For I remember a quarrel I had with your father, my dear, All for a slanderous story, that cost me many a tear. I mean your grandfather, Annie: it cost me a world of woe, For Jenny, my cousin, had come to the place, and I knew right well And the parson made it his text that week, and he said likewise, And Willy had not been down to the farm for a week and a day; And I cried myself well-nigh blind, and all of an evening late I climb'd to the top of the garth, and stood by the road at the gate. The moon like a rick on fire was rising over the dale, And whit, whit, whit, in the bush beside me chirrupt the nightingale. All of a sudden he stopt: there past by the gate of the farm, Willy stood up like a man, and look'd the thing that he meant; And he turn'd, and I saw his eyes all wet, in the sweet moonshine: "Marry you, Willy!" said I, "but I needs must speak my mind, So Willy and I were wedded: I wore a lilac gown; And the ringers rang with a will, and he gave the ringers a crown. But the first that ever I bare was dead before he was born, Shadow and shine is life, little Annie, flower and thorn. That was the first time, too, that ever I thought of death. But I wept like a child that day, for the babe had fought for his life. His dear little face was troubled, as if with anger or pain: I look'd at the still little body-his trouble had all been in vain. For Willy I cannot weep, I shall see him another morn: But I wept like a child for the child that was dead before he was born. But he cheer'd me, my good man, for he seldom said me nay: And he died, and I could not weep-my own time seem'd so near. But I wish'd it had been God's will that I, too, then could have died: I began to be tired a little, and fain had slept at his side. Pattering over the boards, my Annie who left me at two, And Harry and Charlie, I hear them too-they sing to their team: I am not always certain if they be alive or dead. And yet I know for a truth, there's none of them left alive; For mine is a time of peace, it is not often I grieve; To be sure the preacher says, our sins should make us sad: And age is a time of peace, so it be free from pain, So Willy has gone, my beauty, my eldest-born, my flower; And Willy's wife has written, she never was overwise. A FAMILY IN LOVE. [Mrs. Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, born at Stokeupon-Trent, Staffordshire, 1826. She is distinguished as a writer of the best class of novels, but she is also the author of many tender, truthful, and inspiring poems. Her first novel, The Ogilvies, appeared in 1849, and was followed by Olive: The Head of the Family: Alice Learmont, a fairy tale; Agatha's Husband; John Halifax, Gentleman (this is the most popular of all her works); Nothing New-a collection of eight tales, from which we take the following; A Woman's Thoughts about Women; Studies from Life; A Life for a Life; Mistress and Maid, &c. She has also written many books for children. Her chief works are published by Hurst and Blackett, her poems by Sampson Low, Marston, & Co. "We are always glad to welcome Miss Mulock. She writes from her own convictions, and she has the power not only to conceive clearly what it is that she wishes to say, but to express it in language effective and vigorous."-Athenæum.] This is the age of complainings. Nobody suffers in silence; nobody breaks his or her heart in secrecy and solitude: they all take "the public" into their confidence-the convenient public, which, like murder, Hath no tongue, but speaks Of course it is neither the confider's fault nor yet the confidant's, if the winds sometimes whisper that king Midas has asses' ears. Mine is no such confession. I have no gossip to retail of my neighbours: I am a very quiet gentleman, who prefer confining my interests and observations to my own household, my own immediate family. Ay, there lies my inevitable grief, there lurks my secret wrong; I am the unhappy elder brother of a family in love. The fact dimly dawned upon me, widening by degrees, ever since I came home from India last year, and took upon myself the charge of my five sisters, aged from about- But Martha might object to my particularizing. Good little Patty! what a merry creature she was when she went nutting and fishing with me. And what ugly caps she has taken to wearing, poor dear! And why can't she speak as gently when scolding the servants as I remember our sweet-voiced pretty mother used always to do? And why, in spite of their mutual position, will she persist in calling Mr. Green with a kind of frigid solemnity," Mr. Green?" But he does not seem to mind it: probably he never was called anything else. He is a very worthy person, nevertheless, and I have a great respect for him. When my sister Martha-Miss Heathcote, as she has been called from her cradle-by letter announced to me at Madras that she intended to relinquish that title for the far less euphonious one of Mrs. Green, I was, to say the least of it, surprised. I had thought, for various reasons (of no moment now), that my eldest sister was not likely to marry-I rather hoped she would not. We might have been so comfortable, poor Patty and I. However, I had no business to interfere with either her happiness or her destiny; so when, the first Sunday after my arrival at home, a cozy carriage drove up the avenue, and a bald, rather stout little man got out, to be solemnly introduced to me as "Mr. Green," I submitted to the force of circumstances, and to the duties of a brotherin-law. He has dined with us every Sunday since. He and I are capital friends; regularly, when the ladies retire, he informs me what the Funds have been at, day by day during the past week, and which is the safest railway to buy A most shares in for the week following. worthy person, I repeat, will make a kind husband, and I suppose Martha likes him; but However, poor girl, she is old enough to judge for herself, and it is no business of mine. Some time, before long, I shall give her away at the old parish church-quietly, without any show; I shall see her walk down the church-aisle with old Mr. Green-he in his best white waistcoat, and she in her sober gray poplin, which she insists on being married in-not the clear soft muslin and long lace veil I quite well remember seeing Patty working at and blushing over, we won't say how many years ago. Well, women are better married, they say; but I think I would rather have had Martha an old maid. My second sister, Angeline, was fifteen when I left England; and the very loveliest creature I ever beheld. Everybody knew it, everybody acknowledged it. She could not walk down the street without people turning to look after her; she could not enter a room without creating a general whisper: "Who is she?”—The same thing continued as she grew up to womanhood. All the world was at her feet; every one said she would make a splendid marriage become a countess at least; and I do believe Angeline herself had the fullest confidence in that probability. She refused lovers by the dozen; every letter I got told me of some new slaughter of Miss Angeline's. I would have pitied the poor fellows, only she was such a dazzling beauty, and no man falls out of love so safely as a man who falls in love with a beauty. I never heard that anybody died either by consumption, cord, or pistol, through | consent only was required, since he and Charthe cruelty of my sister Angeline. But, like most cruel damsels, she paid the penalty of her hard-heartedness; when I came home I found Angeline Heathcote Angeline Heathcote still. Beautiful yet, beautiful exceedingly; a walking picture, a visible poem: it was a real pleasure to me to have such a handsome creature about the house. Though people did say with a mysterious shake of the head, that handsome as she was, if I had only seen my sister two or three years ago! And Angeline herself became tenacious on the subject of new gowns, and did not like it to be generally known whether she or Charlotte was the elder. Good, plain, merry Charlotte, who never thought about either her looks or her age. Yet Charlotte was the first that brought me into trouble that trouble which I am now called upon to bemoan. I had not been at home three months, when there came a young gentleman-a very lively and pleasant young gentleman too-who sang duets with the younger girls, and made himself quite at home in my family circle. I myself did not much meddle with him, thought him a good-natured lad, and no more-until one fine morning he astonished me by requesting five minutes' conversation with me in my study. (Alas! such misfortunes come not singly-my study has never been safe from similar applications and conversations since.) I was very kind to the young man; when he blushed I looked another way; when he trembled, I invited him to take a chair. I listened to his stammering explanations with the utmost patience and sympathy; I even tried to help him out with them-till he came to the last clause. Now, I do say that a man who asks you for your purse, your horse, your friendship, after only four weeks' acquaintance, has considerable courage; but a man who, after that brief period since his introduction, comes and asks you for your sister-why, one's first impulse is to kick him down stairs. Happily, I controlled myself. I called to mind that Mr. Cuthbert was a very honest young fellow, and that if he did choose to risk his whole future upon the result of a month's laughing, and singing, and dancing at balls certainly it was his affair, not mine. My business solely related to Charlotte. I was just despatching it in the quickest and friendliest manner, by advising the young fellow to go back to college and not make a fool of himself in vain, when he informed me that my lotte had been a plighted couple for the space of three whole days! I have always held certain crotchets on the paramount rights of lovers, and the wrong of interfering with any apparently sincere vows; so I sent for Lotty-talked with her; found she was just as foolish as he. That because he was the best waltzer, the sweetest tenor singer, and had the handsomest moustache she knew— our lively Charlotte was quite contented to dance through life with Mr. Cuthbert, and decidedly proud of having his diamond ring on her third finger, and being considered "engaged' -as indeed they were likely to remain, if their minds changed not, for the next ten years. So, what could I do?-Nothing but deal with the young simpletons-if such they were according to their folly. If true, their love would have time to prove itself such; if false, they would best find out that fact by its not being thwarted. I kissed away Lotty's tears, silly child! and next Sunday I had the honour of carving for brother-in-law elect No. 2. It never rains but it pours. Whether Angeline was roused at once to indignation and condescension by Charlotte's engagementwhich she was the loudest in inveighing against -or whether, as was afterwards reported to me, she was influenced by a certain statistical newspaper paragraph, maliciously read aloud by Mr. Cuthbert for general edification, that women's chances of matrimony were proved by the late census to diminish greatly between the ages of thirty and thirty-five; but most assuredly Angeline's demeanour changed. She stooped to be agreeable as well as beautiful. To more than one suitor whom she had of old swept haughtily by, did she now graciously incline; and the result was-partly owing to the gaieties of this autumn's election-that Miss Angeline Heathcote, the beauty of the country, held a general election on her own private account. Alas for me! in one week I had no less than four hopeful candidates requesting "the honour of an interview" in my study. Angeline's decision was rather dilatorythey were all such excellent matches; and, poor girl-with her beauty for her chief gift and with all the tinsel adoration it brought her, she had never been used to think of marriage as anything more than a mere worldly arrangement. She was ready to choose a husband as she would a wedding-gown-dispassionately, carefully, as the best out of a large selection of articles, each rich and good in its way, and warranted to wear. She had plenty of common | dually it deteriorated-ceased. "You see, Nigel," she said to me, when weighing the respective claims and merits of Mr. Archer and Sir Roland Griffith Jones"you see, I never was sentimentally inclined. I want to be married. I think I should be better married than single. Of course, my husband must be a good man; also, he should be a wealthy man; because-well!—because | I rather like show and splendour: they suit me." And she glanced into the mirror at something which, certainly, if any woman has any excuse for the vanities of life, might have pleaded Angeline's. "But," I argued-half sorrowfully, as when you see an ignorant child throwing gold away, and choosing sham jewels for their pitiful glistering, "you surely would think it necessary to love your husband?" "Oh yes; and I like Sir Roland extremely --perhaps even better than Mr. Archer-though he has been fond of me so long, poor fellow! but he will get over it-all men do." So, though the balance hung for a whole week doubtful, Heaven forgive the girl! but true love was not in her nature, and how can people see further than their lights go?-I was soon pretty certain that fate would decide the marriage question in favour of the baronet. As Lotty said, Angeline would look magnificent in the family diamonds as Lady Griffith Jones. The Welsh cause triumphed; Mr. Archer quitted the field. He had been an old acquaintance; but what was that to Sir Roland and £10,000 a year? After Angeline's affair was settled, there came a lull in the family epidemic-possibly because the head of the family grew savage as a bear, and for a full month his spirit hugged itself into fierce misanthropy, or rather misogyny, contemning the whole female sex, especially such as contemplated, or were contemplated in, the unholy estate of matrimony. No wonder! I could not find peace in my own house; I had not my own sisters' society; not a single family fireside evening could I get from week's end to week's end; not a room could I enter without breaking in on some tête-a-tête; not a corner could I creep into without stumbling upon a pair of lovers. For a little while these fond couples kept on their good behaviour towards me-preserved a degree of reserve towards each other out of respect to the head of the house, the elder brother; but gra Nay, I, who belong to the old generation—which was foolish enough to deem caresses hallowed things, that the mere pressure of a beloved woman's hand, not to speak of her sacred mouth, was a thing not to be made a public show of―never to be thought of without a tender reverence, a delicious fear-I, Nigel Heathcote, have actually seen two young men, strangers a little year ago, kiss my two sisters openly before their whole family—before their brother's very face. My situation became intolerable. I fled the fireside; I took refuge in my study. Woe betide the next lover who should assail me there! Surely that fatality would not again arrive for some time. When the elder ones were once married and away, surely I, and Constantia, and little Lizzie might live a few years in fraternal peace, unmolested by the haunting shadow of impending matrimony. It occurred to me that in the interval of the weddings I would send for an old friend, a bachelor like myself-an honest manly fellow, who worked hard from circuit to circuit, and got barely one brief a year. Yes, Will Launceston would keep me company; and we would spend our days in the woods, and our evenings in my study, safe out of the way of lovers, weddings, and womankind. I had just written to him, when my sister Martha came in with a very serious face, and told me she wished for a little conversation with me." Ominous beginning! But she was not a young tulated myself-alas, too soon! "My dear Nigel." "I wish to consult you on a matter which has recently come to my knowledge, and has given me much pain, and some anxiety." Indeed!" and I am afraid my tone was less sympathising than eager, since from her troubled nervous manner, I thought—I hoped, the matter in question indicated the secession of Mr. Green. "Go on. Is it about "-I stopped and corrected myself hypocritically"about the girls?" She assented. Whew!" -a disappointed whistle, faint and low. "Still go on. I'll listen to anything except another proposal." Martha shook her head. will never come to that! "Alas, I fear it Brother, have you |