HITHERTO you have not heard of any spiritually-minded person connected with my early life; yet there was one, I feel sure, though my recollections are confused and imperfect on that point; and one to whose prayers, if not to her teaching, I surely owe something.

My father's mother was a fine, sprightly, robust old lady, rather small in stature, and already bending a little under the burden of years at the time when I first recollect her as mingling in the visions of my childhood, though I know that even from infancy I was the delight of her warm honest heart. She was simplicity itself in manners, her blunt speeches sometimes clashing a little with her son's notions of polish and refinement, as also did her inveterate antipathy to the reigning fashion, whatever that might be. I remember her reading me a lecture upon something novel in the cut of a sleeve, ending by this remark; 'I never wore a gown but of one shape; and because I don't follow the fashion, the fashion is forced to come to me sometimes by way of a change. I can't help that, you know, my dear; but I

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UNFASHIONABLE TASTE.

never was fashionable on purpose.' She added some pious remarks on vanity and folly, which I soon forgot: but the other dwelt on my mind because it chimed in with my own love of independence-a prominent characteristic with me; too often carried to the excess of self-willed obstinacy. However, I dearly loved, and exceedingly respected my grandmother, and used in my heart to glory in her smooth clean locks, half brown, half grey, combed down from under a snowy cap of homely make, when she had successfully resisted alike the entreaties and examples of cotemporary dames, who submitted their heads to the curling-irons and powderpuff of a frizeur, preparatory to an evening party. I used to stand proudly at her knee, admiring the high colour of her cheek, and uncommon brilliancy of her fine dark hazle eye, while her voice, remarkably rich and clear, involuntarily swelled the chorus parts of our magnificent music.

She was a Percy; not by name, for that had been lost in the female line, some generations before; but the pedigree in my possession, drawn up by Sir W. Betham, shews how just was her vaunt in that respect. For vaunt it she did, to us at least, often bringing it forward to check any tendency to behaviour unbefitting those who claimed descent from

'The stout Earl of Northumberland,'

with whom I ought to be well acquainted, for the singing of Chevy Chace in proper time and tune with her was the only secular accomplishment in which my dear

ANTIQUE PREJUDICES.

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grandmother personally laboured to perfect me, except knitting and curious old-fashioned needlework. The pride of ancestry took strong hold of my mind; and such an ancestry accorded but too well with my romance, innate and acquired. It stood me, many a time, in the stead of better things, when nerving myself to endure affliction and wrong; and therefore I notice it, to warn you against exposing your own children to the same snare.

No

Next to the fashion, if not in an equal or superior degree, I think my grandmother most abhorred the French. Indeed, her strongest denunciations against reigning modes were usually clinched with the triumphant assertion that they were “ French fashions." marvel if her spirit was stirred within her by the horrors of revolutionary France, and her Protestantism strengthened by the butcheries of ninety-eight. I knew that she was a Protester and a Tory of no common stamp; and I knew that she brought her Bible forward in support of every opinion that she uttered. Rarely did I visit her without finding her buried in the study of that blessed Book; and I know that she strove to teach me much of its meaning; but our change of residence proved a great bar to personal intercourse, and she never wrote letters. I sometimes trace impressions on my mind, made in early life, which I am sure must have been through her means; and though the good seed died on the ground, while the weeds took root and flourished, still here and there a grain might sink below the surface, to spring up after many days.

And now I must record my first sorrow, although I cannot dwell upon it as on some other things. My brother had been nearly two years absent, on service in the Peninsula, when an apoplectic attack arrested my father in the midst of life, and health, and vigor, and every promise of lengthened years. The premonitory visitations of repeated strokes were disregarded, for we could not, would not realize the approach of such an event; and persisted in believing them nervous: but just when all cause for alarm seemed at an end, and I was rejoicing in the assurance of its being so, I was called from my pillow at midnight to see that tender and beloved parent die. The bereavement was terrible to me: I had always been his principal companion, because no one else in the family had a taste for those things in which he delighted-literature and politics especially and since my brother's departure, instead of seeking to replace him by friends of my own age, I had turned wholly to my father, never desiring to pass an hour out of his society, and striving to be to him both daughter and son. My mother was a perfect devotee to household cares, every thought occupied in seeking to promote the domestic comforts of her family; while I, indulging a natural antipathy to all that did not engage the intellectual powers, gave her no help there. I was truly cumbering the ground, seeking only my own gratification, and dignifying my selfishness with many fine names, only because it was best indulged in my own dear home. From the period of my loss of hearing, music had been wholly banished; my father seemed

to lose all relish for what could no longer minister enjoyment to me, and deeply I felt the force of that affection which could so instantly and wholly overcome the ruling passion of his mind, accompanied as it was by such exquisite skill in that delightful science as rendered him the admiration of all who came within its influence. It redoubled my devotion to him; and most bitter was the anguish of my heart, when I beheld him taken away at a stroke.

Was this affliction sanctified to me? Not in the least. I found a luxury in grieving alone, brooding on the past, and painting the probable future in any colours but those of reality. My father had enjoyed two livings with a minor canonry in the cathedral, but the emolument was very small, and his income had not allowed him, as yet, to make any provision for us. A small annuity was all that my mother could depend on, and I resolved to become a novel-writer, for which I was just qualified, both by nature and habits of thinking, and in which I should probably have succeeded very well, but it pleased God to save me from this snare. My brother's unexpected return on leave, with our subsequent changes of abode, paying visits among friends, and keeping my thoughts constantly unsettled, hindered the execution of the project; and when my brother returned to Portugal, we repaired to London, to make a long stay with some near relations. It was there that

I met with the gentleman, an officer on leave of absence, whose wife, at the end of six months, I became.

I am longing to arrive at that period when the light

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