in their relations to society, and leaving, when dead, nothing either "to point a moral or adorn a tale." My grandfather was a courtier and a man of expense. He married an earl's daughter, whose habits and tastes were even more expensive than his own, and engaged in several ruinous contests for the representation of the county. The natural consequences followed. Part of the family estate was sold, heavy mortgages incurred on the remainder, and when, in the course of nature, the succession devolved on my father, he found himself in possession of little more than the wreck of a magnificent estate. Of my grandmother, who survived her husband many years, I have a distinct and vivid recollection. I remember a stately old lady, in an oreille-d'ours-coloured silk gown, with a pyramidal headdress, an enamelled snuff-box in her hand, and a ponderous gold equipage at her girdle. I remember, too, the insidious delight taken both by my brother and myself in getting behind her chair, and tugging at the lace lappets, which depended from the apex of her coiffure. She died, and I was allowed to join in paying the last duties to her remains. The pomp and splendour with which the earthly tabernacle of my grandmother was restored to its kindred elements, made a prodigious impression on my young imagination. The hearse, in all its plumed and melancholy grandeur; the crimson velvet coffin, with its guilt escutcheons; the sable mutes, and the long and sombre procession, contributed to people my mind with ideas to which till then it had been a stranger. There is something wild and shadowy in death to the imagination of a child. It is surrounded by a certain dim grandeur and awful solemnity, which perhaps his very ignorance of its nature, tends rather to increase than diminish. He reads in the countenances around him, that something of dread and terror has befallen them. He learns that a being, from infancy familiar to his eyes, and at whose approach, perhaps, they ever brightened, shall meet them no more-that he is gone to a far-distant land, from which he never will return. He knows this, and he knows, likewise, that this is not all. There is some thing still beyond, with which his understanding vainly strives to grapple. Death is an abstraction too pure for the comprehension of a child; and when, in the gradual dawning of his intellect, it becomes intelligible, he finds that the dispersion of the mist which obscured the summit of the mountain has added nothing to its splendour and sub limity. For myself, while the funeral pageant of my grandmother impressed me with feelings of respect for her when dead, of which when living I had been far from betraying any symptoms, I likewise drew from it my first lesson of the transient nature of human glory, by observing how speedily she was forgotten. My father was a man of retired habits and reserved manners. I have already stated, that, on the death of my grandfather, it had been found necessary to sell a large portion of the family estates. This was a severe blow to my father's pride, and one, I think, from which he never afterwards recovered. At no period of his life had his taste led him into expensive pursuits, nor had he launched into any expenditure unsuited to the liberal establishment, which the world considered it fitting for a person of his station and expectations to maintain. The portion of his fortune which still remained to him, was amply sufficient for the supply of all the comforts, and even elegancies of life; yet the dismemberment of his hereditary property was not the less severely felt by a person of his temperament, because it involved no curtailment of his own personal enjoyments. The wound rankled in his mind, and a change in his character was thenceforward visible to all. Before this event, my father had been accustomed to move among the magnates of the land, with that due feeling of consequence and equality which belonged to his birth and fortune. He had entered life with the feelings of a high-born English gentleman, knowing his proper station in society, and neither betraying petty jealousy of his equals, nor kibing the heels of his superiors. It was now different. From the loss of property the loss of influence was inseparable. He was no longer selected as the foreman of grand juries, or the chairman of quarter sessions. His hall, at Michaelmas and Ladyday, was no longer crowded with the throng of tenants, who came to pay their rents, or solicit forbearance. Like angel visits, few and far between," they now came singly in; and though the steward still received them throned as formerly in his elbow chair, and with all his former solemn courtesy, the life and bustle of the scene was gone; "Twas Greece, but living Greece no more." Poor Humphreys felt it to be so, and locked his slender receipts in his bureau, with an air of less consequence, than had sat well upon him in better and brighter days. And thou, too, Jacob Pearson, thou paragon of butlers, thou best and worthiest of all the ministers of Bacchus! thy occupation, too, was gone. Where were those volleys of corks, which, like the fire of hostile armies, came quick and frequent on the ear? Where the gurgling and delightful sound of liberated liquor, full of sweet promise to the thirsty souls, who waited with bashful anxiety for thy approach? Alas, it was no longer heard. Thy visage was as rubicund, thy paunch as portly, as in former days; but where was the laughing sparkle of thine eye, thy ponderous alacrity of motion, the jest that circulated with the tankard, the hospitable jocularity that gave, like nutmeg, a racy flavour to its contents? These, alas, were gone too. Since that sad period, thine eye has been dull, thy motions heavy, and the cork of thy wit has been undrawn. It is not in all cases that the uses of adversity are sweet. In my father's they certainly were not so. He became irascible and morose, and jealous of those small attentions and trifling distinctions in society, to which birth affords, probably, the best claim, but to which wealth is the surest passport. In attempting to conceal even from himself the mortifying fact, that he was now become a much less considerable person than formerly, he assumed an air of austerity in his own family, and of dogmatism in society. He refused the county hunt access to his fox-covers, became litigious about the extent of his manorial rights, cut the vicar for saluting him with a familiar nod, and succeeded in getting himself almost unanimously voted, both the worst neighbour, and the most disagreeable man, in the county. Henceforth my father's life was embittered by a series of difficulties and disappointments, petty indeed in their nature, but not on that account less galling to a mind so morbidly sensitive as his. He imagined himself slighted, and knew himself to be disliked. He was probably both; but the cause was to be found, less in his change of circumstances than of character, At all events, there still remained attached to the family a sort of prescriptive influence and respect, which, like other prejudices, may decay slowly, but cannot be suddenly era. dicated. Of my mother I have not yet spoken: I would now do so. She was the daughter of a dignitary of the church, and brought with her little accession either of blood or of fortune. But she brought what was better, and more valuable than these, an excellent understanding, and an affectionate heart. She had been a beauty in her youth, and, during two seasons which she spent at Bath with her father, her charms had been the object of general homage and admiration. Circumstances of which I have acquired a knowledge, induce me to believe that her marriage with my father had been one rather of prudence than of love. If this was so, it belied the common prediction with regard to such marriages, for the union was not an unhappy one. It was indeed impossible, I think, to know my mother in the intimate relations of domestic life, and not to love her. While her conduct as a wife and mother was truly exemplary, her cheerfulness and benevolence of disposition tended greatly to soothe and soften the inequalities, to which my father's spirits were habitually subject; and she threw around her an elegance and refinement, of which the whole establishment unconsciously partook. The fruit of this union was two sons and two daughters. Of the former I was le cadet. My brother Charles was two years older, Jane one year younger than myself, and I was ten years old when little Lucy (for so I must still call her) was born, at a time when my mother's age rendered any further addition to her family extremely improbable. However, the little visitant was not the less cordially welcomed, on account of the unexpectedness of her arrival. She was the darling and the plaything of us all; and if any of the family were in danger of being spoiled by indulgence, it was little Lucy.-Dearest sister, how do thy infant beauties, and thy joyous frolics, mingle unbidden with the sadder memories of my youth! They run like silver threads through the woof of the dark tissue of I look back on them as to a green and sunny life. spot, which perhaps shows brighter because seen through a long and darkened vista of intervening years. Read, Lucy, these Memoirs of your brother's life. You will find in them much of error, perhaps more of suffering; but from you, at least, he will meet pardon for the one, and for the other sympathy. my CHAPTER II. They grew in beauty, side by side, F. HEMANS. READER, if you have ever travelled from Avington to Mountford, about a mile beyond the village of Edgehill, near where the road to Spixley branches off to the right, you may probably have remarked an ancient, and rather venerable looking gate, the pillars of which are surmounted by two rampant lions. The dexter of these royal animals has suffered considerable mutilation; the effacing fingers of time, or violence, having deprived him of whatever personal decoration might have resulted from the ornamental appendages of paws and tail. His antagonist has been more fortunate, and still retains one paw, with which he appears in the act of taking snuff; an indication of taste for the enjoyments of civilized life undoubtedly somewhat startling and anomalous. Be this as it may, the gate in question forms the entrance to an avenue about a mile long, winding gradually up a gentle acclivity, and flanked on either side by a row of lime-trees of uncommon luxuriance and beauty. In the distance, you may catch, as you advance, occasional glimpses of a house through the intervals of the trees, which is marked by its lofty peaked roof, and clustered chimneys, to belong to the era of Queen Elizabeth. You will not admire the building, but you will admire, I think, the situation in which it stands; the wooded hill that rises behind it, the mazy Severn, which flows a little to the right, the village church visible in the distance, and Cromar wood, that fills the left of the landscape, from which the cuckoo and ring-dove delight to send forth sweet music. This, reader, is Thornhill Manor, the spot where I was born, and where the intervening years of my infancy and youth flew rapidly away. |