sir Walter, however, brought but little of foreign fashions back with him to England. He returned the same hearty, bright-spirited fellow he went-with some additional cultivation, indeed—for his mental qualities were keen and sound-but in no degree warped or made foreign by his residence abroad.

Not long after his return, he succeeded to his title and estate. His mother had been dead some years; and he came and settled at Arlescot, retaining his eldest sister at the head of his household, as she had been in their father's time, and all the others remaining exactly as they had then been. Sir Walter was not the man to put forth his sisters because they ceased to be daughters of the house-he loved them all dearly, and delighted to have them around him. "Arlescot," said he, in answer to his man of business, who spoke to him on the subject, "shall ever be their home till they marry." I wish, in every respect, to fill my poor father's place as much as possible." And, indeed, if it had not been that the face at the head of the table was some thirty years younger than that which had been there so lately, one would scarcely have known that any change had taken place at Arlescot-hall.

There was a very considerable difference between the age of the eldest and the youngest of Sir Walter's five sisters, so that he continued to have a lady-house (and the word, though I coin it for the purpose, carries with it a most comprehensive signification-) for many years. There was none of that loneliness which so often sheds its chill over a bachelor's dwelling. There were always smiling faces and merry voices, to welcome his return home;-and all those elegancies and amenities, which exist in no society among which there are not women, constantly graced, and at the same time gave added animation to, the circle that congregated within the walls of Arlescot. Indeed, celebrated as that venerable pile has always been for its hospitality and

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