nesday with Miss M without any fatigue, though it is ten miles of incessant up and down hill. The deepest snow remembered in Devonshire set in the day after I came, and has so blocked up the roads that I am detained a close prisoner. I intended to return on Monday; but they are so unused to snow here, that no one will venture to go, though I should not be afraid. I cannot tell, therefore, how long I may be detained. Though I am very comfortable at Mr. 's, I am now impatient to return home, as I left my brother only for a day or two."

The snow rendered the road between Barnstaple and Ilfracombe nearly impassable for more than a month; but Jane's anxiety for her brother would not admit of waiting, and she returned to him on horseback, long before a carriage ventured on the difficult enterprise.

With the loss of Anne, society at Ilfracombe possessed few attractions; and neither brother nor sister regretted more seclusion and leisure for their studies and pens. Isaac sometimes joined his sisters in their literary gipsying.

Already he had entered on that field of study of which "Ancient Christianity,” “The Natural History of Enthusiasm," and "Saturday Evening" were afterwards the fruits.

The winter saw Jane at her old habits of work. "Display" was wrought out; one of those charming stories in which human nature is mirrored with that quiet fidelity which convinces the judgment and wins us to amend

ment.

To the often-asked question, "How to write a book?" Isaac's description of the birth of Display" will answer for one at least:

"My sister began it with a specific idea of the qualities she designed to exhibit, but with no definite plan for its execution. In pursuit of the same general object, she followed every day the suggestion of the moment; and this was perhaps the only way in which she would ever have written. It was her custom, in a solitary walk among the rocks, for half an hour after breakfast to seek that pitch of excitement without which she never took up a pen. This fervour of thought was usually exhausted in two or three hours' writing; after

which she enjoyed a social walk, and seldom attempted a second effort in the day; for she now had adopted the salutary plan of writing in the morning only, and to this plan she adhered ever after."

receiving company; father and mother have left the Castle House; we have removed to Marazion, and Bonaparte to Elba; so that the world does not pay us the compliment of standing still till we have time to animadvert on its revolutions......

"I told S-that we did not think of leaving Ilfracombe till August; but finding that, during the summer, it does not often happen that vessels from Cornwall put into Ilfracombe, we determined to avail ourselves of the first good opportunity. We regretted that one offered so soon; we had scarcely twenty-four hours' notice. But our little affairs were soon arranged, and at nine o'clock in the evening of the 9th we set sail, and a mild breeze wafted us from our dear Ilfracombe. We were tolerably well till about the middle of the night, when a fresh gale sprang up, and from that time to the moment of our landing, at nine o'clock the following evening, we suffered continued sickness. We landed at St. Ives, and took lodgings there for a week; on Friday evening we reached this place, where we had before engaged lodgings. They are not