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With an old lady whose anger one word asswages;

They every quarter paid their old servants their wages,

And never knew what belong'd to coachmen, footmen, nor pages; But kept twenty old fellows with blue coats and badges.

With an old study full of learned books,

With an old reverend chaplain, you might know him by his looks; With an old buttery hatch worn quite off the hooks,

And an old kitchen, that maintain'd half a dozen old cooks.

With an old hall hung about with pikes, guns, and bows,

With old swords, and bucklers, that had borne many shrewde blows; And an old frize coat, to cover his worship's trunk hose,

And a cup of old sherry, to comfort his copper nose.

With a good old fashion, when Christmasse was come,
To call in all his old neighbours with bagpipe and drum;
With good chear enough to furnish every old room,
And old liquor able to make a cat speak and man dumb.

With an old falconer, huntsman, and a kennel of hounds,
That never hawked nor hunted but in his own grounds;
Who, like a wise man, kept himself within his own bounds,
And when he dyed gave every child a thousand good pounds.

But to his eldest son his house and land assign'd,
Charging him in his will to keep the old bountifull mind,
To be good to his old tenants, and to his neighbours be kind.

"A country gentleman," fays Macaulay, "who witnessed the Revolution was probably in receipt of about the fourth part of the rent which his acres now yield to his pofterity. He was, therefore, as compared with his posterity, a poor man, and was generally under the neceffity of refiding, with little interruption,

on his eftate. The heir of an estate often paffed his boyhood and youth with no better tutors than grooms and gamekeepers, and scarce attained learning enough to fign his name to a mittimus. His chief serious employment was the care of his property. He examined samples of grain, handled pigs, and on market-days made bargains over a tankard with drovers and hop-merchants. His table was loaded with coarfe plenty, and guests were cordially welcomed to it; but as the habit of drinking to excefs was general in the clafs to which he belonged, and as his fortune did not enable him to intoxicate large affemblies daily with claret or canary, ftrong beer was the ordinary beverage. It was only at great houses, or on great occafions, that foreign drink was placed on the board. The ladies of the house, whofe bufinefs it had commonly been to cook the repaft, retired as foon as the dishes had been devoured, and left the gentlemen to their ale and tobacco. The coarse jollity of the afternoon was often prolonged till the revellers were laid under the table. It was very feldom that the country gentleman caught glimpses of the great world. His animofities were numerous and bitter. He hated Frenchmen and Italians, Scotchmen and Irishmen, Papifts and Prefbyterians, Independents and Baptifts, Quakers and Jews. His wife and daughter were in taste and acquirements below a housekeeper or a ftill-room maid of the present day. They ftitched and fpun, brewed gooseberry wine, cured marigolds, and made the cruft for the venison pasty. Unlettered as he was and unpolished, he was still in fome most important points a gentleman."

In the Auguftan age of our country the English gentleman was ftill one of the most interesting types of our national character; and in the writings of Addifon we find that amiable individual thus defcribed :

"There is no character more deservedly esteemed than that of a country gentleman who understands the station in which heaven and nature have placed him. He is a father to his tenants, a patron to his neighbours, and is fuperior to those of a lower fortune more by his benevolence than his poffeffions. He justly divides his time between folitude and company, fo as to use the one for the other. His life is employed in the good offices of an advocate, a referee, a companion, a mediator, and a friend."

And in another part this type of national character is perfonified in the famous Sir Roger de Coverley. The brilliant effayift, while enjoying the hofpitality of this genial member of the Spectator's Club, had opportunities of obferving, at his refidence, the charms of an English country gentleman's life.

"I am more at eafe," writes Addison, " in Sir Roger's family, because it confifts of fober and ftaid perfons; for as the knight is the best master in the world, he feldom changes his fervants; and as he is beloved by all about him, his fervants never care for leaving him; by this means his domeftics are all in years, and grown old with their mafter. You would take his valet-de-chambre for his brother; his butler is grey-headed; his groom is one of the graveft men that I have ever seen, and his coachman has the looks of a privy-councillor. You fee the goodness of the master

even in the old house-dog, and in a grey pad that is kept in the stable with great care and tenderness out of regard to his past services, though he has been useless for several years.

"I could not but obferve with a great deal of pleasure the joy that appeared in the countenances of these ancient domestics upon my friend's arrival at his country-feat. Some of them could not refrain from tears at the fight of their old master; every one of them preffed forward to do fomething for him, and feemed difcouraged if they were not employed. At the same time the good old knight, with a mixture of the father and the master of the family, tempered the inquiries after his own affairs with several kind questions relating to themselves. This humanity and good nature engages everybody to him, so that when he is pleasant upon any of them, all his family are in good humour, and none fo much as the perfon whom he diverts himself with on the contrary, if he coughs, or betrays any infirmity of old age, it is easy for a ftander-by to observe a fecret concern in the looks of all his fervants."

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HUNTING AND HAWKING.

BOUT the middle of the seventeenth century, Burton wrote in his Anatomy of Melancholy that "Hunting and Hawking are honest recreations, and fit for fome great men, but not for every base inferior perfon, who while they maintain their faulkoner, and dogs, and hunting nags, their wealth runs away with their hounds, and their fortunes fly away with their hawks ;" and that "riding of great horfes, running at rings, tilts and tournaments, horfe races, and wild goofe chafes, are difports of greater men, and good in themfelves, though many gentlemen by fuch means gallop quite out of their fortunes." A character introduced in the Cornish Comedy, written and acted by Powell in 1696, is made to say," What is a gentleman without his recreations? With these we endeavour to pass away the

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