sweetmeats, fruits, and confections. Such, I suppose, is town fashion. At the laste, came musick; Mistress Mildred sang and played; then prest me to do y* like, but I was soe fearfulle, I coulde not; so my husband sayd he woulde play for me, and that woulde be alle one, and soe covered my bashfullenesse handsomelie.

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Onlie this morning, just before going to his studdy, he stept back and sayd, "Sweet Moll, I know you can both play and sing-why will you not practise?" I replyed, I loved it not much. He rejoyned," But you know I love it, and is not that a motive?" I sayd, I feared to let him hear me, I played so ill. Why, that is y very reason you shoulde seek to play better, and I am sure you have plenty of time. Perhaps, in your whole future life, you will not have such a season of leisure as you have now-a golden opportunity, which you will surelie seize."-Then added, "Sir Thomas More's wife learnt to play yo lute, solely that she mighte please her husband." I answered, "Nay, what to tell me of Sir Thomas More's wife, or of Hugh Grotius's wife, when I was the wife of John Milton?" He looked at me twice, and quicklie, too, at this saying; then laughing, cried, "You cleaving mischief! I hardlie know whether to take that speech amisse or well-however, you shall have the benefit of the doubt."

And so away laughing; and I, for very shame, sat down to y spinnette for two wearie hours, till soe tired, I coulde cry; and when I desisted, coulde hear Jack wailing over his task. 'Tis raining fast, I cannot get out, nor should I dare to go alone, nor where to go to if 't were fine. I fancy ill smells from y church-yard-'t is long to dinner-time, with noe change, noe exercise; and oh, I sigh for Forest Hill.

-A dull dinner with Mrs. Phillips, whom I like not much. Christopher Milton there, who stared hard at me, and put me out of countenance with his strange questions. My husband checked him.

He is a lawyer and has wit enoughe. Mrs. Phillips speaking of second marriages, I unawares hurt her by giving my voice agaynst them. It seems she is thinking of contracting a second marriage.

—At supper, wishing to ingratiate myself with ye boys, talked to them of countrie sports, etc. to which y youngest listened greedilie: and at length I was advised to ask them woulde they not like to see Forest Hill? to which y elder replyed in his most methodical manner, "If Mr. Powell has a good library." For this piece of hypocrisie, at which I heartilie laught, he was commended by his uncle. Hypocrisie it was; for Master Ned cryeth over his taskes pretty nearlie as oft as y youngest.

and then he told me alle about theire getting up y masque of Comus in Ludlow castle, and how well y Lady's song was sung by Mr. Lawes' pupil, the Lady Alice, then a sweet, modest girl, onlie thirteen yeares of age-and he told me of y singing of a faire Italian young Signora, named Leonora Barroni, with her mother and sister, whome he had hearde at Rome, at y concerts of Cardinal Barberini: and how she was as gentle and modest as sweet Moll," yet not afrayd to open her mouth, and pronounce everie syllable distinctlie, and with ye proper emphasis and passion when she sang. And after this, to my greate contentment, he tooke me to y° Gray's Inn Walks, where, the afternoon being fine, was much companie.

After supper, I proposed to the boys that we shoulde tell stories; and Mr. Milton tolde one charminglie, but then went away to write a Latin letter. Soe Ned's turn came next; and I must, if I can, for very mirthe's sake, write it down in his exact words, they were soe pragmaticall.

"On a daye, there was a certain child wandered forthe, that would play. He met a bee, and sayd, Bee, wilt thou play with me?' The bee sayd,

No, I have my duties to perform, tho' you, it woulde seeme, have none. I must away to make honey.' Then ye childe, abasht, went to y ant. He sayd, Will you play with me, ant?' The ant replied, Nay, I must provide against y° winter.' In shorte, he found that everie bird, beaste, and insect he accosted, had a closer eye to yo purpose of their creation than himselfe. Then he sayd, 'I will then back, and con my task.'— Moral. The moral of ye foregoing fable, my deare aunt, is this-We must love work better than play.”

With alle my interest for children. how is it possible to take anie interest in soe formall a little prigge?

Saturday. I have just done somewhat for Master Ned which he coulde not doe for himselfe -viz. tenderly bound up his hand, which he had badly cut. Wiping away some few naturall tears, he must needs say, "I am quite ashamed, aunt, you shoulde see me cry; but y° worst of it is, that alle this payne has beene for noe good; whereas, when my uncle beateth me for misconstruing my Latin, tho' I cry at y time, all y° while I know it is for my advantage."-If this boy goes on preaching soe, I shall soon hate him.

-Mr. Milton having stepped out before supper, came back looking soe blythe, that I askt if he had hearde good news. He sayd, yes that some friends had long beene persuading him, against his will, to make publick some of his Latin poems; and that, having at length consented to theire wishes, he had beene with Mosley y publisher in St. Paul's church-yard, who agreed to print them. I Friday. To rewarde my zealous practice to- sayd, I was sorrie I shoulde be unable to read day on y spinnette, Mr. Milton produced a col- them. He sayd he was sorry too; he must translection of "Ayres, and Dialogues, for one, two, late them for me. I thanked him, but observed and three voices," by his friend Mr. Harry Lawes, that traductions were never soe good as originalls. which he sayd I shoulde find very pleasant studdy; He rejoyned," Nor am I even a good translater."

CHAPTER III.-THE FIRST DEATH IN THE FAMILY.

with more solemnity than usual; and for the first time we separated without the accustomed mirth

so, for the throbbing pain at his heart had alarmed her by its frequency. But Herbert now looked so well, and seemed so cheerful, that his kind sister soon lost all fear.

AFTER Margaret's wedding, our house was ful chorus, to which every one used to add his or never quite so cheerful as before. Miles went her voice, whether musical or not. It was the last away to a distant school, and Dora became Kate's Christmas-day we ever spent together. pupil, for my mother would never consent to send I returned to my professional duties, and was her daughters from the sacred precincts of home, but little at home. It was a bitter winter, and we the only place where a young girl's mind and were not surprised that Herbert suffered much in heart can be alike nurtured. I followed my pro- consequence. We had been so long accustomed fession of medicine, living still in my father's to his illness, that we never thought his health house. was failing. Letters from Margaret cheered and Herbert, helpless as he was doomed to be through brightened him; her absence, she said, was likely life, and sad as that life had now become through to last only five years instead of ten, and then the severance of the sweet tie which had subsisted Edmund was determined never to leave England from his birth-yet endured patiently his monoto- more. Kate told me how much this good news nous existence. Kate became to him, as she al-had effected our invalid-at first almost dangerously ways had been to me, the kindest sister that ever man had; yet he never loved her like Margaret. It was early autumn when Margaret went away; winter came and found Herbert still pining for his twin-sister. His continual ill-health had given One evening I returned home, having been abhim almost the clinging tenderness of a girl; in-sent from the dull dawn of a winter's morning deed, at nineteen, Herbert was in many things a until late at night. I rode through the court-yard mere child. In a thousand ways Margaret had-fastened my horse, and, without seeing any perbecome essential to him; she it was who soothed son walked through the dark fir-tree alley, to the his waywardness, who found for him all kinds of hall-door. No light came from the windows on amusement, and prevented his devoting himself to the snow-covered grass; but I was scarcely surany undue study. In intellect Herbert had the prised, for it was a night in which every one strength of manhood; in everything else he was would shut out the cold with double barricades. a boy still. Now that Margaret was gone, he My usual light knock sounded hollow and strange, clung solely to his books for pleasure, and no per- I thought; but in a moment the door was opened suasions could allure him from them. He grew by my sister. more reserved, less simple and child-like, and though his health was scarcely worse than usual, still there darkened more and more over his face that strange shadow, half-solemn, half-mournful, which we unconsciously associate with the idea of future sorrow, or regard as the omen of early death.

Christmas came, and we all met together once more-all but one! Yet we knew that she was happy, sailing over the blue waters with him who, as she had said with the enthusiasm of a young wife, "made every place home to her." Still there was one gone from among us; and when we gathered round the dinner-table there was one vacant seat, by Herbert's side. My mother glanced towards it, and burst into tears. Kate silently glided thither, but Herbert, with the waywardness in which he now indulged at times, signed her to return to her own place. Not another word was said about Margaret; but that Christmas dinner was the first sad and silent one we had ever had.

All evening we were very quiet; Margaret's piano remained unopened, and the unfailing jests of Miles could elicit a smile from none but Dora. Herbert sat reading in his arm-chair. Once or twice during the evening I watched his countenance change, while he pressed his hand suddenly to his heart. But when I spoke to him, he only answered that it was a slight pain which was quite usual to him—nothing worth" Doctor Bernard's" notice. That night my father gave us his simple and heartfelt "God bless you all, my children!"

"It is a late hour for you, Kate," I said. She did not speak, but her looks terrified me. "Has anything happened?" I hastily asked. Kate threw her arms round my neck, and sobbed as though her heart was breaking.

Death had entered our house for the first time; the gentle, long-stricken Herbert was no more! He had died suddenly a few hours before, of that fearful heart-disease which calls away its victims in a moment. Kate was leaning over his easychair in cheerful talk, when the dread summons came. One affectionate look-one pressure of her hand-one word, " Margaret!" and the soul had departed. Our brother was now numbered with the dead.

I do not see why we should pray to be delivered from "sudden death." To those who walk with their eyes turned heavenward, not shrinking from the dread Angel, but looking calmly on his face, until all its horror is changed into a solemn beauty, there is no fear, whether he come with a slow warning, or with a lightning summons. Equally peaceful are the arms of the great Deliverer, whether they creep around us with the stealthiness of wasting sickness, or snatch us away in the embrace of a moment. And to those who survive, is it not almost always better that the wrench should be sudden than that they should watch the lingering agonies of slow disease, until love itself grows feebler, and even learns to pray that the sufferer may be freed?

Thus thought I, as in the stillness of that sol

CHAPTER IV.-LIFE AND ITS CARES.

emn midnight I stood with Kate beside me, and looked on the marble features of our dead brother. We did not murmur-we felt that it was best it should be so. For Herbert we could not grieve. Life to him had been a weary road, save for the continual sunshine of love that had surrounded him. If a change should come, he could not have borne it. I knew, more than Kate did, that there was a cloud gathering over us, and I felt almost thank-expressed what I thought at the time an undue

ful that poor Herbert had been taken away from the sorrrow to come, though it was then only as a faint shadow in the distance.

I have not yet spoken of my father and mother in their affliction. Perhaps, in a large family, the companionship between parents and children is not so close as when there are few to divide that parental love. My father and mother were so united to each other that they had no favorites among the children. Their joys and sorrows were shared together through many long years of wedded life; and when this greatest blow came, the husband and wife clung to one another, and not even we dared intermingle our sorrow with a grief so sacred as theirs. They remained together, secluded in their own chamber, rarely joining the rest of the family, during the whole of that gloomy week of death.

The first death in a household carries with it a strange solemnity. Never before had we experienced the tokens of the presence of deaththe closed shutters, the noiseless footsteps, the whispered tones, and all those dread formalities which sorrow assumes. I do not think this altogether right. Why should we close the light of day from us, if we indeed believe as we say, that the dead-the righteous dead---are blessed, and their spirits are rejoicing in that heaven to which we dare not or will not look? Why should we shrink from mentioning the beloved name of one departed, or utter it with mournful and pitying epithets, when each doctrine of our religion, each effort of our reason, teaches us that the great change from life to immortality is one joyful, and not sorrowful? I did not then think thus, but I do now; and the more so as, from my profession, I have been often and often within the shadow of the dread Visitant, until I have learned to look upon him thus, without fear or undue sorrow. Would that I could teach all others to do the same !

Not long after Herbert's death, I determined to quit my father's house, and begin to practise as a surgeon in a distant part of the country. I did this partly because of a few hints that my father gave of his own cares, and the wish he had to see me settled and making my way in the world. He

anxiety for the fate of my two sisters, saying then I was their sole stay, that Miles was only a boy, and even then a great cause of sorrow, from his thoughtlessness and his wild ways.

I had none of the joy that young men have at leaving the household, for home was to me not a place of restraint, but a sweet and pleasant refuge

not a dull prison, but a cheerful abode where all tried to make a little atmosphere of quiet gayety. People who murmur so constantly at the faults of wild brothers and unruly sons, never think how much the after life of both depends on their life at home during the interval from childhood to manhood. If it is a wife's duty to make for her husband a cheerful and happy fireside, surely it is no less that of mother and sisters to do the same for the young men who depend on them for so much while they remain at home. True, the wife receives the fruit of her care and self-devotion in her husband's love and the world's estimation, while the mother and sister are rarely requited and often forgotten; but the duty remains the same, and the good influence is never wholly lost.

I

All this and more had Kate done for me, and my greatest trouble in leaving home was in parting from her. Her good sense. her gentle temper, her strong but not too excitable feelings, made her every way suited to be my companion and confidant. And so she was from childhood; until the younger ones used to laugh and call us the grave old people-old bachelor and old maid in prospective. How far they were destined to prove true prophets, my story will tell in good time. However, at present, the prediction seemed likely to be correct, for Kate had arrived at the mature age of twenty-two, without showing any disposition to follow the example of our beautiful Margaret. think I never described Kate; I will do so now. She was not beautiful; her perfectly colorless complexion looked faded beside Margaret's lilies My father, my brother, and I, laid poor Herbert and roses; yet her delicate features were full of in his solitary grave, the first of our own that we expression; she had sweet, soft eyes, and beauhad ever stood by. We heard the words of im-tiful silken hair, of that purple black which poets mortal hope breathed in our church's sublime call hyacinthine. She possessed the grace which burial service, and then we returned home. My a refined mind naturally gives to a face and form mother and sister sat in their black robes, calm otherwise not lovely; at first sight she seemed an and serious, but without tears. They had subdued ordinary girl, neither plain nor pretty; but one their first bitter grief, and affection would soon by one her qualities, personal and mental, unfolded soften it into a tender memory of him who was themselves, and before you had lived a week in gone. But alas! for the one who had so loved the same house with my sister Kate, you would him, and whom he had loved best: who was far have thought her a perfect Venus. away, and knew not that she would see his face no more! From my heart's core I grieved at the thought of Margaret.

The day before I left home, Kate and I had a long walk and talk together; much good advice did the gentle girl bestow, to which her elder

brother was not too proud to listen, so humbly and

Six months after my departure, I was called unoffendingly was it given. Some men think a home suddenly-My father was dead, and the woman has no capability of judging or of advising; family were ruined!

but I am not ashamed to confess that some of

Kate's grave speeches during that long walk have

lingered on my memory, and done me good through CHAPTER V.—THE BREAKING-UP OF THE FAMILY.

life.

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"Bernard," she said, in answer to my vague hopes that good fortune might attend me, 'you do not know how much a man's fortune in life depends upon himself. Fate, or rather Providence, sends the showers and sunshine, but all is in vain if man does not sow the corn. If your steadiness and perseverance had not attracted the notice of good Dr. Cleveland, he would probably never have offered you this partnership which is likely to turn out so well, and which you call so fortunate." "I am afraid, Kate, you will make me vain, when I ought to be pious and thankful."

"Not at all," answered my sister; "I will stop your mouth with an old adage, dear Bernard — Providence helps those who help themselves.' And don't be discouraged," she added with a smile, “if you have to work from morning till night, or your patients get peevish, and the old doctor cross; go on your way steadily, not expect ing too much, and you will be a great man yet."

"Thank you, Kate; I did not know you thought me so clever."

Kate's frankness was put to the proof; she said candidly, though affectionately, "I do not consider you a man of genius, Bernard, but your talents are above mediocrity; and you will, I trust, deserve thus far the title of a great man, in having made the most of your natural powers, and in becoming a useful and good member of society in your station, whether it be high or low. And depend upon it, no one is or will be more proud of you than your sister Kate." Her voice trembled as she concluded. I pressed her arm as we walked along, declaring that she was the best and truest sister in the world—that I would never give her reason to think worse of me than now; and so we went in to prepare for my departure.

When my father bade me adieu in his study, he told me how strong was his confidence that I should do well in the world, that as yet he could only add to my store a small gift of money which he made me take. Things had not gone well in his business lately, he said, though he hoped they would amend.

MANY and cutting were the observations of our neighbors, when it was known that Mr. Orgreve, whom every one thought so well off in his circumstances, had died on the verge of insolvency. But the world is not half so wicked and cruel as many novelists-ay, and moralists too-would have us believe, making universal the distorted image which exists in their own hearts, and walking through life with a pair of allegorical green spectacles on their mental eyes. There is much goodness and noble kindness in the world yet; and so I thought when many old friends-ay, and new ones too did not turn away from me, but gave the hand of fellowship to my ruined father's son. Now I saw what a blessing is an unspotted name. My father had gone through life blameless; and though by a sudden revulsion in trade he had experienced these fatal losses, yet even then he was not distrusted. Not one of his creditors obtruded themselves to harass his dying moments, or to add fresh agony to the sorrows of the widow and orphans.

When I shed the tears which even manhood could not despise, over my father's grave, in my heart of hearts I blessed him for having left me that best of inheritance, a good name-and next to that, that he had given me the education, mental and moral, which is worth all the world's wealth. I had never hoped for much of his fortune, in which there were so many to share--girls too, whom it is every father's duty to consider first; but still it was a loss to me to miss any little help that my father might have given me. And then I had my widowed mother, whose strength of mind was utterly prostrated, Dora, and Miles, all looking to me for support, counsel, and comfort. Kate alone, my brave Kate, could think and act for herself.

My sister and I mutually began to arrange our father's affairs. In his last illness he had taken his eldest daughter into his confidence, and therefore Kate was a great assistance to me. We found that, upon the discharge of some long-standing debts owing to him, enough might be collected from the wreck of his fortune to clear our father's "But I am getting old, Bernard," he added, memory from disgrace, and even to leave some "and you may ere long become the head of the trifle over. But we must have time;-and so I family. Two of them are gone—perhaps it is went to every one of my father's creditors to ask well for poor Herbert, as for Margaret-but there this. It was an undertaking that sorely galled my are your mother, your sisters, and Miles; I charge pride, but Kate encouraged me in her own gentle you, act ever towards them as I have acted towards way.

you, and towards all my children. Be a good "Sudden misfortune is no shame," she said; elder brother and guide to them, and if I should" no one will think lower of you for what has die before your mother, never forsake her in her old age. But I do not doubt you," he continued, you have always been a comfort to me, and, my dear Bernard, my best wish for you is that your eldest son may grow up like mine!"

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happened, at least no one whose opinion is worth having. You were always rather too proud, Bernard," she added with a faint smile, “and you think there are no good people to be found, when there are many."