Ir does occasionally happen in the unheeded vales of life that a tissue of facts, outdoing the creation of the novelist, makes up the web of a real history. Cottage life sometimes offers a moving story, or might do so if the thick veil were drawn aside which hangs around the rich and conceals from them the histories, and the doings, and the passions of the poor and lowly. When some such romance of real life has its scene in the cottage, the work-room, the small farm-house, or even, unromantic as it may sound, behind the counter, unknown and unheeded though it be, it usually contains within itself deep and sacred interest, because the inward feelings which conspire with outward circumstances to beget it are simple, real, undressed, and of soulstirring intensity.

Amongst the well-born, education and the etiquettes of society restrain much that is native and induce still more that is artificial. They disguise and half change the nature and chill the soul. It is in humble life that there is no semblance assumed, that all is reality; that passions, both good and evil, glow in unrepressed fervour; that words represent feelings, and that the emotion goes beyond the power to express it in language.

It is a tale of life other than their own that we are about to unfold to the inmates of the saloon.

Milly L is withered now; she is travelling down the hill, and with no "John Anderson" at her side. As you look into her face you see that sorrow has worked there; but it is a sweet and beaming face still,it speaks of patient, unrepining, cheerful endurance, the fortitude of the undistinguished.

Milly's father was a very small farmer, living by the sweat of his own brow and honestly paying his rent the very day on which it fell due, though it was at the cost of sharp privation sometimes that he managed to do so. He had only two children, and there was an interval of ten years between them,

VOL. XXXIII. NO. CXCVI.

His

eldest daughter went, when about fourteen years old, to supply for a time, as best she might, the place of Lady C's maid, who had fallen sick of a rheumatic fever. Mary had a facetious manner, a facile temper, and aptitude to learn. She so well pleased Lady C- that on the recovery of the maid she was still retained, and by degrees crept on in favour, till at length Lady Chaving first had her taught some things that would enable her to pass in a station above that of her birth, elevated her to the post of her companion. She treated her with tenderness, and when, some years later she died, left her 500l. a-year for life. The heir to the remaining property, being at once vexed with the annual deduction from his own income and pleased with the girl, compromised the point by marrying her.

A

Mary had been fortunate, but it is a question whether she was happy. She had no heart. Our tale abides with Milly. She was her widowed father's darling. He was sixty years old when she was born to him, and her mother died in childbed. neighbour nursed her for the first ten months, and then the little thing was left to his sole care. Never had child been more gently tended. The old man sunned himself in her fondness. She gambolled about him, received his caresses and caressed him again, and knew as much lightheartedness and infant joy as if she had been born the daughter of a palace. Her sister had left her father's house when she was four years old; then, as she grew older, and his hairs whitened, and his back gradually bent, she in turn became the nurse, and he received the care which he had bestowed; and when she left him for a few hours of the day to attend a school in the neighbouring town (for which her sister found the funds) he waited with fond anxiety for her return, and the sympathy between the old man and the young girl was as perfect as if no chasm of years had intervened.

But the day came when she must

DD

able), and pulled Ford's Hand-Book out of my alforijas, and, in spite of weariness, held charmed converse with it until the demands of Death's twin-brother, Sleep the filmy-eyed, became imperative. In thus reading the book one felt as though he was conversing on themes of surpassing interest, with a companion endowed

"With all good grace to grace a gentleman."

You felt that there was no affectation, no hypocrisy, no base, mean, and vulgar prejudices about him; no humbug, no snobbery, no cliquerie; you were with an independent author, and not with a littérateur of a league. In his frank, manly narrative, you saw that there was no straining after effect, no contorted phraseology, no preposterous similes redolent of the lamps and sawdust of Astley's Circus, or drawn from the fœtid atmosphere and the things and characters that appear in it behind the scenes of some minor theatre, where Cockneys do congregate in front of the green curtain, and amateurs half-crazed with personal vanity and presumptuous ignorance, behind. You perceive, too, that in Ford's book there is never the slightest depreciatory touch of a Smellfungus; nothing of the mere travelled derisor the most despicable buffoon of human kind; none of those lamentations about hardships and discomforts, which no man of manly feeling would make; none of those allusions to the luxuries, splendour, pomps, &c. &c.; not forgetting the towels, and such-like curiosities of literaturalitism, which the traveller had left behind him in his house in London; allusions which no man to whom this magnificence was not new and strange, and, in fact, as uneasy as, except from Fortune's jesting caprice, it would have been unknown in the way of toilette, would have dreamed of making. But Spain is no land for Cockneys errant in the philosophic and melodramatic line of the book-making business. Nor is it a country to attract the mere idler and pleasure-seeker.

cooks: there are more altars than kitchens, des milliers de prétres et pas un cuisinier! Life in the country is a Bedouin Oriental existence. The inland unfrequented towns are dull and poverty - stricken. Madrid itself is but a drear and secondrate inhospitable city. The maritime sea-ports, as in the East, from being more frequented by the foreigner, are more cosmopolitan, more cheerful and amusing. Generally speaking, as in the East, public amusements are rare. The calm contemplation of a cigar, and a dolce far niente siestose-quiet indolence, with unexciting twaddle, suffice; while to some nations it is a pain to be out of pleasure, to the Spaniard it is a pleasure to be out of painful exertion [here is the key to the Spanish character and to that of all the cognate Celts.-M.R.]. Leave me, leave me to repose and tobacco. When, however, awake, the alameda or church-show, and the bull-fight, are the chief relaxations. These, however, will be best enjoyed in the southern provinces, the land also of the song and dance, of bright suns and eyes, and not the largest female feet in the world."

Such is Spain; but the last remark suggests to me a great fact, on which Ford does not so much insist as all the other men I have met who knew Spain well were wont to do; and that is, that the chief and real business of the population, high and low, rich and poor, and the only business that is carried on with any zeal and resolute industry and devotion, is making love. It is not, of course, every traveller who is qualified to take his part in this popular amusement, or would care to run the risks and dangers with which it bristles. And for this, amongst other reasons, Spain is only a land to be travelled

66

through" by the cavallero. He who can use his weapons, and ride his horse, and strum his guitar, and woo in pure Castilian, and cheerfully encounter all hardships, aud privations, and dangers, will not fail to make himself very happy in the Spains; and if he be also, like Borrow and Ford, a scholar and a man of

lofty thoughts and inspirations, with the good and graceful power to give them utterance, he may make multitudes happy, as these gentlemen, by their works, have oftentimes and for hours made me.

It will be seen that in this paper, long as it is, I have hardly entered on the subject.

Ir does occasionally happen in the unheeded vales of life that a tissue of facts, outdoing the creation of the novelist, makes up the web of a real history. Cottage life sometimes offers a moving story, or might do so if the thick veil were drawn aside which hangs around the rich and conceals from them the histories, and the doings, and the passions of the poor and lowly. When some such romance of real life has its scene in the cottage, the work-room, the small farm-house, or even, unromantic as it may sound, behind the counter, unknown and unheeded though it be, it usually contains within itself deep and sacred interest, because the inward feelings which conspire with outward circumstances to beget it are simple, real, undressed, and of soulstirring intensity.

Amongst the well-born, education and the etiquettes of society restrain much that is native and induce still more that is artificial. They disguise and half change the nature and chill the soul. It is in humble life that there is no semblance assumed, that all is reality; that passions, both good and evil, glow in unrepressed fervour; that words represent feelings, and that the emotion goes beyond the power to express it in language.

It is a tale of life other than their own that we are about to unfold to the inmates of the saloon.

Milly L is withered now; she is travelling down the hill, and with no "John Anderson" at her side. As you look into her face you see that sorrow has worked there; but it is a sweet and beaming face still,it speaks of patient, unrepining, cheerful endurance, the fortitude of the undistinguished.

Milly's father was a very small farmer, living by the sweat of his own brow and honestly paying his rent the very day on which it fell due, though it was at the cost of sharp privation sometimes that he managed to do so. He had only two children, and there was an interval of ten years between them.

VOL. XXXIII. NO. CXCVI.

His

eldest daughter went, when about fourteen years old, to supply for a time, as best she might, the place of Lady C's maid, who had fallen sick of a rheumatic fever. Mary had a facetious manner, a facile temper, and aptitude to learn. She so well pleased Lady C that on the recovery of the maid she was still retained, and by degrees crept on in favour, till at length Lady Chaving first had her taught some things that would enable her to pass in a station above that of her birth, elevated her to the post of her companion. She treated her with tenderness, and when, some years later she died, left her 500l. a-year for life. The heir to the remaining property, being at once vexed with the annual deduction from his own income and pleased with the girl, compromised the point by marrying her.

A

Mary had been fortunate, but it is a question whether she was happy. She had no heart. Our tale abides with Milly. She was her widowed father's darling. He was sixty years old when she was born to him, and her mother died in childbed. neighbour nursed her for the first ten months, and then the little thing was left to his sole care. Never had child been more gently tended. The old man sunned himself in her fondness. She gambolled about him, received his caresses and caressed him again, and knew as much lightheartedness and infant joy as if she had been born the daughter of a palace. Her sister had left her father's house when she was four years old; then, as she grew older, and his hairs whitened, and his back gradually bent, she in turn became the nurse, and he received the care which he had bestowed; and when she left him for a few hours of the day to attend a school in the neighbouring town (for which her sister found the funds) he waited with fond anxiety for her return, and the sympathy between the old man and the young girl was as perfect as if no chasm of years had intervened.

But the day came when she must

DD

besides England. They tell me that America is every bit as fair a land to look upon as this, and a deal better to live in, for a poor man may make his fortune there (which is a thing, God knows, he can't do here; the rich keep it pretty close in their pockets, that same). Bless them, too, I don't mean no ill to them. They or their fathers worked for it like we once, and it's fair and right they should enjoy it when they've made it; and there's but a few of 'em that don't warm their hearts to folk not so well off as themselves when they come in the way of 'em. But, however, let alone the rich and bless 'em. To come to the short of it, Milly, a poor man lives poor to the end of his days in England; it's harder for a poor fellow to work his way up now, let him strive as he may, than it was when the country was not stodged up with people, like rabbits in a warren, that can't get enough to live on. My brothers have been advising me to go to America for a year past and more; for you see they two is older than me, and they are more than enough for the farm and to take care of mother. I had an uncle; he went over there sixteen years ago and made his fortune; he lived like the best, and when he died two years ago he left his wife and family well to do after him. And the end of it all is, that I don't suppose I could do a better thing than go there myself. But, for the life of me! I can't go alone, Milly."

And now he grasped her other hand and looked earnestly and imploringly into her face; and her look met his, and then it turned aside, and the big tears rolled down her cheeks and chased each other rapidly as he went on:-

"For I love you, Milly; with all my soul I love you. There's no woman on earth that'll make me happy but you, and no happiness left for me but with you; and as to going off to America without you, I'd go to my death as soon."

"Oh! John, dear John," she murmured, faintly.

An impulse moved him, he could not cease to speak. He went on :

"And yet it's only for your sake that I want to go there,-to make something comfortable to keep you on. And if you'll give me the

word, Milly, that you'll be my wife, I'll go where hope's the brightest, and labour hard indeed to support you decently and well. What will you say to me? Be mine, be mine, Milly, and you shall never repent it, for I'll be a true husband to you and a fond one, and never love you less than this day. Nay, more and more close I'll cleave to you till the dark days come when the grave parts us."

He paused, and his very soul looked through his eyes into her face.

She was covered with smiles, and tears, and blushes; she tried to look at him and tried to speak to him; but her voice was choked, the tears gushed faster and faster, and she could neither see nor utter. Angry with the drops, which she deemed all ill-timed, she dashed them away, but again and again they came. He caressed her and said,

"I took ye a little too sudden, Milly; but I'm not a rough heart for all that. Ye see, when a man's got his courage once up, and his hopes hang all on a thread like, he should get pardon if he's something too hasty to make all sure. Take time, and cheer, and speak, when you can, for it's a deal to me that's in your answer-a deal, a deal it is."

No affected emotion had been Milly's; no affectation artificially increased or prolonged it. She was a creature of simple reality-Nature's true child. She made effort to regain her self-possession, and then she said,-

66

John, dear John, you would have made me so, so happy if you had said all this without talking of America. If you had been for staying at home, John, I'm sure I should have said 'yes' in a minute, and thanked you for your love, which I do any way, for I'm not an ungrate ful girl; but thinking of that far-off land, John, makes me down-hearted. To go and leave my aunt in her old age, who has been so good to me, and my father's grave, it is hard to think of that, John. And then there is my sister, though she is a bit fine, and not very hearty to me, and we do not meet often, yet she is my sister still, and the nearest kin I have. And then who knows what might happen to us both in that strange country, and the wide sea