passed in town; and they are never seen abroad but in their carriages. They are fond of flowers. They have also the grace to visit the Cascine every evening. The Cascine are meadows with trees, where the Grand Duke has an aviary and dairy, a pretty little pastoralized edition of Kensington Gardens, with the Arno on one side and mountains in the distance. But their visitors only come for a drive, and they would not come for that if it were not fashionable. The charm consists in criticising shaped bonnets, and saying, “Ah, there's Tomkins!" I beg pardon,-Gian-Battista, I should say; but these Italian commonplaces sound so finely that they impose on one's ear. The Tomkinses are a numerous race all over the world," from China to Peru;" and they abound much more among the upper orders in the south than the lower. If I were a bachelor, and inclined to marry in Italy, I should like to select a peasant girl, of a reasonable age, deepen the depth of her eyes with a little more knowledge, and in five years' time make her my wife. The graces would follow as a matter of course. In her style of language I already defy anybody to discover the difference, except that among the ladies the perpetual recurrence of certain elegancies of no meaning, and phrases of polite deprecation, looks more like the art of Letter-writing made Easy, or the Academy of Compliments. Let an Englishman, if he is wise and well off, seek his wife among those most respectable of all the respectable families on earth, who, in his own native soil, spend a good part of every year in the country, and make everybody happy about them. I have one in my eye now, at C., in Northumberland, the head of which is a second Allworthy. Even the town residence of this family looks upon a noble garden. Never shall I forget how affectionately the mother and daughter (the most unaffected people in the world, and yet they read Latin - hear that, ye Blues and ye anti-Blues!), never shall I forget how they all came about the object of their love, putting their gentle hands about his neck, and asking him how he fared after his walk. There is not a good of his fellow-creatures which he does not seek, nor a grace to grace it which he does not feel. I sometimes change color when alone to think what regard and gratitude an author may feel towards such men, and how long he may struggle in vain to show it. Why cannot we coin some of the wealth of our imagination into proofs tangible, and pour down our souls upon them in the princely shower? The less they care for it, in one sense, the more desire we have to show them how we care for it in another. And yet, God knows, I grudge no man his generosity. But these things are a mystery." I look upon it as a blessing in my lot that all the friends I ever was connected with have sympathized with me in preferring a country life. And yet they have liked the town too, and so do I. Luckily, very genuine country may be found near town for those who are not rich enough to go to a distance. Come, let us whisk ourselves back again. There is nothing like it. I pitch myself into one of those old green lanes of which I am so fond, and invite any bachelor that pleases to come and see me. I think there is a cottage in the neighborhood that will suit him. No. XI. LOVE AND THE COUNTRY. Hic gelidi fontes, hic mollia prata, Lycori, -VIRGIL. Hic nemus, hic ipso tecum consumere ævo. A wood, a stream, fair fields, and flowering hedges— T is a large, low cottage, smoking among the trees, with its back to a couple of green hills that shelter it from the north and cast. Everything is neat: Everything is quiet. Listen to the bees! What meadows go down there to the plain! What rich trees are about us, — elms, oaks, and beeches; not rich in fruit, but rich in verdure and leaves, and food for poetry. By heavens! this is better than Tuscany. The pleasures there are all too tangible and sensual, all corn, wine, and oil. Here man does not live by olives alone, but by those useful trees also, which, among a number of other calumniated goods, are on the face of them useless. "I love," exclaimed somebody, on passing a moorland, "to see some ground left in God Almighty's hands." So say I. I love to see trees that look as if they were good for nothing but to walk under, and to furnish us with a sentiment. I have a particular regard for those which the carpenter rejects with disdain. I know they do not exist for nothing; and I take them for what they are, memorandums of the abundance and poetry of Nature. At the bottom of the grounds about the cottage, there is a lane by a brook-side, which runs into a cross-country road. But the place, though solitary, is not desolate. There are some farms, and a noble mansion not far off, where a hospitable old gentleman, the possessor, has a fine library. The lanes branch. off in all directions, some opening into meadows, others into cornfields, most of them between rich banks of earth ornamented with natural hedges. One of my favorite spots is a bit of heath, looking up to a hill full of trees, out of which peeps a summer-house. Another is a wilderness, where the roots of the old trees issue forth and twist over the ground. But I know scarcely one which I prefer to certain meadows enriched with elm trees. I lie there very often in my Wishing-Cap, when the hay has been cut, and build castles in the air, — I should rather say, cottages in the trees, for those whom I love. Is not this a pleasant place to come to of an evening? "What can man more desire?" when he has been studying all the morning, and is determined to make heavens of his afternoons? Task the most ambitious old bachelor, whether there have not been periods in his life. best of them all and the very when the idea of such a cottage smoking among the trees, a kettle on the fire, and his arm round a slender waist, has not found the " consummation,” of all others, "most devoutly to be wished." Accordingly, I have provided a wife for my reader. She is not regularly handsome; but she has one of those faces which are justly accounted more beautiful than beauty. A person who goes by says, "What a lovely expression!" There is intelligence in her eyes, and an infinite sweetness about her mouth. Whenever she turns her face upon you in kindness, she seems to thank and bless you, and wish you all happy things. Sorrow might cut her to pieces, ere she would say a word to distress you: or if she did, she would repent it forever. But in joy, I advise you to bring a world of vivacity along with you, for she will give as good as you bring. She is fond of books and music. If you do not have some exquisite casts and engravings to adorn your parlor with, you will not do her justice. When females of her own rank come to see her, they long to play the rustic as she does. When the peasant girls bring her provision, they desire more than ever to be ladies. She meets them half way, and will pin their handkerchiefs for them, if got loose. Between ourselves (for it must not be mentioned to everybody), she can make an excellent pudding. It was a whim of her grandmother to teach her; and she insists that her children will be the better for it, and not at the mercy of a cook; for I must own, that although not yet married, she has the face to speak of the family she may have some day; and has even been heard to say, that she should not like to make a very poor match, because she hopes to have leisure enough to be her husband's companion; which, added she, is after all the first business of a wife: though she blushed when she said it. Her vivacity and address serve to extricate her gentleness out of its difficulties. Her brother, who is a collegian, and loves somewhat maliciously to call her "a Blue," caught |