I had scarce taken orders a year, before I began to think seriously of matrimony, and chose my wife as she did her wedding gown, not for a fine glossy surface, but such qualities as would wear well. To do her justice, she was a good-natured notable woman; and as for breeding, there were few country ladies who at that time could show more. She could read any English book without much spelling; but for pickling, preserving, and cookery, none could excel her. She prided herself also upon being an excellent contriver in house-keeping; though I could never find that we grew richer with all her contrivances.

However, we loved each other tenderly, and our fondness increased with age. There was in fact nothing that could make us angry with the world, or each other. We had an elegant house, situated in a fine country, and a good neighbourhood. The year was spent in moral or rural amusements; in visiting our rich neighbours, or relieving such as were poor. We had no revolutions to fear, nor fatigues to undergo; all our adventures were by the fireside, and all our migrations from the blue room to the brown..

Some

As we lived near the road, we often had the traveller or stranger coming to taste our gooseberry wine, for which we had great reputation; and I profess, with the veracity of an historian, that I never knew one of them find fault with it. Our cousins too, even to the fortieth remove, all remembered their affinity without any help from the heralds' office, and came very frequently to see us. of them did us no great honour by these claims, of kindred; for, literally speaking, we had the blind, the maimed, and the halt, amongst the number. However, my wife always insisted that as they were the same flesh and blood with us, they should sit with us at the same table. So that if we had not very rich, we generally had very happy, friends, about us; for this remark will hold good through life, that the poorer the guest, the better pleased he ever is with being treated; and as some men gaze with admiration at the colour of a tulip, or the wing of a butterfly, so I was by nature an admirer of happy human faces. However, when any one of our relations was found to be a person of very bad character, a troublesome guest, or one we desired to get rid of, upon his leaving my house for the

(1) Here is one of the innumerable "felicities" which mark Goldsmith's writings. The ease, grace, and humour with which he thus introduces his wife, are beautiful. Then, again, that "she could read any English book without much spelling," and the "migration from the blue room to the brown," are circumstances happily invented to heighten the picture.

first time, I ever took care to lend him a riding-coat, or a pair of boots, or sometimes a horse of small value; and I had always the satisfaction of finding he never came back to return them.

Thus we lived several years in a state of much happiness; not but that we sometimes had those little rubs which Providence sends to enhance the value of its favours. My orchard was often robbed by school-boys, and my wife's custards plundered by the cats or the children. The squire would sometimes fall asleep in the most pathetic parts of my sermon, or his lady return my wife's civilities at church with a mutilated? "courtesey." But we soon got over the uneasiness caused by such accidents, and usually in three or four days began to wonder how they vexed us.

My children, the offspring of temperance, as they were educated without softness, so they were at once well-formed and healthy; my sons hardy and active, my daughters beautiful and blooming. When I stood in the midst of the little_circle, which promised to be the supports of my declining age, I could not avoid repeating the famous story of Count Abensberg, who, in Henry II.'s progress through Germany, while other courtiers came with their treasures, brought his thirty-two children, and presented them to his sovereign as the most valuable offering he had to bestow. In this manner, though I had but six, I considered them as a very valuable present made to my country, and consequently looked upon it as my debtor.

It would be fruitless to deny my exultation when I saw my little ones about me; but the vanity and satisfaction of my wife were even greater than mine. When our visitors would usually say-" Well, upon my word, Mrs. Primrose, you have the finest children in the whole country,"-" Ay, neighbour," she would answer, "they are as heaven made them; handsome enough, if they be good enough; for 'handsome is that handsome does;"" and then she would bid the girls hold up their heads; who, to conceal nothing, were certainly very handsome. Mere outside is so very trifling a circumstance with me, that I should have scarce remembered to mention it, had it not been a general

(1) Plunder seems incorrectly used here. We plunder a person or a house, but not the booty itself-this we steal or purloin. The corresponding error is found in Breen's "Modern English Literature," where in p. 222 he says, "few ancient writers have been so purloined as Seneca." In the above passage, it should have been "my wife was plundered of her custards," or "my wife's custards were stolen or purloined."

(2) Mutilated is most cleverly used here-a curtsey shorn of its fair proportions.

topic of conversation in the country. Olivia, now about eighteen, had the luxuriancy of beauty with which painters generally draw Hebe; open, sprightly, and commanding. Sophia's features were not so striking at first, but often did more certain execution; for they were soft, modest, and alluring. The one vanquished by a single blow, the other by efforts successively repeated.

The temper of a woman is generally formed from the turn of her features; at least it was so with my daughters. Olivia wished for many lovers, Sophia to secure one. Olivia was often affected, from too great a desire to please; Sophia even repressed excellence, from her fears to offend. The one entertained me with her vivacity, when I was gay; the other with her sense, when I was serious. But these qualities were never carried to excess in either, and I have often seen them exchange characters for a whole day together. A suit of mourning has transformed my coquette into a prude, and a new set of ribbons has given her younger sister more than natural vivacity. My eldest son, George, was bred at Oxford, as I intended him for one of the learned professions. My second boy, Moses, whom I designed for business, received a sort of a miscellaneous education at home. But it would be needless to attempt describing the particular characters of young people that had seen but very little of the world. In short, a family likeness prevailed through all, and, properly speaking, they had but one character; that of being all equally generous, credulous, simple, and in

offensive.

THOMAS GRAY.'

1. THE SOUTHAMPTON WATER AND
NETLEY ABBEY.

FROM "CORRESPONDENCE OF T. GRAY WITH REV. W. NICHOLLS,"

DATED 1764.)

SIR, I received your letter at Southampton, and as I would wish to treat everybody according to their (his) own rule and

(1) Gray's letters have always been admired for the graceful confluence of thought and language. Hazlitt says, "they are inimitably fine. If his poems are sometimes finical and pedantic, his prose is quite free from affectation. He pours his thoughts out upon paper as they arise in the mind."

measure of good breeding, have, against my inclination, waited till now before I answered it, purely out of fear and respect, and an ingenuous diffidence of my own abilities. If you will not take this as an excuse, accept it, at least, as a well-turned period, which is always my principal concern. So I proceed to tell you that my health is much improved by the sea; not that I drank it, or bathed in it, as the common people do,-no! I only walked by it, and looked upon it. The climate is remarkably mild, even in October and November; no snow has been seen to lie there for these thirty years past; the myrtles grow in the ground against the houses, and Guernsey lilies bloom in every window. The town, clean and well built, surrounded by its old stone walls, with their towers and gateways, stands at the point of a peninsula, and opens full south to an arm of the sea (the Southampton water), which, having formed two beautiful bays on each hand of it, stretches away in direct view till it joins the British Channel. It is skirted on either side with gently-rising grounds, clothed with thick wood; and directly across its mouth rise the high lands of the Isle of Wight, at a distance, but distinctly seen. In the bosom of the woods (concealed from profane eyes) lie hidden the ruins of Netley Abbey; there may be richer and greater houses of religion; but the abbot is content with his situation. See here, at the top of that hanging meadow, under the shade of those old trees that bend into a half-circle about it, he is walking slowly (good man!) and bidding (telling) his beads for the souls of his benefactors, interred in that venerable pile that lies beneath him. Beyond it (the meadow still descending) nods a thicket of oaks, that mask the building, and have excluded a view too garish and luxuriant for a holy eye; only, on either hand, they leave an opening to the blue glittering sea. you not observe how, as that white sail shot by and was lost, he turned and crossed himself, to drive the tempter from him, that had thrown that distraction in his way? I should tell you, that the ferryman who rowed me, a lusty young fellow, told me that he would not for all the world pass a night at the Abbey (there were such things seen near it), though there was a power of money hid there. From thence I went to Salisbury, Wilton, and Stonehenge; but of these I say no more; they will be published at the University press.

Did

P.S.-I must not close my letter without giving you one principal event of my history; which was, that (in the course of my late tour), I set out one morning before five o'clock, the moon shining through a dark and misty autumnal air, and got

to the sea-coast time enough to be at the sun's levee. I saw the clouds and dark vapours open gradually to right and left, rolling over one another in great smoky wreaths, and the tide (as it flowed gently in upon the sand), first whitening, then slightly tinged with blue and gold; and all at once a little line of insufferable brightness that (before I can write these five words) was grown to half an orb, and now to a whole one, too glorious to be distinctly seen. It is very odd it makes no figure on paper; yet I shall remember it as long as the sun, or at least, as long as I endure. I wonder whether anybody ever saw it before? I hardly believe it.1

2. GRASMERE.

(FROM "LETTERS," WRITTEN IN 1769.)

I PASSED by the little chapel of Wiborn (Wythburn), out of which the Sunday congregation were then issuing; soon after a beck (rivulet) near Dunmail-Raise, when I entered Westmoreland a second time, and now began to see Holm-crag (Helm Crag), distinguished from its rugged neighbours, not so much by its height as by the strange broken outlines of its top, like some gigantic building demolished, and the stones that composed it flung across each other in wild confusion. Just beyond it opens one of the sweetest landscapes that art ever attempted to imitate. The bosom of the mountains spreading here into a broad basin discovers in the midst Grasmere-water; its margin is hollowed into small bays, with bold eminences; some of rock, some of soft turf, that half conceal and vary the figure of the little lake they command: from the shore, a low promontory pushes itself far into the water, and on it stands a white village with the parish church rising in the midst of it; hanging enclosures, corn-fields, and meadows green as an

(1) It may be well to place in juxtaposition here, as Mason has done, a pendant to the above picture, one from Jeremy Taylor ("Holy Dying "). "As when the sun approaches towards the gates of the morning, he first opens a little eye of heaven, and sends away the spirits of darkness; gives light to a cock, and calls up the lark to matins, and by-and-bye gilds the fringes of a cloud, and peeps over the eastern hills, thrusting out his golden horns, like those which decked the brow of Moses when he was forced to wear a veil, because himself had seen the face of God; and still while a man tells the story, the sun gets up higher, till he shows fair face and a full light, and then he shines one whole day, under a cloud often, sometimes weeping great and little showers, and sets quickly; so is a man's reason and his life."