A PAIR OF TURTLES. 66 BY THE AUTHOR OF THE PURITAN'S GRAVE." Slow sinks, more lovely ere his race be run, MORE lovely than any sunset, whether in Grecian or in northern climes, is the placid close of a mildly expiring life. Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright, for the end of that man is peace.' There is a beauty, therefore, for those who have a heart to appreciate it, even in solitary old age, or on a companionless dying bed but how much more interesting is the sight of an affectionate old couple tottering to the grave together, who have been lovely in their lives, and in death are undivided. I have seen such a sight as this: it is among the earliest and strongest of my recollections: and never do I hear the well-known line of the bard of Erin There's nothing half so sweet in life as love's young dream,— but I immediately think of the aged and venerable couple who lived together in one house, and with one heart, for upwards of fifty years, and slowly sank together, with an unabated unity of affection, into one grave; and I cannot but suppose that they found the last days of their loving life quite as sweet as "love's young dream." It is a scene worth preserving, lacking as it may all poetical circumstance or embellishment. The couple to whom I refer, and whose image I am now endeavouring to present to the world's eye, belonged to the most unpoetical class in society, and dwelt in a region the most unromantic that it is possible to imagine : they were among the very humblest of the middle class, and their abode was in one of the eastern suburbs of the great metropolis, somewhat beyond that delectable region called Mile-End. The house in which they lived still remains, but so surrounded with buildings of recent erection, that it is hardly to be recognised. When I first knew it, it stood alone in a dull and silent lane, which was seldom used save as a thoroughfare to some marches that lay along the river's side. From the front of the house you had a smoky prospect of the steeples and domes of the great city, and from the back you might see the ships coming up or going down the river. The dwelling had once been a small farm house; it was built with a dingy red brick, which time, and smoke, and damp, have now rendered almost black. When I knew it, it had casement windows, which, having been but lately replaced by sash windows, give the poor old house the melancholy gloomy aspect of a superannuated dandy clad in cast-off finery of a recently by-gone fashion. When Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the name of my old friends, lived there, although the house might have somewhat faded from its pristine glory, yet the place looked respectably old, and particularly well adapted to its inhabitants. It had a pretty papered parlour for Sunday use, coldly furnished with a thin Kidderminster carpet, a few high-backed, black mahogany chairs, and a pair of scanty, old chintz window curtains, thin and transparent as muslin. There was also a glazed corner cupboard, which contained the Sunday tea-things. This apartment was only used to drink tea in on Sundays; there being for common use another room of that amphibious kind, between parlour and kitchen, as may yet be seen in villages and small country towns, having a kitchen range, a brick sanded floor, elm chairs, a deal table, and stout blue stuff window-curtains. Everything was brightly and beautifully clean. Mr. Smith had a place in the India-house, as porter, or something of that kind. He had held it for many years, and latterly it was mercifully made almost a sinecure to him; for he did not like to retire, though his services could not amount to much-the task of walking. there and back again, in his old age, being quite enough for a day's work; but he liked to look on and see that things were done properly. He used to wonder what would become of the East-India Company and the great house in Leadenhall-street when he should no longer be able to give them the benefit of his presence and advice. His personal appearance was particularly neat, and his address courteous beyond his station. He wore a brown bob wig, and a uniform snuff-coloured suit, which the people all along Whitechapel and Mile-end-road were as familiar with as with the return of morning and evening. Mrs. Smith was as neat as her husband. Having once seen, it would be impossible for any one to forget, her snow-white mob-cap, plaited round her placid face with such an exquisite adaptation, that it seemed difficult to say whether the cap was made for the face, or the face for the cap. They had not many neighbours, or many acquaintances, but all they had spoke and thought very highly of them; yet when you came to inquire who and what the Smiths were, and why every body spoke so well of them, the only account you could get of the matter was, that they were worthy old creatures whom every body liked. They were certainly not the dispensers of much wealth either in the way of business or of charity, for they had not much to dispense. They had no particular brightness of intellect, nor did they take any part in the general interests and concerns of the parish. But they were such nice-looking old people-they were in nobody's way-they did not hurt any one's self-love. They had not done or said anything to win the good-will of their neighbours, but they had gradually grown into the hearts of those that knew them. They looked as if they wished far more good than they could possibly do. Human beings are for the most part in a state of care, of struggling, of anxiety; and the faces that you mostly meet in the great thoroughfares, and in the more multitudinous resorts of men, have upon them marks of doubt, or fear, or selfish calculation; a smiling and habitually contented countenance is as rare a thing in the great lottery of the world as a great prize used to be in the state lotteries. Therefore the very appearance of these good people was a pleasant sight to their neighbours-a kind of moral sunshine-an oasis in the desert-a paradise in a vale of tears. Happy, pleased, and contented, as they were, and apparently creeping through life as almost the only undisturbed couple amid the agitations of the world, they had not been without their troubles in days past. When you see a pleased and happy infant stretching its tender limbs upon its mother's lap, and forming its pretty face into dimpled smiles at each new sight of wonder which the untried world presents to its eager eyes, little can you imagine to what cares and fears, to what sorrows and sufferings, it may be exposed in after life. So in like manner when you see an aged pair quietly melting away the latter hours of their mortal life, and looking as mere sleepy spectators of the busy and careful world around them, you cannot say what sorrows they may not have experienced, nor do you know to what storms and trials they may have been exposed: for as the cloudless sunrise tells not of the storms that are coming, so neither does the placid sun-set, gorgeous with its golden clouds, bear manifestation of the storms that have been. I knew this venerable couple only in their latter days, and, from what I saw then, I should have thought that their whole lives had glided calmly along, without a ripple or a breeze. But they had borne their share of the trials of life; they had brought up a large family with care and tenderness, and with the usual hopes which parents form for their children; but the world had gone hardly with their children, who had been dispersed in various directions, and exposed to various hardships, so that the old people in their latter days had none of their family near them, except a grandchild-an orphan girl, whom they had brought up from her childhood. At two years of age, having lost both father and mother, the old people took her to live with them, and she became to them a substitute for all their other children, who were married away from them, settled or unsettled, here and there, and every where, save within reach of their parents. Little Lucy was suffered to grow up in a kind of amiable and quiet wildness; she was placed under very little restraint, because from her constitutional meekness she needed but little. Her education too was more of the heart than of the head; her only preceptress had been her grandmother, who would not part with the little living treasure for so many hours in the day as a school education demanded. Perhaps the child lost little in literature by this arrangement, and certainly she gained much in gentleness and sweet simplicity of manners. As the child grew up to maturity, the old people made equally rapid strides towards the close of their mortal pilgrimage. And every day they needed more and more the attentions and care of their affectionate and grateful grandchild. Lucy was quite pleased to assist her grandmother in the many monotonous toils of the domestic day. There were many culinary mysteries on which the little girl, in the days of her childhood, had looked with not much less awe than did the heathen folk of old regard the Elusinian mysteries, and to these-I mean the culinary, not the Elusinian mysteries-did her kind and gentle grandmother gradually introduce her. Daily and hourly did the affectionate grandchild become more interesting and more important to the old people. They had loved their children with sincere and deep attachment, but they seemed to love this young dependent more than they had ever before loved any human being; and when the little girl found how useful she was, and how pleasantly her assistance was received, she grew most prettily proud of the importance of her station, and the value of her services. It is a pleasant thing to feel one's-self to be something in the world. Naturally indolent and fond of ease as the generality of mankind may be, there are few who would not cheerfully, or at least willingly, undergo much labour in order to enjoy the satisfaction of conscious importance. In point of external and extensive importance, there is a very wide difference, but in point of internal feeling very little dif ference, between a minister of state and a little girl who is just beginning to find herself useful in a humble domestic establishment. Old age was now creeping upon the grandfather and |