Eugene was astonished. He would have demanded an explanation, but before he could speak, Lady seized her son by the hand, and left the temple, bidding her daughters "follow her immediately, and not to countenance, by their presence, the disgraceful intercourse of two ungrateful hirelings."

The daughters would have disobeyed their mother, and remained to comfort their falsely-accused friend, but Miss Tarleton waved them from her as she rose from their arms, and the countess again bade them leave, on pain of her displeasure, those who should shortly be turned out into the world as they deserved." They reluctantly obeyed.

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The situation of Miss Tarleton and Eugene was painful in the extreme. He, however, led the poor weeping girl to a seat, and in the most delicate way he could, inquired the meaning of what he had seen and heard. The explanation satisfied him that the countess was a slanderer and a tyrant. He strongly advised Miss Tarleton to quit the castle immediately.

Where was she to go? She had not a friend in the world. Eugene thought of his mother. He urged Miss Tarleton to put herself under his protection. She refused, for she said it would confirm the story which the countess had invented. Eugene combatted her arguments, and at last prevailed by promising her not to visit his home while she remained under its roof. He would resign his tutorship, and would retire to London for a time.

Eugene procured a means of conveyance, and when the countess inquired for the governess in the evening, a note was placed in her hands, which informed her that she had left the castle for ever. In anger she ordered the servant to send Mr. Akinside to her. The man told her "he had left in a post-chaise about an hour before."

Lady sought the earl, who told her that through her violent temper and unwarrantable accusations, she had driven a friendless girl to seek a home with the stranger, deprived her son of a conscientious guide, and himself of a sincere friend.

The countess sneered at her lord contemptuously as she said,

"It was cunningly contrived-she wished they might marry and live happily together."

Lord would have vindicated the characters of his friend and his daughters' governess, but the countess bade him not to attempt to deceive her as he had been deceived himself-and left the room.

CHAP. IV.

Two months had passed since the scenes I have recorded were acted. Eugene Akinside had been inducted to the living of Ditchingly. Lord, the patron of the living, had given it to him in a way which rendered a refusal impossible. It was but of little value, but it would, as his lordship said, support him in comfort until a more valuable one became vacant.

After induction and reading in Eugene returned to London until the vicarage-house was put into repair.

"The season" had again commenced; town was full; the streets and parks were thronged with carriages. Amidst the thousands who went to breathe the pure air of the park and Kensington-gardens was the sub-vicar of Ditchingly. As he was about to leave and seek his lodgings, some time after the great press of visiters had departed, and evening was throwing its lengthened shadows on the earth, he heard a loud shout followed by screams and shrieks. These were succeeded by a fearful trampling of horses-the ground seemed to shake under his feet. He turned to ascertain the cause of the sudden uproar, and saw an open poney-carriage approaching as fast as the little animals could draw it. A lady sat on the driving-seat, but the reins had fallen from her hand and she was screaming for aid. A gentleman who was sitting by her side seemed to be trying to recover the fallen reins. This Eugene saw at a glance; the carriage came up, he sprung into the road, seized the bridle of the off-side horse, and turned the carriage towards the rails by the side of the drive; the ponies sprung over, broke the traces and the pole, and scampered over the green sward, leaving the carriage on the other side.

Eugene's arm was broken in the attempt to stop the ponies-the agony was such that he was insensible for a time. When he recovered a crowd was around him and a surgeon was binding up his broken limb; the carriage lay at his side overturned; a lady was fainting on the ground near him, and by her side lay what had been Lord Eugene's friend and patron. The ladies Louisa and Fanny were weeping over their dead father; he had fallen on his head and fractured his skull. The fainting lady was the countess, who had been driving the ponies and venting her ill-humour by lashing them into madness.

Eugene was assisted into a coach that had been called for him and left the spot. The fractured arm was for a long time painful, and the surgeons were in doubt whether they would not be compelled to remove it. They removed him instead of his arm, sent him down to his mother, where Miss Tarleton still dwelt-repaying the widow's kindness to her in her destitute state by educating her younger daughters.

A few years passed by, and Ditchingly vicarage was tenanted by the incumbent and his incumbrances. Eugene had a wife and six children all living happy and contented on 180l. per annum. Need the reader be told that the mother of those children had borne the name of Tarleton ?-that the countess's wish had proved prophetic ?

It was to be a great day at the parsonage of Ditchingly when the sixth child was to be christened. The grandmother of the child was to be there, and all its aunts and uncles-the whole family were to attend. They came the day passed off delightfully; never had an evening sun set on a happier family. When the same sun rose again, it shone on the house of mourning-joy and mirth were exchanged for gloom and sorrow. The cholera-the pestilence permitted by Heaven to pervade the land-had fallen on the happy family. The scourge assumed its severest form all human aid was vain-victim after victim fell beneath its violence, and when the father recovered from its attack, he found that all his loved ones-all-his mother, his wife, his brothers, and his children-all save one-his infant-were dead and BURIED. Hidden for ever from his sight in this world. Many of his parishioners

had fallen too; for the plague had swept that part of the countryencouraged probably by the nuisance from the peats below.

Did Eugene Akinside sink under the blow? No: faith and hope supported him he lived to join his loved ones in another world, to rear and train up the only legacy his wife had left him-her babe-in this.

Within one year after this sad blow was sent to try him, the Countess of died. In her will, she left a large sum, amounting to thousands to the Incumbent of Ditchingly, as some compensation for the injuries she had done to him and his wife, and as a mark of her sense of his courage in attempting to save her from harm when her horses ran away.

Eugene did not want this money; he had enough, and more than enough for himself and his child. He gave it-the whole amount -anonymously, to a college for the education of orphan-girls.

Reader-my tales are told. The "Five Incumbents" are still living, I believe. If you should meet with them all, or any of them, except the Rector of Squashyfield, whose merits I know not, and may never know, as he is still non est, cultivate their friendship for they are worthy of your regard.

If you are fond of angling, seek the village of Clearstream, on the top of the Exeter Highflyer. The landlord will tell you of my success, and point out my favourite spots; he will not complain to you of my having done nothing for the "good of the house" by sponging on the neighbouring parsons; but will tell you of the happy evening we passed on the day before my departure, when I entertained all my friends to an excellent dinner, gave them plenty of wine, and promised them to visit them again on the following year.

I have not been able to perform that promise, but my friend the professor vows he will accompany me to Clearstream next season to eat the trout and the fairy fish on the spot. He is nervously anxious for the time to arrive, but I tell him, in the words of Zachariah Bond, "Easy does it-no hurry-lots of time," to which he replies with a wink, like the Rector of Rushley's, and sings,

Time hath wings, old age approaches,

imitatory of my friend, Mr. Quaverton.

DIARY AND CORRESPONDENCE OF MADAME D'ARBLAY.

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HOWEVER the world may have benefitted, through the medium of this Diary, by the six years' residence of Miss Burney at the court of Queen Charlotte, we are by no means sorry to find that her almost monastic seclusion from society closes at an early part of the new volume (the fifth). The truth is, that no human creature ever felt more keenly the evils of finding oneself in a thoroughly "false position" than Miss Burney did during those six mortal years-mortal ones to her, very nearly, in the fatal sense of the phrase, for one year more of their privations and annoyances would evidently have killed her. She just escaped in time however; and as the Queen, though extremely disappointed and annoyed at losing her, behaved very kindly and handsomely to her at parting-continuing one-half of her salary for the remainder of her life-her lot, upon the whole, was certainly not injured by her connection with the court; and we, her successors, have gained by it what no one else could have given us, and for the loss of which nothing that even she could have offered us in its place would have compensated for much as we admire, and what is better, esteem and love her "Evelinas" and "Cecilias," we would not part with her Court Diary for the best two of them that she could or would have written during the period of its composition. So that with all that personal fondness and regard for the "dear little Burney" with which no other female writer-much less any male one-ever inspired us in any thing like an equal degree, we are quite reconciled to that period of penance and purgatory through which she fretted so gently, and sighed so pathetically, all the while that she was turning its evils to favour and to prettiness," and from which she at last emancipated herself so nobly, notwithstanding the "most admired disorder" and consternation into which the very hint of such a step threw, not merely the cold and empty courtiers with whom she was associated, but her own nearest and dearest friends and kindreds-all indeed who knew her, with the sole exception of those three superior spirits, Burke, Windham, and Sir Joshua Reynolds, to whose grade of mind her's approached as closely as a woman's mind can or ought to do, and but for whose strong and active interest in her welfare she certainly never would have escaped from the unnatural thraldom into which nothing but her intense filial affection could have enticed her. All Miss Burney's reverent fondness and admiration for the venerable Mrs. Delaney, through whose medium the place at court was offered to her, and doubtless from what she (Mrs. Delaney) had reported to the Queen of her character and principles (though this latter fact nowhere appears in the Diary), did not for a moment hoodwink that fine intuitive perception of moral fitness which taught her to shrink from the seducing offer of becoming a court menial, as if it had come from an avowed emissary of the evil one; and had she herself alone been concerned, she evidently would not have taken a second moment to consider of the offer, but have rejected it as promptly as she would the offer of any other glaring mesalliance (to which, by the by, she more than once pathetically likens her miserable position during these years). But her dear father-what would he say or do? It was evident from the first moment that he had set

his heart upon his beloved Fanny-the flower of his flock-being a court lady. And his thoroughly worldly view of the matter (for with all his amiable and endearing qualities, Dr. Burney was a thorough man of the world, so far as honour and integrity allowed) was supported by the kindly but shallow-thoughted conclusions of all her dearest relations and closest friends. The struggle, therefore, was brief; and the gentlest, the softest, the most pure-minded, the most simple-thoughted, the most home-loving, the most retiring of her sex, became for six weary years the daily and hourly companion of lords and ladies in waiting, mistresses of the robes and maids of honour, military equerries and grooms of the stole, every one of whose aristocratic blood scorned the music-master's daughter, as a low-born "weed which had no business there," at the same time that they hated her intellectual superiority, and dreaded its possible employment, in some day or other putting them into a book.

But this was not the worst. Miss Burney well knew how to assert her social position had it been openly questioned, and her mind at all times enjoyed that healthy tone which enabled it to " find good in every thing," even in the washy "brooks" and stately "stones" of a court circle. It was after having all day long run the gauntlet through all these, that at night she was compelled-for compulsion it was to her gentle spirit, the alternative being a charge of purposed insult-to "make herself agreeable" to her immediate superior in office, who seems to have been the most thoroughly ill-conditioned, ill-tempered, impracticable, heartless, empty creature, that age and ill-health ever yet concocted out of a court official too old to work, too proud to resign, and too long trusted to be turned off. There is not in any existing work of fiction so fine a study, or one so full of affecting interest, as that afforded by the daily tête-à-têtes of Madame Schwellenberg and Miss Burney, and the daily struggles of the latter to bear them patiently, without basely succumbing to the insolent pretensions and heartless cruelty of her wretched tyrant, as we find them daily recorded in the last and present volume of this Diary.

From this melancholy thraldom, which was unrelieved by a single redeeming circumstance, beyond the uniform kindness of the princesses, and the general, but by no means uniform kindness of the Queen herself —a thraldom, too, for which the sufferer herself was condemned to pay a large annual price in argent comptant (for Miss Burney could, with perfect ease, have earned by her pen at least ten times the amount of her paltry annual stipend)-from this cruel thraldom she was rescued only just in time to save her life, by the earnest and almost indignant remonstrances of Mr. Windham to her father, with whom his opinions had great weight, especially when backed, as they were, by those of Burke and Reynolds; the latter of whom proposed, more than half seriously, to get a Round Robin addressed to Dr. Burney, signed by the whole of the famous Literary Club, against the enormity in question, which they, and they only, seemed to regard in its true light,-as no less foolish than it was selfish and unfeeling.

At last, however, she does escape; and the first use she makes of her newly recovered liberty is, like an uncaged bird, to fly to the woods and fields, whither she cares not, so that it be but far enough away from the scenes of her late thraldom. But, like a bird in this too, she soon re