Campaign in Ireland; by the Wife of a Colonel, 650, 694 | Irish Loan Funds and Montes de Pieté, Laing's (Samuel) Translation of the Heimskringla; or, Chronicles of the Kings of Norway, 281, 369 28 Life in the Bush Described, 216 709, 775 664 442 Life in the Sick Room, (by Miss Martineau,) 131 Correspondence between Burns and Clarinda, Dahlmann's History of the English Revolution, Earth-Stopper, The; by John Mills, 570, 654 Meredith's (Mrs) Notes, &c. of New South Wales, 805 Erastus on Excommunication; transl. by Dr. Lee, 467 Factories Ten-hours Bill, The, Feast of the Poets for September 1844, Fisher's Annuals for 1845, Foster's Contributions to the Eclectic Review, 488, 554, 613, 681 398 679 784 748 Morocco; French Aggression, and English Accusers, 677 793, 794 Morrison's (John) Reminiscences of Sir W. Scott,&c. 15 581 Montes de Pieté and Loan Funds, Free Trade, Free Trade and Free Labour Patmore, Coventry; Poems by, 726 Ten Hours' Bill; The Factories', 405 735 195 529 Pearson, Henry Hugh; Professor of Music, Edinr. Quaker Mission to the Mauritius and South Africa, 630 Retrospect of the Session, 1844, Repeal Agitations, The Two, 15 530 223 417 423 20 608 Wheel of Fortune, The ; by Mrs. Gore. See Blanks. TAIT'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. JANUARY, 1844. BLANKS AND PRIZES; OR, THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE. PART I. took the goods the gods provided gratis, but took amazing care of them. The old-fashioned furniture bequeathed by her grandmother with her spacious house, was rubbed and scrubbed and burnished by her diligent hand-maidens, till it acquired a sort of ironical freshness, like the youthful airs of an old beau: and had the smallest particle of her curious old china come to mischance, or the smallest piece of her antique plate been missing, the magistrates of Apston would have heard of it. Her servants were charity girls, taken from the CHEERFULLY Overlooking the waters of the Severn, as if taking pleasure in the beauty of its site, and superior to the interested views usually arising from vicinity to a navigable river, stands the town of APSTON, or the town we intend to call Apston; an airy spot, and a rural: for not only are the gardens of the spreading suburbs fair to see, and interspersed with what are called "genteel residences," but, in summer time, a very fair crop of grass makes its appearance in all but the Mar-poor-house, to be drilled into a knowledge of their ket Place. For Apston has only a single manufactory, to balance against a considerable number of widows in easy circumstances, and light-footed single ladies. The tranquillity of the place appears to possess an almost conventual charm for the feebler sex. No barracks, no manufacturing population, no colliers or miners within distance, to shake with their insubordination the foundations of this peaceful city of refuge. "The spinsters and the knitters in the sun," pursue their work unmolested; and the spinsters and widow ladies their whist, without fear of an intruder more dangerous than Dr. Toddles, the meally-mouthed physician-general of the neighbourhood, or old Mr. Mumbleton, the vicar. St. Ursula and her train might have set up their rest at Apston, without peril to their eleven thousand reputations. Among the singlest of the single ladies, and residing in the house usually pointed out to strangers as the best in the town, was Miss Lavinia Meade; a damsel who, for the last thirty years, had gone by the opprobrious title of old maid; and who, born to a good fortune, had spent the greater part of her life in rendering it better. Why, it was hard to say: for those who amass fortunes for their successors, have usually objects of affection to inherit their property; whereas Miss Lavinia exhibited no sort of sympathy with her family or fellow-creatures. Her self-denying thrift, therefore, probably arose from an innate taste for hoarding. But though supposed to spend only a fourth part of her income, and to waste no portion of even that on the superfluities of life, she not only VOL. XI.-NO, CXXI, duties: and that their drilling did credit to the crabbed old lady, was avouched by the specklessness of her floors and brilliancy of her andirons. Miss Lavinia was as good a housewife as though there had been any one to applaud or profit by her housewifery. But not a human being took pleasure in the neatness and orderliness of her house, not even herself. It was, however, at least an object of envy. Not one among the whist-playing widows but would have been thankful to exchange her narrow lodgings for the roomy and commodious mansion of Miss Lavinia Meade; and whereas on the gala evenings devoted to receiving the thrones and dominions of Apston, the Mayor and his deaf wife, Dr. Toddles and his toadying sister, and a horde of minor Misses of small accompt, the rich old maid gloried in an exhibition of her superior gentility and household treasures: there was some excuse for the covetous eyes with which many contemplated her establishment, and many more speculated, like Alexander's courtiers, on the future distribution of her inheritance. For Miss Lavinia had no immediate relations. The nearest was an aunt, married in British America, of whose family little was known at Apston; and the old lady had been so careful to circulate in the town that she could devise her property to whom she pleased, and that the public charities of Apston had better look to themselves, that her whole tea-drinking acquaintance were justified in trusting that the heirless old maid might win her way to Heaven by loving at least one of her neighbours as herself. In defiance, therefore, of wind and weather, and in spite of variabilities of temper, characteristic of March rather than the usual simile of April, (for they changed not from sunshine to rain, and vice versa, but from rain to sleet,) her card-parties were sedulously attended. Every newspaper that reached Apston, was offered in succession for Miss Lavinia's perusal; and when it became evident to all that little world, that Miss Toddles, the Doctor's sister, had evil-spoken, lied, and slandered herself into paramount favour at the White House, a general outcry of indignation arose, at the idea of that fine fortune, of three thousand a-year, passing from the hands of one stingy old skinflint into those of another. relationship as if no other woman in the world were cousin to a junior captain of light infantry. It is true, no other at Apston happened to enjoy that distinction. Dr. Toddles had a brother who was a half-pay Colonel of Marines; and Mrs. Mumbleton, a nephew, a Lieutenant in the East India Company's Service. But not a soul among Miss Lavinia's tea-drinkers, saving the stern hostess, had the smallest right to feel nervous at the issue of a second edition of The Courier. She was the only heroine akin to a Peninsular hero, throughout that quiet town. In process of time, however, Captain Erskine came to be everybody's hero as well as her own. Every individual of the tabby coterie was familiar with his marchings and counter-marchings, his hair-breadth 'scapes, his hopes of promotion, his chances of leave of absence. The three little Misses Prebbles, nieces to the mayor, made spirited sketches of light infantry officers, manœuvring at the head of their companies, both on and off the field of battle,-all supposed to bear reference to Miss Lavinia's cousin; while the Toddleses were often heard to whisper, that if Captain Erskine obtained leave of absence, they only trusted no im Just, however, as the gossips of Apston, and Miss Hannah among the rest, had begun to look upon this dispensation as unchangeable, a name escaped the lips of Miss Lavinia Meade, unaccountably unfamiliar to the ears of her toadies. She began to talk of "my cousin Captain Erskine;" nay, even to accept the loan of newspapers on the plea of wishing to see whether the Gazette contained honourable mention of this hitherto unmentioned kinsman. For the Peninsular war was at its fiercest; and there was every excuse for those who had Captain-cousins, occasionally feeling hysteri-portant movement of the French armies might take cal at the blowing of the post horn; and no sooner had the Apstonians satisfied themselves that Captain Erskine was not a man of straw, that he had a local habitation in Lord Wellington's camp and a name in the Army List, than they became agitated in their turn with sudden interest in the fortunes of the campaign; and echoed with an unanimous “Amen” the opinion of Miss Lavinia, that the advisers and maintainers of that bloody and devastating war, would have enough to answer for. "To think of so many fine young men, the hopes of so many honourable families, sacrificing their valuable lives in behalf of a set of cigar-smoking, frowsy, priest-ridden Spaniards!" cried Miss Toddles, with a somewhat single-sided view of continental politics; upon which sympathetic hint, all the old ladies, far gone in their cups-of hyson or bohea-groaned in unison. There were those, however, in Apston who whispered that Miss Toddles had appeared quite as much startled as her neighbours, on first hearing the name of Captain Erskine; and protested that all these lamentations over the perils of "fine young men, the heirs of prosperous families," purported only to discover the nature of the old lady's feelings and intentions towards her kinsman. But whatever curiosity either she or others might entertain on the subject, was soon appeased : for from that day forth, nothing but "Captain Erskine " was heard of at the White House. Whether, as some asserted, Miss Lavinia had only lately been made cognizant of his existence, by a deathbed letter from her aunt, (a younger sister of her mother, married to an American loyalist,) or whether she had kept the secret in her heart of hearts to be wreaked in vengeance at some moment of peculiar spite upon the aspirants to her inheritance, certain it is that from the moment of avowal, she appeared as proud of the place while his services were withheld from the cause of his country! Though Wellington, in short, might be the hero of Great Britain, in the eyes of Apston, Erskine was the man. At length, within a year of the "glorious termination" of the Spanish war, the gallant corps, of which Captain Erskine formed a part, was ordered home; that is, all that was left of the gallant corps: for on its disembarkation at Portsmouth, there were scarcely men left to return, with an effective cheer, the warm salutations with which they were greeted by their fellow-countrymen on shore. Worn and torn, they looked like anything rather than the victorious troops of the conqueror of the modern Cæsar. Apston, however, still beheld them in its mind's eye as the élite of the British army; and, now that there was an immediate probability of an introduction to Captain Erskine, scarcely wondered at the triumphant joy of Miss Lavinia; or the zeal with which the gilt frames and looking-glasses of the White House were unpapered, and its lustres and girandoles released from their canvas-bags, in order to do honour to him who was about to do so great an honour to them all. The idea of possessing familiarly by their firesides a man still reeking from the smoke of the cannon of Soult,-a man fresh from the razing of cities and sacking of convents, was almost too much for the sensibility of a circle to whom even a militia-officer was a rarity. The younger Misses only trusted he might not prove too martial and ferocious for their susceptibility; the elder ones saw, with envious feelings, that Miss Lavinia was no longer ashamed, though her enemies spoke to her in the gate. On the evening it was known that Captain Erskine would arrive at the White House by the London coach, all Apston held its breath with emotion. By the middle of the following day, one began to inquire of the other, whether the |