"there is more interest attached to the old times of love, it is, after all, in some degree, counterbalanced by the safety of the present; and I know not whether it is not better to be born in the age when racks and torments are used metaphorically, than in those in which it is an even chance that I might have encountered the reality."

VOL. I.

L

LADY BETTY'S POCKET-BOOK.

"Into it, Knight, thou must not look."

SCOTT.

I PASSED my five-and-twentieth birthday at Oakenshade. Sweet sentimental age! Dear, Oakenshade is the

deeply regretted place!

fairest child of Father Thames, from Gloucestershire to Blackwall. She is the very queen of cottages, for she has fourteen best bedrooms and stabling for a squadron. Her trees are the finest in Europe, and her inhabitants the fairest in the world. Her old mistress is the Lady Bountiful of the country, and her young mistresses are the prides of it. Lady Barbara is black-eyed and hyacinthine, Lady Betty blue-eyed and Madonna-wised.

In situations of this kind it is absolutely necessary for a man to fall in love, and, in due compliance with established customs, I fell in love both with Lady Betty and Lady Barbara. Now Barbara was soft-hearted and highminded, and pretended, as I thought, not to care for me, that she might not interfere with the interests of her sister; and Betty was reckless and giddy-witted, and troubled her head about nobody and nothing upon earth, except the delightful occupation of doing what she pleased. Accordingly, we became the Romeo and Juliet of the place, excepting that I never could sigh, and she never could apostrophize.

Oh, what a time was that! I will just give a sample of a day. We rose at seven (it was July), and wandered amongst moss roses, velvet lawns, and sequestered summer-houses, till the lady mother summoned us to the breakfast table. I know not how it was, but the footman on these occasions always found dear Barbara absent on a butterfly chase, gathering flowers, or feeding her pet robin, and Betty and myself on a sweet honeysuckle seat, just big enough to

hold two, and hidden round a happy corner as snug as a bird's nest. The moment the villain came within hearing, I used to begin in an audible voice to discourse upon the beauties of nature, and Betty would answer in the same key, as if the subject were the nearest to her heart.

After breakfast we used to retire to the young ladies' study, in which blest retreat I filled some hundred pages of their albums, whilst Betty looked over my shoulder, and Barbara hammered with all her might upon the grand piano, that we might not be afraid to talk. I was acknowledged to be the prince of poets and riddle-mongers, and, in the graphic art, I was a prodigy unrivalled. Sans doute, I was a little overrated. My riddles were so plain, and my metaphors so puzzling — and then my trees were like mountains, and my men were like monkeys. But love has such penetrating optics! Lady Betty could perceive beauties to which the rest of the world were perfectly blind, and, for hours together, I have felt her pretty lips exhaling their perfumes within a quarter of an inch of my temples. It

was a perilous situation. It used to take away my breath—even Betty's was drawn shorter, and she would hail Barbara through the thunders of Kalkbrenner, as much as to say that things were in a dangerous state, and it was time to take a ride.

Now Barbara was a good horsewoman, and Betty was a bad one; consequently, Barbara rode a pony, and Betty rode a donkey; consequently, Barbara rode a mile before, and Betty rode a mile behind; and, consequently, it was absolutely necessary for me to keep fast hold of Betty's hand, for fear she should tumble off. Thus did we journey through wood and through valley, through the loveliest and most love-making scenes that ever figured in rhyme or on canvass. The trees never looked so green, the flowers never smelt so sweet, and the exercise and the fears of her high-mettled palfrey gave my companion a blush which is quite beyond the reach of simile. Of course, we always lost ourselves, and trusted to Barbara to guide us home, which she generally did by the most circuitous routes she could find.

At dinner, the lady-mother would inquire