Chapter 9

MORE CONCERNING THE AFORESAID TOBACCONIST.

I doubt nothing at all but that you shall like the man every day better than other; for verily I think he lacketh not of those qualities which should become any honest man to have, over and besides the gift of nature wherewith God hath above the common rate endued him.

ARCHBISHOPCRANMER.

Mr. Allison was as quiet a subject as Peter Hopkins, but he was not like him a political quietist from indifference, for he had a warm sense of loyalty, and a well rooted attachment to the constitution of his country in church and state. His ancestors had suffered in the Great Rebellion, and much the greater part of their never large estates had been alienated to raise the fines imposed upon them as delinquents. The uncle whom he succeeded in Bishopsgate Street, had, in his early apprenticeship, assisted at burning the Rump, and in maturer years had joined as heartily in the rejoicings, when the Seven Bishops were released from the Tower: he subscribed to Walker's “Account of the Sufferings of the Clergy,” and had heard sermons preached by the famous Dr. Scott, (which were afterwards incorporated in his great work upon the Christian Life,) in the church of St. Peter le Poor (oddly so called, seeing that there are few districts within the City of London so rich, insomuch that the last historian of the metropolis believed the parish to have scarcely a poor family in it); and in All-hallows, Lombard Street, where, during the reign of the Godly, the puritanical vestry passed a resolution that if any persons should come to the church “on the day called Christ's birth-day,” they should be compelled to leave it.

In these principles Mr. Allison had grown up; and without any profession of extra-religion, or ever wearing a sanctified face, he had in the evening of his life attained “the end of the commandment, which is charity, proceeding from a pure heart, and a good conscience, and a faith unfeigned.” London in his days was a better school for young men in trade than it ever was before, or has been since. The civic power had quietly and imperceptibly put an end to that club-law which once made the apprentices a turbulent and formidable body, at any moment armed as well as ready for a riot; and masters exercised a sort of parental controul over the youth entrusted to them, which in later times it may be feared has not been so conscientiously exerted, because it is not likely to be so patiently endured. Trade itself had not then been corrupted by that ruinous spirit of competition, which, more than any other of the evils now pressing upon us, deserves to be called the curse of England in the present age. At all times men have been to be found, who engaged in hazardous speculations, gamester-like, according to their opportunities, or who mistaking the means for the end, devoted themselves with miserable fidelity to the service of Mammon. But “Live and let live,” had not yet become a maxim of obsolete morality. We had our monarchy, our hierarchy and our aristocracy,—God be praised for the benefits which have been derived from all three, and God in his mercy continue them to us! but we had no plutarchy, no millionaires, no great capitalists to break down the honest and industrious trader with the weight of their overbearing and overwhelming wealth. They who had enriched themselves in the course of regular and honourable commerce, withdrew from business, and left the field to others. Feudal tyranny had past away, and moneyed tyranny had not yet arisen in its stead—a tyranny baser in its origin, not more merciful in its operations, and with less in its appendages to redeem it.

Trade in Mr. Allison's days was a school of thrift and probity, as much as of profit and loss; such his shop had been when he succeeded to it upon his uncle's decease, and such it continued to be when he transmitted it to his son. Old Mr. Strahan the printer (the founder of his typarchical dynasty) said to Dr. Johnson, that “there are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money;” and he added, that “the more one thinks of this, the juster it will appear.” Johnson agreed with him; and though it was a money-maker's observation, and though the more it is considered now, the more fallacious it will be found, the general system of trade might have justified it at that time. The entrance of an Exciseman never occasioned any alarm or apprehension at No. 113, Bishopsgate Street-Within, nor any uncomfortable feeling, unless the officer happened to be one, who, by giving unnecessary trouble, and by gratuitous incivility in the exercise of authority, made an equitable law odious in its execution. They never there mixed weeds with their tobacco, nor adulterated it in any worse way; and their snuff was never rendered more pungent by stirring into it a certain proportion of pounded glass. The duties were honestly paid, with a clear perception that the impost fell lightly upon all whom it affected, and affected those only who chose to indulge themselves in a pleasure which was still cheap, and which, without any injurious privation, they might forego. Nay, when our good man expatiated upon the uses of tobacco, which Mr. Bacon demurred at, and the Doctor sometimes playfully disputed, he ventured an opinion that among the final causes for which so excellent an herb had been created, the facilities afforded by it toward raising the revenue in a well-governed country like our own, might be one.

There was a strong family likeness between him and his sister, both in countenance and disposition. Elizabeth Allison was a person for whom the best and wisest man might have thanked Providence, if she had been allotted to him for help-mate. But though she had, in Shakspeare's language, “withered on the virgin thorn,” hers had not been a life of single blessedness: she had been a blessing first to her parents; then to her brother and her brother's family, where she relieved an amiable, but sickly sister-in-law, from those domestic offices which require activity and forethought; lastly, after the dispersion of his sons, the transfer of the business to the eldest, and the breaking up of his old establishment, to the widower and his daughter, the only child who cleaved to him,—not like Ruth to Naomi, by a meritorious act of duty, for in her case it was in the ordinary course of things, without either sacrifice or choice; but the effect in endearing her to him was the same.

In advanced stages of society, and no where more than in England at this time, the tendency of all things is to weaken the relations between parent and child, and frequently to destroy them, reducing human nature in this respect nearer to the level of animal life. Perhaps the greater number of male children who are “born into the world” in our part of it, areput outat as early an age, proportionally, as the young bird is driven from its nest, or the young beast turned off by its dam as being capable of feeding and protecting itself; and in many instances they are as totally lost to the parent, though not in like manner forgotten. Mr. Allison never saw all his children together after his removal from London. The only time when his three sons met at the Grange, was when they came there to attend their father's funeral; nor would they then have been assembled, if the Captain's ship had not happened to have recently arrived in port.

This is a state of things more favorable to the wealth than to the happiness of nations. It was a natural and pious custom in patriarchal times that the dead should be gathered unto their people. “Bury me,” said Jacob, when he gave his dying charge to his sons,—“bury me with my fathers, in the cave that is in the field of Machpelah, which is before Mamre in the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought with the field of Ephron the Hittite, for a possession of a burying place. There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; there they buried Isaac and Rebecca his wife; and there I buried Leah.” Had such a passage occurred in Homer, or in Dante, all critics would have concurred in admiring the truth and beauty of the sentiment. He had buried his beloved Rachel by the way where she died; but although he remembered this at his death, the orders which he gave were that his own remains should be laid in the sepulchre of his fathers. The same feeling prevails among many, or most of those savage tribes who are not utterly degraded. With them the tree is not left to lie where it falls. The body of one who dies on an expedition is interred on the spot, if distance or other circumstances render it inconvenient to transport the corpse; but however long the journey, it is considered as a sacred duty that the bones should at some time or other be brought home. In Scotland, where the common rites of sepulture are performed with less decency than in any other Christian country, the care with which family burial-grounds in the remoter parts are preserved, may be referred as much to natural feeling, as to hereditary pride.

But as indigenous flowers are eradicated by the spade and plough, so this feeling is destroyed in the stirring and bustling intercourse of commercial life. No room is left for it: as little of it at this time remains in wide America as in thickly peopled England. That to which soldiers and sailors are reconciled by the spirit of their profession and the chances of war and of the seas, the love of adventure and the desire of advancement cause others to regard with the same indifference; and these motives are so prevalent, that the dispersion of families and the consequent disruption of natural ties, if not occasioned by necessity, would now in most instances be the effect of choice. Even those to whom it is an inevitable evil, and who feel it deeply as such, look upon it as something in the appointed course of things, as much as infirmity and age and death.

It is well for us that in early life we never think of the vicissitudes which lie before us; or look to them only with pleasurable anticipations as they approach.

YouthKnows nought of changes: Age hath traced them oft,Expects and can interpret them.1

The thought of them, when it comes across us in middle life, brings with it only a transient sadness, like the shadow of a passing cloud. We turn our eyes from them while they are in prospect, but when they are in retrospect many a longing lingering look is cast behind. So long as Mr. Allison was in business he looked to Thaxted Grange as the place where he hoped one day to enjoy the blessings of retirement,—thatotium cum dignitate, which in a certain sense the prudent citizen is more likely to attain than the successful statesman. It was the pleasure of recollection that gave this hope its zest and its strength. But after the object which during so many years he had held in view, had been obtained, his day-dreams, if he had allowed them to take their course, would have recurred more frequently to Bishopsgate Street than they had ever wandered from thence to the scenes of his boyhood. They recurred thither oftener than he wished, although few men have been more masters of themselves; and then the remembrance of his wife, whom he had lost by a lingering disease in middle age; and of the children, those who had died during their childhood, and those who in reality were almost as much lost to him in the ways of the world, made him alway turn for comfort to the prospect of that better state of existence in which they should once more all be gathered together, and where there would be neither change nor parting. His thoughts often fell into this train, when on summer evenings he was taking a solitary pipe in his arbour, with the church in sight, and the church yard wherein at no distant time he was to be laid in his last abode. Such musings induced a sense of sober piety,—of thankfulness for former blessings, contentment with the present, and humble yet sure and certain hope for futurity, which might vainly have been sought at prayer meetings, or evening lectures, where indeed little good can ever be obtained without some deleterious admixture, or alloy of baser feelings.

1ISAACCOMMENUS.

The happiness which he had found in retirement was of a different kind from what he had contemplated: for the shades of evening were gathering when he reached the place of his long-wished-for rest, and the picture of it which had imprinted itself on his imagination was a morning view. But he had been prepared for this by that slow change of which we are not aware during its progress till we see it reflected in others, and are thus made conscious of it in ourselves; and he found a satisfaction in the station which he occupied there, too worthy in its nature to be called pride, and which had not entered into his anticipations. It is said to have been a saying of George the Third, that the happiest condition in which an Englishman could be placed, was just below that wherein it would have been necessary for him to act as a Justice of the Peace, and above that which would have rendered him liable to parochial duties. This was just Mr. Allison's position: there was nothing which brought him into rivalry or competition with the surrounding Squirarchy, and the yeomen and peasantry respected him for his own character, as well as for his name's-sake. He gave employment to more persons than when he was engaged in trade, and his indirect influence over them was greater; that of his sister was still more. The elders of the village remembered her in her youth, and loved her for what she then had been as well as for what she now was; the young looked up to her as the Lady Bountiful, to whom no one that needed advice or assistance ever applied in vain. She it was who provided those much approved plum-cakes, not the less savoury for being both homely and wholesome, the thought of which induced the children to look on to their Lent examination with hope, and prepare for it with alacrity. Those offices in a parish which are the province of the Clergyman's wife, when he has made choice of one who knows her duty and has both will and ability to discharge it, Miss Allison performed; and she rendered Mr. Bacon the farther, and to him individually the greater service of imparting to his daughter those instructions which she had no mother to impart. Deborah could not have had a better teacher; but as the present chapter has extended to a sufficient length,

Diremo il resto in quel che vien dipoi,Per non venire a noja a me e voi.2

2ORLANDOINNAMORATO.

A FEW PARTICULARS CONCERNING NO. 113 BISHOPSGATE STREET WITHIN; AND OF THE FAMILY AT THAXTED GRANGE.

Opinion is the rate of things,From hence our peace doth flow;I have a better fate than kings,Because I think it so.KATHERINEPHILIPS.

The house wherein Mr. Allison realized by fair dealing and frugality the modest fortune which enabled him to repurchase the homestead of his fathers, is still a Tobacconists, and has continued to be so from “the palmy days” of that trade, when King James vainly endeavoured by the expression of his royal dislike, to discountenance the newly-imported practice of smoking; and Joshua Sylvester thundered from Mount Helicon a Volley of Holy Shot, thinking that thereby “Tobacco” should be “battered, and the Pipes shattered, about their ears that idly idolize so base and barbarous a weed, or at least-wise overlove so loathsome vanity.” For he said,

“If there be any Herb in any placeMost opposite to God's good Herb of Grace,'Tis doubtless this; and this doth plainly prove it,That for the most, most graceless men do love it.”

Yet it was not long before the dead and unsavoury odour of that weed, to which a Parisian was made to say that “sea-coal smoke seemed a very Portugal perfume,” prevailed as much in the raiment of the more coarsely clad part of the community, as the scent of lavender among those who were clothed in fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day: and it had grown so much in fashion, that it was said children “began to play with broken pipes, instead of corals, to make way for their teeth.”

Louis XIV. endeavoured just as ineffectually to discourage the use of snuff-taking. Hisvalets de chambrewere obliged to renounce it when they were appointed to their office; and the Duke of Harcourt was supposed to have died of apoplexy in consequence of having, to please his Majesty, left off at once a habit which he had carried to excess.

I know not through what intermediate hands the business at No. 113 has past, since the name of Allison was withdrawn from the firm; nor whether Mr. Evans, by whom it is now carried on there, is in any way related by descent with that family. Matters of no greater importance to most men have been made the subject of much antiquarian investigation; and they who busy themselves in such investigations must not be said to be ill employed, for they find harmless amusement in the pursuit, and sometimes put up a chance truth of which others, soon or late, discover the application. The house has at this time a more antiquated appearance than any other in that part of the street, though it was modernized some forty or fifty years after Mr. Bacon's friend left it. The first floor then projected several feet farther over the street than at present, and the second several feet farther over the first; and the windows, which still extend the whole breadth of the front, were then composed of small casement panes. But in the progress of those improvements which are now carrying on in the city with as much spirit as at the western end of the metropolis, and which have almost reached Mr. Evans's door, it cannot be long before the house will be either wholly removed, or so altered as no longer to be recognized.

The present race of Londoners little know what the appearance of the city was a century ago;—their own city, I was about to have said; but it was the city of their great grandfathers, not theirs, from which the elder Allisons retired in the year 1746. At that time the kennels (as in Paris) were in the middle of the street, and there were no foot paths; spouts projected the rain-water in streams against which umbrellas, if umbrellas had been then in use, could have afforded no defence; and large signs, such as are now only to be seen at country inns, were suspended before every shop, from posts which impeded the way, or from iron supports strongly fixed into the front of the house. The swinging of one of these broad signs in a high wind, and the weight of the iron on which it acted, sometimes brought the wall down; and it is recorded that one front-fall of this kind in Fleet-street maimed several persons, and killed “two young ladies, a cobler, and the King's Jeweller.”

The sign at No. 113 was an Indian Chief, smoking the calumet. Mr. Allison had found it there; and when it became necessary that a new one should be substituted, he retained the same figure,—though if he had been to chuse he would have greatly preferred the head of Sir Walter Raleigh, by whom, according to the common belief, he supposed tobacco had been introduced into this country. The Water-Poet imputed it to the Devil himself, and published

A Proclamation,Or Approbation,From the King of ExecrationTo every Nation,For Tobacco's propagation.

Mr. Allison used to shake his head at such libellous aspersions. Raleigh was a great favorite with him, and held indeed in especial respect, though not as the Patron of his old trade, as St. Crispin is of the Gentle Craft, yet as the founder of his fortune. He thought it proper, therefore, that he should possess Sir Walter's History of the World, though he had never found inclination, or summoned up resolution, to undertake its perusal.

Common sense has been defined by Sir Egerton Brydges, “to mean nothing more than an uneducated judgement, arising from a plain and coarse understanding, exercised upon common concerns, and rendered effective rather by experience, than by any regular process of the intellectual powers. If this,” he adds, “be the proper meaning of that quality, we cannot wonder that books are little fitted for its cultivation.” Except that there was no coarseness in his nature, this would apply to Mr. Allison. He had been bred up with the notion that it behoved him to attend to his business, and that reading formed no part of it. Nevertheless he had acquired some liking for books by looking casually now and then over the leaves of those unfortunate volumes with which the shop was continually supplied for its daily consumption.

——Many a load of criticism,Elaborate products of the midnight toilOf Belgian brains,1

went there; and many a tome of old law, old physic, and old divinity; old history as well; books of which many were at all times rubbish; some, which though little better, would now sell for more shillings by the page than they then cost pence by the pound; and others, the real value of which is perhaps as little known now, as it was then. Such of these as in latter years caught his attention, he now and then rescued from the remorseless use to which they had been condemned. They made a curious assortment with his wife's books of devotion or amusement, wherewith she had sometimes beguiled, and sometimes soothed the weary hours of long and frequent illness. Among the former were Scott's “Christian Life,” Bishop Bayly's “Practice of Piety,” Bishop Taylor's “Holy Living and Dying,” Drelincourt on Death, with De Foe's lying story of Mrs. Veal's ghost as a puff preliminary, and the Night Thoughts. Among the latter were Cassandra, the Guardian and Spectator, Mrs. Rowe's Letters, Richardson's Novels and Pomfret's Poems.

1AKENSIDE.

Mrs. Allison had been able to do little for her daughter of that little, which, if her state of health and spirits had permitted, she might have done; this, therefore, as well as the more active duties of the household, devolved upon Elizabeth, who was of a better constitution in mind as well as body. Elizabeth, before she went to reside with her brother, had acquired all the accomplishments which a domestic education in the country could in those days impart. Her book of receipts, culinary and medical, might have vied with the “Queen's Cabinet Unlocked.” The spelling indeed was such as ladies used in the reign of Queen Anne, and in the old time before her, when every one spelt as she thought fit; but it was written in a well-proportioned Italian hand, with fine down-strokes and broad up-ones, equally distinct and beautiful. Her speech was good Yorkshire, that is to say, good provincial English, not the worse for being provincial, and a little softened by five and twenty years residence in London. Some sisters, who in those days kept a boarding school of the first repute in one of the midland counties, used to say, when they spoke of an old pupil, “her went to school to we.” Miss Allison's language was not of this kind,—it savoured of rusticity, not of ignorance; and where it was peculiar, as in the metropolis, it gave a raciness to the conversation of an agreeable woman.

She had been well instructed in ornamental work as well as ornamental penmanship. Unlike most fashions, this had continued to be in fashion because it continued to be of use; though no doubt some of the varieties which Taylor the Water-Poet enumerates in his praise of the Needle, might have been then as little understood as now:

Tent-work, Raised-work, Laid-work, Prest-work, Net-work.Most curious Pearl, or rare Italian Cut-work,Fine Fern-stitch, Finny-stitch, New-stitch and Chain-stitch,Brave Bred-stitch, Fisher-stitch, Irish-stitch and Queen-stitch,The Spanish-stitch, Rosemary-stitch and Maw-stitch,The smarting Whip-stitch, Back-stitch and the Cross-stitch.All these are good, and these we must allow;And these are every where in practice now.

There was a book published in the Water Poet's days, with the title of “School House for the Needle;” it consisted of two volumes in oblong quarto, that form being suited to its plates “of sundry sorts of patterns and examples;” and it contained a “Dialogue in Verse between Diligence and Sloth.” If Betsey Allison had studied in this “School House,” she could not have been a greater proficient with the needle than she became under her Aunt's teaching: nor would she have been more

——versed in the artsOf pies, puddings and tarts,2

if she had gone through a course of practical lessons in one of the Pastry Schools which are common in Scotland, but were tried without success in London, about the middle of the last century. Deborah partook of these instructions at her father's desire. In all that related to the delicacies of a country table, she was glad to be instructed, because it enabled her to assist her friend; but it appeared strange to her that Mr. Bacon should wish her to learn ornamental work, for which she neither had, nor could foresee any use. But if the employment had been less agreeable than she found it in such company, she would never have disputed, nor questioned his will.

2T. WARTON.

For so small a household, a more active or cheerful one could no where have been found than at the Grange. Ben Jonson reckoned among the happinesses of Sir Robert Wroth, that of being “with unbought provision blest.” This blessing Mr. Allison enjoyed in as great a degree as his position in life permitted; he neither killed his own meat nor grew his own corn; but he had his poultry yard, his garden and his orchard; he baked his own bread, brewed his own beer, and was supplied with milk, cream and butter from his own dairy. It is a fact not unworthy of notice, that the most intelligent farmers in the neighbourhood of London, are persons who have taken to farming as a business, because of their strong inclination for rural employments; one of the very best in Middlesex, when the Survey of that County was published by the Board of Agriculture, had been a Tailor. Mr. Allison did not attempt to manage the land which he kept in his own hands; but he had a trusty bailiff, and soon acquired knowledge enough for superintending what was done. When he retired from trade he gave over all desire for gain, which indeed he had never desired for its own sake; he sought now only wholesome occupation, and those comforts which may be said to have a moral zest. They might be called luxuries, if that word could be used in a virtuous sense without something so to qualify it. It is a curious instance of the modification which words undergo in different countries, that luxury has always a sinful acceptation in the southern languages of Europe, and lust an innocent one in the northern; the harmless meaning of the latter word, we have retained in the verbto list.

Every one who looks back upon the scenes of his youth, has one spot upon which the last light of the evening sunshine rests. The Grange was that spot in Deborah's retrospect.

A REMARKABLE EXAMPLE, SHOWING THAT A WISE MAN, WHEN HE RISES IN THE MORNING, LITTLE KNOWS WHAT HE MAY DO BEFORE NIGHT.

—Now I love,And so as in so short a time I may;Yet so as time shall never break that so,And therefore so accept of Elinor.ROBERTGREENE.

One summer evening the Doctor on his way back from a visit in that direction, stopt, as on such opportunities he usually did, at Mr. Bacon's wicket, and looked in at the open casement to see if his friends were within. Mr. Bacon was sitting there alone, with a book open on the table before him; and looking round when he heard the horse stop, “Come in Doctor,” said he, “if you have a few minutes to spare. You were never more welcome.”

The Doctor replied, “I hope nothing ails either Deborah or yourself?” “No,” said Mr. Bacon, “God be thanked! but something has occurred which concerns both.”

When the Doctor entered the room, he perceived that the wonted serenity of his friend's countenance was overcast by a shade of melancholy thought; “Nothing,” said he, “I hope has happened to distress you?”—“Only to disturb us,” was the reply. “Most people would probably think that we ought to consider it a piece of good fortune. One who would be thought a good match for her, has proposed to marry Deborah.”

“Indeed!” said the Doctor; “and who is he?” feeling, as he asked the question, an unusual warmth in his face.

“Joseph Hebblethwaite, of the Willows. He broke his mind to me this morning, saying that he thought it best to speak with me before he made any advances himself to the young woman: indeed he had had no opportunity of so doing, for he had seen little of her; but he had heard enough of her character to believe that she would make him a good wife; and this, he said, was all he looked for, for he was well to do in the world.”

“And what answer did you make to this matter-of-fact way of proceeding?”

“I told him that I commended the very proper course he had taken, and that I was obliged to him for the good opinion of my daughter which he was pleased to entertain: that marriage was an affair in which I should never attempt to direct her inclinations, being confident that she would never give me cause to oppose them; and that I would talk with her upon the proposal, and let him know the result. As soon as I mentioned it to Deborah, she coloured up to her eyes; and with an angry look, of which I did not think those eyes had been capable, she desired me to tell him that he had better lose no time in looking elsewhere, for his thinking of her was of no use. Do you know any ill of him? said I; No, she replied, but I never heard any good, and that's ill enough. And I do not like his looks.”

“Well said, Deborah!” cried the Doctor: clapping his hands so as to produce a sonorous token of satisfaction.

“Surely, my child, said I, he is not an ill-looking person? Father, she replied, you know he looks as if he had not one idea in his head to keep company with another.”

“Well said, Deborah!” repeated the Doctor.

“Why Doctor, do you know any ill of him?”

“None. But as Deborah says, I know no good; and if there had been any good to be known, it must have come within my knowledge. I cannot help knowing who the persons are to whom the peasantry in my rounds look with respect and good will, and whom they consider their friends as well as their betters. And in like manner, I know who they are from whom they never expect either courtesy or kindness.”

“You are right, my friend; and Deborah is right. Her answer came from a wise heart; and I was not sorry that her determination was so promptly made, and so resolutely pronounced. But I wish, if it had pleased God, the offer had been one which she could have accepted with her own willing consent, and with my full approbation.”

“Yet,” said the Doctor, “I have often thought how sad a thing it would be for you ever to part with her.”

“Far more sad will it be for me to leave her unprotected, as it is but too likely that, in the ordinary course of nature, I one day shall; and as any day in that same ordinary course, I so possibly may! Our best intentions, even when they have been most prudentially formed, fail often in their issue. I meant to train up Deborah in the way she should go, by fitting her for that state of life in which it had pleased God to place her, so that she might have made a good wife for some honest man in the humbler walks of life, and have been happy with him.”

“And how was it possible,” replied the Doctor, “that you could have succeeded better? Is she not qualified to be a good man's wife in any rank? Her manner would not do discredit to a mansion; her management would make a farm prosperous, or a cottage comfortable; and for her principles, and temper and cheerfulness, they would render any home a happy one.”

“You have not spoken too highly in her praise, Doctor. But as she has from her childhood been all in all to me, there is a danger that I may have become too much so to her; and that while her habits have properly been made conformable to our poor means, and her poor prospects, she has been accustomed to a way of thinking, and a kind of conversation, which have given her a distaste for those whose talk is only of sheep and of oxen, and whose thoughts never get beyond the range of their every day employments. In her present circle, I do not think there is one man with whom she might otherwise have had a chance of settling in life, to whom she would not have the same intellectual objections as to Joseph Hebblethwaite: though I am glad that the moral objection was that which first instinctively occurred to her.

“I wish it were otherwise, both for her sake and my own; for hers, because the present separation would have more than enough to compensate it, and would in its consequences mitigate the evil of the final one, whenever that may be; for my own, because I should then have no cause whatever to render the prospect of dissolution otherwise than welcome, but he as willing to die as to sleep. It is not owing to any distrust in Providence, that I am not thus willing now,—God forbid! But if I gave heed to my own feelings, I should think that I am not long for this world; and surely it were wise to remove, if possible, the only cause that makes me fear to think so.”

“Are you sensible of any symptoms that can lead to such an apprehension?” said the Doctor.

“Of nothing that can be called a symptom. I am to all appearance in good health, of sound body and mind; and you know how unlikely my habits are to occasion any disturbance in either. But I have indefinable impressions,—sensations they might almost be called,—which as I cannot but feel them, so I cannot but regard them.”

“Can you not describe these sensations?”

“No better than by saying, that they hardly amount to sensations, and are indescribable.”

“Do not,” said the Doctor, “I entreat you, give way to any feelings of this kind. They may lead to consequences, which without shortening or endangering life, would render it anxious and burthensome, and destroy both your usefulness and your comfort.”

“I have this feeling, Doctor; and you shall prescribe for it, if you think it requires either regimen or physic. But at present you will do me more good by assisting me to procure for Deborah such a situation as she must necessarily look for on the event of my death. What I have laid by, even if it should be most advantageously disposed of, would afford her only a bare subsistence; it is a resource in case of sickness, but while in health, it would never be her wish to eat the bread of idleness. You may have opportunities of learning whether any lady within the circle of your practice, wants a young person in whom she might confide, either as an attendant upon herself, or to assist in the management of her children, or her household. You may be sure this is not the first time that I have thought upon the subject; but the circumstance which has this day occurred, and the feeling of which I have spoken, have pressed it upon my consideration. And the inquiry may better be made and the step taken while it is a matter of foresight, than when it has become one of necessity.”

“Let me feel your pulse!”

“You will detect no other disorder there,” said Mr. Bacon, holding out his arm as he spake, “than what has been caused by this conversation, and the declaration of a purpose, which though for some time perpended, I had never till now fully acknowledged to myself.”

“You have never then mentioned it to Deborah?”

“In no other way than by sometimes incidentally speaking of the way of life which would be open to her, in case of her being unmarried at my death.”

“And you have made up your mind to part with her?”

“Upon a clear conviction that I ought to do so; that it is best for herself and me.”

“Well then, you will allow me to converse with her first, upon a different subject.—You will permit me to see whether I can speak more successfully for myself, than you have done for Joseph Hebblethwaite.—Have I your consent?”

Mr. Bacon rose in great emotion, and taking his friend's hand prest it fervently and tremulously. Presently they heard the wicket open, and Deborah came in.

“I dare say, Deborah,” said her father, composing himself, “you have been telling Betsy Allison of the advantageous offer that you have this day refused.”

“Yes,” replied Deborah; “and what do you think she said? That little as she likes him, rather than that I should be thrown away upon such a man, she could almost make up her mind to marry him herself.”

“And I,” said the Doctor, “rather than such a man should have you would marry you myself.”

“Was not I right in refusing him, Doctor?”

“So right, that you never pleased me so well before; and never can please me better,—unless you will accept of me in his stead.”

She gave a little start, and looked at him half incredulously, and half angrily withal; as if what he had said was too light in its manner to be serious, and yet too serious in its import to be spoken in jest. But when he took her by the hand, and said, “Will you, dear Deborah?” with a pressure, and in a tone that left no doubt of his earnest meaning, she cried, “Father, what am I to say? speak for me!”—“Take her my friend!” said Mr. Bacon, “My blessing be upon you both. And if it be not presumptuous to use the words,—let me say for myself, ‘Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace!’”

A WORD OF NOBS, AND AN ALLUSION TO CÆSAR. SOME CIRCUMSTANCES RELATING TO THE DOCTOR'S SECOND LOVE, WHEREBY THOSE OF HIS THIRD AND LAST ARE ACCOUNTED FOR.

Un mal que se entra por medio los ojos,Y va se derecho hasta el corazon;Alli en ser llegado se torna aficion,Y da mil pesares, plazeres y enojos:Causa alegrias, tristezas, antojos;Haze llorar, y haze reir,Haze cantar, y haze plañir;Da pensamientos dos mil a manojos.QUESTION DEAMOR.

“Nobs,” said the Doctor, as he mounted and rode away from Mr. Bacon's garden gate, “when I alighted and fastened thee to that wicket, I thought as little of what was to befal me then, and what I was about to do, as thou knowest of it now.”

Man has an inward voice as well as an “inward eye,”1a voice distinct from that of conscience. It is the companion, if not “the bliss of solitude;”1and though he sometimes employs it to deceive himself, it gives him good counsel perhaps quite as often, calls him to account, reproves him for having left unsaid what he ought to have said, or for having said what he ought not to have said, reprehends or approves, admonishes or encourages. On this occasion it was a joyful and gratulatory voice, with which the Doctor spake mentally, first to Nobs and afterwards to himself, as he rode back to Doncaster.

1WORDSWORTH.

By this unuttered address the reader would perceive, if he should haply have forgotten what was intimated in some of the ante-initial chapters, and in the first post-initial one, that the Doctor had a horse, named Nobs; and the question Who was Nobs, would not be necessary, if this were all that was to be said concerning him. There is much to be said; the tongue that could worthily express his merits, had need be like the pen of a ready writer; though I will not say of him as Berni or Boiardo has said of

quel valeroso e bel destriero,

Argalia's horse, Rubicano, that

Un che volesse dir lodando il vero,Bisogno aria di parlar piu ch' umano.

At present, however, I shall only say this in his praise, he was altogether unlike the horse of whom it was said he had only two faults, that of being hard to catch, and that of being good for nothing when he was caught. For whether in stable or in field, Nobs would come like a dog to his master's call. There was not a better horse for the Doctor's purpose in all England; no, nor in all Christendom; no, nor in all Houyhnhnmdom, if that country had been searched to find one.

Cæsarem vehis, said Cæsar to the Egyptian boatman. But what was that which the Egyptian boat carried, compared to what Nobs bore upon that saddle to which constant use had given its polish bright and brown?

Virtutem solidi pectoris hospitamIdem portat equus, qui dominum.2

Nobs therefore carried—all that is in these volumes; yea, and as all future generations were, according to Madame Bourignon, actually as well as potentially, contained in Adam,—all editions and translations of them, however numerous.

2CASIMIR.

But on that evening he carried something of more importance; for on the life and weal of his rider there depended from that hour, as far as its dependence was upon anything earthly, the happiness of one of the best men in the world, and of a daughter who was not unworthy of such a father. If the Doctor had been thrown from his horse and killed, an hour or two earlier, the same day, it would have been a dreadful shock both to Deborah and Mr. Bacon; and they would always have regretted the loss of one whose company they enjoyed, whose character they respected, and for whom they entertained a feeling of more than ordinary regard. But had such a casualty occurred now, it would have been the severest affliction that could have befallen them.

Yet till that hour Deborah had never thought of Dove as a husband, nor Dove of Deborah as a wife,—that is, neither had ever looked at the possibility of their being one day united to each other in that relation. Deborah liked him, and he liked her; and beyond this sincere liking neither of them for a moment dreamt that the inclination would ever proceed. They had not fallen in love with each other; nor had they run in love, nor walked into it, nor been led into it, nor entrapt into it; nor had they caught it.

How then came they to be in love at last? The question may be answered by an incident which Mr. John Davis relates in his Travels of Four Years and a Half in the United States of America. The traveller was making his way “faint and wearily” on foot to a place called by the strange name of Frying Pan,—for the Americans have given all sorts of names, except fitting ones, to the places which they have settled, or discovered, and their Australian kinsmen seem to be following the same absurd and inconvenient course. It will occasion, hereafter, as much confusion as the sameness of Mahommedan proper names, in all ages and countries, causes in the history of all Mahommedan nations. Mr. Davis had walked till he was tired without seeing any sign of the place at which he expected long before to have arrived. At length he met a lad in the wilderness, and asked him, “how far, my boy, is it to Frying Pan?” The boy replied, “you be in the Pan now.”

So it was with the Doctor and with Deborah;—they found themselves in love, as much to their surprize as it was to the traveller when he found himself in the Pan, and much more to their satisfaction. And upon a little after reflection they both perceived how they came to be so.

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