ON THE OPENING THE PORTS OF ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL AND WESTMINSTER ABBEY. BY JOHN HAMILTON, ESQ. THE GRAVE ON THE LIDO. BY ANNA SAVAGE. THE SACRO MONTE OF ORTA. BY THE AUTHOR OF SECRET HISTORY OF THE COURT, MINISTRY, AND TIMES OF GEORGE IV. BY AN OLD DIPLOMATIST. LYCIAN ANTIQUITIES. BY W. FRANCIS AINSWORTH, ESQ... 231 HAVE YOU HEARD A LUTE? BY JOHN HAMILTON, ESQ. PRESENT STATe and ProspeCTS OF ITALY. BY L. MARIOTTI LITERATURE :-Azeth: the Egyptian. T. C. Newby.-Straw- berry Hill. By the Author of "Shakspeare and his Friends." NOW READY, THE FEBRUARY NUMBER OF AINSWORTH'S MAGAZINE. EDITED BY W. HARRISON AINSWORTH, ESQ. Contents. I. JAMES THE SECOND; OR, THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. BOOK THE FIRST.-Chap. III. The Golden Farmer.-Chap, IV. Of the II. AMABEL BLOUNDEL. III. THE DEMON PILOT. BY WILLIAM H. G. KINGSTON, ESQ. V. ON THE NEW POOR'S REMOVAL ACT. BY T. ROSCOE, ESQ. VII. THE RUINED CITIES OF AMERICA. BY NICHOLAS VIII. A QUEST AFTER QUIET. BY RUSSELL GRAHAM, ESQ. IX. AMOS'S "GRAND OYER OF POISONING." BY THOMAS WRIGHT, A.M. X. LAUNCELOT WIDGE. BY CHARLES HOOTON, ESQ. ILLUSTRATED BY R. W. BUSS. CHAPTER THE FIFTH.-Saul the Astrologer. CHAPTER THE SIXTH.-Displays Mrs. Thoroton's Hypocrisy, and instructs the Reader in the Art of Killing with Kindness. CHAPTER THE SEVENTH.-Illustrates Master Launcelot Widge's amazing Powers with the Kitchen Poker; and relates a curious Experiment which he tried upon his Father's Nose. XI. OUR LIBRARY-TABLE. CHAPMAN AND HALL, 186, STRAND. EVERY man should build his own house, if he can afford to pamper his peculiarities; for the mind, which has been compared to many things, is, in fact, like a fragment of rock fallen off from the crag, full of knobs, and angles, and odd corners, of all sorts of shapes and sizes, and there are many hundred millions of chances to one that-in all the multitude of sheaths or cases which are daily constructed for bodies and souls on this earth-you will not get one which will fit exactly any particular specimen of mind which has been reft from the great rock. Man must have corners for his oddities, and nobody can make them for him but himself. Now Mr. Graham had built his own house some ten or fifteen years before the period of which I write, and a very comfortable house it was, large, roomy, well arranged, not what is called magnificent, because Mr. Graham had on certain subjects a great fund of good sense, and having become wealthy (after having been by no means so) in consequence of the increasing prosperity in manufactures of the town of Brownswick, in which his was the only bank, he had a strong notion that any thing like ostentation would make people remember rather than forget that he had not always been as rich as he now was. He was a man of a very active and cultivated mind, and of a disposition both liberal and enterprising, he loved to do good to all around him, to see happy faces, and to know there were happy hearts. He had been industrious himself, and he loved to encourage industry. His principal object in buying a large tract of what had been considered waste land, and in bringing it into cultivation, was to give employment to the peasantry of a poor district; and in dealing with them he did not so much consider at what rate he could get their labour as what wages he could properly afford to give. He did not at all wish to do any injury to the neighbouring farmers or gentlemen, by giving higher wages than it was fair to give. That was not at all his object, and, throwing such considerations entirely out of the question, Feb.-VOL. LXXIX. NO. CCCXIV. L he only asked himself, what was fair. The plan succeeded wonderfully: first, in making one-half of his neighbours hate him mortally; secondly, in making all the poor people love him warmly; thirdly, in gaining for him all the best labourers in the county; and, fourthly, in rendering the estate exceedingly productive at the very time when every market-day heard prognostications of his never getting a penny of return. But this was only one of many successful speculations. He was always ready to enter into any thing which held out even a tolerable prospect. He lent money to one manufacturer, who could not get on without; he took a share in a mill which was likely to be stopped for want of funds; he bought up a great quantity of produce which was to be sold at a period of depression. If a contract was offered, he was ready to take it on the most favourable terms, and in all he was successful. The manufacturer to whom he had lent money prospered; the mill went on; the period of depression passed away, and prices rose; the contract proved a good one. Some attributed all this to Mr. Graham's luck, some to a keen foresight to coming events, some to the possession of great wealth, which enabled him to hold on while others were obliged to sell. There was, perhaps, a little of all in the business, and great luck he certainly had, for his least hopeful speculations were often more successful than the most promising. However so it was, Mr. Graham was a very prosperous man. The situation which he had chosen for his house turned out a good one, though people at first thought it would be bad. The moorland lying to the north-west was separated from his grounds or park, as the people called them, by several masses of wood, large and small, to which he added young plantations, arranged with great taste. In front of the house, while it was building, stretched out sloping to the southward some two hundred acres of open ground, rather unpleasantly soft to the foot, with more rushes and moss than were altogether beautiful or agreeable, while at the bottom of this marshy tract was a thick mass of tall old trees, some oaks, but more frequently pines, which cut off entirely the view of the lake. But Mr. Graham set to work, ploughed and harrowed the whole of the open space, drained it upon a plan of his own, gave it a greater inclination away from the house, cropped it, cleansed it thoroughly, and then laid it down in grass. By the time the house was inhabitable, for it occupied nearly four years in building and fitting up, Mr. Graham had as fine a lawn as ever was seen. He then attacked the wood, and cut his way clear through, till there was not a window on that side which had not a peep of the lake. He did nothing rashly however. The oaks in general were spared, and he so arranged it, that when the winter wind tore off the brown leaves from the deciduous tree, a tall old pine or fir appeared through the stripped branches. Neither did he anywhere afford a view of the whole lake or of either end, it was too small for that. The cutting was so arranged, and the trees left standing were in such a position, that from one window you got a view of one part of the sheet of water and the hills behind, and from another of a different portion, without ever seeing beginning or end. There was a mystery about the extent which is always pleasant. The lines of land and water lost themselves among the trees; and imagination might go on prolonging them for ever if she liked, behind the woody screen, in whatever way suited her best at the moment. In summer it was, indeed, a beautiful scene, with 4 the green slope and the dark broken wood, and the catches of the sunshiny lake, with tall, bare, misty mountains rising blue behind. Often, too, to give greater magic to the scene, a white-sailed boat would skim across the face of the waters, be lost behind some of the masses of trees, and then reappear again, till hidden at length entirely behind the part of the old wood which had been left standing. A little stream, too, which flowing down in former times from the moor had lost itself in the savannah before the house, and in rainy weather had turned it into a swamp, now collected in a fixed bed with one or two other small brooks, was led along till it reached the top of a rocky bank some twelve or fourteen feet high, and was there left to leap over at its own discretion, forming a cascade within sight, produced indeed by art in which no art was apparent. Nobody who had not seen the place before ever fancied that the stream had had another bed. In all these things, as I have before said, Mr. Graham had been very successful. In one point in life, however, he had not been so, and it was an important one. Whenever a man suffers himself to be led in pursuit of an object not consonant to his general views and disposition, he is sure to get into a scrape. Mr. Graham was not naturally an ambitious man, but some four-and-twenty years before, when he was nearly forty, he had done a little bit of ambition. In the straitened circumstances of his early days he had remained single, but as prosperity visited him and wealth increased, he began to sigh for domestic happiness. He was an enterprising man, as I have said; and he married a lady without knowing very much of her character. All he did know was, that she was handsome, about thirty years of age, the daughter of a baronet, whose father had been lord mayor of London, and whose sister had married a poor peer. It was not a hopeful concatination for a country banker, Mr. Graham. Nevertheless, something might be said in your defence. One might suppose that the civic origin of the family dignity, the three turtle shells rampant in the arms might keep down aristocratic pride. Such, however, was not the case. Mrs. Graham's father had spent a great deal of what her grandfather had made; and yet, young, single, and handsome, she had seen no reason why she should not marry a peer as well as her aunt. Peers thought otherwise, however, and did not marry her; considering a little, perhaps, that she had but five thousand pounds for her portion, when her aunt had had fifty. At twenty-six she began to imagine that a baronet or an honourable would do; but they did not come. At thirty her father was dead, her brother ruined, some grey hairs were mingling with the black, and she married a rich country banker. But her temper was by this time soured, and her pride not a whit quelled. She fancied she was condescending to Mr. Graham-nay, more, that she was lowering herself. She felt a degree of spite at herself and him for what she had done, and her only consolation was, that he was rich enough to enable her to domineer over all the families in the neighbourhood. Now Mr. Graham did not approve of her consolation at all. He did not consider himself honoured in the very least degree; he did not think his wealth or her assumed station gave her any right to treat his friends on any terms but those of equality. He was not weak enough to yield upon such a subject while there was a hope of a change; and during the first two years of their union he reasoned, remonstrated, even re |