with him to observe the moon-lit sky, the starry firmament, the morning and the evening sun, and with what exquisite taste did he direct our attention to the noblest objects around us, the river rushing along its rocky bed, the trees bending before the wind, or the hills tossing their heads on high, and wrestling through a wilderness of clouds.

God! who can tread upon the breathing ground,

Nor feel thy presence where thy works abound!

To Lady Laura's mind the minuter beauties of creation were yet more congenial, and the melodies of nature added an additional enjoyment to the charm of her plants and her flowers. The bee, murmuring as it wandered from leaf to leaf, the flow and fall of the tumbling stream, the song of birds, the lowing of cattle, and even the howling of the tempest, were to her the very enchantment of rural life. Though she could, with a most accomplished pencil, imitate the forms and the hues of nature; though I have seen her gazing long with intensest interest into the structure of the very smallest wild-flower; yet the life-giving sounds, and the busy stir of animal life, were, to a mind full of sympathy as hers, the greatest of pleasures. The familiar association of birds and animals with man, and the opportunity of observing their habits, is one of the enjoyments peculiar to country life, of which none who are accustomed to it ever tire; and to the poetical mind of Cowper, his domesticated hares were not a more pleasing resource, than the deer and the wild goats, which were tamed by my mother, and became the joy and delight of our childhood, as well as the rough, shagged pony, which carried my brothers by turns, or sometimes both at once, to the fields.

Lord Charles, who never after his marriage kept horses for himself, used good humoredly to say sometimes, when alluding to the necessity he had found of parting with his stud, that only the eldest son in a family should be allowed to acquire a taste for hunting, and all the younger brothers might prudently limit their genius for sport to fishing—an amusement of which he became passionately fond; and he used often to summon Lady Laura with her books and work," to share with him in that "healthful play."

Amidst all the simple pleasures by which their tastes were elevated, none supplied so inexhaustible a harvest of reflection and of enjoyment to my parents as their beautiful garden, to the decoration of which they jointly devoted many a leisure hour. That one acre might have passed for the work of a fairy's wand, so successfully had it been adorned with rare and splendid plants. The whole looked, in summer, like one brilliant bouquet; and my father, in the exultation of exhibiting his success to visitors, used to boast, that "not a thimbleful of earth was without a leaf, and that if he planted weeds they would come up flowers."

"Of all the occupations in life," said he one day, more seriously, without satiety at the time, or self-reproach afterward, none is so natural or so attractive as gardening— the first employment appointed to man by his Maker, and almost the only one of which the reward is certain and lasting. Nature, as you see here, is not niggardly in the return she makes for any labor we bestow on her."

Yes," added Lady Laura, "and to poets, philosophers, or Christians, what so fertile in thought as a scene like this! It was in a garden that man first saw the light-in a gar

B*

den that the fall of man took place in a garden that the Saviour prayed in agony for our redemption—and there that the loveliest type is daily exhibited of our death and resurrection.

All nature dies, and lives again:

The flow'r that paints the field,

The trees that crown the mountain's brow,

And boughs and blossoms yield,

Resign the honors of their form

At winter's stormy blast.

And leave the naked leafless plain

A desolated waste.

Yet soon reviving plants and flow'rs

Anew shall deck the plain,

The woods shall hear the voice of spring,

*And flourish green again.

But man forsakes this earthly scene,

Ah! never to return!

Shall any following spring revive

The ashes of the urn ?"

CHAPTER IV.

To such I render more than mere respect,

Whose actions say that they respect themselves.

COWPER

To the indignation and annoyance of their titled sisters and flourishing brothers, my father and mother, being poor, had of course a numerous family, who were each and all as joyfully welcomed into the world, as if large estates had been entailed on every child they possessed.

Lord Barnfield being a great political economist, and a private economist besides, afraid of our at last becoming a burden to him, declared, that he thought no marriages should be allowed by law, unless the parties could give security to government for being able suitably to maintain a family; and by all our rich relations we were looked upon from our infancy as suspicious characters, likely, by our poverty, to become a family reproach, and in all probability an intolerable bore. With an independence of mind amounting almost to extravagance, my father omitted to ask any of his more prosperous relatives to become godfathers and godmothers to his unwelcome children; but forfeiting every prospect of our being presented with silver cups or christening frocks, he named us all, without reference to mercenary considerations, after those whom he most esteemed, or who had, he thought, the most single-hearted regard for himself.

Among those, none ranked so high as a worthy good old uncle, Lord Robert, the benefactor of his own boyhood, who lived in London on a small annuity, the greater part of which he expended in acts of kindness and charity, leaving little for himself but the barest necessaries of life.

He was a cheerful old man; for whatever might be wanting to his own happiness, he could usually borrow by sympathizing in the enjoyments of all around, and especially in the joys of my father's children, whom he looked upon and loved as his own. Most of us were born in his house, and in after years I still delight to remember his kind old countenance, his humorous jests, his gold-headed cane with which he pretended to threaten us, the sights he took us to enjoy, the mountain of bon-bons and cakes with which he regaled us, and the perpetual holiday which continued by his desire as long as we visited him in Baker-street. Lord Robert's theories of diet and education were most popular with his juvenile visitors, as he thought it impossible for children either to eat too much or to learn too little. If any of us were ill in his house, he never could be persuaded that it was not from getting too much study in the schoolroom, rather than too much trash in the dining-room, and he continued to the end of his days firm in the belief that we were all too precocious to live, and required the rein in our education rather than the spur.

It

Those who wish to be remembered for countless years with affectionate gratitude, should be kind to children. was my earliest sorrow when we lost Lord Robert, and I yet remember the heart-felt grief with which my father announced his death, and desired us all, while we lived, to