did they do?" "O! they came ringing at the bell like new 'uns; six or seven times they called us out— they would take no nay."

Little did these fair ladies, when sallying out for this frolic in the sylvan lanes of Surrey, dream, I dare say, that they should meet "a chiel takin' notes," that would put their exploits into print. Here they are, however; and if they should chance to see this, I must tell them, that they were very sweet nondescripts, but not very perfect beggars; and far, far indeed from perfect Zinganies. For Madge Wildfires, they were not amiss; but beggars, impudent as they are, seldom ask for sixpences; seldom appear in new apparel; never run by the side of carriagesthat is left to beggar children. Pleading looks, and a pitiful whining tone, with low genuflections, mark the young beggar woman, as she stands fixed at one place ;—her husband is dead, and she is going home to her parents or parish; or he is gone for a soldier, and she is following to the garrison. Lancashire witches they would have done for capitally-but then witches don't tell fortunes by palmistry; their vocation is by spell and cauldron; and as for gipsies, why it is just as difficult to mistake the particular expression and cultivated voice of an English lady, as it is the features and voice of the real gipsy-woman. Black eyes and black hair these ladies had; but they had neither the olive skin, nor the bold, easy degagée air of the gipsy belle; and what do gipsies with such beautifully slender and delicate hands? They were importunate; but nothing but a life and an education in the gipsy-camp, and perhaps the blood and descent of the gipsy, can give the peculiar style of palaver—

the suaviter in modo-the unique flattery-the "you are born fortunate, sir"-with which the gipsy accosts you. And the costume! The gipsy wears nothing short. She has a long gown,-a long red cloak-a handkerchief tied over her head, it is true, but upon it a large flapping bonnet with lace trimming, or black beaver hat;-instead of that fairy form, she is generally strapping, tall, and strong-and instead of those taper ankles and small feet, which could evidently dance down the four-and-twenty hours, she has her lower limbs arrayed in black stockings and stout shoes that would do for a wagoner. Young gipsy women walk with sticks! who indeed ever saw an old one with one? Knowing now who these ladies were, I should, beforehand, have expected a closer personation of the gipsy; but the result only proves the difficulty of the attempt. It must, however be confessed, that this was as pretty a little rural adventure as one could desire to meet with.

251

CHAPTER II.

NOOKS OF THE WORLD; OR,

A PEEP INTO THE BACK SETTLEMENTS OF ENGLAND.

A

THERE are thousands of places in this beautiful kingdom, which, if you could change their situation-if you could take some plain, monotonous, and uninteresting tracts from the neighbourhood of large cities, from positions barren and of daily observance, and place these in their stead—would acquire an incalculable value; while the common spots would serve the present inhabitants of those sweet places just as well, and often far better, for the ordinary purposes of their lives-for walking over in the day, sleeping in during the night, and raising grass, cattle, and corn upon. The dwellers of cities-the men who have made fortunes, or are making them, and yet long for the quietness and beauty of the country-but especially the literary, the nature-loving, the poetical-would, to use a common expression, jump at them; and, if it were in their power to secure them, would make

heavens-upon-earth of them. Yes! they are such spots as thousands are longing for; as the day-dreaming young, and the world-weary old, are yearning after, and painting to their mind's eye, daily, in great cities; and the dull, the common-place, the impercipient of their beauty and their glory, are dwelling in them:-paradisiacal fields and magnificent mountains; or cloudy hollows in their mottled sides; or little cleuchs and glens, hidden and green-overhung with wild wood-rocky, and resounding with dashing and splashing streams;-places, where the eye sees the distant flocks and their slowly-stalking shepherds-the climbing goat, the soaring eagle: and the ear catches their far-off cries; whence a thousand splendours and pageants, changing aspects, and kindling and dying glories, in earth and sky, are witnessed; the cheerful arising of morning-the still, crimson, violet, purple, azure, dim grey, and then dark fading away of day into night, are watched; where the high and clear grandeur and solitude of night, with its moon and stars, and wandering breezes, and soul-enwrapping freshness, are seen and felt. Such places as these, and the brown or summer-empurpled heath, with its patch of ancient forest; its blasted, shattered, yet living old trees, greeting you with feelings and fancies of long-past centuries; the clear, rushing brook; the bubbling and most crystalline spring; and the turf that springs under your feet with a delicious elasticity, and sends up to your senses a fresh and forest-born odour; or cottages perched in the sides of glades, or on eminences by the sea-the soul-inspiring sea-with its wide views of coming and going ships, its fresh

gales, and its everlasting change of light and life, on its waters, and on its shores; its sailors, and its fishermen, with all their doings, families, and dependencies -every one of them thoroughly covered and saturated with the spirit of picturesque and homely beauty; or inland hollows and fields, and old hamlets, lying amid great woods and slopes of wondrous loveliness;—if we could but turn things round, and bring these near us, and unite, at once, city advantages, city society, and them! But it never can be! And there are living in them, from generation to generation, numbers of people who are not to be envied, because they know nothing at all of the enviableness of their situation.

We are continually labouring to improve society— to diffuse education-to confer higher and ampler religious knowledge; but these people know little of all this-experience little of its effect; for their abodes, and natural paradises, lie far from the great tracks of travel and commerce; far from our great roads; in the most out-of-the-world places-the very nooks of the world.

If you come by chance upon them, you are struck with their admirable beauty, their solemn repose, their fresh and basking solitude. You cannot help exclaiming, What happy people must these be! But, when you come to look closer into them, the delusion vanishes. They do not, in fact, see any beauty that Their minds have never been stirred from you see. the sluggish routine of their daily life; their mental eye has never been unsealed, and directed to survey - the advantages of their situation. They have been occupied with other things. Like the farmer's lad