industry as others do reproach. This character is so particular, that it will be very easily fixed on her only, by all that know her, but I dare say she will be the last to find it out."-Tatler, No. XLII. July 16, 1709.

This character was written when Lady Elizabeth was twenty-eight*. She passed the rest of her life agreeably to it, relieving families, giving annuities, contributing to the maintenance of schools and university-scholars, and all the while behaving with extraordinary generosity to her kindred, and keeping up a noble establishment. Those whom such a description incites to know more of her, will find a good summary of her way of life in Miss Hays's Female Biography, a work, by the way, which contrives to be at once conventional and liberal, and ought to be in possession of all her countrywomen.

Miss Hays informs us, that the close of this excellent person's life was as suffering as it was patient. An accidental contusion in her bosom, at an early period of life, had left the seeds of a cancer, which for many years she disregarded. About a year and a half before her death she was obliged to undergo an amputation of the part affected, which she did with a noble and sweet fortitude, described in a very touching manner by another of her biographers. "Her ladyship," he tells us, "underwent this painful operation with surprising patience and resolution; she shewed no reluctancy, no struggle or contention; only, indeed, towards the end of the operation she drew such a sigh as any compassionate reader may when he hears this." This is one of the truest and most pathetic things we remember to have read. Unfortunately, the amputation, though it promised well for a time, did no good at last. The disorder returned with greater malignity, and after submitting to it with her usual patience, and exhorting her household and friends, upon her death-bed, in a high strain of enthusiasm, she expired on the 22d December, 1739, in the fifty-seventh year of her age. "Her character in miniature," says the biographer just quoted, "is this. She was a lady of the exactest breeding, of fine intellectual endowments, filled with divine wisdom, renewed in the spirit of her mind, fired with the love of her Creator, a friend to all the world, mortified in soul and body, and to everything that is earthly, and a little lower than the angels." He has a mysterious anecdote of her in the course of his account. "The following remarkable circumstance happened to her in her youth. A young lady, of less severity of manners than herself, invited her once to an entertainment over a romance, and very dear did she pay for it; what evil tinctures she took

It is attributed by the annotators to Congreve,-I know not on what authority. If I know anything of style, I can swear it was Steele's. The moral elegance and faith of it, and the turn of the words, are all his.

from it I cannot tell, but this I can, that the remembrance of it would now and then annoy her spirit down into declining life." Miss Hays concludes the memoir in the Female Biography with informing us, that "she was fond of her pen, and frequently employed herself in writing; but, previous to her death, destroyed the greater part of her papers. Her fortune, beauty, and amiable qualities, procured her many solicitations to change her state; but she preferred, in a single and independent life, to be mistress of her actions and the disposition of her income."

It seems pretty clear from all these accounts, that this noble-hearted woman, notwithstanding her beauty and sweet temper, was as imperfect a specimen of animal humanity as her kinsman was of spiritual. We are far from meaning to prefer his state of existence. We confess that there are many persons we have read of, whom we would rather have been, than the most saintly of solitary spirits; but the mere reflection of the good which Lady Elizabeth did to others, would not allow us a moment's hesitation, if compelled to choose between inhabiting her infirm tenement and the jolly vacuity of Honourable William. At the same time, it is evident that the fair saint neglected the earthly part of herself in a way neither as happy-making nor as pious as she took it for. Perhaps the example of her kinsman tended to assist this false idea of what is pleasing to heaven, and made her a little too peremptory against herself; but what had not her lovers a right to say? For our parts, had we lived then, and been at all fitted to aspire to a return of her regard, we should have thought it a very unfair and intolerable thing of her to go on doing the most exquisite and seducing actions in the world, and tell us that she wished to be mistress of her own time and generosities. So she might, and yet have been generous to us as well as to the charity boys. But setting this aside (and the real secret is to be found, perhaps, in matters into which we cannot inquire), a proper attention to that beauteous form which her spirit inhabited might have done great good to herself. She not only lived nearly half a century less than her kinsman, and thus shortened a useful life, but the less healthy state of her blood rendered even a soul like hers liable to incursions of melancholy to the last moment of her existence. If it be said that this stimulated her the more to extract happiness out of the happiness of others, we do not deny that it may have done so; nor do we pretend to say that this might not have been her best state of existence for herself and all of us, if we could inquire into matters hidden from our sight. But upon that principle, so might her relation's. It is impossible to argue to any purpose upon these assumptions, which are only good for patience, not for action. William Hastings

was all bodily comfort; Elizabeth Hastings was all mental grace. How far the liability of the former to gusts of passion, as well as the other conditions of his being, settled the balance with her necessity for being patient, it is impossible to say; but it is easy and right to say, that nobody would like to undergo operations for a cancer, or to die at fifty-seven, when they could live healthily to a hundred.

What, then, is our conclusion? This: that the proper point of humanity lies between the two natures, though not at equal distances; the greatest possible sum of happiness for mankind demanding that great part of our pleasure should be founded in that of others. Those, however, who hold rigid theories of morality and yet practise them not (which is much oftener the case with such theories than the reverse), must take care how they flatter themselves they resemble Lady Elizabeth. Their extreme difference with her kinsman is a mere cant, to which all the privileged selfishness and sensuality in the world give the lie-all the pomps and vanities, all the hatreds, all the malignities, all the eatings and drinkings, such as William Hastings himself would have been ashamed of. In fact, their real instincts are generally as selfish as his, though in other shapes, and much less agreeable for everybody. When cant lives as long and healthy a life as his, or as good a one as hers, it will be worth attending to. Till then, the best thing to advise is, neither to be canting, nor merely animal, nor overspiritual; but to endeavour to enjoy, with the greatest possible distribution of happiness, all the faculties we receive from nature.

LIX. RETURN OF AUTUMN.

THE autumn is now confirmed. The harvest

is over; the summer birds are gone or going; heavy rains have swept the air of its warmth, and prepared the earth for the impressions of winter.

And the author's season changes likewise. We can no longer persuade ourselves that it is summer, by dint of resolving to think so. We cannot warm ourselves at the look of the sunshine. Instead of sitting at the window,

hindering" ourselves, as people say, with enjoying the sight of Nature, we find our knees turned round to the fire-place, our face opposite a pictured instead of a real landscape, and our feet toasting upon a fender.

When some enjoyments go, others come. The boys will now be gathering their nuts. The trees will put forth, in their bravely dying leaves, all the colours of heaven and earth, which they have received from sun, and rain, and soil. Nature, in her heaps of grain and berries, will set before the animal creation as profuse and luxurious a feast, as any of our

lordly palates have received from dish and dessert.

Nature, with the help of a very little art, can put forth a prettier bill of fare than most persons, if people will but persuade each other that cheapness is as good as dearness ;—a discovery, we think, to which the tax-gatherer might help us. Let us see what she says this autumn. Imagine us seated at the bar of some fashionable retreat, or boxed in a sylvan scene of considerable resort. Enter, a waiter, the September of Spenser-that ingenious and (to a punster) oddly-dressed rogue, of whom we are told, that when he appeared before the poet, he was

Heavy laden with the spoil

Of harvest's riches, which he made his boot. At present, he assumes a more modest aspect, with a bunch of ash-leaves under his arm by way of duster. He bows like a poplar, draws a west wind through his teeth genteelly, and lays before us the following bill of entertain

ment :

Fish, infinite and cheap.
Fruit, ditto.
Nuts, ditto.

Bread, ditto-taxed.

Fresh airs, taxed if in doors-not out.
Light, the same.

Wine in its unadulterated shape, as grapes, or sunshine, or well-fermented blood.

Arbours of ivy, wild honeysuckle, arbutus, &c. all in flower.

Other flowers on table.

The ante-room, with a view into it, immense with a sky-blue cupola, and hung round with landscapes confessedly inimitable.

Towards the conclusion, a vocal concert among the trees.

At night, falling stars, and a striking panoramic view of the heavens; on which occasion, introduced that was admired by the "immortal for a few nights only, the same moon will be Shakspeare!!!”

N.B. It is reported by some malignant persons, that the bird-concert is not artificial: whereas it will be found, upon the smallest inspection, to beat even the most elaborate inventions of the justly, admired Signor Mecanical Fello.

LX. THE MAID-SERVANT* MUST be considered as young, or else she has married the butcher, the butler, or her cousin, or has otherwise settled into a character distinct from her original one, so as to become what is properly called the domestic. The Maid-Servant, in her apparel, is either slovenly

* In some respects, particularly of costume, this portrait must be understood of originals existing twenty or thirty years ago.

and fine by turns, and dirty always; or she is at all times neat and tight, and dressed according to her station. In the latter case, her ordinary dress is black stockings, a stuff gown, a cap, and a neck-handkerchief pinned cornerwise behind. If you want a pin, she feels about her, and has always one to give you. On Sundays and holidays, and perhaps of afternoons, she changes her black stockings for white, puts on a gown of a better texture and fine pattern, sets her cap and her curls jauntily, and lays aside the neck-handkerchief for a high-body, which, by the way, is not half so pretty.

The general furniture of her ordinary room, the kitchen, is not so much her own as her master's and mistress's, and need not be described but in a drawer of the dresser or the table, in company with a duster and a pair of snuffers, may be found some of her property, such as a brass thimble, a pair of scissars, a thread-case, a piece of wax candle much wrinkled with the thread, an odd volume of Pamela, and perhaps a sixpenny play, such as George Barnwell or Southerne's Oroonoko. There is a piece of looking-glass in the window. The rest of her furniture is in the garret, where you may find a good looking-glass on the table; and in the window a Bible, a comb and a piece of soap. Here stands also, under stout lock and key, the mighty mystery,-the box,-containing, among other things, her clothes, two or three song-books, consisting of nineteen for the penny; sundry Tragedies at a halfpenny the sheet; the Whole Nature of Dreams Laid Open, together with the Fortune-teller and the Account of the Ghost of Mrs. Veal; the Story of the Beautiful Zoa "who was cast away on a desart island, showing how," &c. ; some half-crowns in a purse, including pieces of country-money; a silver penny wrapped up in cotton by itself; a crooked sixpence, given her before she came to town, and the giver of which has either for gotten or been forgotten by her, she is not sure which ;-two little enamel boxes, with lookingglass in the lids, one of them a fairing, the other "a Trifle from Margate ;" and lastly, various letters, square and ragged, and directed in all sorts of spellings, chiefly with little letters for capitals. One of them, written by a girl who went to a day-school, is directed "Miss."

ing person goes up her wet stairs with dirty shoes, or when she is called away often from dinner; neither does she much like to be seen scrubbing the street-door steps of a morning; and sometimes she catches herself saying, "Drat that butcher," but immediately adds, "God forgive me." The tradesmen indeed, with their compliments and arch looks, seldom give her cause to complain. The milkman bespeaks her good-humour for the day with "Come, pretty maids :"- then follow the butcher, the baker, the oilman, &c. all with their several smirks and little loiterings; and when she goes to the shops herself, it is for her the grocer pulls down his string from its roller with more than ordinary whirl, and tosses his parcel into a tie.

Thus pass the mornings between working, and singing, and giggling, and grumbling, and being flattered. If she takes any pleasure unconnected with her office before the afternoon, it is when she runs up the area-steps or to the door to hear and purchase a new song, or to see a troop of soldiers go by; or when she happens to thrust her head out of a chamber window at the same time with a servant at the next house, when a dialogue infallibly ensues, stimulated by the imaginary obstacles between. If the Maid-servant is wise, the best part of her work is done by dinner-time; and nothing else is necessary to give perfect zest to the meal. She tells us what she thinks of it, when she calls it "a bit o' dinner." There is the same sort of eloquence in her other phrase," a cup o' tea;" but the old ones, and the washerwomen, beat her at that. After tea in great houses, she goes with the other servants to hot cockles, or What-are-mythoughts-like, and tells Mr. John to "have done then ;" or if there is a ball given that night, they throw open the doors, and make use of the music up stairs to dance by. In smaller houses, she receives the visits of her aforesaid cousin ; and sits down alone, or with a fellow maid-servant, to work; talks of her young master or mistress and Mr. Ivins (Evans); or else she calls to mind her own friends in the country; where she thinks the cows and "all that" beautiful, now she is away. Meanwhile, if she is lazy, she snuffs the candle with her scissars; or if she has eaten more heartily than usual, she sighs double the usual number of times, and thinks that tender hearts were born to be unhappy.

The most active of the money-getters is a vegetable compared with them. The Maidservant when she first goes to Vauxhall, thinks she is in heaven. A theatre is all pleasure to her, whatever is going forward, whether the play or the music, or the waiting which makes others impatient, or the munching of apples and gingerbread, which she and her party commence | almost as soon as they have seated themselves. She prefers tragedy to comedy, because it is grander, and less like what she meets with in general; and because she thinks it more in earnest also, especially in the love-scenes. Her favourite play is" Alexander the Great, or the Rival Queens." Another great delight is in going a shopping. She loves to look at the patterns in the windows, and the fine things labelled with those corpulent numerals of “only 7s."—" only 6s. 6d." She has also, unless born and bred in London, been to see my Lord Mayor, the fine people coming out of Court, and the "beasties" in the Tower; and at all events she has been to Astley's and the Circus, from which she comes away, equally smitten with the rider, and sore with laughing at the clown. But it is difficult to say what pleasure she enjoys most. One of the completest of all is the fair, where she walks through an endless round of noise, and toys, and gallant apprentices, and wonders. Here she is invited in by courteous and well-dressed people, as if she were the mistress. Here also is the conjuror's booth, where the operator himself, a most stately and genteel person all in white, calls her Ma'ain; and says to John by her side, in spite of his laced hat," Be good enough, sir, to hand the card to the lady."

Ah! may her "cousin" turn out as true as he says he is; or may she get home soon enough and smiling enough to be as happy again next time.

LXI. THE OLD LADY.

In a

Ir the Old Lady is a widow and lives alone, the manners of her condition and time of life are so much the more apparent. She generally dresses in plain silks, that make a gentle rustling as she moves about the silence of her room; and she wears a nice cap with a lace border, that comes under the chin. placket at her side is an old enamelled watch, unless it is locked up in a drawer of her toilet, for fear of accidents. Her waist is rather tight and trim than otherwise, as she had a fine one when young; and she is not sorry if you see a pair of her stockings on a table, that you may be aware of the neatness of her leg and foot. Contented with these and other evident indications of a good shape, and letting her young friends understand that she can afford to obscure it a little, she wears pockets, and uses them well too. In the one is her handkerchief,

and any heavier matter that is not likely to come out with it, such as the change of a sixpence; in the other is a miscellaneous assortment, consisting of a pocket-book, a bunch of keys, a needle-case, a spectacle-case, crumbs of biscuit, a nutmeg and grater, a smelling-bottle, and, according to the season, an orange or apple, which after many days she draws out, warm and glossy, to give to some little child that has well behaved itself. She generally occupies two rooms, in the neatest condition possible. In the chamber is a bed with a white coverlet, built up high and round, to look well, and with curtains of a pastoral pattern, consisting alternately of large plants, and shepherds and shepherdesses. On the mantle-piece are more shepherds and shepherdesses, with doteyed sheep at their feet, all in coloured ware: the man, perhaps, in a pink jacket and knots of ribbons at his knees and shoes, holding his crook lightly in one hand, and with the other at his breast, turning his toes out and looking tenderly at the shepherdess : the woman holding a crook also, and modestly returning his look, with a gipsy-hat jerked up behind, a very slender waist, with petticoat and hips to counteract, and the petticoat pulled up through the pocket-holes, in order to show the trimness of her ancles. But these patterns, of course, are various. The toilet is ancient, carved at the edges, and tied about with a snow-white drapery of muslin. Beside it are various boxes, mostly japan; and the set of drawers are exquisite things for a little girl to rummage, if ever little girl be so bold,-containing ribbons and laces of various kinds; linen smelling of lavender, of the flowers of which there is always dust in the corners; a heap of pocketbooks for a series of years; and pieces of dress long gone by, such as head-fronts, stomachers, and flowered satin shoes, with enormous heels. The stock of letters are under especial lock and key. So much for the bed-room. In the sitting-room is rather a spare assortment of shining old mahogany furniture, or carved arm-chairs equally old, with chintz draperies down to the ground; a folding or other screen, with Chinese figures, their round, little-eyed, meek faces perking sideways; a stuffed bird, perhaps in a glass case (a living one is too much for her); a portrait of her husband over the mantel-piece, in a coat with frog-buttons, and a delicate frilled hand lightly inserted in the waistcoat; and opposite him on the wall, is a piece of embroidered literature, framed and glazed, containing some moral distich or maxim, worked in angular capital letters, with two trees or parrots below, in their proper colours; the whole concluding with an ABCand numerals, and the name of the fair industrious, expressing it to be "her work, Jan. 14, 1762." The rest of the furniture consists of a lookingglass with carved edges, perhaps a settee, a hassock for the feet, a mat for the little dog,

and a small set of shelves, in which are the Spectator and Guardian, the Turkish Spy, a Bible and Prayer Book, Young's Night Thoughts with a piece of lace in it to flatten, Mrs. Rowe's Derout Exercises of the Heart, Mrs. Glasse's Cookery, and perhaps Sir Charles Grandison, and Clarissa. John Buncle is in the closet among the pickles and preserves. The clock is on the landingplace between the two room doors, where it ticks audibly but quietly; and the landingplace, as well as the stairs, is carpeted to a nicety. The house is most in character, and properly coeval, if it is in a retired suburb, and strongly built, with wainscot rather than paper inside, and lockers in the windows. Before the windows should be some quivering poplars. Here the Old Lady receives a few quiet visitors to tea, and perhaps an early game at cards: or you may see her going out on the same kind of visit herself, with a light umbrella running up into a stick and crooked ivory handle, and her little dog, equally famous for his love to her and captious antipathy to strangers. Her grand-children dislike him on holidays, and the boldest sometimes ventures to give him a sly kick under the table. When she returns at night, she appears, if the weather happens to be doubtful, in a calash; and her servant in pattens, follows half behind and half at her side, with a lantern.

Her opinions are not many nor new. She thinks the clergyman a nice man. The Duke of Wellington, in her opinion, is a very great man; but she has a secret preference for the Marquis of Granby. She thinks the young women of the present day too forward, and the men not respectful enough; but hopes her grandchildren will be better; though she differs with her daughter in several points respecting their management. She sets little value on the new accomplishments; is a great though delicate connoisseur in butcher's meat and all sorts of housewifery; and if you mention waltzes, expatiates on the grace and fine breeding of the minuet. She longs to have seen one danced by Sir Charles Grandison, whom she almost considers as a real person. She likes a walk of a summer's evening, but avoids the new streets, canals, &c., and sometimes goes through the church-yard, where her children and her husband lie buried, serious, but not melancholy. She has had three great epochs in her life:-her marriage-her having been at court, to see the King and Queen and Royal Family-and a compliment on her figure she once received, in passing, from Mr. Wilkes, whom she describes as a sad, loose man, but engaging. His plainness she thinks much exaggerated. If anything takes her at a distance from home, it is still the court; but she seldom stirs, even for that. The last time but one that she went, was to see the Duke of Wirtemberg; and most probably for the last time of all, to see the Princess Charlotte and Prince

Leopold. From this beatific vision she returned with the same admiration as ever for the fine comely appearance of the Duke of York and the rest of the family, and great delight at having had a near view of the Princess, whom she speaks of with smiling pomp and lifted mittens, clasping them as passionately as she can together, and calling her, in a transport of mixed loyalty and self-love, a fine royal young creature, and "Daughter of England."

LXII.-PULCI.

We present our readers with a prose abridg ment of the beginning of the Morgante Maggiore of Pulci, the father of Italian romance. We would rather have given it them in verse; but it would have taken more time and attention than we can just now afford. Besides, a prose specimen of this author, is a less unjust one, than it would be of any of his successors; because though a real poet, he is not so eminent as a versifier, and deals less in poetical abstractions. He has less of the oracular or voiceful part of his art, conversing almost exclusively with the social feelings in their most familiar language.

Luigi Pulci, the younger of three literary brothers, was born the 15th of December (3d, O.S.), 1431. His family was noble, and probably gave their name to the district of Monte Pulciano, famous for the supereminence of its wine. It was a fit soil for him to grow in. He had an enviable lot, with nothing to interrupt his vivacity; passing his life in the shades of ease and retirement, and "warbling his native wood-notes wild," without fear of hawks from above, or lurking reptiles from below. Among his principal friends were, Politian, Lorenzo de Medici, and the latter's mother, Lucrezia Tornabuona. He speaks affectionately of her memory at the close of his work. At Lorenzo's table he was a constant guest; and at this table, where it is possible that the future pope, Leo the Tenth, was present as a little boy, he is said to have read, as he produced it, that remarkable poem, which the old Italian critics were not agreed whether to think pious or profane.*

The reader, at this time of day, will be inclined to think it the latter; nor will the reputation of Leo himself, who is said to have made use of the word "fable" on a very remarkable occasion, be against their verdict. Undoubtedly there was much scepticism in those days, as there always must be where there is great vivacity of mind, with great demands upon its credulity. But we must take care how we pronounce upon the real spirit of

* Leo was born in 1475, forty-four years after the birth of Pulci; so that, supposing the latter to have arrived at

anything like length of days, he may have had the young

Father of the Faithful for an auditor.