tained that Mr. Jackson, the rich city grocer, had sanctioned their visits by first leaving his card. A blind, stupid, and crawling deference to wealth, if it be not peculiar to the English nation, certainly attains its maximum of intensity among those idolatrous worshippers of the golden calf; and no one, therefore, will be surprised that Mr. Jackson, with three stars at the India house, and the best portion of a plum in bank stock, should be deemed a little. monarch in his own village. Nobody rode in such a gorgeous equipage; and when he went to church to abjure pomps and vanities, nobody's servant followed, with a gilt prayer-book, in a finer livery or more flaming shoulder knot: of course, nobody could be so proper to decide whether the philosophic Chilvers was a visitable person or not. Miss Briggs, an elderly maiden relation, and an inmate in the family, decided this important question in his favour, when it was very near being negatived, by declaring that his being undoubtedly a person of property was quite sufficient; that she dared to say, he was a very good sort of man, in spite of his little oddities; and that, in her opinion, he ought to be visited even in spite of his old white hat.

Chilvers was so elemental in his views, as generally to overlook all conventional modes and forms; and thus, without affectation of singularity, he often fell into somewhat grotesque peculiarities. One summer he purchased a white hat, and once ventured to tie it down under his chin, on account of a face-ache. The ridicule and laughter of the rustics first made him sensible that he had presumed to deviate from customary fashions; but as he felt benefit from that which he had adopted, and had a perfect contempt for vulgar or polite raillery, he adhered to his hat as religiously as a Quaker; and partly from habit, partly from obstinacy, constantly wore it, even within doors. The giggling, sneers, and whispering of the visitors, when the irruption

formally broke in upon his quiet cottage, suggested to him the idea of checking their unwelcome invitations, by going to their houses in his old white hat, and giving them to understand that he never took it off. Even this expedient failed. A rich man, without children or apparent relations, has too much to leave to be left alone, and cards and visits rather increased than diminished, in spite of the old white hat.

Accident, however, effected what this inseparable appendage could not accomplish. A female cousin of Chilvers, about thirty years of age, had been left a widow, with a little girl of five years old, in a state of utter destitution; and as soon as she learnt his accession of fortune, very naturally applied to him for assistance. Upon occasions of benevolence he was not in the habit of calculating appearances, or balancing surmises; so he tied down his old white hat, got into a glass coach, drove to his relation's, and in less than twelve hours from the receipt of her letter, had established her, with her child, in his cottage, giving up his own bedroom for her use, because, as he said, young women liked to be cheerful, and from the corner window she could see all the company on the Romford road. When the dust allowed any objects to be discerned at that distance, it is certain that a glimpse might occasionally be caught of a drove of oxen, or a cart laden with calves for Whitechapel market; but Chilvers had been told that his window commanded this great thoroughfare, and had never been at the pains to ascertain the nature of its command. Such as it was, there the widow had her habitation, her kinsman little dreaming that, in following the dictates of his kind heart, he had at last hit upon an expedient for effectually clearing his house of ceremonious, card-leaving and card-playing annoyances.

However liberal the world may be in measuring a man's fortune, they seldom extend the same gene

rous estimate to his actions and morals, but are exceedingly prone to deduct from his honour and honesty, at least as much as they had added to his wealth. So it fared with Chilvers. They were willing to overlook his whims and caprices, and even tolerate his old white hat, but there was really no shutting their eyes to the improper nature of the connexion with this pretended widow, this Mrs. Hall, or Ball, or whatever he called her; and, indeed, it was obviously an old affair, for the brat of a child was the very picture of him. He might, at least, have concealed the creature, and not have brought her into his own house, and under the very noses of such universally-allowed-to-be-respectable people as the inhabitants of C Row. Miss Briggs again took the field on this momentous abomination! and although, but a few days before, she had been heard to pronounce him remarkably good-looking for a middle-aged man, she now, with a toss of ineffable anger and disdain, most energetically termed him a good-for-nothing nasty old fellow; and the obsequious village re-echoed the assertion. Footmen, boys, and maids, no longer lifted his latch with cards and invitations; and the females of the place were suddenly seized with an unaccountable obliquity of vision, when they saw him approaching with the unconscious author of this revolution leaning upon his arm. The outrageous puritans instantly crossed over the road, regardless of mud or puddle: some looked steadily at a sign-post on the opposite side of the way; others gazed upon the heavens or contemplated the earth; while a few summoned a whole pandemonium of outraged chastity in their countenances, and passed him with a fling of ineffable scorn; but he was too absent and heedless to be even conscious of the cut direct and insolent, still He was less of the cut oblique and embarrassed. too happy in the quiet repossession of his house, and resumption of his studies, to be solicitous about the

cause; and as to the poor widow, her time and thoughts were so exclusively occupied with little Fanny, her daughter, that she required not the attentions of her neighbours.

Al

Nothing could exceed the amazement of Chilvers, when I explained to him the meaning of this estrangement. "Why, she is not thirty," he exclaimed, "and I am sixty; what disproportion will secure a man from scandal ?" With his usual phi lanthropy, however, he soon began to find excuses for the world, and as he was highly sensitive to any imputations thrown upon his relative, though utterly callous to them in his own person, he consulted me as to what conduct he could adopt, so as to silence calumny, and yet afford the shelter of his roof to this destitute widow. "None," I replied, "but by marrying her." "With all my heart," he rejoined, "if Mrs. Ball will give her consent." ready deeply impressed with gratitude and esteem, weary of struggling with misfortune, and anxious to secure a protector for her little portionless daughter, this simple minded and kind hearted woman did not hesitate in accepting his hand; the marriage took place, and Chilvers, who was before an old rogue, and an old sinner, was instantly converted, in the village vocabulary, into an old fool and an old dotard. This union, dictated solely by benevolence on one side, by gratitude and maternal solicitude on the other, without a particle of love on either, was, without exception, the happiest and most undisturbed that has ever fallen within my observation. And yet there was no intellectual congruity between them: she was an uneducated simple woman; he was a profound, original, and elemental philosopher. But there was affinity and sympathy in their kind and generous hearts; he had found an object for the overflowings of his benevolent bosom, and she looked up to her benefactor with a mixture of filial and conjugal affection.

This case may have been an exception to the general rule, but it certainly affords a proof that disproportion of age is not necessarily incompatible with married happiness. Theirs' was unbroken except by death; and he, alas! unlike Miss Briggs, came but too soon to visit the cottage, in spite of the imputed mistress, and even of the old white hat.

Chilvers had a mortal antipathy to all interference in parochial affairs, deeming them the infallible foes of neighbourly concord, and the bitter springs of jealousy, bickering, and ill will. During the war, when the militia papers were left at his house, he regularly inserted in the column of exemptions"Old, lame, and a*coward”—and returned it to the proper officer, generally within an hour of his having seen it. Once he was appointed overseer of the poor, in the very natural supposition, that from his indolent and sequestered habits he would appoint a deputy, for which office several applicants accordingly presented themselves; but he detected the motive of his nomination, determined to punish his annoyers, and to the amazement of the whole village declared his intention of acting. His first step was to abolish the quarterly dinners, and other indulgences and perquisites, which his coadjutors had been in the long established habit of enjoying; his second, was to compel them to the performance of those duties which for an equally lengthened period they had been accustomed to neglect; and the result was precisely what he wished-they never troubled him in future. Upon only one other occasion was he moved to enter into the parochial arena, and as it occured but shortly before his death, of which, indeed, it was the ultimate cause, and was productive of a little scene of which I was an eye-witness, I shall proceed to relate it.

About half way down Loughton lane, a footpath strikes off across a large field, and coming out opposite the free school, considerably shortens the way