looking uncommon close in the old gravestones, up behind t' ould yewtree yonder; and one of them writ something, now and then, in a book; so they're book-writers."

"That's scholars, I reckon," quoth Dickons, " but rot the larning of such chaps as they!"

"I wonder if they'll put a picture o' the Hall in their book," quoth the sexton. "They axed a many questions about the people up there, especially about the squire's father, and some ould folk, whose names I knew when they spoke of 'em-but I hadn't heard o' them for this forty year. And one of 'em (he were the shortest, and such a chap, to be sure! - just like the monkey that were dressed i' man's clothes last Grilston fair) talked uncommon fine about Miss".

"If I'd a heard him tak' her name into his dirty mouth, his teeth should a gone after it!" said Tonson.

"Lord, he didn't say any harmonly silly-like-and t'other seemed now and then not to like his going on The little one said Miss were a lovely gal, or something like thatand hoped they'd become by-and-by better friends."

so.

"What! wi' that chap?" said Pumpkin-and he looked as if he were meditating putting the little sexton up the chimney, for the mere naming of such a thing.

"I reckon they're from London, and brought London tricks wi' 'emfor I never heard o' such goings on as theirs down here before," said Tonson.

"One of 'em-him that axed me all the questions, and wrote i' th' book, seemed a sharp enough chap, in his way; but I can't say much for the little one," said Higgs. "Lud, I couldn't hardly look in his face for laughing, he seemed such a fool!He had a riding-whip wi' a silver head, and stood smacking his legs (you should ha' seen how tight his clothes was on his legs- I warrant you, Tim Timkins never seed such a thing, I'll be sworn) all the while, as if a' liked to hear the sound of it." "If I'd a been beside him," said Hazel, "I'd a saved him that trouble-only I'd a laid it into another part of him!"

"Ha, ha, ha!" they laughed and presently passed on to other mat

ters.

"Hath the squire been doing much

lately in Parliament?" enquired the sexton of Dickons.

"Why, yes-he's trying hard to get that new road made from Harkley Bridge to Hilton."

"Ah, that would save a good four mile".

"I hear the Papists are trying to get the upper hand again-which the Lud forbid!" said the sexton.

"The squire hath lately made a speech in that matter, that hath finished them," said Dickons.

"What would they be after?" enquired the landlord of Dickons, with all present, thinking great things of him. "They say they wants nothing but what's their own, and liberty, and that like."

"If thou wast a shepherd, and wer't to be asked by ten or a dozen wolves to let them in among thy flock of sheep, they saying how quiet and kind they would be to 'em-would'st let 'em in, or keep 'em out-eh?"

"Ay, ay-that be it 'tis as true as gospel!" said the clerk.

"So you an't to have that old sycamore down, after all, Master Dickons?" enquired Tonson.

"No; miss hath carried the day against the squire and Mr Waters; and there stands the old tree, and it hath to be looked better after than it were before."

"Why hath miss taken such a fancy to it? Tis an old crazy thing."

"If thou hadst been there when she did beg, as I may say, its life," replied Dickons, with a little energy -"and hadst seen her, and heard her voice, that be as smooth as cream, thou would'st never have forgotten it, I can tell thee!"

"There isn't a more beautiful lady i'th' county, I reckon, than the squire's sister?" enquired the sexton.

"No, nor in all England: if there be, I'll lay down a hundred pounds."

"And where's to be found a young lady that do go about i' th' village like she? - She were wi' Phœbe Williams t'other night, all through the snow, and i' th' dark."

"If I'd only laid hands on that chap!" interrupted the young farmer, her rescuer.

"I wonder she do not choose some one to be married to up in London," said the landlord.

"She'll be having some delicate high quality chap, I reckon, one q' these fine days," said Hazel.

" She will be a dainty dish, truly, for whomever God gives her to," quoth Dickons.

"Ay, she will," said more than one; and there was a slight sound as of smacking of lips.

" Now, to my mind," said Tonson, "saving your presence, Master Dickons, I know not but young madam be more to my taste; she be in a manner somewhat fuller-plumper-like, and her skin be so white, and her hair as black as a raven's."

"There's not another two such women to be found in the world," said Dickons. Here Hector suddenly rose up, and went to the door, where he stood snuffing in an inquisitive

manner.

"Now, what do that dog hear, I wonder?" quoth Pumpkin, curiously, stooping forward.

"Blind Bess," replied Tonson, winking his eye, and laughing. Presently there was a sharp rapping at the door; which the landlord opened, and let in one of the servants from the Hall, his clothes white with snow, his face nearly as white with manifest agitation.

"Why, man, what's the matter?" enquired Dickons, startled by the man's appearance. "Art frightened at any thing?"

"Oh, Lord! oh, Lord!" he com. menced.

"What is it, man? Art drunk? -or mad? or frightened? Take a drop o' drink," said Tonson. But the man refused it.

"Oh, my friends, sad work at the Hall!"

"What's the matter?" cried all at once, rising and standing round the

have us all be going up in a body to the Hall."

Having forced on him part of a glass of ale, he began, "There hath been plainly mischief brewing somewhere this many days, as I could tell by the troubled face o' the squire; but he kept it to himself. Lawyer Parkinson and another have ve been latterly coming in chaises from London; and last night the squire got a letter that hath finished all. Such trouble there were last night with the squire, and young madam and miss! And to-day the parson came, and were a long while alone with old Madam Aubrey, who hath since had a stroke, or a fit, or something of that like, (the doctor hath been there all day from Grilston,) and likewise young madam hath taken to her bed, and is ill."

"And what of the squire and miss?" enquired some one, after all had maintained a long silence.

"Oh, 'twould break your heart to see them," said the man, bursting into tears: they are both as pale as death: he so dreadful sorrowful, but quietlike, and she now and then wringing her hands, and both of them going from the bedroom of old madam to young madam's. Nay, an' there had been half-a-dozen deaths i' the house, it could not be worse. Neither the squire nor miss hath touched food the whole day!"

There was, in truth, not a dry eye in the room, nor one whose voice did not seem somewhat obstructed with his emotions.

Who told about the squire's losing the estate?" enquired Dickons.

"We heard of it but an hour or so, agone. Mr Parkinson (it seems by the squire's orders) told Mr Waters, and he told it to us; saying as how it was useless to keep such a thing secret, and that we might all know the occasion of so much trouble."

"Who's to ha' it then, instead of the squire?" at length enquired Tonson, in a voice half-choked with rage and grief.

" Lord only knows at present. But whoever 'tis, there isn't one of us servants but will go with the squire and his if it be even to prison."

"I'm Squire Aubrey's gamekeeper," quoth Tonson, his eye kindling as his countenance darkened. " It shall go hard if any one else ere hatha game""But if there's law in the land, sure the justice must be wi' the squire-he and his family have had it so long," said one of the farmers.

"I'll tell you what, masters," said Pumpkin, "I shall be somewhat better pleased when Higgs here hath got that old creature safe underground."

" Blind Bess?" exclaimed Tonson, with a very serious, not to say disturbed, countenance. "I wonder-sure! sure! that old witch can have had no hand in all this"-

"Poor old soul, not she! There be no such things as witches now-a-days," exclaimed Higgs. "Not she, I warrant me! She hath been ever befriended by the Squire's family. She do it!" "The sooner we get her under

ground, for all that, the better, say I!" quoth Tonson, vehemently striking his hand on the table.

on

"The parson hath a choice sermon The Flying Away of Riches," said Higgs, in a quaint, sad manner; "'tis to be hoped he'll preach from it the next Sunday."

Soon after this the little party dispersed, each oppressed with greater grief and amazement than he had ever known before. Bad news fly swiftly

and that which had just come from the Hall, within a very few hours of its having been told at the Aubrey Arms, had spread grief and consternation among high and low, for many miles round Yatton.

2.

NAPOLEON's Egyptian expedition supplies one of the most distinct proofs ever given of the Divine punishment which may directly stamp a great public crime. Many acts of memorable atrocity have of old unquestionably passed without any evident retribution; but of later years, whether for the purpose of more powerfully impressing justice on the minds of modern nations, or from the nearer approach of some great but still undefined consummation, the retribution has trod with singular closeness on the steps of the crime.

It is right previously to observe, that those direct inflictions seem seldom to be visited on the general course of public crime in high places, how ever repulsive. The punishment of what may be called the customary criminality, the habitual ambitions and encroachments of nations on each other, are apparently left to customary and general evils. But it is when nations, or their rulers, start out of the common track of ambition and encroachment, that a new, sudden, and striking brand of vengeance is often openly burned on them. Thus the partition of Poland was an act of plunder and blood beyond the ordinary line of that rapacity and cruelty which habitually marks the conduct of foreign cabinets; and never was the punishment of a highway robbery or murder more directly marked in the punishment of the individual robber and murderer than the punishment of that dreadful atrocity was marked in the sufferings of Prussia, Austria, and Russia-within a few years from the crime, the capture of their three capitals, the defeat of their armies, and the vast losses of wealth, population, honour, and territory.

The late instance of the invasion of Algiers, without the slightest cause except the French desire to gain what it terms glory, by cutting throats, and robbing wherever it can with impunity, was instantly followed to the King by the downfall of the Bourbon dynasty, as it has been followed to France by the erection of an anomalous and precarious Government forced to be despotic through fear of being forced to be republican; and the

anxieties of a war, which, after wasting life and treasure during ten years, is now to be begun afresh, and requires an army of 60,000 men. We shall thus see America, in due time, punished for her atrocious robbery by which she has seized Texas, and for her gross and wholly unjustifiable attempts on Canada. Russia will yet have to pay heavily in blood for her invasion of the brave Caucasian tribes, for her cruel extinction of the few remains of independence in unhappy Poland, and for that unlicensed and unlimited system of grasping by which she continues the guilty policy of Catharine, and labours to add thousands of slaves, and tens of thousands of square miles, to a population and territory beyond the power of any man to govern wisely -beyond any nation to hold safelyand beyond every thing but the indescribable folly of human ambition.

Napoleon's Egyptian enterprise was exactly of this order of ultra-atrocity.

It is the universal characteristic of foreign politics, that they have no morality whatever. Whatever they can grasp, they grasp; and by whatever means they can obtain their objects, they obtain them. France has, in all ages, differed from her Continental neighbours only in putting these maxims into more unhesitating practice. What fraud can contrive and force can perform, will inevitably be contrived and performed by her, on every occasion where it can be done with impunity. The only country on earth which ever exhibits a sense of common justice in her public transactions, is England; and even at this moment no Ministry of England would be suffered by the nation to seize a single acre of the feeblest state on earth, without having strict justice on the national side. This is an eminent honour to the national character, and one which must never be forfeited.

Egypt had thus been an object of French cupidity for upwards of a hundred years. There exists a memorial of Leibnitz, then at the head of all Continental science, addressed to Louis XIV., recommending the seizure, at the period when that profligate and sanguinary despot was assaulting Holland. This philosophic tempter