tions, this small sum was tendered to a respectable lady keeping a boarding-school near town, on condition that she would take charge of me until my nineteenth year, and prepare me to obtain my own living as a private governess. The lady entered into the agreement with my relations, and performed her part with strict honour, upon the whole, rendering my childhood happy, and certainly doing her best to prepare me for what my friends intended me to become. But although for her day, for I am speaking of nearly half a century past, she was accounted a highly-accomplished person, yet she was, in fact, totally ignorant of all valuable information, and knew nothing of vital religion. Her views of morality were quite commonplace, so that her seminary was merely an ordinary place of education, and the characters formed therein were of the most ordinary description. Though, with regard to accomplishments, we were certainly somewhat above par, for we had a teacher from Paris, who spoke French perfectly well, and knew how to touch the harp in a superior style.

I was only four years old when I was placed in this establishment, and in the fourteen years which were before me I must have been cruelly neglected, or have been naturally very stupid, if I had not acquired most of what was taught in the house; and as I had rather a genteel person, a good carriage, and an agreeable manner, I was considered, for several years before I left the family, as a sort of ornament to the establishment, and was always brought forward in strong relief whenever any thing like an exhibition was to be got up.

It cannot therefore be questioned but that I had a tolerably good opinion of myself, and that I expected, when I got out into the world, that every one was to give way to me, as my young companions had been accustomed to do for some years.

When I was eighteen years of age the term of the agreement between my relations and my governess was at an end, and about this time an elderly cousin of mine, who was in fact my guardian, wrote to inform my governess that he had spoken in my favour to a certain lady of quality, who wanted an instructress for her only daughter, and that this high preferment might be obtained for me, if she (my preceptress) would vouch for my being fit for the situation. My cousin was a man of business to the husband of this lady, and had thus

obtained the opportunity of speaking a word in my behalf.

My governess was so obliging as to send a very handsome letter in reply, and it was the more kind in her so to do, as she would rather have kept me to assist herself. However, this letter was decisive, and obtained the situation for me. My cousin sent me a sum of money to provide me with proper clothes, and pay for my journey, and after the summer vacation I parted, with some tears, and not without many brilliant anticipations of future aggrandizement, from the friends of my youth; and after a journey of twenty-four hours, with little rest, found myself in the village of Harley, at a small inn, bearing the arms of the family of Hon its signpost.

The noble mansion to which I was bound was scarcely a quarter of a mile distant from this inn, and there I met my cousin, an elderly man, in a mulberry-coloured suit, a wig, and a pair of spectacles. He had provided a supper for me, as it was late, and among many other counsels which he bestowed upon me, advised me to repose that night at the inn, in order that I might not appear before Lady H- while under the influence of fatigue, promising to walk over with me to the hall the next day. My cousin had ordered a duck and green peas for supper; and while partaking of our repast we had a great deal of discourse, during which I no doubt displayed no little of that entire self-confidence which I then entertained.

"I hope, Miss Caroline," said the old gentleman, "that you understand the French lingoo in perfection, for my lady has been on the Continent, and has it at her tongue's end.”

"So much the better for me," I replied, " for she will then understand that I have been taught the true Parisian accent."

Humph," said my cousin, "I don't understand these matters, since good plain English has always been enough for me. But, Miss Caroline," he added, "take the advice of one who has lived many more years in the world than you have, and don't be showing your better learning before my lady. Don't be pretending to know more than she does. Hear all she has to say, and seem as if you were ready to learn even in matters that you may chance to understand better than she does

And mind your own business, and keep to your own apartments and departments, and remember, you don't come to teach my lady herself, but her daughter; and hearken to the word of a friend, don't be making free with the second sort of gentry of the family, or with the French woman who waits on the little lady."

"You might have spared this last piece of advice, cousin," I answered, "for I do not think it very likely that, brought up as I have been, I should be making free with servants and those sort of people."

As I had been travelling nearly the whole of the past night, I was glad to go to bed immediately after supper; and the next morning, when we had breakfasted, my cousin set out with me to the hall.

It was a noble house, standing in a park, and there was a fine lake fringed with beautiful shrubs. When we were come up near the front of the house we saw a chariot-and-four standing at the principal entrance. On which my cousin remarked that there was company with my lady, and was thereupon turning towards the entrance of the offices by which he had always been accustomed to enter the mansion, whereat I expostulated, and said, "If I am to be company for my lady, I will not enter the house through the offices,-I don't count myself a servant, and I will not be treated as such."

"I do not understand these things," replied my cousin, "but take your own way. It is a narrow path you have to walk in, Caroline Mordaunt, and a delicate post you have to fill. Perhaps I judged wrong in offering to lead you by the back way; but mind my advice, do not take too much upon you-if you are not to be counted as a servant, yet you must not reckon yourself to be an equal with my lady, and you must endeavour to find your place, which is a sort of middle one, and neither carry yourself too high nor too low."

My cousin was not at the time a pious man. The advice he gave me was good, nevertheless; but in order to have been enabled to follow it, I ought already to have received that divine principle by which alone an individual is enabled to act with true decorum blamelessly, in whatever situation it may please God to place him.

So we walked to the grand entrance, and had to pass two or three powdered footmen who belonged to the

equipage, and were lounging about the steps. As soon as we were entered, my cousin passed through a sidedoor into the offices, and I saw him no more for some hours; but presently one of the footmen of the family appeared, and ushered me through several vestibules and halls into a small parlour elegantly fitted up. There I sat for more than an hour, trying to amuse myself with a book, but continually returning to a painful sense of my situation, and wishing, oh! how earnestly, that I were at school again. At length I heard the chariotand-four drive away, and the next minute a voice without the door saying, "Garfield, where did you say the young person was?"

I arose on hearing this, and the next moment her ladyship entered, followed by two children; the eldest a girl about eleven years of age, and the second, a boy who might be seven.

These were Lady Euphrasia, my future pupil, and Lord S- the son and heir, and only hope of the no

ble family.

This group were in nowise remarkable, excepting for the excessive coldness of their manner; had their features been of marble, there could not have been less expression than these great people chose to throw into their countenances when I stood and courtesied before them. "Miss Mordaunt," said her ladyship, "the young person recommended by Mr. Blagden (that was my cousin), I am glad to see you. I hope you have not found your journey fatiguing: permit me to introduce your pupil to you, Lady Euphrasia. You will find her a very apt little scholar. Come forward, Euphrasia, and tell Miss Mordaunt you will be very obedient. Miss Mordaunt, we speak French only in your apartments; you will observe that restriction, I trust; you are to have nothing to do with Lord S-, though he pleads the privilege of visiting his sister sometimes. Euphrasia, I am now going to ride; you will accompany your governess to your apartments. All preliminaries respecting salary, &c., Miss Mordaunt, you know, have been settled through Mr. Blagden. You will have your meals in your own sitting-room, and be prepared to attend to Lady Euphrasia when she is not with me." I was about to speak, but her ladyship had left the room with her The next moment, Euphrasia asking me if I were ready to accompany her, quitted the room (for it was

son.

the usual habit of this high family, as it was said to have been that of the members of the court of Versailles, never to wait for an answer to a question asked of an inferior), and I had therefore nothing for it but to walk after her little ladyship, which I did in the worst possible state of temper.

Lady Euphrasia led me through various halls, galleries, antechambers, &c. till she had brought me to a suite of chambers on the first floor, in a remote wing. "These are our rooms," she said, without vouchsafing me any sort of title," and there you are to sleep," she added, pointing to one door," and that is my room," pointing to another,-" and this is our sitting-room, and this is Juliette's room." Juliette was Lady Euphrasia's French femme de chambre.

It is one comfort, I thought, that I am not to sleep with you, you little, cold, haughty thing; and I felt that it would be impossible for me to bear this sort of treatment for any length of time; however, I plucked up my spirits, and walking up to a harp which stood in the corner of the room, began to try it. "This harp has a good tone, Lady Euphrasia," I said, as carelessly as I could speak. She took no notice of this remark, and then I remembered that I was to speak French, and repeated my words in French.

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She answered me in English, saying, "she knew nothing about it."

I admonished her that she was to speak French in our apartments. On which she flatly told me that she could not talk French with me, for she did not understand my French.

I found my blood boiling; but was relieved by the appearance of Juliette issuing from the door of her own chamber. This Juliette was a lively and apparently good-humoured middle-aged French woman, and one who knew much better than I did how to deal with the little haughty scion of a noble stock which I had undertaken to control.

She accosted me cheerfully, and reproached Lady Euphrasia for not having opened the door and shown me my chamber. She told her that if she had ever been in France she would have understood better what politeness was, and hastened herself to introduce me to my apartment, where I found my luggage already ar, rived.