into the family, to assist her in the care of the bairns. Helen was come of no ungentle kin; but poverty had sat down heavily on her father and mother, and sunk them into an early grave; and it was a Godsend to poor Helen to get service in a house where poverty would be held no reproach to her. If ye ever saw the creature, ye wadna easily forget her. Many bonnier blither lasses are to be seen daily, but such a look of settled serenity and downcast modesty ye might go far to find. It quite won my wife's heart and mine, and more hearts than ours, as I shall tell you presently. As for the bairns, they just doated on Helen, and she on them; and my poor youngest, that is now with God, during all her long long decline was little, if ever, off her knee. No wonder then that Helen grew pale and thin, ate little, and slept less. I first set it down to anxiety, and, when the innocent bairn was released, to grief; and from these no doubt it partly arose. But when all was over, and when weeks had passed away-when even my poor wife dried her mother's tears, and I could say, 'God's will be done'-still Helen grew paler and thinner, and refused to be comforted; so I saw there was more in it than appeared, and I bade her open her heart to me; and open it she did, with a flood of tears that would have melted a stone. "Sir,' said she, 'I maun go away; I think it will kill me to leave you and Mrs. Monteith, and the dear bairns in the nursery, and wee Jeanie's grave in the kirkyard; but stay I canna, and I will tell you why. It is months -ay,amaist years-since Willie Meldrum, auld Blinkbonnie's son, fell in fancy wi' me; and a sair sair heart I may say I have had ever sinsyne. His auld hard father, they tell me, swears (wi' sic oaths as wad gar ye grew to hear them) that he will cut him off wi' a shilling if ever he thinks of me; and oh! it wad be a puir return for the lad's kindness to do him sic an ill turn! So I maun awa' out of the country till the auld man dies, or Willie taks a wife to his mind; for I've seen ower muckle o' poverty, Mr. Monteith, to be the cause o't to ony man, though I whiles think it wad be naething to me that's sae weel used till't mysell.' "Helen,' said I, when did Willie Meldrum find opportunities to gain your heart? I never saw him in the house in my life.' "Oh, sir,' said she, 'gin I could hae bidIden in the house, he wad never hae seen me either; but I was forced to walk out wi' the bairns, and there was nae place sae quiet and out o' the gate but Willie was sure to find me out. If I gaed down the burn, Willie was aye fishing; if I gaed up the loan, there was aye something to be dune about the kye. At the kirk-door Willie was aye at hand to spier for your honour, and gie the bairns posies; and after our sair distress, when I was little out for mony a day, I couldna slip out ae moonlight night to sit a moment upon Jeanie's grave, but Willie was there like a ghaist aside me, and made my very heart loup to my mouth!-' "And do you return his good-will, Helen?' said I, gravely. "Oh, sir,' said the poor thing, trembling, I dare na tell you a lie. I tried to be as proud and as shy as a lassie should be to ane abune her degree, and that might do sae muckle better, puir fallow! I tried to look anither gate when I saw him, and mak' mysell deaf when he spoke o' his love; but oh! his words were sae true and kindly, that I doubt mine were nae aye sae short and saucy as they suld hae been. It's hard for a tocherless fatherless lassie to be cauldrife to the lad that wad tak' her to his heart and hame; but oh! it wad be harder still if she was to requite him wi' a father's curse! It's ill eneuch to hae nae parents o' my ain, without makin' mischief wi' ither folk's. The auld man gets dourer and dourer ilka day, and the young ane dafter and dafter-sae ye maun just send me aff the country to some decent service, till Willie's a free man or a bridegroom.' "My dear Helen,' said I, 'you are a good upright girl, and I will forward your honest intentions. If it be God's will that Willie and you come together, the hearts of men are in His hand. If otherwise, yours will never at least reproach you with bringing ruin on your lover's head.' "So I sent Helen, Mr. Francis, to my brother's in the south country, where she proved as great a blessing and as chief a favourite as she had been with us. I saw her some months afterwards; and though her bloom had not returned, she was tranquil and contented as one who has cast her lot into the lap of Heaven. 'Well, to make a long story short, Willie, though he was unreasonable enough-good worthy lad as he is-to take in dudgeon Helen's going away (though he might have guessed it was all for his good), was too proud, or too constant, to say he would give her up, or bind himself never to marry her, as his father insisted. So the old man one day, after a violent altercation, made his will, and left all his hard-won siller to a rich brother in Liverpool, who neither wanted nor deserved it. Willie, apon this quarrel, had left home very unhappy, and stayed away some time; and during his absence old Blinkbonnie was taken extremely ill. When he thought himself dying he sent for me (I had twice called in vain before), and you may be sure I did my best not to let him depart in so unchristian a frame towards his only child. I did not deny his right to advise his son in the choice of a wife; but I told him he might search the world before he found one more desirable than Helen, whose beauty and sense would secure his son's steadiness, and her frugality and sobriety double his substance. I told him how she had turned a deaf ear to all his son's proposals of a clandestine marriage, and made herself the sacrifice to his own unjust and groundless prejudices. Dying men are generally open to conviction; and I got a fresh will made in favour of his son, with a full consent to his marriage honourably inserted among its provisions. This he deposited with me, feeling no great confidence in the lawyer who had made his previous settlement, and desired me to produce it when he was gone. "It so happened that I was called away to a distance before his decease, and did not return till some days after the funeral. Willie had flown home on hearing of his father's danger, and had the comfort to find him completely softened, and to receive from his nearly speechless parent many a silent demonstration of returned affection. It was therefore a doubly severe shock to him, on opening the first will (the only one forthcoming in my absence), to find himself cut off from everything except the joint lease of the farm, and instead of five thousand pounds, not worth a shilling in the world. His first exclamation, I was told, was, 'It's hard to get baith scorn and skaith-to lose poor Helen and the gear baith. If I had lost it for her, they might hae ta'en it that liket!' "About a week after I came home, and found on my table a letter from Helen. She had heard of Willie's misfortune, and in a way the most modest and engaging expressed herself ready, if I thought it would still be acceptable, to share his poverty and toil with him through life. 'I am weel used to work,' said she, and but for you wad hae been weel used to want. If Willie will let me bear a share o' his burden, I trust in God we may wrastle through thegither; and to tell you the truth,' added she, with her usual honesty, 'I wad rather things were ordered as they are, than that Willie's wealth should shame my poverty.' "I put this letter in one pocket, and his father's will in the other, and walked over to Blinkbonnie. Willie was working with the manly resolution of one who has no other resource. I told him I was glad to see him so little cast down. "Sir,' said he, I'll no say but I am vexed that my father gaed to his grave wi' a grudge against me-the mair sae, as when he squeezed my hand on his death-bed I thought a' was forgotten. But siller is but warld's gear, and I could thole the want o't an it had nae been for Helen Ormiston, that I hoped to hae gotten to share it wi' me. She may sune do better now, wi' that bonnie face and kind heart o' hers!' 666 "It is indeed a kind heart, Willie,' answered I; if ever I doubted it, this would have put me to shame.' So saying, I reached him the letter; and oh that Helen could have seen the flush of grateful surprise that crossed his manly brow as he read it! It passed away, though, quickly, and he said, with a sigh, 666 Very kind, Mr. Monteith, and very like hersell; but I canna take advantage o' an auld gudewill, now that I canna reward it as it deserves.' And what if ye could, Willie?' said I, 'as far, at least, as worldly wealth can requite true affection? There is your father's will, made when it pleased God to touch his heart, and you are as rich a man as you were when Helen Ormiston first refused to make you a beggar.' "Willie was not insensible to this happy change in his prospects; but his kind heart was chiefly soothed by his father's altered feelings; and at the honourable mention of Helen's name he fairly began to greet. "The sequel is easily told; but I think the jaunt I made to Tweeddale with Willie, to bring back Helen Ormiston in triumph, was the proudest journey of my life. "A year ago I married them at the manse, amid much joy, but abundance of tears in the nursery. To-day, when, according to an old promise, I am to christen my name-son Charlie, I expect to be fairly deaved with the clamorous rejoicings of my young fry, who, I verily believe, have not slept this week for thinking of it. But" (pulling out his watch) "it is near four o'clock!-sad quality hour for Blinkbonnie! The hotch-potch will be turned into porridge, and the how-towdies burned to sticks, if we don't make haste!" I wish, my dear reader, you could see the farm of Blinkbonnie, lying, as it does, on a gently sloping bank, sheltered from the north by a wooded crag or knoll, flanked upon the cast by a group of venerable ashes, enlivened knew she must be. The actors in some striking drama of human life often disappoint us by their utter dissimilitude to the pictures of our mind's eye, but Helen was precisely the perfection of a gentle, modest, self-possessed Scottish lassie-the mind, in short, of Jeanie Deans, with the personal advantages of poor Effie. else. and perfumed on the west by a gay luxuriant | self, and she was just what, from her story, I garden, and open on the south to such a seaview as none but dwellers on the Frith of Forth have any idea of. Last Saturday it was the very beau ideal of rural comfort and serenity. The old trees were reposing, after a course of somewhat boisterous weather, in all the dignity and silence of years. The crows, their usual inhabitants, having gone on their Highland excursion, those fantastic interlopers, Helen's peacocks (a present from the children at the manse), were already preparing for their siesta on the topmost boughs. Beneath the spreading branches the cows were dreaming delightfully, in sweet oblivion of the heats of noon. In an adjoining paddock graceful foals and awkward calves indulged in their rival gambols; while shrieks of joy from behind the garden hedge told these were not the only happy young things in creation. We deposited our horses in a stable to whose comforts they bore testimony by an approving neigh, and made our way by a narrow path, bordered with sweet-brier and woodbine, to the front of the house. Its tall good-looking young master came hastily to meet us; and I would not have given his blushing welcome, and the bashful scrape that accompanied it, for all the most elaborate courtesies of Chesterfield. No sooner were our footsteps heard approaching than out poured the minister's whole family from the little honeysuckled porch, with glowing faces and tangled hair, and frocks probably white some hours before, but which now claimed affinity with every bush in the garden. Mrs. Monteith gently joined in the chorus of reproaches to papa for being so late; but the look with which she was answered seemed to satisfy her, as it usually did, that he could not be in fault. We were then ushered into the parlour, whose substantial comforts and exquisite consistency spoke volumes in favour of its mistress. Opulence might be traced in the excellent quality of the homely furniture, in the liberal display of antique china (particularly the choice and curious christeningbowl); but there was nothing incongruous, nothing out of keeping, nothing to make you for a moment mistake this first-rate farmhouse parlour for a clumsy ill-fancied drawingroom. A few pots of roses, a few shelves of books, bore testimony to Helen's taste and education; but there were neither exotics nor romances in the collection; and the piece of furniture evidently dearest in her eyes was the cradle, in which reposed, amid all the din of this joyous occasion, the yet unchristened hero of the day. It is time to speak of Helen her Her dress was as suitable as anything Her gown, white as snow, and her cap, of the nicest materials, were neither of them on the pattern of my lady's, but they had a matronly grace of their own worth a thousand second-hand fashions; and when Helen, having awakened her first-born, delivered him with sweet maternal solicitude into the outstretched arms of the minister's proud and favoured youngest girl, I thought I never saw a picture worthier the pencil of Coreggio. It was com pleted when, bending in all the graceful awkwardness of a novice over the group, Willie received his boy into his arms, and vowed bebefore his pastor and his God to discharge a parent's duty, while a parent's transport sparkled in his eyes! I have sat, as Shakspeare says, "at good men's feasts ere now"-have ate turtle at the lord-mayor's, and venison at peers' tables, and soufflés at diplomatic dinners; I have ate sturgeon at St. Petersburg, and mullet at Naples, mutton in Wales, and grouse in the Highlands, roast-beef with John Bull, and volauzvents at Beauvilliers'; but I have no hesitation in saying that the hotch-potch and how-towdies of Blink bonnie out-herod them all. How far the happy human faces of all ages round the table contributed to enhance the gusto, I do not pretend to decide; but I can tell Mr. Véry that, among all his consommés, there is nothing like a judicious mixture of youth and beauty with manliness, integrity, and virtue! - Blackwood's Magazine. A COURT AUDIENCE. ANNE BOLEYN. BY HENRY HART MILMAN, D.D.1 Scene: QUEEN ANNE BOLEYN landing at the Tower a prisoner, attended by SIR WILLIAM KINGSTON and guards. QUEEN. Here-here, then, all is o'er !-Oh! awful walls, KINGSTON (to the guard). Advance your halberds. QUEEN. Oh! sir, pause-one look, Of those thy myriad barks makest passing music:- 1 See Casquet, vol. ii. page 53. Since I set forth from yon dark low-brow'd porch, That call'd Heaven's blessings on my head, in sounds That might have drown'd the thunders-I've more need Of blessing now, and not a voice would say it. KINGSTON. Your grace, no doubt, will long survive this trial Sir, sir, it is too late to flatter me: KINGSTON. Day wears, and our imperious mandate Brooks no delay-advance. QUEEN. Back, back, I say I will not enter! Whither will ye plunge me? Of torture-not a bed nor straw-laid pallet But bears th' impression of a wretch call'd forth To execution. Will ye place me there, Where those poor babes, their crook-back'd uncle murder'd, Still haunt?-Inhuman hospitality! Look there! look there! fear mantles o'er my soul As with a prophet's robe, the ghostly walls Are sentinel'd with mute and headless spectres, KINGSTON. The deaths of traitors, If such have died within these gloomy towers, Should not appal your grace with such vain terrors; The chamber is prepar'd where slept your highness When last within the Tower. QUEEN. Oh! 'tis too good For such a wretch-a death-doom'd wretch, as me. My lord, my Henry-he that call'd me forth THE GOOD-NATURED COUPLE.1 There was once a man called Frederick: he 64 had a wife whose name was Catherine, and they had not long been married. One day Frederick said, Kate! I am going to work in the fields; when I come back I shall be hungry, so let me have something nice cooked, and a good draught of ale.' Very well," said she, "it shall all be ready." When dinner-time drew nigh, Catherine took a nice steak, which was all the meat she had, and put it on the fire to fry. The steak soon began to look brown, and to crackle in the pan; and Catherine stood by with a fork and turned it: then she said to herself, "The steak is almost ready, I may as well go to the cellar for the ale. So she left the pan on the fire, and took a large jug and went into the cellar and tapped the ale cask. The beer ran into the jug, and Catherine stood looking on. At last it popped into her head, "The dog is not shut up-he may be running away with the steak; that's well thought of." So up she ran from the cellar; and sure enough the rascally cur had got the steak in his mouth, and was making off with it. Away ran Catherine, and away ran the dog across the field: but he ran faster than she, and stuck close to the steak. "It's all gone, and 'what can't be cured must be endured,' said Catherine. So she turned round; and as she had run a good way, and was tired, she walked home leisurely to cool herself. Now all this time the ale was running too, for Catherine had not turned the cock; and when the jug was full the liquor ran upon the floor till the cask was empty. When she got to the cellar stairs she saw what had happened. This is a popular German story which, being susceptible of many variations, is used by the peasantry as a satire upon silly housekeepers. "My stars!" said she, "what shall I do to keep Frederick from seeing all this slopping about?" So she thought a while; and at last remembered that there was a sack of fine meal bought at the last fair, and that if she sprinkled this over the floor, it would suck up the ale nicely. "What a lucky thing," said she, "that we kept that meal; we have now a good use for it." So away she went for it: but she managed to set it down just upon the great jug full of beer, and upset it; and thus all the ale that had been saved was set swimming on the floor also. "Ah! well," said she, "when one goes another may as well follow." Then she strewed the meal all about the cellar, and was quite pleased with her cleverness, and said, "How very neat and clean it looks!" At noon Frederick came home. "Now, wife," cried he, "what have you for dinner?" "O Frederick!" answered she, "I was cooking you a steak; but while I went down to draw the ale, the dog ran away with it, and while I ran after him, the ale all ran out; and when I went to dry up the ale with the sack of meal that we got at the fair, I upset the jug: but the cellar is now quite dry, and looks so clean!" "Kate, Kate," said he, how could you do all this? Why did you leave the steak to fry. and the ale to run, and then spoil all the meal?" "Why, Frederick," said she, "I did not know I was doing wrong; you should have told me before." The husband thought to himself, if my wife manages matters thus, I must look sharp my self. Now he had a good deal of gold in the house: so he said to Catherine, "What pretty yellow buttons these are! I shall put them into a box and bury them in the garden; but take care that you never go near or meddle "No, Frederick," said she, with them." that I never will." As soon as he was gone, there came by some pedlars with earthenware plates and dishes, and they asked her whether 'Oh dear me, I should like she would buy. to buy very much, but I have no money: if you had any use for yellow buttons, I might "Yellow buttons?" said deal with you." they, "let us have a look at them." "Go into the garden and dig where I tell you, and you will find the yellow buttons: I dare not go myself." So the rogues went; and when they found what these yellow buttons were they took them all away, and left her plenty of Then she set them all plates and dishes. about the house for a show: and when Frederick came back, he cried out, Kate, what have you been doing?" "See," said she, "I have bought all these with your yellow buttons. |