he would never see him or leave him a farthing. Soon after this the old man died. Immediately the brother offered to divide the property; and upon his repeated entreaties, Gaetano did receive a part. "I cannot take half,” said he, "because you, with a large house and no shop, are a poorer man than I am."

The aunt is more demure than ever. There are so many stories abroad of the infamy of an Illustrissimo becoming a shopkeeper, and of a respectable girl marrying a convict, that she is nervous. She goes about protesting she had no hand in the matter, that nothing of the kind ever entered her head, and thus gets suspected most undeservedly, as a sly, goodfor-nothing, wicked woman.

True love, they say, must be " itself alone," not the offspring of any other passion; and that affection springing from gratitude or pity is by no means love; with many more wise sayings which I forget. To all this I have nothing to reply,—I only refer such dogmatizers to the principal snuffshop in Pescia. Gaetano and Nina have now three children. The youngest is the most beautiful infant I ever saw, especially at the mother's breast;" mind, reader, these are the husband's own words, and you are not to make me accountable for so dainty an observation.

66

SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY'S PICTURE

GALLERY.

BY MRS. CHARLES GORE.

"I was this morning walking in the gallery, when Sir Roger entered at the end opposite to me, and, advancing towards me, said he was glad to meet me among his relations, the De Coverleys, and hoped I liked the conversation of so much good company, who were as silent as myself. I knew he alluded to the pictures; and as he is a gentleman who does not a little value himself on his ancient descent, I expected he would give me some account of them. We were now arrived at the upper end of the gallery, when the knight faced towards one of the pictures."-Spectator, 109.

“A LOVELY creature,” said I, placing my hand athwart my forehead by way of sight-shade, with as much the air of a connaisseur as I could manage to assume.

"A dear one, a prudent, and a virtuous," rejoined the knight, turning sharply away, and betaking himself to his box, as if he had made an effort to look upon an object connected with painful recollections. Nay, if I am not mistaken, there was a moisture on the lace of his sleeve as he raised his arm to his eyes, affecting to ward off the sun-beams glaring through the windows. For worlds I would not have entrapped him into the discussion of the subject; but reading curiosity in my looks, he paused when we reached the door of the gallery, and, tapping me significantly on the hand, said in a low voice, "I have her history written out in fair text hand among my family papers. My cousin Ursula was the choicest scribe in this part of the country. You will find

specimens of her best Italian manner in the great family recipe book; but if you are inquisitive touching the memoir of her sister Milicent, why 'tis heartily at your service." The word "prudent" was a stumbling-block. I was ever inclined to banish from among the cardinal virtues, the prim, self-contented, prudish-looking damsel with the looking-glass; and since even Saint Augustine pleads guilty to a similar prejudice, I,—a sinner, need not hesitate to avow the antipathy. Nevertheless, the following sketch of family history could not but interest my feelings; and I have no scruple in pointing out the picture of "the Lady Keswycke at her lookingglass," as the sweetest personification of Prudence that has exemplified the duty of self-examination since the days of Penelope.

Sir Lawrence de Cressingham, of Cressingham Hall, was the friend and companion of the great Clarendon ;—sat in the Long Parliament, retired to France on the ruin of the royal cause, and died in exile. In compensation for these disasters, his son, Sir Giles, received at the Restoration offers of a pension and peerage; both of which he stoutly declined, as being connecting links with a court towards which he was anything but favourably disposed. Retiring, therefore, to the estate or remnant of estate still pertaining to the family name, he devoted his time to its cultivation, and his thoughts to the rearing of two daughters, bequeathed him by his wife, Ursula de Coverley, grand-aunt to the good knight, whom it was the ambition of his frugality to raise to the condition of co-heiresses.

Unfortunately, however, little Milicent and Ursula were not the sole objects of his solicitude. The charge of a young cousin, son to a younger brother of Sir Lawrence, who had fallen on the field of Worcester, leaving a young wife and posthumous child to the mercy of his then wealthy relatives, was entailed upon him with the family estates; and Francis de Cressingham grew up as the sole child of the house, till, thirteen years after his melancholy birth, little

Milicent made her appearance to initiate the heart of the bluff Sir Giles into the still warmer tenderness of actual paternity.

Frank, a spirited lad, with the wild blood of his race already boiling in his veins, was not jealous of the little stranger; nay, he would often snatch the pretty doll into his arms and cover it with kisses, till the lady mother shrieked aloud lest its delicate frame should be injured by his rough caresses. But however blustering elsewhere, Francis. became a tamed lion on approaching the nursery; and when, a few years afterwards, the Lady de Cressingham died of a slow decay, there was no one in the house whose endearments afforded consolation to her two moping motherless girls, saving those of "cousin Frank." His visits to the Hall from college or his regiment were hailed as signals for a general holiday. Sir Giles prepared for a carouse with the neighbouring squires; Milicent, who at that period inclined to the coquette, began to gather the bright rings of her chestnut hair under a fontauge of the newest fashion; while Ursula, her younger sister, would sit for hours at her spinet, studying sonatas for his amusement. The worthy knight was scarcely prouder of his young relative than were the two girls; and during the perils encountered by the combined fleet in which young De Cressingham was serving with honour as a volunteer, Dr. Esdras, the family chaplain, could by no means determine which of the three displayed most fervour at morning and evening prayers, in commending to heaven the destinies of those who "travel by land or by water."

Sooth to say, the reverend divine regarded much of this tenderness as a work of supererogation; for Francis de Cressingham was not only a scapegrace by nature, but a papist by profession; his mother (who survived his disastrous birth long enough to influence his religious principles) being issued of the noble house of Norfolk, and boasting the celebrated Cardinal Howard among her uncles.

Meanwhile the peace of Nimeguen restored tranquillity to western Europe, and Captain de Cressingham to the Hall; and it was well for him that he escaped being drowned in sherries-sack by his kinsman, or smothered in kisses by the two girls, during the first twenty-four hours of his sojourn. Millicent was scarcely fourteen; yet Dr. Esdras was of opinion that the raptures of her welcome might have been moderated with advantage to all parties. He even ventured to express some such notion in the hearing of his patron and disciple Sir Giles; who swore in good round terms that he had no mind to be chaplain-ridden, and would foster no crop-eared puritan in his household, till the doctor was fain to retreat into the little study that served him for dormitory and all, leaving the young people to be as loving and frolicsome as they and the obstinate knight thought proper.

But however warm the welcome of the elder Cressingham, and however strenuous his opposition to the innovations of a meddling chaplain, there existed between himself and his kinsman a fertile and inextinguishable germ of discord. They had lived on easy terms in the relative position of benefactor, and protégé, guardian and ward; but, as man and man, the case was widely different. Frank was a blind and hotheaded royalist; while the loyalty of Sir Giles was somewhat refrigerated by the sacrifices he had been compelled to make to the improvidence and obstinacy of the House of Stuart. Frank was a courtier; Sir Giles a clown. But above all, the knight had formed, or, as he said, obtained an opinion that, by means of certain fines and recoveries, the residue of the Cressingham estates were fully redeemed from the original deed of entail; while Frank regarded the whole as his inalienable inheritance; and, dearly as he loved his two fair cousins, had no mind to be swaggered out of his birthright. A sovereign regnant is apt to look with a jealous eye upon his heir apparent, and still more upon the heir presumptive, or presumptuous, who advances unrecognised claims. The young captain had not been six weeks established at the