Nancy Patching, who was always fleering at me for going to be married to a ploughboy :-Nancy is a very pert, stuckup-thing, I can assure you, Sir, or else I shouldn't ha' cared -I thought I would show her that I might have a finer gentleman for my husband than ever she could. But I'm sure I cried all the way to Lunnun for thinking of poor Hodge, and now I've lost him for ever, and it serves me quite right, for I'm a very vain, good-for-nothing, silly, wicked, wicked girl."

Here she burst into a fresh passion of grief, which Henry tried to assuage, by assuring her that her subsequent resolution and good conduct had done much to atone for her first imprudence, and that her future life might, perhaps, be rendered more happy, through the stability of character which her present painful experience would create.

Under the impression that his imprisoned friend might require some immediate pecuniary supply, Henry had, previously to his leaving home, replenished his purse. With this money he now discharged the demand against Lucy, and bidding her remain in the lobby till he returned, proceeded into the interior of the prison, where he quickly recognised Enoch Clayton, who, from the intelligence he had received of his absence in the country, was not less surprised than delighted to see him. Though the sum for which that young man had become security, to oblige a friend, did not exceed his ultimate means, it was beyond the reach of his available resources, and his imprisonment must have continued till his funds became disposable, for he was almost a total stranger in England. Henry was the more rejoiced to find that the amount was within the compass of his own fortune, and though it very nearly exhausted the little accumulations of his minority, he gave an order upon his agent for the sum with much greater pleasure than most men would have felt in doubling their property, instead of reducing it to a mere trifle.

Much as they had to say to one another, the colloquy of the friends was a short one; for Henry felt that Lucy was in no fitting state of mind to be left, nor did he like that she should be exposed to the impertinent curiosity, or coarse ribaldry of the inferior prison officers. Taking, therefore, a hasty leave of his friend, after having given him his address at Grotto-house, he returned to the lobby, ordered a hackney-coach to be called, and had the pleasure, which none VOL. II.-4

but hearts like his can experience in all its exquisiteness, of handing Lucy into it, freed for ever from the clutches of her infamous landlady, and uncontaminated by any acquaintance with the corrupting interior of a jail. The words " flat !" and "bubble!" muttered by some of the bystanders around the lobby met his ear more than once; while others, who considered him to be the duper rather than the dupe, intimated by significant winks to one another, that they attributed his conduct to any thing rather than the benevolent feelings in which it originated; but in the conscious rectitude of his own motives, Henry despised covert surmises, as he would equally have done open accusations; and nothing, therefore, disturbed the pure complacency of his heart as he drove towards his mother's lodgings.

Not a single particle of complacency entered into the feelings of that lady when Henry, after having left Lucy in another room, went into the parlour to communicate what he had done, and to bespeak his mother's kindness for their new and most unexpected inmate. Averse as she knew him to be in general from joke and banter, she could not but imagine him to be indulging some momentary badinage, under which impression she exclaimed, Snecks! Henry, old birds, like me, are not to be caught with chaff! You're poking fun at me, I know you are; for you would never be such a tarnal simpleton, as to be gudgeoned by a common trull and tramper. Guess you're a little on the bamboozling order this morning."

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"I am sorry, Madam, that you should think me capable of uttering an untruth even in jest; still more so that you should imagine poor Lucy to be an improper character; and in order to prove to you that you have done us both an injustice, I shall take leave to introduce her to your acquaintance."

He was leaving the room for the purpose of conducting Lucy into it, when Mrs. Tenby, who saw at once that he was in earnest, laid her hand upon his shoulder, and gently staying him--for she knew that persuasion was much more likely than imperative demeanour to succeed with one of so decided a character-implored him to furnish her some farther explanations before he brought the creature into her presence. These were readily given; and it was with no small satisfaction that she learned the trifling amount of the debt discharged, though she failed not to enlarge upon the

gross imprudence of bringing the girl to the house; a proceeding which was sure to subject him to all sorts of calumnious imputation from the illiberal."

"I reverence public opinion too much," said Henry, "to defy it needlessly. The fear of its censure is most salutary; it is a sort of external conscience that deters many a man from open misconduct, as the inward conscience dissuades him from even concealed offence. But there should be bounds to its influence; and many occasions may arise wherein a man ought to have moral courage enough to disregard it. I have brought Lucy hither, because I know no other roof beneath which she could be placed without incurring a danger from which I am determined to snatch her. Any one may defame me and my motives, but no one can make me infamous but myself; and while I have the approbation of my own heart, I may well despise the calumnies of the profligates and slanderers who judge of others by themselves."

"Snecks! what a tarnal lengthy speech: got it out of a book, that's my guess. Well, boy, I know there's no more turning you from your purposes, however mischievous they may be, than one can turn a bear out of a hemlock wood; and so the creature shall sleep here to-night, and I will consent that she shall accompany us to Thaxted, upon one condition, and that is, that we start by the coach to-morrow morning."

This proposition was a little finesse on the part of Mrs. Tenby, who possessed a certain degree of cunning which she mistook for acuteness. As Henry had said nothing about Enoch Clayton, she concluded that he had been altogether forgotten in the absorbing interest excited by Lucy; and knowing that his generosity would prompt him to liberate the man who had once ventured his life for him, she had assented to his wishes, trusting that her stipulation for departing on the morrow would prevent all interview between the friends, and save Henry's finances from the threatened assault. She would not even trust him out of her sight during the remainder of the evening, but sent the servant to secure places in the stage-coach, which, on the following day, conveyed them all three in perfect safety to Thaxted. That Lucy and her lover may not call upon us for any farther notice, we may here state, that Henry made it his first business to see honest Hodge, and having restated the

Malthusian theory, by which he pronounced his auditor to be unjustified in marrying, considering his little, prospect of maintaining a family, he proceeded to relate Lucy's history, extenuating her indiscretion, extolling the courage and firmness which had fortunately enabled her to return to Roydon as pure and virtuous as when she had quitted it, and prophesying, that the experience she had gained would render her more prudent and steady than ever she had been before.

"As to muster Malthouse," said Hodge in reply, "him and me doesn't agree; seeing whereby, that as our fathers and mothers married afore we, why shouldn't us marry a'ter they; and that, I look upon't, there's no answering. But as to what you say about Lucy's being all the better for this little freak, why, there's some gumption in it, and I'll give you a proof on't. Did you know Farmer Patching's swish-tail gray mare, that he used to drive in a chay-cart? Well, we put her to plough one day, and she kicked, and plunged, and got loose, and jumped over hedge and ditch, and ran off, and two days after we found her in Shirley Pound. Heart alive, Sir! that day's nonsense cured her of all her tantrums for ever; for she had torn her shoulder, cut her fetlock, and had little or no feed the whole time; so, when she came back, she took to plough as if she had been used to it all her life. I drive her now sometimes as leader, with two yoke of oxen, and a quieter beast never touched collar."

Henry did not offer to dispute the justice of Hodge's conclusions respecting Lucy, drawn from the premises of Farmer Patching's gray mare. He had performed what he considered to be his duty, in advising him to defer his marriage until he should be in more prosperous circumstances; but as Hodge was anxious to hasten the wedding, and Lucy, grateful for his kindness and constancy, interposed no obstacle, the ceremony was soon after performed. Henry was present at the solemnity, and we have much pleasure in recording, before we proceed with our history, that his predictions and Hodge's, as to the future good conduct of Lucy, were abundantly justified by the event.

CHAPTER VI.

To show in what manner they felt, when they placed themselves, by the power of imagination, in trying circumstances, in the conflicts of duty and passion, or the strife of contending duties; what sort of loves and enmities theirs were; how their griefs were tempered, and their full swollen joys abated; how much of Shakspeare shines in the great men his contemporaries, and how far, in his divine mind and manners, he surpassed them and all mankind. CHARLES LAMB.

MRS. PENGUIN and Mrs. Tenby might be considered as not unapt representatives of the different styles of beauty in English and American women of middle age. The former, who was indeed so much younger than her visitant, that she would have spurned the indefinite term by which we have signified her to be no longer in the first bloom of youth, was plump almost to an undue rotundity of figure, with a fine blooming complexion, blue eyes, and light hair; a combination which, in the country circles, had procured for her the reputation of a belle, though in London she would hardly have obtained any higher praise than that of being a handsome, rustic-looking woman. However brightly the roses might have once flourished in Mrs. Tenby's cheeks, they had now withered, leaving her oval-shaped face and still handsome features of a clear and uniform, but somewhat sallow hue, relieved, however, by a pair of sparkling dark eyes, and tresses rather remarkable for their glossy raven hue than their profusion. In figure she was tall and thin, exhibiting at the same time a more sinewy strength than accords with English notions of feminine delicacy and beauty.

Little as was the external resemblance between the two ladies, there was still less consimilarity in their characters, and it might therefore have been surmised, that the compact of amity, composed of such discordant elements, would not be of very long continuance; but Mrs. Tenby, being by no means of an unaccommodating disposition where her interests were concerned, and having, moreover, too great a reverence for poor Richard's maxims to quarrel with her bread