refuse the offer, now made most opportunely to his sons, of placing them at school. The Bank of Hereford, in which my parents had placed a part of their fortune, and the whole of their savings, failed most unexpectedly about this time, which rendered it almost impossible for us longer to reside at Rosemount Lodge, or for my brothers to be provided in any other way with a liberal education; and my father himself candidly acknowledged that he had already given them all the classical instruction to which he was competent.

'What everybody says must be true'; and a perfect outcry of approbation arose among all our relations when they heard of the Duke's offer. All the usual jargon was made use of against a domestic education-that it would be a perfect disgrace if so promising a family were allowed to be any longer of mere home manufacture. 'Charles,' said the Duke one day, your girls, like Warren's blacking, require polishing, and the boys emulation. Ned and Robert must be early trained in the world, or they never can be fit for it! Those who are intended hereafter to be public men must begin by being public boys.'

If these were truths, they were very unwelcome, but our parents, fearful of being guided by inclination rather than by duty, listened, argued, and at last yielded.

As no substance in nature is at the same time both hard and soft, so there are very seldom united in the same character strong principle and tender sensibility. In no one were these qualities more exquisitely tempered, the one by the other, than in the well balanced disposition of our admirable mother, who resisted the change as long as resistance was possible, and at last gained over the Duke's consent, that, as I was yet young, she should for the present retain me.

After much anxious discussion, during which it became more and more evident that their own pecuniary affairs might soon become irretrievably embarrassed, and that my parents must accept all or nothing from the Duke, as no middle course was allowed, Lady Laura at length sorrowfully consented to a revolution in all her life and occupations, which prudence and gratitude dictated, but from which her whole heart recoiled.

"The Duke has been most kind in his own way,' she said, and I thank him with my whole heart; yet to break up all my school-room happiness, and become almost childless-to be hemmed in for ever by the walls of a street, with all nature shut out, and nothing visible but man and his works-what a change! It seems to me as if religion, happiness, and all good were nearer to my children in the country, and vice farther off, than ever they can

be amidst the artificial life of a great and boundless world like London.

It is, after all,' replied my father cheeringly, 'a mere libel on the little village of London, to fancy that we cannot be as domestic, as happy, and even as pious there as elsewhere. Let us show the world that it is so. We must consider our small home, wherever it be, as the universe. The happiness of our lives and their temptations are within our own hearts, and you cannot hope to avoid all trials, even if we had remained in retirement. As St. Jerome said: "Hide myself as I may, still old Jerome is with me.”’

I was but thirteen when we emigrated to London, yet never shall I forget that day, when our parents, from a deliberate conviction of their duty to us, forsook the little paradise in which they had so long delighted.

The only home I had ever yet known looked on that morning more like the vision of a dream than a solid reality. You scarce could see the grass for flowers.' The wild rose flung its graceful sprays across the path; our one lilac tree, weighed down with a load of flowers, almost dipped its head into the stream, and the jessamine, nailed to the house with gay shreds of my father's old uniform, grew in garlands around every latticed window. Many a bird had its song, and the sun

shine gave not only light and warmth, but, like a smile of affection from those we love, it cheered the very heart.

We were all at play in the little bowling-green while my mother's eye lighted up at the sound of our ringing laughter. For the last time she scattered crumbs among her tame robins, and gathered a bouquet of her favorite flowers: but when she gazed on their fading hues, and thought that these were all she could retain of her happy home-when she remembered, that, before they were withered, it would be deserted and desolate, she sat down on the stairs leading from the porch, and burst into tears.

My father's own lip quivered with emotion, but he sat down and took her hand in silence. It was long before either spoke, but at last he said, in a voice broken with emotion, While we are all together, no grief is unbearable. It is not of importance where one lives, but with whom, and I take my best gifts and greatest enjoyments in life wherever I take you and my children. Our first object should certainly be rather to see them, than any of our other plants, properly cultivated.'

6

True, but what a blessing when both could be trained together. You know it broke a Dutchman's heart to lose a single tulip root, so what should I feel when every tree and shrub here seems

like a near relation and old friend,' said Lady Laura sadly, and that beautiful stream, my long-loved and cheerful companion. What an emblem its rapid course is of time, as the ocean is of eternity."

Children are always delighted with any change, and when my father looked around on our faces, sparkling with excitement, which we were vainly seeking to moderate or conceal, his own spirits rose with ready sympathy for ours, and he added to us, in his good-humored rallying tone, 'We shall thrive very well in the smoke of Londen, I have no doubt, and may have our throats swept, like our chimneys, once a month. After all, what do we leave here to break our hearts about? A farm containing one cow, two hens, and a gooseberry bush. We shall still have, wherever we go, a rousing fire on the dark winter nights, and a merry circle around it.'

'Not if our children are dispersed like a hive upset; but I shall cease, my dear husband, to repine at what all the world, for their advantage, recommends, yet as long as you could do them justice at home, how happy we all were!'

'Yes; but hereafter I shall be quite at a loss how to conceal my own ignorance from my own children. If they have any headpiece at all, they have it from you, Lady Laura, but I believe, in all cases, the talents of children are inherited from