then to the scene without, which was quite lovely enough to fix the glance that it caught.

Spring and Morning are ladies that owe half their charms to their portrait-painters. What are they in truth? One, a mixture of snow that covers the fair earth, or thaws that turn it into mud-keen east winds, with their attendant imps, coughs and colds-sunshine, which just looks enough in at the window to put out the fire, and then leaves you to feel the want of both. As for the other, what is it but damp grass, and an atmosphere of fog-to enjoy which, your early rising makes you sick and tired the rest of the day? These are the harsh and sallow realities of the redlipped and coral-cheeked divinities of the pic

ture.

After all, the loveliness of Spring and Morning is like that of youth—the beauty of promise; beauty, perhaps, the most precious to the soul. Campbell exquisitely says,

""Tis distance lends enchantment to the view:"

and let the heart be thankful from its inmost depths for that imaginative and self-existent faculty which first lends enchantment to the distance.

Spring, however, now and then gives us a beautiful day-to shew, if she does make a promise, she has a stock of sunshine on hand wherewith to keep it. Such a day was now shining on Norville Abbey. The gray mist, which imparts such indescribable beauty to an English landscape, was now illuminated with the morning light, and hung round the turrets a bright transparent mass of vapour, which you seemed to expect would every moment clear away, like those which, in the valley of St. John, opened and gave to view the enchanted castle. They never did clear away-still it was something to have expected.

One side of the building was completely covered with ivy: it was like a gigantic bower; and the numerous windows where the branches had been pruned, seemed like vistas cut in the luxuriant foliage. The rest of the walls were stained and gray, carved with all varieties of ornament; flowers cut in the stone, the cross at every angle, the winged heads representing the cherubim-niches, where male and female saints stood in divers attitudes of prayer-and arched lattices, whose small glittering panes seemed too thankful for a sunbeam not to reflect it to the utmost. The imagination must

have been cold, and the memory vacant indeed, which gazed unexcited on the venerable pile.

Religion was never more picturesque than in the ancient monastery. History, poetry, romance, have alike made it the shrine for their creations. The colour thrown over its remembrances is like the rich and purple hues the stained glass of the painted window flings on the monuments beneath.

The situation, too, was one of great natural beauty. At the back was a smooth turf, unbroken save by two gigantic cedars, stately as their native Lebanon, and shadowy as the winters they had braved. This sloped down to a large lake, where the image of the abbey lay as in a mirror-every turret, every arch, dim, softened, but distinct: beyond were fields covered with the luxuriant and rich-looking green of the young corn- - for the park had not been preserved till the varied outlines of undulating hedge, groups of old elms, distant meadows, and the verdant hills, were lost in the blue sky.

The view from the breakfast-room was of an utterly different and confined character. The thick growth of the fine old trees, and the un

clipped shrubs, shut out all but the small portion of shrubbery, which was like one bright and blooming spot in a wilderness. The windows opened upon a broad terrace, against whose stone balustrade a few pots of early flowers were placed-not very rare, for the hothouse had been neglected; still there were some rose-trees, putting forth buds at least, some myrtles, some deep purple hyacinths.. The steps led down into the garden, whose beds were rich in white and crimson daisies, hepaticas, and violets, whose breath perfumed the whole place. The turf was of that rich dark emerald which promises softness fit for the chariot of the fairy queen; and, spreading his magnificent plumage in the sunshine, which brought out a thousand new colours, a peacock stood gazing round, either for admiration, or with an Alexander Selkirk -looking feeling, which said, "I am monarch of all I survey.

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"I must say," observed Lord Mandeville, opening the window till the room seemed filled with fragrance and sunshine, "a street sacred to Macadam's dynasty of mud, and the blinds, bricks, and smoke of our opposite neighbours, are not quite equal to a scene like this."

"On to the combat, say your worst;

And foul fall him who flinches first!"

replied Lady Mandeville. "The exception proves the rule; but there is such an argument in your favour, that for once I will give up the dispute-but, mind, it is not to be considered a precedent.

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So saying, she stepped upon the terrace to meet a beautiful boy, who came, glowing and out of breath, to ask for bread for the peacock. In sober seriousness, there is more poetry than truth in the sweet poem of Allan Cunningham - the Town and Country Child: witness the cheerful voices and the rosy faces to be met with in the smallest street and closest alley in London; but if an artist had wished for a model for the children so beautifully painted by the poet, Frank Mandeville-two months ago pale and languid, and now Frank Mandeville bright-eyed and cheerful — might fairly have sat for both likenesses.