out upon the moor, whence they can see the silent tumult of the mountains beyond, crest and crescent, and sweeping ridge and delicate sunlit peaks silent and very still, yet shifting perpetually and changing with every minute's light. As Susy stood there the old, cruel feeling which she had hoped to subdue suddenly came over her again. Everything seemed so confused, so short, so long; so many things to do, so many to undo; there were so many words to say, so many to unsay. Ah! why had she ever tried to explain to one who would not understand? Ah! how gladly she would have waited for years had he but agreed to it. But with him it was a man's strong, passing feeling, with her it had been a new self only then awakened. Now she knew what it all had meant as she went back in mind to those early spring days, remembering the new light in the sky, the beauty of the world, the look in people's faces, the wonder of commonplace. She understood it all. 66 Susy," cries Dermy, "come! come! Phrasie wants you!" Little Phrasie had tumbled into a furzebush, and refused to be comforted by her uncles; and her mother, suddenly awakening from her dreams, now hurriedly ran to pick her up, to kiss away her tears, and wipe her wet cheek with her handkerchief. From Good Words. FROM "SOME REMINISCENCES OF MY LIFE." BY MARY HOWITT. My father, who had returned to Uttoxeter humble and submissive after his adversity in the Forest of Dean, was speedily to see that God had not forsaken him, but was preparing for him a better lot in the old home than he had sought for himself in the new. In 1800 a commission sent out by the crown to survey the woods and forests, decided that "the Chase of Needwood," in the county of Stafford, should be divided, allotted, and enclosed. This forest, dating from time immemorial, and belong. ing to the crown, extended many miles, contained magnificent oaks, limes, and other lordly trees, gigantic hollies and luxuriant underwood, and twenty thousand head of deer, was divided into five wards, one being Uttoxeter, and had four lodges, held under lease from the crown, its lieutenants, rangers, axe bearers, keep. crs, and woodmote court. To be surveyor in the disafforesting was an important post solicited by father; months of anxious suspense had, however, to be endured before the nominations could be known. In June, 1801, the act for the enclosure was passed, one clause containing the appointment of the surveyors. Their names would be published in Stafford on a certain day; but father felt he could not go thither to ascertain his fate; he should be legally notified, if appointed. On the day when any favorable decision ought to arrive by post, mother, waiting and watching, saw the postboy ride into the town, then, somewhat later, the lettercarrier enter the street, deliver here and there a letter and pass their door. She did not speak to her husband of a disappointment which he was doubtless experiencing. But after they had both retired to rest, if not to sleep, they heard in the silence of the little outer world the sound of a horse coming quickly up the street. It stopped at their door; father's name was shouted by Thomas Hart, the banker, and formerly his political sympathizer in the outbreak of the French Revolution. He hastened to the window, and was greeted by the words, "Good news, Mr. Botham; I am come from Stafford, I have seen the act. You and Mr. Wayatte are appointed the surveyors." It is still a pleasure to me, eighty-four years later, to think of the joy and grati tude that must have filled those anxious hearts that memorable night. On the other hand, as a lover of nature, I sincerely deplore any instrumentality in destroying such a vast extent of health-giving solitude and exuberant beauty in our thickly populated, trimly cultivated England. On Christmas day, 1802, Needwood Chase was disafforested, followed by a scene of the most melancholy spoliation. There was a wholesale devastation of the small creatures that had lived for ages amongst its broadly growing trees, its thickets, and underwood; birds flew bewildered from their nests as the ancient timber fell before the axe; fires destroyed the luxuriant growth of plants and shrubs. No wonder that Dr. Darwin, of Lichfield, the Rev. Thomas Gisborne and Mr. Francis Noel Mundy, living respectively at the lodges of Yoxall and Ealand in the forest, published laments over the fall of Needwood descriptive of the change from sylvan beauty and grandeur to woful devastation. For upwards of nine years the work of dividing, allotting, and enclosing continued. The rights of common, of pasture, of pannage-feeding swine in the woods . LIFE. of fuel, and of making birdlime from | features were good, but his countenance the vast growth of hollies, claimed by severe; over his very grey hair he wore a peasants, whose forefathers had built their grey worsted wig, with three stiff rows of turf cottages on the waste lands of the curls behind, and was attired in a darkforest; the rights of more important in-brown, collarless suit of a very old-fashhabitants to venison, game, timber, etc., ioned cut, wearing out of doors a cocked had to be considered by the commission of the enclosure, and compensated by allotments of land. On May 9, 1811, the final award was signed, by which the freeholders' portion was subdivided amongst the various persons who had claims thereon. Practically the two surveyors had to decide the awards; it was, consequently, a source of deep thankfulness to my father, who had throughout refused gifts from any interested party, that all claimants, from the richest to the poorest, were satisfied with their awards. On returning from the Forest of Dean my parents had temporarily resided in a small, semi-detached house belonging to them, having let the old home on a short lease. By March, 1802, however, they must have removed to their usual habitation, with grandfather for an inmate, as my first recollection is a dim remembrance of the old man delivering in the kitchen some piece of intelligence which was received by the assembled household with expressions of joy. I was told later that it must have been the announcement of the Peace of Amiens. Grandfather did not long remain under the same roof, for having, in a moment of great excitement, wounded little Anna with the large scissors he used to cut out the strong veins of the leaves which he dried, and feeling it a sad mischance, he was made willing to remove himself and his medicaments. He took up his abode with some simple, good people in a comfortable cottage on the enclosed land, which had formerly been the heath. At this distance he acquired for us children | a certain interest and charm. The walk to his dwelling was pleasant. His sunny sitting room, with the small stove, from which pungent odors issued, the chafing dishes, metallic tractors, the curious glasses and retorts and ancient tomes excited our imagination; in after years we perceived that it must have resembled the study of an alchemist. Here amongst his drying herbs and occult possessions he taught the poorest, most neglected boys to read, from a sense of Christian duty, which was generally regarded as a queer crotchet, for it was before the days of Bell and Lancaster, and when ragged schools were unimagined. How well do I remember him! His hat, also of an old Quaker type, a short great coat or spencer, and in winter grey, ribbed, worsted leggings, drawn to the middle of the thigh. Although a stickler for old customs, he was one of the very first in the midland counties to use an umbrella. The one that belonged to him was a substantial concern, covered with oilcloth or oil silk, with a large ring at the top, by which it was hung up. Having a reputation in the Society as a minister, he now and then paid visits to other meetings, but never very far from home; and considering himself connected with Phoebe Howitt, of Heanor, by the marriage of his stepson John to her aunt, felt it doubly incumbent to repair thither. At Heanor- then a secluded Derbyshire village, situated high and pleasantly on the western boundary of the Erewash Valley — dwelt Thomas Howitt, an essentially practical, clear-headed Quaker, possessing a large, fully developed frame and great natural capacity, who farmed his own land and managed extensive coalpits; while his wife, of a small, delicate frame, one of the best and gentlest of women, unworldly, full of devotion, a mystic in her faith, a keen lover of nature, the mother and physician of the whole parish, found in John Botham a useful and congenial companion, with whom she could consult concerning "worts of healing power." With Thomas and Phoebe Howitt, the parents of my future husband, we had no personal acquaintance, merely a somewhat disagreeable association, from his having obtained from them the plant asarabacca, which had caused mother violent headaches, and was the chief ingredient of his cephalic snuff. In their society the simple, religious, and therefore the best side of his character, was exhibited. He was consequently described to me in after years by my hus band as a welcome guest, generally arriv ing at harvest-time, when he would employ himself in the pleasant field-labor, quoting beautiful and appropriate texts of Scrip ture as applicable to the scenes around him. This I can well understand from a little incident in my childhood. Rebecca Summerland, the daughter of grandfather's stepson John, had married in 1801 a Friend named Joseph Burgess, of Grooby Lodge, near Leicester. She became the mother of a little boy-Wil-| liam with whom, when staying at his grandparents Summerland, we were permitted to play. On one of these happy occasions, their rarity enhancing the delight, we had already arrived at Aunt Summerland's, when grandfather unexpectedly appeared. Our parents were absent from home, and he, wishful to look after us, had come to take us a walk. To refuse was not to be thought of; we very reluctantly left little William and started under his escort. But grandfather was unusually kind and gentle, and to give us a treat, took us to see father's small tillage farm at the distance of a couple of miles from home. Grandfather passed away in his eightyfourth year, and we often glanced at his grave in the quiet meeting-house yard, where in the early summer a mother ewe and her lambs were turned in to graze on the abundant grass. It is impossible to give an adequate idea of the stillness and isolation of our lives as children. Our father's introverted character and naturally meditative turn of mind made him avoid social intercourse and restrict his participation in outward events to what was absolutely needful for the exact fulfilment of his professional and religious labors. Our mother's clear, intelligent mind, her culture and refinement, were chastened and subdued by her new spiritual convictions, and by painful social surroundings, which were aggravated by the death of her sympathizer, Ann Shipley. Our nurse, Hannah, was dull and melancholy, seeking to stifle an attachment which she had formed in the Forest of Dean for a handsome carpenter of dubious character, and unconvinced of Friends' principles. Each of our reticent caretakers was subjected to severe inward ordeals, and incapable of infusing knowledge and brightness into our young minds; and as little Anna was unable to talk at four, she was sent daily to a cheerful old woman who kept a dame school, and in more lively surroundings acquired the power of speech. He talked about the trees and plants in Timber Lane, which, winding up from the town to the top of a hill, was hemmed in by steep, mossy banks, luxuriant with wild flowers and ferns, and overarched by the green boughs of the oak, hawthorn, and alder, having a clear little stream gurgling along one side. And when we came out on the open, breezy hill, with the high, bushy banks of Needwood Forest extending before us in wooded promonotories for many a mile, he spoke about the young calves in the fields; and passing a barn by a stile, with a partly dead ash-tree growing near it, must have told us in Scriptural language something about the barren fig tree, for ever after, even to this moment, I recall the bit of scenery like a After we could both talk, being chiefly woodcut by Bewick, and with it the inci- left to converse together, our ignorance dent recorded in the last sorrowful days of the true appellations for many ordinary of our Lord. At length we reached the sentiments and actions compelled us to farm of eighteen acres, which we had last coin and use words of our own. I can seen in autumnal desolation. Now all recall the first dawn of awakened intelliwas beautifully green and fresh; the lower gence within me, and how, standing in the portion closed for hay, the upper filled garden and suddenly perceiving with with vigorous young vegetation, tender pleasurable surprise that our own little blades of wheat springing from the earth, flower-beds, the big apple-trees, the stone green leaflets of the flax for mother's roller, the adjacent meadow, the wooden spinning just visible; next the plot re- bridge over the stream, had each acquired served for turnips, the field being enclosed an individuality, were the separate parts by a broad, grassy headland, a perfect of a great whole, I exclaimed to myself, border of flowers, of which we had soon "Now I can think and understand, all our hands full. All our vexation and ill- that I have hitherto felt has been buntemper had now vanished, and we returned gum!" This word was to me the equiv to tea with little William at Aunt Sum-alent of a dark void. To sneeze was to merland's happier than we had been on us both, akisham the sound which one our arrival. of our parents must have made in sneezing. Roman numerals which we saw on the title-pages of most books conveyed no other idea than the word icklymickly dictines. Italic printing was softly writing. Our parents often spoke together of dividends; this suggested to me some connection with the devil, and I was grieved and perplexed to hear our good parents This walk gave my sister Anna her first taste for botany. She probably inherited from grandfather her passionate love of flowers, whilst she learnt from his copy of Miller's "Gardeners' Chronicle," which became her property after his death, to appreciate the wonderful beauty of the Linnæan system. I had also to read to father during the day when some mechanical operation left his mind disengaged. Thomas à Kempis was a great favorite with him; not so with me, as I understood the constant exhortation to take up the cross to refer to using the plain language and plain attire of Friends, and our peculiar garb, many degrees more ungainly than that of most strict Friends, was already a perfect crucifixion to Anna and me. The New Testament never came amiss, although on one occasion I received from father a stern reprimand for having, when reading the miracle of the loaves and fishes as related by St. Mark, inserted, as he sup. posed, the word green in the thirty-ninth verse, " And he commanded them to make them sit down by companies upon the green grass." talk without hesitation or sense of impro- | nals, "The Persecution of Friends," and The Bible, being acknowledged a secondary rule, and subordinate to the Spirit, had become neglected in many Friends' families. This led the Yearly Meeting, in the early part of the century, to recommend Friends everywhere to adopt the habit of daily reading the Scriptures, and father, deputed by the authorities, endeavored without success to induce the other members of our meeting to comply with the advice. He himself had ever set them the example, and whilst bearing his testimony that it is the Spirit not the Scriptures which is the ground and source of all truth, diligently studied the Bible, at the same time refusing to call it the Word of God, a term he only applied to Christ, the true Gospel. Each morning a chapter was read after breakfast, followed by a pause for interior application and instruction by the Holy Spirit, the purpose of this silence being, however, never explained to us. In the long winter evenings the Old Testament, Friends' Jour He continued sternly, 66 Mary, thou must not add or take from Scripture." "Please, father, it is green grass," I replied. "Let me see, let me see," he exclaimed ; and after looking at the verse, added in a surprised but appeased tone, "I had never noticed it." We children went to meeting twice on First-day, walking demurely hand in hand behind our parents; and once on Fifth.. day with mother alone if father was ab. sent in the forest. These silent meetings were far from profitable to me. I did not know the need of this religious observance, and whilst preserving the grave composure that marked the quiet, motionless assembly, gave full vent to the activity of my young, lively imagination. How grieved would my parents have been at this want of mental discipline! How still more shocked and alarmed had they known the work of destruction to the purity and in nocence of my soul which was being car ried on by a trusted member of their household! Hannah, the nurse, unable to conquer her attachment, had married the worthless carpenter, and thus plagued her own heart ever after. Father and mother, aware of the vital importance of early influences, had sought long and anxiously for a proper substitute, which they believed they had ultimately met with in a countrywoman, | dignation they have broken into wareabout thirty, who knew her work as if by houses, seized the hoarded grain, and instinct, speedily expressed a desire to at- thrown it into the sea. Peter Price, who tend meetings, and by her irreproachable is a corn merchant, has in consequence conduct, sobriety of dress, and staidness left off purchasing grain. He has tempoof demeanor, won their entire confidence. rarily suspended business, and set his Nanny, as she was called, equally ensnared clerks and warehousemen at liberty; and us children. She had a memory stored, I feeling quite secure, has gone with his suppose, with every song that ever was wife, in their one-horse chaise, as the printed on a half penny sheet or sold in a Falmouth representatives, to the distant country fair, which she repeated in a wild Quarterly Meeting. They have left their recitative, that attracted us as much as if home and children in mother's care, and it had been singing; was familiar with have been absent two or three days, when ghosts, hobgoblins, and fairies; knew the news spreads through the alarmed much of the vices and less of the virtues town that the rioters are coming. While of both town and country life; and find- mother hurriedly despatches messengers ing us insatiable listeners, eagerly retailed to collect the clerks and warehousemen, to us her stores of miscellaneous-chiefly the street before the house becomes filled evil - knowledge under a seal of secrecy which we never broke. We trembled when we heard her utter an oath; but had no hesitation in learning from her whist, Nanny always playing dummy, and using a tea-board on her lap as a card-table. with several thousand strong, clamorous, fierce-looking men and women. The ringleaders rush to the house, eagerly demanding to speak with Mr. Price. Mother, already attired in bonnet and shawl, standing on the doorsteps, explains that Mr. Price is absent; that he has no hoarded Yet we were not entirely left to the fascinations of this shrewd, eloquent, coarse-grain, only a considerable quantity of minded woman. When father's surveying in the forest necessitated his absence from home a part of each week, our mother required us to sew or knit for hours together by her side, whilst she busily plied her needle or her wheel, in the parlor or the garden porch. I particularly remember her spinning in the porch, because it having a brick floor with a second porch below opening into the lower story, the wheel gave a hollow, louder sound, which caused us to bring our low seats close to her knee, that we might catch every word of her utterance. Never ceasing our employ. ment for, to use mother's phrase, "we must not nurse our work" we listened with breathless attention to descriptions of her girlhood at Cyfarthfa, to "Lavinia," from Thomson's "Seasons," and the other poems she had learnt from her father; to exciting tales of her Cornish life. And since I have been led to mention her graphic power of narration, let me be pardoned for giving two scenes of her portrayal, which have thus been recalled. It is the end of the last century, and all the country is in a state of excitement on the question of corn. The growers imagine they could get better prices, and the buyers that they could purchase cheaper, if the profits of the intermediate dealers were saved. The common people are made to believe that the dearths, which frequently occur, arise from the practice of the dealers in buying up corn and withdrawing it from the market. In their in damaged wheat, which from principle he forbears to offer for sale. The listeners treat the plea of damaged corn as an excuse, and peremptorily demand the warehouse keys. Our brave-hearted mother fetches the bunch of heavy keys, but instead of giving them to the rude hands stretched out to clutch them, holds them firmly, saying she will show them the truth of her words. With the ringleaders closed round her like a guard of honor and the mob following, she proceeds to the warehouses, which are situated on the harbor. Then, unlocking the great doors, she admits the leaders. They search the warehouses, find and leave untouched the damaged wheat, and retire with expressions of apology and of admiration for her courage and courtesy. She, feeling faint and hardly able to support herself, is met in the street by Mr. Price's stout warehousemen and servants, who are hastening forward, not knowing what terrible scene they may have to witness. And again. Mother, about to visit her family in south Wales, has taken her passage in a sailing vessel from Falmouth to Swansea. She is arranging her multifarious luggage on board, when a handsome young sailor, of a singularly agreeable appearance, rushes into her cabin. The press-gang is coming, he says, "and is sure to seize him, the only young and likely man on board. He had just returned from a long voyage. Will the lady save him from this cruel fate? will she |