elegant tastes; and generous, both from temper and principle, refused no indulgence to his family, except such as appeared inconsistent with their station, or with that wise and liberal economy which is as essential, perhaps even more so, to the affluent as to the poor. The young people were all of high promise. The eldest, Charles, a youth of extraordinary ability, bringing up to the bar, was on the point of leaving Oxford, where he had distinguished himself greatly, and had recently been entered at the Temple. George, the second son, was in his father's office: and of the three daughters, Catherine, the eldest, a girl of eighteen, was eminently pretty; Sarah, two years younger, and less handsome, had something of her brother Charles' talent; and little Barbara, the pet and plaything of the whole house, was that charming creature-a lively and good-humoured spoilt child.

One evening, in the beginning of July, this amiable family were assembled in their pretty drawing-room, fresh hung with India paper, where gorgeous birds were perched amongst gorgeous flowers, and Chinese processions, gorgeous and immoveable as the birds, stuck amidst gay pagodas and gilded temples-a bright but unmeaning pageant. The furniture consisted of French chairs and settees covered with blue damask, at once handsome and uncomfortable, with window curtains to match; a japan cabinet: a mahogany bureau, of which the top formed a small bookcase with glass doors; a harpsicord-for pianos were not yet in use; two large lookingglasses between the windows, and marble tables with gilt legs underneath them; a Pembroke table in the middle of the room, and a large fire-screen, with a stupendous bunch of flowers in embroidery, the elaborate work of the fair Catherine, in one corner.

Mr. Mordaunt was writing a letter at one table; his eldest daughter working, or, to use her brother's phrase, flourishing, at another: the young men were lounging at the windows; and Bab (for the dignity of that aristocratic name, so often seen in the peerage, and so seldom elsewhere, was in this young lady's case sadly pretermitted-the very housemaid who dressed her called her Miss Bab) was playing with her doll on the floor.

Sarah's employment was different from the rest. She was standing at the harpsichord, busied in arranging, in China vases, a quantity of flowers with which it was strewed, and which had

just arrived from a small country house, which Mr. Mordaunt called his farm, on Enfield Chase. With intuitive taste Sarah had put the honeysuckles, so pretty by themselves and which mix so ill with gayer flowers, in a large jar on the centre of the mantle-piece, flanking it with a small pot filed with white Provence roses so elegant and delicate amongst their own green leaves— on one side, and one of that rose called the maiden's blush on the other; whilst the rest of the old-fashioned beau-pot, pinks, lilies, larkspurs, sweet-williams, and sweet-peas, she gathered together in a large China bowl, and deposited on the harpsichord between a pile of music-books and a guitar-case.

"How I wish these flowers had arrived before poor Mrs. Sullivan went away!" exclaimed Sarah, after standing before them for some minutes to survey and admire her own handywork. "She seemed so out of spirits-poor woman!

and some of these beautiful flowers would have comforted her and done her good; at least," added she, seeing her elder brother smile and shake his head, "I am sure they would always have cheered me, let me be as melancholy as I might; and she is as fond of them as I am, and was always used to them in her father's fine garden."

"Kindness must always do good under any form, my dear Sarah," observed her father, looking up from his letter; "but I fear that poor Mrs. Sullivan's depression is too deeply seated to be touched by your pretty remedy, and that any thing which reminds her of her father's house is more likely to increase than to remove her dejection."

"Mr. Darrell, then, continues implacable?" enquired Charles, with much interest.

"Yes," replied Mr. Mordaunt, "and I fear will remain so. I am writing to him now in his daughter's behalf, but I have no hope from the result. He sent for my partner yesterday to make his will, evidently to avoid my importunity in favour of these poor Sullivans. Her elopement was a most foolish act-a wrong, a foolish act; but ten years of penitence and suffering might have softened my old friend towards his only child, and one who, spoilt by his indulgence and her own position in society-a beauty and an heiress--can so ill support the penury and neglect under which she now languishes."

"Was she beautiful?" asked Catherine: "I see no remains of former loveliness."

"She is much changed," answered Charles; "but even I can remember her a most splendid woman. She had the presence and air of a queen, or rather of a young lady's notion of a queen. Fancy a stately and magnificent creature, with high features; a dark, clear, colourless complexion; a proud, curling lip; large black eyes-sometimes soft and languishing, but which could light up with a fire as bright as the glow of a furnace; a broad, smooth forehead; a dark, flexible brow; and a smile exquisitely sweet, and you will have some idea of Sophia Darrell before her imprudent and unfortunate marriage. Poverty and her father's displeasure have wrought this change, and perhaps her husband's death."

"Chiefly want of money," observed Mr. Mordaunt, sealing and directing his letter. "She had pretty well got over the loss of Captain Sullivan. Want of money is the pressing evil."

"I wish I were as rich as Mr. Darrell!" cried Sarah; and then she blushed and stopped, adding, in a hesitating voice, "what a pity it is that good wishes can do no real good!"

"Except to the wisher, Sarah," replied her father: "the slightest emotion of disinterested kindness that passes through the mind improves and refreshes that mind, producing generous thought and noble feeling, as the sun and rain foster your favourite flowers. Cherish kind wishes, my children; for a time may come when you may be enabled to put them in practice. In the meantime," added he, in a gayer tone, "tell me, if you were all very rich, what you would wish for yourselves for your own gratification, ladies and gentlemen?"

"Oh, papa," exclaimed Sarah, "a great library!"

"And I," said Miss Bab, from the floor, "I'd have a great doll." "I'd go to Italy," said Charles. "I to Oxford," cried his brother. "And I to Ranelagh," said Catherine, laughing. "In the meantime," added she, as the footman-it being now six o'clock, for they had dined at the usual hour of three-brought in the tea equipage, followed by the silver kettle and lamp:-" in the meantime, we may as well go to tea, and afterwards take a walk in Gray's Inn Garden as we meant to do, for the evening is beautiful, and my new hat is just come home."

About two months after, the same party, with the exception of Mr. Mordaunt, were assembled at nearly the

same hour in a very different scene. They were then passing the long vacation at the farm, and, it being Bab's birthday, had adjourned to the roothouse, a pretty rustic building at the end of the garden, to partake of fruit, and cakes, and a syllabub from the cow, which the enchanted little girl had been permitted to compound herself, under the direction and superintendance of the housekeeper. It was a scene beantiful in itself, and full of youthful enjoyment. The somewhat sombre roothouse, with its Gothic painted windows, its projecting thatch, supported by rough pillars clothed with ivy, clematis, passion-flowers, and the virgin-in-thebower, looked out on a garden, gay with hollyhocks, balsams, China asters, African marigolds, the rich scarlet geranium, and the sweet marvel of Peru. The evening sun gleamed brightly around, shining on the old farm-house, whose casement windows peeped through a clustering vine, on a small piece of water at the end of the garden, and the green common and forest beyond, with an effect of light and shadow, just, as Sarah observed, "like a real picture;" and the figures scattered about would have pleased a painter's eye almost as well as the landscape in which they were placed.

Catherine, radiant with innocent gaiety, blooming as Hebe, and as airy as a sylph, stood catching, in a wicker basket, the large bunches of grapes which her younger brother, with one foot on a ladder, and one on the steep roof of the house, threw down to her and Charles, who was at once steadying the ladder and directing the steps of the adventurous gatherer. Little Bab, the heroine of the day, was marching in great state down a broad gravel walk, leading from the house to the roothouse, preceding a procession consisting of John, the footman, with a tray of jingling glasses-the housekeeper, bearing the famous syllabub, her own syllabub-and the housemaid, well laden with fruit and cakes. Sarah, faithful to her flowers, was collecting an autumn nosegay-cloves, jessamine, blossomed myrtle, mignionette, and the late muskrose-partly as an offering to Miss Barbara-partly for her father, whose return from town, whither he had been summoned on business, was anxiously expected by them all.

Just as the young people were collected together in the root-house, Mr. Mordaunt arrived. He was in deep mourning, and although receiving with

kindness Sarah's offering of flowers, and Bab's bustling presentation of a glass of syllabub, which the little lady of the day insisted on filling herself, was evidently serious, preoccupied, almost agitated. He sat down without speaking, throwing his hat upon the table, and pushing away Catherine's guitar, which had been brought thither purposely to amuse him. He had even forgotten that it was poor Bab's birthday, until reminded of it by the child herself, who clambered upon his knees, put her arms round his neck, and demanded clamorously that her dear papa should kiss her and wish her joy. He then kissed her tenderly, uttered a fervent benediction on her, and on all his children, and relapsed into his former silence and abstraction.

At length he said, "My sadness saddens you, my dear boys and girls, but I am just come from a very solemn scene, from Mr. Darrell's funeral."

"Good gracious!" exclaimed Charles, with much emotion: "I did not even know that he was dead."

"Nor I, till I reached London yesterday," replied Mr. Mordaunt.

"Poor Mrs. Sullivan!" cried Sarah: "did her father forgive her before he died?"

"He sent her his forgiveness on his death-bed-an unspeakable comfort!-but still his angry will remains unrevoked. She and her children are starving, whilst his immense fortune descends to one unconnected with him by blood or alliance, or any tie save that of an old friendship. After a few trifling legacies to friends and servants, I am left residuary legatee. The property is large, my children; larger, perhaps, than with your moderate views and limited expectations you can readily apprehend. You may be rich, even beyond the utmost grasp of your wishes, and Catherine may revel in innocent amusement, and Charles in tasteful travel; college with all its advantages is open to his brother; Sarah may have endless books, and Barbara countless dolls; luxury, splendour, gaiety, and ambition, are before ye-the trappings of grandeur or the delights of lettered ease; ye may be rich, my children, beyond the dreams of avarice-or ye may resign these riches to the natural heir, and return to peaceful competence and honourable exertion, reaping no other fruit from this unsought-for legacy than a spotless reputation and a clear conscience. Choose, and choose freely. My little Sarah has, I think, already

chosen. When, some weeks ago, she wished to be as rich as Mr. Darrell, I read her countenance ill, if the motive of that wish were not to enrich Mrs. Sullivan. Choose, my dear children, and choose freely!"

"Oh, my dear father, we have chosen! Could you think that we should hesitate? I answer for my brothers and sisters, as for myself. How could your children waver between wealth and honour?" And Charles, as he said this, threw himself into his father's arms, the other young people clinging round them-even little Bab exclaiming, "Oh, dear papa, the money must be all for Mrs. Sullivan!"

The relator of this true anecdote had the gratification of hearing it from one of the actors in the scene-the Sarah of her little story, who is now in a green old age, the delight of her friends, and the admiration of her acquaintances. Her readers will probably be as glad to hear as she was, that the family, thus honourably self-deprived of enormous riches, has been eminently happy and prosperous in all its branches -that the firm distinguished by the virtues of its founder still continues one of the first in London-and that a grandson of Mr. Mordaunt's, no less remarkable for talent and integrity than his progenitor, is at the present time a partner in the house.

port in respectability and comfort.-Before, however, the elder had attained her eight year their mother was attacked by a malignant disease, which baffled the power of medicine, and, in six weeks, brought her to the gates of the grave."

It was on a calm and beautiful sumthat bed from which she was destined mer evening that she was reclining upon her little weeping darlings was clasped never more to rise. A hand of each of in hers, and at her feet, in deep but silent sorrow, stood her youngest and beloved sister, Hannah. Mary felt that she was dying: yet there played upon her pale features a smile to which the setting sun, as he flung his golden beams

THE ORPHANS.

BY W. H. HARRISON, ESQ.

IN a quiet valley, about a mile from the village of B- in Kent, stood the cottage of Mary Bloomfield. It was almost buried in wood; indeed it seemed as if a space had been cleared in the copse to make room for it and the little garden by which it was encircled. It was a small, but trim and snug-looking dwelling; its white walls, partially covered with sweet briar and honeysuckle, forming an agreeable contrast to the weather-stained and moss-grown thatch.

Mary had been early left a widow with two children, a girl and a boy, whom, endeared though they were by the memory of their gallant father, who fell in his country's battles on the plains of Egypt, she loved most affectionately for their own sakes; and whom, by her industry, she had been enabled to supJennings and Chaplin.

supernatural radiance, as if a foretaste of a blissful eternity had been vouchsafed to smooth her passage from a she was bound by many a tender tie of world to which, with all its troubles, parental and sisterly affection. It was a smile of thankfulness and confidence: of thankfulness for the strength that had been given to her in that hour of trial, and of confidence, for which she had many a blessed warrant in the book of life, that the great and good Being would

hands that had laboured for them were not desert her little ones when the cold in the dust. She had the further consolation of knowing that her sister Hannah, who had promised to be a mother to them when she was gone, would endeavour to bring them up in the path into which it had been her chief care to guide their infant feet.

The scene soon closed: the last struggle between the aspirations of the soul and the lingering infirmities of mortality was over, and, in the following week, I beheld the burial train of Mary Bloomfield wind slowly through the village church-yard. The simple but touching melody of the funeral anthem was floating on the summer breeze, and was, to my ears, infinitely more solemn than if it had been chanted by white-robed choristers, over the grave of a conqueror, and echoed by the long drawn aisles' of a cathedral. Its allusion to our frail and perishable nature— to our being cut down as the 'grass of the field,' was strikingly illustrated by the flowers which were springing up in the path of the mourners, and blossoming upon the very verge of the grave.

Her melancholy duty being performed, Hannah returned with her adopted children to the cottage, there to seek consolation from the holy volume whose

light had guided her dear sister through the dark 'valley of the shadow of death,' to that blessed region where the tear shall be wiped from the cheek of the mourner, where there shall be no more sorrow nor sighing, neither shall there be any more death.'

Hannah, at the period of which I am now writing, was scarcely nineteen, with a countenance remarkably only for its expression of modesty and good humour, which well accorded with the delicacy and single-heartedness that reigned within. These qualities, however, combined with her domestic accomplishments-and they merit the title as much as do the more refined acquirements of polished life-procured for her many and very advantageous offers of marriage; but, friendless though she was, she would listen to nothing that could interfere with the sacred stewardship to which she had so generously devoted herself. And well and faithfully did she discharge it, and abundantly did she feel rewarded, as well by the consciousness of performing her duty, as by the love of the dear orphans, who were growing up in the paths of virtue beneath her eyes. They were children of good capacities, which she did not suffer to remain unimproved, -affectionate towards each other, and warmly attached to their aunt Hannah. For three or four years, this exemplary young woman managed, by the most persevering industry, to support herself and young charges; but when a season of national distress arrived, and provisions became dear, she found herself no longer competent to the task.

Things became gradually worse-they were often reduced to a meal a day, and that meal was a crust; while, on the other hand, the want of proper nourishment rendered her less capable of exertion, and she began to look forward to the alternative, from which her mind had always revolted, of resigning her darlings to the parish.

Still, however, though she mourned over this reverse of circumstances, she did not repine; while the natural buoyancy of youth, co-operating with the contentedness of their dispositions, kept up the spirits of the children; nor, as they knelt down, each morn and evening, in united prayer, were their hearts less grateful, than when their board was spread with a more bounteous hand.

It happened, one day, while their affairs were in this unpromising posture, that little George had been dispatched to the village, on some errand,

by his aunt, and, as he was returning, his natural civility and obliging disposition prompted him to open a gate for a gentleman on horseback. George, without waiting for thanks, continued on his way, when the horseman, calling him back, flung him a sixpence for his trouble; and, perceiving the boy to return to the village as soon as he had made his bow for the present, became somewhat curious to know in what manner he would dispose of it. He accordingly pulled up his horse, and watched the little fellow into a baker's shop, whence he soon emerged, carrying a loaf under his arm, and was indeed most welcome, for they had tasted nothing the whole day.

On the following evening, Hannah was sitting at work in her little kitchen; George and his sister, the former on a form and the latter on her knees, were amusing themselves with a draughtboard on the head of a barrel, which, as a substitute for a table, was placed upright between them. Their kind aunt, occasionally looking from her work upon their happy countenances, sighed deeply when she considered of how short duration their happiness was likely to be, and how soon they would be compelled to exchange her roof and care for the workhouse, and, it might be, hard task-masters. On a sudden, they heard the tramp of a horse's feet on the gravelled road which led up to the cottage, and, the next moment, the door was opened by a person whom George recognized as the donor of the sixpence, and Hannah as the owner of a title and a splendid domain in the neighbourhood.

With the frankness and urbanity which, to the honour of the British nobility, the majority of them exhibit to their inferiors, he explained to Hannahı that the behaviour of her nephew, on the day before, had excited his curiosity, and led to inquiries which resulted in his being made acquainted with her past history and present circumstances, and that his admiration of her conduct had determined him in doing all he could to serve them. Now his lordship, although very wealthy, and generous even to lavishness, was a sensible man, and well knew that the happiness of persons, so far from being promoted, is often marred, by their being suddenly lifted out of the sphere in which they have been accustomed to move. He therefore proposed to Hannah that, as he was about to go abroad with his establishment for a consider