discriminately condemning herself. Her humility never impairs her cheerfulness; for the sense of her wants directs her to seek, and her faith enables her to find the sure foundation of a better hope than any which can be derived from a delusive confidence in her own goodness.

"One day," continued Dr. Barlow, "when I blamed her gently for her backwardness in expressing her opinion on some serious point, she said, 'I always feel diffident in speaking on these subjects, not only lest I should be thought to assume, but lest I really should assume a degree of piety, which may not belong to me. My great advantages make me jealous of myself. My dear father has so carefully instructed me, and I live so much in the habit of hearing his pious sentiments, that I am often afraid of appearing better than I am, and of pretending to feel in my heart, what perhaps I only approve in my judgment. When my beloved mother was ill,'continued she, 'I often caught myself saying mechanically, God's will

be

be done! when, I blush to own, how little I felt in my heart of that resignation of which my lips were so lavish.""

I hung with inexpressible delighton every word Doctor Barlow uttered, and expressed my fears that such a prize was too much above my deserts, to allow me to encourage very sanguine hopes. "You have my cordial wishes for your success," said he, "though I shall lament the day, when you snatch so fair a flower from our fields, to transplant it into your northern gardens."

We had now reached the Park gate, where Sir John and Lady Belfield joined us. As it was very hot, Dr. Barlow proposed to conduct us a nearer way. He carried us through a small nursery of fruit trees, which I had not before observed, though it was adjoining the ladies' flower-garden, from which it was separated and concealed by a row of tall trees. I expressed my surprize that the delicate Lucilla would allow so coarse an inclosure to be so near her ornamented ground. "You see she does all she can to shut it out," replied he. "I will

VOL. II.

tell

tell you how it happens, for I cannot vindicate the taste of my fair friend, without exposing a better quality in her. But if I betray her, you must not betray

me.

"It is a rule when any servant who has lived seven years at the Grove marries, provided they have conducted themselves well and make a prudent choice, for Mr. Stanley to give them a piece of ground on the waste to build a cottage: he also allows them to take stones from his quarry, and lime from his kiln; to this he adds a bit of ground for a garden. Mrs. Stanley presents some kitchen furniture, and gives a wedding dinner; and the Rector refuses his fee for performing the ceremony."

"Caroline," said Sir John," this is not the first time since we have been at the Grove, that I have been struck with observing how many benefits naturally result to the poor, from the rich living on their own estates. Their dependants have a thousand petty local advantages, which cost almost nothing to the giver, which are

yet

yet valuable to the receiver, and of which the absent never think."

"You have heard," said Doctor Barlow, "that Miss Stanley, from her childhood, has. been passionately fond of cultivating a garden. When she was hardly fourteen, she began to reflect that the delight she took in this employment was attended neither with pleasure nor profit to any one but herself, and she became jealous of a gratification which was so entirely selfish. She begged this piece of waste ground of her father, and stocked it with a number of fine young fruit trees of the common sort, apples, pears, plumbs, and the smaller fruits. When there is a wedding among the older servants, or when any good girl out of her school marries, she presents their little empty garden with a dozen young apple trees, and a few trees of the other sorts, never forgetting to embellish their little court with roses and honey-suckles. These last she transplants from the shrubbery, not to fill up the village garden, as it is called, with any thing that is of no positive use. She employs

D 2

employs a poor lame man in the village a day in the week to look after this nursery, and by cuttings and grafts a good stock is raised on a small space. It is done at her own expence, Mr. Stanley making this a condition when he gave her the ground; "otherwise," said he, "trifling as it is, it would be my charity and not hers, and she would get thanked for a kindness which would cost her nothing." The warm-hearted little Phoebe co-operates in this, and all her sister's labours of love.

"Some such union of charity with every personal indulgence, she generally imposes on herself; and from this association she has acquired another virtue, for she tells me smiling, she is sometimes obliged to content herself with practising frugality instead of charity. When she finds she cannot afford both her own gratification, and the charitable act which she wanted to associate with it, and is therefore compelled to give up the charity, she compels herself to give up the indulgence also. By this self-denial

she