THE GREEN LANE.

THERE are no green lanes in the world equal to those of England. Italy has its skies, Greece its classic ruins, Egypt its pyramids, Switzerland its Alps, Germany its Rhine, America its Niagara, but none of these has a green lane such as we have thousands of in England. The green lane is essentially English, and is confined to England. There are green lanes neither in Scotland nor Ireland-we mean grassy roads arrayed in greenery, shaded by lofty old hedges, beech-trees, alders, or willows, leading to some quiet cot or farmhouse, or range of pasture-lands; and often leading on merely to some other green lane, or series of lanes, branching off to right or left, which are there seemingly without any other purpose than that they are there, to feast the eyes of country strollers with the sight of their quiet green beauty.

The green lane is the delight alike of our poets and our artists, and of all who love rural scenery. Cowper, Hunt, and Wordsworth have painted them in words; and our living painters, Creswick, Lee, Witherington, and Redgrave, have painted them in colours. No pictures are more admired than theirs on the walls of the academy. But they can only give us charming "bits," whereas the pedestrian can range along miles of charming lanes, even in the very neighbourhood of this crowded metropolis. Leigh Hunt can point out a favourite route along green lanes in the neighbourhood of Hampstead, which takes a long day to visit. Wordsworth has sung that the fields and rural lanes were his "favourite schools." Indeed, his poetry is full of the sweet breath of the country.

Step out of the dusty highway into the green lane. How cool and quiet it is! Pleasantly it winds on among the farms and fields. A gentle breeze stirs the tree tops, on the summit of one of which the throstle is pouring out his sweet music. But for the feathered singers, the cloister-shade of the green lane were bathed in stillness. The sun, as it streams through the young fan-like foliage of the trees, turns them to green and gold-the bright livery of spring. The gentle wind kisses the leaves as it passes by with a faint rustle and murmur, which still enables you to hear the brushing of your feet over the grassy path.

Flowers are peeping out from the hedge-bottoms. The violet is modestly lifting up its head, and shedding abroad its delicate odour even where unseen. The bees

[PRICE 1 d.

have already begun their year's work, and are grappling with the hawthorn blossoms and the wild roses of the hedgerows. The sward is covered with daisies; and foxglove, primroses, and blue-bells cover the banks by the lane side. An open space appears, covered with gorse, full of golden bloom. Nothing can be more gay and beautiful.

Sometimes the lane is quite overshadowed by tall trees, which make a green twilight, but through which the slanting sun's rays shoot down here and there, lighting up the patches of grass beneath. How bright the leaves through which the sun's light trembles. What variety of tints, from the cool green to the golden yellow, and the rich amber brown of the tree stems! With a pool of water in the foreground, or a bright cool stream leaping or trickling from the bank, and straggling irregularly across the path, you have before you one of those delicious "bits" of woodland or green-lane scenery which Creswick so loves to paint.

The green lane is generally quiet and lonely, but sometimes there is life about it-the life of the fields. Hist! 'Tis the lowing of a cow, strayed from the adjoining field, tempted by the sweet daisied sward of the lane. She has raised her head, and is lowing to her fellow across the adjoining hedge, who is standing udder-deep in the rich grass and golden butter-cups. Or, there is a flock of geese in the lane, watched by a little fellow with red cheeks and flaxen locks, who amuses himself by making whistles out of reeds, and occasional clay-pies and other dainties in the runnel that bustles along under the hedge side. Farther on, you overtake an old man leaning on his staff. He has crawled forth into the green lane to rejoice, as he still can rejoice, in its quiet life and beauty. He is not far from home; a rude style points out the path across a field, and there, within sight, is a little cluster of cottages, rose-embowered and suckle-wreathed, with bees about them; old women peep out from the doors, and the merry voices of children rise up from the grassy spaces near at hand, where they are at play. And here is the spring-well of the hamlet, close at hand, from which a cottage girl draws her can full of water, and shily trips over the style and away across the field, out of the stranger's sight. The well is nooked in a leafy, lush recess, fern-fringed and mossy to the bottom; its clear bubbling waters tempting the stroller to uncoil the rusty chain and fetch up a bumper cool as the polar ice.

These cottages look really pleasant and rural; the

cluster of lilacs nodding over their mossy roofs, with those branching oaks, loftier still, through which the thin blue smoke slowly eddies upwards into the bluer sky. There is also an elder-tree growing by the wicket, near the entrance to the cottager's garden, and no cottagegarden would be complete without an elder. And there is a cottager at work, turning over the soil with his spade, which tinkles against the pebbles as he delves the dry earth, making it ready for some summer crop.

Move back into the lane again, and as you proceed, lo! a patient ass stands before you, listlessly meditating. No green lane without its ass! Does the ass love green lanes for their quiet, or for their sweet herbage? Either way, the ass must be an animal of taste, much-reviled brute as it is. But this poor ass bears upon it the marks of hard work, of blows, of poor feeding. It is not a luxurious, idle, dissipated ass, but a common day-labouring ass, the servant of tinkers and gipsies. There they are, camped out in the green lane!

"Will you have your fortune read?" Then have it read here in the green lane, by that bold tawny girl, with blazing black eyes-a genuine gipsy, a true child of the East. Since Squire Western had his fortune told in the green lane, as related in Tom Jones, these same strollers have been haunting the lanes of England. The lanes are the camping ground of the gipsies; there they mend pots and manufacture brooms; there they cook, eat, marry, and bring up children. The gipsy child, brought up in the green lanes, is no more to be tied down to the plodding life of towns, than is the American Indian to become a cotton planter for a Yankee slave-owner. The gipsy is the Indian of Europe-not to be civilised, any more than the green lane itself could flourish in the Strand.

The green lane is beautiful at all seasons. In spring it is youthful and fresh. In summer it is rich and luscious. In autumn its beauty is ripe and full. The fresh green of the lane in the young spring is delicious; but yet, for richness of colour, for brilliant tints, deep browns, lit up with the scarlet and red berries with which the hedgerows are full in autumn, we have even a preference for the latter season. But always is the green lane beautiful. And in summer, when the delicious fragrance from the hay-fields fills the lane, and heavyladen wains come swinging along the grass path, the scent filling the summer air, a walk in the lane is an inexpressible source of delight. There is a life among the fields at that season also, such as you rarely witness at other times. The mowers are at work, and the haymakers are busy in their wake, casting about the drying hay, amidst laughter, and jesting, and merry glee.

But the pleasures of the green lane at all seasons are endless. In the early morning, at glowing noon, or in the balmy eve, when the sun sets in gold, dimly seen through overarching trees, the lane is always delightful. It calls up the poetry of our nature, and quickens it to life; and we feel as if we could only enjoy it thoroughly to the accompaniment of a volume of Keats, or Tennyson, or Wordsworth. This love of green lanes is a truly national attachment. It is a simple and delightful taste, and we are not ashamed of it. The love of country and of country life is rather our pride and our glory.

behind the heavy boots of Hodge." We couple it with the rich brown faggot-stack and the golden waggon-load of barley. It brings recollections of the hamlet-common, the rushy pond, the furze patches, the nibbling geese, the straggling cottages, and the evening tribe of pigmy cricketers, who expend their utmost energies under the influence of a penny ball and sixpenny bat. We see her standing in a green lane, among elms, beeches, whitethorns, and mountain ashes, with a bunch of wood-strawberry blossoms in her hand, talking to some tawny-faced, broad-beavered, red-waistcoated, leather-gaitered son of the soil. We hear her calling her pet greyhound, "Mayflower," within bounds. We conjure her up in one of the "Belford" highways, dispensing kind words and sedative sugar-plums to some of the petticoated nondescript bipeds so loved by her womanly spirit. We walk with her shadow through corn-fields and hop-gardens. We go with her blackberrying and nutting. We have her by our side when the frosty snow crackles under our doublesoles; and, in short, Miss Mitford lives with us always and everywhere in the country.

We think we read Our Village with as much delight as any book that ever came into our hands. We were very young at the time, but it captivated us beyond expression; and now, when we have learnt somewhat more of "classics" and "epics," we dip into it with affectionate and enduring pleasure. We are proud to say it is one of the most "grubby" volumes on our shelves, and if Miss Mitford had never written another line we should ever be most grateful to her for this treasured production.

The present and last work from her pen presents all the refreshing traits of simple and sincere writing which marked her earlier emanations. Atherton fills the first volume, and is the longest story, we think, ever published by Miss Mitford. It is a domestic narrative, replete with heart-interest and genial feeling,-making no pretensions to exalted, political, or ethical elaboration, so prevalent in the modern schools of novel writing; but has a simple freshness in its tone which charms one into reading on, though we are being called to supper. Miss Mitford's rural descriptions are as usual equally beautiful and truthful. We present our readers with this nice bit of painting from the opening chapter :

trees;

"There were few houses which wore more completely the outward show of comfort and prosperity than the Great Farm at Atherton. It was a large square substantial building, with fine fruit-trees covering the upper part of the walls, and jessamine, honeysuckle, and China roses clustering round the windows. The green court, which divided the house from the road, was gay during nine months of the year with flowers and flowering and boasted still some lingering spikes of hollyhock, a stray blossom of clove and scarlet geranium, and bunches of that most fragrant of roses which is called of the four seasons.' The mignonette too and the violet still mingled their delicious odours. People who sincerely love flowers contrive to make them blow sooner and later than others. We see this in the poorest cottages, and here was no poverty to contend with. On one side of the court was that most affluent of all territories, an immense orchard, a perfect grove of fruit-trees, cherry, apple, pear, plum, and walnut at their tallest growth and fullest bearing. Behind was a large kitchengarden; and on the side opposite to the orchard a magnificent farm-yard, a huge and indescribable mixture of riches and mud. Behind that came poultry-yard and rick-yard, horse-pond and duck-pond, barns, stables, carthouses, cow-houses, dovecots, and pigsties, with all their inhabitants, biped and quadruped, feathered and unfeathered, of every denomination.

"They who talk of the quiet of the country cau hardly have been in a great farmyard towards sunset on

a wintry day, when the teams are come back from the plough and the cattle from the field, and the whole population is gathered together for the purpose of feeding. I would match it for noise and dirt and jostling against Cheapside, and taking into account the variety of the creatures, and the different keys combined in that wild chorus, I should have little doubt of winning."

The veracity of the latter paragraph has often been proved in our own experience. We were intimately connected with a "farmyard" in our juvenile days, and can bear witness to all that Miss Mitford declares touching its uproar and confusion. We remember getting into awkward positions more than once during the business hour" of four or five o'clock. Some teams came home from market, some from ploughing. The pigs were clamorously active in the neighbourhood of the hog-tub, betraying a wonderful eagerness to convert themselves into pork, by grunting and squeeling and pushing, beyond all decorum, for the usual troughfuls of food. The calves bleated vigorously at the approach of their maternal relatives, and the cows bellowed unceasingly in reply, to assure their offspring of a mother's presence. The fowls were flapping and flying and chuckling and scrambling like insane creatures about the granary door, and assaulted all who went near it with audacious pertinacity. The team-horses rattled their chains with impatient zeal, carts and waggons were being drawn under sheds by no gentle or silent spirits; Dick, the ploughboy, was exclaiming to Ben, the ploughman, about that ere trace of old Dumplings being too long," and "as how he was sure that Smiler went summut lame all day." Ben, paying not the slightest attention to Dick, was calling lustily to Harry, in the rick-yard, "to be sure and take them ere sacks out of the big barn into the little un;" and Jem, "the odd boy," was managing the pigs by dint of the loudest and strongest Sussex dialect he could muster; while Martha, the dairy-maid, was alternately screaming after a missing pail and invoking David Horton, the handsome young thresher, to help her get that obstinate old " Mudge" into the shippen. "Drat that hussey of a cow, she never would do as she was wanted, and was'nt to be gotten near her place no how, if Davy didn't come to help" (by-the-by, Martha and Davy were married about six months after). The sheep-dog was barking at an obstreperous sow; the terriers, pointers, and beagles all chose that auspicious and lively period to hold a sort of gymnastic and barking revel with boisterous glee; and we repeat, that more than once we have been glad to escape the confusion and Babel of a "quiet farmyard."

Miss Mitford gives us a graphic description of the inhabitants of this farm, which we cannot resist quoting.

"Lord Delancy, the noble owner of the hall, had most extensive estates in the same county: but nearly all the parish of Atherton was rented by the tenant of the Great Farm, and that tenant was a woman.

"

Mrs. Warner had presided over this land of plenty for nearly fifty years, originally as the wife of the master, latterly as the mistress, and always with high reputation for hospitality and good management. She was a neat, gentle, lady-like person, with silver hair, a fair, pale complexion, mild dark eyes, a little tremor of head and voice, and a slight bend of the slender figure; altogether a most venerable and beautiful old woman. Her family consisted of a daughter-in-law, the widow of her only son, and of their daughter Catherine, commonly called Katy Warner, a girl of fifteen.

Katy's mother was a round, rosy, merry, bustling dame, who having, since the death of her first husband, had, as she expressed it, the luck to marry and bury a second, bore the name of Bell. To her for some years back the chief government of the house and farm had devolved, and few women could be fitter for such a charge. With a frame strong and active as that of a

man, a competent knowledge of husbandry, a good judgment in cattle, and considerable skill in parish affairs; with a kindness that was always felt and a tongue that was often heard, she scolded her way through the agricultural year from wheat-sowing to harvest. Ignorant as a new-born child of the world and its ways, except always the small bit of that 'huge rotundity' called the manor and royalty of Atherton, it is probable that the very limitation of her faculties conduced not a little to her prosperity. Fearful of experiments, she stuck to the old routine adapted to her capacity; and trusted to the experience of her labourers, men for the most part born upon the land, who knew every inch of the ground, and cared for the interest of their good mistress as if it had been their own. Everything throve in this female household, from the flocks whose numbers were counted by thousands down to Katy's bees.

"The parlour, the common living-room of the family, was smaller than, to judge from its appearance, any room in that house ought to have been, chosen, perhaps, on that account-people who can command large rooms having a frequent tendency to use small ones.

"It was a sort of excrescence on one side of the dwelling, a kind of afterthought, with a sunny bay-window commanding the farm-yard, from which it was only parted by a low paling and a slip of turf, and giving a peep at the high-road.

"A snug and cheerful apartment, after all, was that little parlour, crowded with furniture, from the good old lady's high-backed chair to the low stool on which Katy, whenever that Mercurial little person did stay five minutes in a place, used to sit at her grandmother's feet.

"In the centre was a small Pembroke table of dark mahogany, somewhat ricketty; at the end a sideboard of the same material, the drawers groaning with stands of spirits, and bottles of home-made wine, the top covered with miscellaneous articles, Mrs. Warner's large Bible, surmounted by a cookery-book, occupying one corner, whilst Mrs. Bell's enormous work-baskets and work-bags over-filled the other; a beautiful jar of dried grasses, Katy's property, occupied the middle. Katy's possessions, indeed, might be traced everywhere. Her litter, living and dead, cumbered the walls and the floor. kittens, skipping-ropes, bridles, riding-whips, and battledores were distributed all over the room, whilst a fat spaniel called Flora lay basking before the fire.

Birds,

"Two triangular cupboards occupied two opposite corners; of which one was so crammed with closelypacked glass and china that it was dangerous for any unaccustomed finger to attempt to extricate cup or saucer from the pile; whilst the other was filled to bursting with articles of daily call, tea, sugar, lemons, nutmegs, and gingerbread. Fruit at all seasons, and cakes of every denomination completed the array. No one could enter that room without tasting the light seed-cake-diet-bread Mrs. Warner called it-compounded from a family recipe a hundred years old; or the green gooseberry wine, famous as that of Mrs. Primrose, sparkling and effervescent as champagne. It was the very temple of hospitality."

Katy is the heroine of the story, and we beg to commend her to our young friends as a fine specimen of English girlhood. We will not extract more from Atherton, but advise the reading of it in its perfect form.

The other two volumes are composed of short stories, which have only appeared in comparatively unread and expensive annuals. They are all good and pleasing. We must present a specimen from Dolly and her Beaux :

"Dolly, whose real name, by the way, was Dora, though it is doubtful whether she had been so addressed since the christening; the very maids- even Mrs. Hicks herself, calling her Miss Dolly. Dolly was a nice little girl small of her age, but well formed and active, with abundance of flaxen ringlets, blue eyes, and a pink and

white complexion, not much unlike her own great wax doll, and not very much larger, the chief difference between them consisting in the absence of noise and motion on the doll's part, wherein Dolly had the advantage, and in the far superior neatness of the waxen lady's apparel: neither Mrs. Hicks, nor her aide-de-camp, Patty (the nursery-maid) being able to keep Dolly tidy, though they tried hard, after their several fashions, to achieve that most laudable object. Mrs. Hicks hoping, lamenting, and sighing in her great chair, over torn frocks and tattered trowsers; whilst Patty chased her young mistress, needle in hand, running up tucks, sewing on strings, and tying sashes; all of which might truly be called labour in vain, for Dolly was a romp at heart, a romp in grain, and it would be as easy to wash a blackamoor white as to preserve cleanliness and order in the person of a young lady who labours under that unlucky propensity.

Dolly (I am sorry to give so bad a character to my heroine) was a most inveterate romp. She romped with her brothers and sisters wherever she met with them; with her father and mother whenever she could coax them into the sport; with Miss Harris, the governess: with Patty, the nursery-maid; and, finally, notwithstanding corns and the rheumatism, with Mrs. Hicks herself, who, in spite of a considerable degree of gravity, mental and bodily, and a decided theoretical objection to such rudeness, could not always find in her heart to resist Dolly's practical temptation, especially when Dolly climbed to the top of her great chair, and stole the very spectacles from off her nose.

:

"This was the signal for a game of play, which used to last till poor fat Mrs. Hicks, tired as ever a poor fat Mrs. Hicks was before, was forced to give in and cry for quarter and then Dolly (who seldom attacked Mrs. Hicks until she had exhausted the patience of her other biped play-fellows) used to resort to the quadrupeds of the house-her mamma's lap-dog, her papa's poodle, her sister's kitten, Miss Harris's cat, and a much-enduring terrier of her own, cally Tiny, for amusement and consolation; and they, especially Tiny and the kitten, would enter into her glee, and jump and frisk about, and scratch and tear the clothes upon her back, and make such a commotion as would have wearied anybody under the sun except Dolly; but Dolly was untirable. It was perfectly wonderful how much fatigue under the name of play, that little person could endure - from sunrise to sundown she was in perpetual motion. Miss Harris (who dreaded her coming into the school-room), used to declare that it made her head ache only to look at her!

"Besides being a romp, Dolly (the sins are apt to go together in damsels under four years old) was, I am sorry to say, a most desperate flirt. She had early made the discovery that gentlemen, who have no bonnets to discompose, nor gowns to rumple, make far better playfellows than ladies who have their millinery and petticoats to take care of, and are, besides, less strong in the arm, and therefore less capable of giving, what Dolly liked better than anything, a good high toss. Gentlemen were, therefore, her decided favourites; and every male visitor, who came to the house, was sure of being challenged to a game of romps with Miss Dolly. But, besides these chance beaux, she had, nearly from the time she could talk, a regular flirtation on hand with some favourite of the house.

"First on the list was Mr. Simon Bates, the house steward; a retainer of the family of somewhere about Mrs. Hicks' standing, for whom in his youth he had been suspected of a lurking penchant, and for whom he still retained sufficient partiality to induce him to pay her long and frequent visits in the nursery, when his flirtation with Miss Dolly commenced. It did not last long. Poor Mr. Simon Bates, besides being nearly as unwieldy as

Mrs. Hicks, was subject to fits of the gout, which utterly incapacitated him from the active gambols that his young lady required, so he relinquished his post, or she turned him off (either version may serve) as speedily as possible.

"His successor was Mr. Jackson, the butler, whose pantry, abutting on the great stairs, threw him frequently in Dolly's way, and enabled him to give her two exercises of which she was exceedingly fond-sliding down the banisters, and trotting round the hall on horseback, Mr. Jackson performing the part of a steed, and prancing and curvetting on hands and feet for her gratification. What added to her pleasure in this sport was Jackson's being furnished with a natural bridle, in the shape of a pig-tail, he being of the old-fashioned race of butlers, with a red face blazing amidst his frizzed and powdered hair-silk stockings, paste buckles, and, on state occasions, an embroidered waistcoat with long flaps, which some former head of the Vernons had worn at court. A capital steed. Dolly, in her lisping English, was pleased to call him "vely nithe horthe;" but, notwithstanding his alacrity in moving on all-fours, poor Mr. Jackson's red nose was fated to be put out of joint even sooner than that of his predecessor, Mr. Bates.

"The favourite by whom the galloping butler was superseded, was a certain Eugene Prince, or, as his comrades called him, Prince Eugene, who accompanied Harry Vernon home from the Military College, one Christmas holidays. Prince Eugene was exactly the person to worry a young lady off her feet; bold, active, lively, and good humoured, and blest with such a fund of animal spirits that he could even tire down Dolly herself. Prince Eugene was irresistible; he tossed her over his head, he shook her into penny-pieces, he called her his little wife, he sang songs, made faces, and played Punch for her amusement; and reigned without a rival, whether on four feet or on two. But, alas! the Christmas hours do not last for ever. Prince Eugene departed, and poor Dolly was left a disconsolate damsel, to seek another playfellow as best she might.

"She found, or rather made one, in the shape of the vicar of the parish; a grave, decorous, respectable, Mr. Harman, who at first sight seemed an unpromising subject for a romping bout. But the gentleman had more fun in him than he seemed to have; and being much at the house, and amused by the manner in which Dolly forced herself upon his attention, and insisted on his tossing her up to the ceiling, and shaking her into pennypieces, and calling her his little wife, like her 'poor dear Printh,' he took very greatly to the office, and, on my arrival at General Vernon's, I found him as regularly romping with Dolly after dinner, as saying grace before.

"This state of things did not last long; Dolly was, as I have said, a flirt as well as a romp; and an occasion soon presented itself for displaying her unlucky quality in full perfection. It came, as usual, in the form of a rival.

"The time of my visit happened to be on the eve of a general election; and a few days after my arrival, a fellow guest made his appearance in the shape of a young baronet, who was a candidate for the representation of the next town, where the Vernons had great interest. A very agreeable person was Sir Robert,-cheerful, pliant, and good humoured, and so overflowing with civility, that he made his court to every creature in the house, from Lady Ann, the really lovely eldest daughter, down to Finette and Tiny. Of course, Dolly was not overlooked. He outtossed and out-shook Mr. Harman; made more faces and sang more songs that Prince Eugene; played Punch twice over; galloped on all fours three times round the great drawing-room; declared that she should be nobody's wife but his; and finally, promised to carry her away with him the next morning.

"The night had been stormy, and Mr. Harman had, as was frequently the case in bad weather, slept at the great

house; and the morning being brilliantly fine, we were all assembled to witness the departure of the two gentlemen-the one on foot to the vicarage, the other on horseback to the independent borough of G, when, to our great astonishment, Dolly marched into the hall, equipped in her best pelisse and bonnet, with a huge wax doll in one hand, and a coach and four with their outriders (the gift of Mr. Harman), in the other. "Thtop!' shouted Dolly, perceiving that her new admirer, who was already mounted, was bowing himself off as fast as possible, 'thtop! I go too!'

dear

"No,' rejoined the faithless swain, 'not now, Dolly; there's no room; you see I'm on horseback: I'll come back in a carriage and fetch you and your doll. I'll come back for you to-morrow, Dolly.'

"I go now,' screamed Dolly. 'I ride before-I ride behind. I oor wife!" quoth Dolly. But all in vain, for her treacherous admirer nodded, and kissed his hand, and galloped off; he laughed and he rode away, and poor Dolly, quite astounded at anybody's being as fickle as herself, seemed likely to cry, till, catching a glimpse of Mr. Harman, who was now, in his turn, taking leave, she resumed her doll and her coach-and-four, which she had put down in her consternation, and then said very quietly- Well, then, Mither Harman, I go with oo.'

No,' rejoined Mr. Harman, 'not to-day, Miss Dolly. I'll come and fetch you another time;' and off he bowed himself; and poor Dolly, quite astounded with this great moral lesson on the dangers of flirtation, and the treachery of men, walked back to the nursery quite misanthropic, exclaiming, with the drollest possible union of mirth, of observation, and falseness of grammar, 'Manth ith all alike!' she being, perhaps, the first young lady of three years and a half old, who ever had occasion, on her own account, to verify the words of the old song,

--

'Sigh no more, ladies, ladies, sigh no more,Men were deceivers ever;

One foot on sea and one on shore,

To one thing constant never.'

"Manth ith all alike,' quoth poor Dolly, and off she marched to play with Tiny."

We are by no means certain that the last reflective declaration of Miss Dolly, is not rather beyond the mental and moral perception of a young lady rising "three and a half," but we should require to find many more serious faults before we could quarrel with such a pretty sketch of infant life.

In the third volume there is a "Story for children of all ages," entitled, The Two Cousins, which affords an excellent lesson on wisdom, illustrated by a charmingly related tale of girlish folly. We meet with Sheridan's Rhyming Calendar in it, which may be new to many of our readers:

'January snowy;
February flowy;
March blowy;
April showery;

May flowery;
June bowery;
July moppy;
August croppy;
September poppy;
October breezy ;
November wheezy;
December freezy.

We welcome this publication as we would a picture of Gainsborough's or Wilkie's, among a gallery of mosaics and marbles; and fervently hope that the amiable and gifted authoress will yet present the world with many productions of her refined and refining genius.

There is a likeness of Miss Mitford in the first volume, which will at once impress those who look on it with a most favourable opinion of the nature and temper of the original. There is something unaffected, English-like, and loveable in the face and figure, which is unusual in

the average portaits of popular writers, and Miss Mitford has been lucky in finding an artist who has done common justice to her real lineaments. We close these volumes, feeling they will be perused and appreciated as they deserve.

JEROME CARDAN.*

THE record of the life of the eccentric old physician is richly suggestive, and will be found to possess no mean interest, although it may not entitle Cardan to more than a secondary position among the great men who have imprinted their memorials upon the eventful history of a singularly fertile period, in which the empire of science and thought was extended, in various ways, with wonderful rapidity.

It is certain, we think, in common with Mr. Morley, that historians have been neglectful, if not unjust, to Jerome Cardan. That many wild and fanciful theories are to be found in his writings must be admitted; that exception may be taken to much of his moral philosophy is true; that his life was stained by dissipation we must also regret, although it should not be forgotten, the evidence on the last point proceeds from his own pen; and but for his own, perhaps, too frank confessions, he would not have been accounted worse than his contemporaries.

It was charged against Cardan, as a physician, in his lifetime, that he never concentrated his powers upon his profession, and he was a man of versatile attainments. He studied intensely, wrote much upon the abstract sciences; and, despite the singular conceits upon many topics, these writings display a remarkable acuteness of observation, and profundity of research and analysis. But so strangely compounded was his nature, that Brücker observes, "If we read only certain of his works, we may say he was the greatest fool who ever lived; at the same time he was one of the most fertile geniuses that Italy has produced, and one who made certain rare discoveries in mathematics and medicine."

The early days of the philosopher were beset with evil. His birth, we are told, made no man happy, and his first gaze into the world was darkened by a mother's frown. This mother was one Chiara, or Clara Micheria, a young widow; his father, who was fifty-six years old, was Fazio Cardan, a lawyer of some repute, and jurisconsult of Milan. The unwelcome child was, however, born at Pavia, on the 24th of September, 1501, whither its maternal parent had fled, to avoid the plague, then raging in the former city. His infancy was a series of casualties, and to accident more than design, on her part, may the preservation of his life be attributed. At length she returned to Milan, taking Jerome with her, and soon after Fazio dwelt under the same roof with the widow, their child, and her sister Margherita, of whom the nephew gives no very favourable account. And he may be well excused in his want of affection towards one who treated him so unkindly, that he fancied "she must have been without a skin, for she cared so little for the skin of Clara's child." The systematic cruelty to which little Cardan was subjected, added to his feeble health and hereditary disease, made up the sum of martyrdom, but

The Life of Girolamo Cardano, of Milan, Physician-By Henry Morley, Author of Palissy the Potter, &c. London: Chapman and Hall. 185.