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for the most exact, regular, and every-way consistent kinsman breathing.

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In my next, reader, I may perhaps give you some account of my cousin Bridget—if you are not already surfeited with 5 cousins and take you by the hand, if you are willing to go with us, on an excursion which we made a summer or two since, in search of more cousins

Through the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire.

XI. MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE BRIDGET ELIA has been my housekeeper for many a long 10 year. I have obligations to Bridget, extending beyond the period of memory. We house together, old bachelor and maid, in a sort of double singleness; with such tolerable comfort, upon the whole, that I, for one, find myself in no sort of disposition to go out upon the mountains, with the 15 rash king's offspring, to bewail my celibacy. We agree pretty well in our tastes and habits—yet so, as "with a difference." We are generally in harmony, with occasional bickeringsas it should be among near relations. Our sympathies are rather understood, than expressed; and once, upon my dis20 sembling a tone in my voice more kind than ordinary, my cousin burst into tears, and complained that I was altered. We are both great readers in different directions. While I am hanging over (for the thousandth time) some passage in old Burton, or one of his strange contemporaries, she is 25 abstracted in some modern tale, or adventure, whereof our common reading-table is daily fed with assiduously fresh supplies. Narrative teases me. I have little concern in the progress of events. She must have a story, well, ill, or indifferently told — so there be life stirring in it, and plenty 30 of good or evil accidents. The fluctuations of fortune in

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fiction and almost in real life have ceased to interest, or operate but dully upon me. Out-of-the-way humours and opinions heads with some diverting twist in them - the oddities of authorship please me most. My cousin has a native disrelish of anything that sounds odd or bizarre. 5 Nothing goes down with her that is quaint, irregular, or out of the road of common sympathy. She "holds Nature more clever." I can pardon her blindness to the beautiful obliquities of the Religio Medici; but she must apologize to me for certain disrespectful insinuations, which she has been pleased to to throw out latterly, touching the intellectuals of a dear favourite of mine, of the last century but one - the thrice noble, chaste, and virtuous, but again somewhat fantastical, and original-brained, generous Margaret Newcastle.

It has been the lot of my cousin, oftener perhaps than I 15 could have wished, to have had for her associates and mine, free-thinkers-leaders, and disciples, of novel philosophies and systems; but she neither wrangles with, nor accepts, their opinions. That which was good and venerable to her, when she was a child, retains its authority over her mind still. 20 She never juggles or plays tricks with her understanding.

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We are both of us inclined to be a little too positive; and I have observed the result of our disputes to be almost uniformly this that in matters of fact, dates, and circumstances, it turns out, that I was in the right, and my cousin in the 25 wrong. But where we have differed upon moral points; upon something proper to be done, or let alone; whatever heat of opposition, or steadiness of conviction, I set out with, I am sure always in the long run, to be brought over to her. way of thinking.

I must touch upon the foibles of my kinswoman with a gentle hand, for Bridget does not like to be told of her faults. She hath an awkward trick (to say no worse of it) of reading in company at which times she will answer yes or no to a

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question, without fully understanding its purport- which is provoking, and derogatory in the highest degree to the dignity of the putter of the said question. Her presence of mind is equal to the most pressing trials of life, but will sometimes 5 desert her upon trifling occasions. When the purpose requires it, and is a thing of moment, she can speak to it greatly; but in matters which are not stuff of the conscience, she hath been known sometimes to let slip a word less seasonably.

Her education in youth was not much attended to; and Io she happily missed all that train of female garniture, which passeth by the name of accomplishments. She was tumbled early, by accident or design, into a spacious closet of good old English reading, without much selection or prohibition, and browsed at will upon that fair and wholesome pasturage. 15 Had I twenty girls, they should be brought up exactly in this fashion. I know not whether their chance in wedlock might not be diminished by it; but I can answer for it, that it makes (if the worst come to the worst) most incomparable old maids.

In a season of distress, she is the truest comforter; but 20 in the teasing accidents, and minor perplexities, which do not call out the will to meet them, she sometimes maketh matters worse by an excess of participation. If she does not always divide your trouble, upon the pleasanter occasions of life she is sure always to treble your satisfaction. She is 25 excellent to be at play with, or upon a visit; but best, when she goes a journey with you.

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We made an excursion together a few summers since, into Hertfordshire, to beat up the quarters of some of our lessknown relations in that fine corn country.

The oldest thing I remember is Mackery End; or Mackarel End, as it is spelt, perhaps more properly, in some old maps of Hertfordshire; a farm-house, — delightfully situated within a gentle walk from Wheathampstead. I can just remember having been there, on a visit to a great-aunt, when I was a

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child under the care of Bridget; who, as I have said, is older than myself by some ten years. I wish that I could throw into a heap the remainder of our joint existences, that we might share them in equal division. But that is impossible. The house was at that time in the occupation of a substantial yeo- 5 man, who had married my grandmother's sister. His name was Gladman. My grandmother was a Bruton, married to a Field. The Gladmans and the Brutons are still flourishing in that part of the county, but the Fields are almost extinct. More than forty years had elapsed since the visit I speak of; and, 10 for the greater portion of that period, we had lost sight of the other two branches also. Who or what sort of persons inherited Mackery End kindred or strange folk we were afraid almost to conjecture, but determined some day to explore. By somewhat a circuitous route, taking the noble park at 15 Luton in our way from Saint Alban's, we arrived at the spot of our anxious curiosity about noon. The sight of the old farm-house, though every trace of it was effaced from my recollection, affected me with a pleasure which I had not experienced for many a year. For though I had forgotten 20 it, we had never forgotten being there together, and we had been talking about Mackery End all our lives, till memory on my part became mocked with a phantom of itself, and I thought I knew the aspect of a place, which, when present, O how unlike it was to that, which I had conjured up so 25 many times instead of it!

Still the air breathed balmily about it; the season was in

the "heart of June," and I could say with the poet,

But thou, that didst appear so fair

To fond imagination,

Dost rival in the light of day

Her delicate creation!1

1 Wordsworth.

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Bridget's was more a waking bliss than mine, for she easily remembered her old acquaintance again—some altered features, of course, a little grudged at. At first, indeed, she was ready to disbelieve for joy; but the scene soon reconfirmed 5 itself in her affections - and she traversed every outpost of the old mansion, to the wood-house, the orchard, the place where the pigeon-house had stood (house and birds were alike flown) with a breathless impatience of recognition, which was more pardonable perhaps than decorous at the age of fifty odd. 10 But Bridget in some things is behind her years.

The only thing left was to get into the house — and that was a difficulty which to me singly would have been insurmountable for I am terribly shy in making myself known to strangers and out-of-date kinsfolk. Love, stronger than 15 scruple, winged my cousin in without me; but she soon returned with a creature that might have sat to a sculptor for the image of Welcome. It was the youngest of the Gladmans; who, by marriage with a Bruton, had become mistress of the old mansion. A comely brood are the Bru20 tons. Six of them, females, were noted as the handsomest young women in the county. But this adopted Bruton, in my mind, was better than they all- more comely. She was born too late to have remembered me. She just recollected in early life to have had her cousin Bridget once pointed out 25 to her, climbing a stile. But the name of kindred, and of

cousinship, was enough. Those slender ties, that prove slight as gossamer in the rending atmosphere of a metropolis, bind faster, as we found it, in hearty, homely, loving Hertfordshire. In five minutes we were as thoroughly acquainted as if we 30 had been born and bred up together; were familiar, even to the calling each other by our Christian names. So Christians should call one another. To have seen Bridget, and her — it was like the meeting of the two scriptural cousins! There

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