ble, as impossible to humble or contend with as a polecat or a chimney-sweeper, and for the same reason.

I mentioned this to my observing host, and he said it was quite in Fothergill's style, and pretty much his own opinion. This, however, he begged to defer giving in a place dedicated, by its pure and innocent character, to far other subjects than envy, hatred, and malice. In this I agreed, and, only changing a little the article of time, I thought I saw in my new friend the picture of the Count in the Belise of Marmontel. "Un espece de philosophe dans la vigueur de son age, qui apres avoir joui de tout pendant six mois de l'annee a la ville, venoit jouir six mois de lui-meme, dans une solitude voluptueuse."

CHAPTER XXII.

MORE ог HOMELY PURSUITS.-MR. MANNERS' OPINIONS OF SOME FAVOURITE AUTHORS, NOT QUITE IN ACCORDANCE WITH THOSE IN GENERAL ENTERTAINED.-THE EFFECTS OF EARLY RECOLLECTIONS.

Hath not old custom made this life more sweet,
Than that of painted pomp?

SHAKSPEARE.-As You Like It.

HAVING Surveyed the garden, we now prepared to return to the house; but first, opening a gate, Mr. Manners led me into an inclosure of about a quarter of an acre, covered with buck-wheat, and the crop covered with bees. These swarmed, and seemed to drink perfume in the foilage of two or three odoriferous limes, round which they winged a perpetual flight, with an unceasing, yet soothing hum, which, with the heat of the day, would in a few minutes have invited us to sleep. All round there was a border of sweet herbs, and on one side, facing the south, were ranged, in an alcove, perhaps a dozen hives.

Mr. Manners, seeing my pleased look at this little honied

spot, said, "I hope you like my apiary ?" and pointing to a small clear stream which intersected it, added, "you see I have copied my master, Virgil, pretty closely, in this refreshing rivulet, and these protecting lines." At this he recited, with emphasis, those pleasing lines :—

"At liquidi fontes, et stagua virentia musco
Adsint, et tenuis fugiens per gramina rivus;
Palmaque vestibulum, aut ingens oleaster inumbrat,
Ut cum prima novi ducent examina reges
Vere suo, ludetque favis emissa juventus;
Vicina invitet decedere ripa calori,

Obviaque hospitiis teneat frondentibus arbos."*

"This," said he, "is another of those domestic sights and sounds, and not the meanest or least pleasurable, I assure you, of those we have been discussing."

"There are those, however," said I, "who might think this beneath one who has lived with statesmen and warriors, and men of learning and genius.'

"I hope," returned he, "you are not one of them. There is a philosophy which analyzes every thing. It dissects the occupations of the world, and those of retirement, and the same occupations have a very different aspect according to the scene. In the world I might feel out of place in watching my bees, when I ought to be in business. But, you see I am in retirement, where lesser interests become of consequence. The pursuit of us all is happiness, and he can never be said to be independent in his, who cannot concentrate his wishes and enjoyments to the spot he inhabits, whether in town or country.'

وو

Nothing more clear," answered I, to common sense; but what would your countesses say to this?"

"They have not common sense," replied he, "though they have talents, and a great many accomplishments. We will, therefore, refuse them as, judges. But if they knew

"But near a living stream their mansion place,
Edged round with moss and tufts of matted grass,
And plant (the wind's impetuous rage to stop)
Wild olive trees, or palms, before the busy shop:
Then, when the youthful prince, with loud alarm,
Calls out the vent'rous colony to swarm,
The banks of brooks may make a cool retreat
For the raw soldiers from the scalding heat."
DRYDEN'S Virgil.

any thing about it, probably they would envy me, for I mistake if they have any such enjoyment in the whole range of their splendid, but artificial lives. They know nothing of honey except to eat it; yet their finely-bound books on natural history, into which they never look, might teach them that there were pleasures belonging to it-pleasures which, without searching Buffon, or Goldsmith, or the Spectacle de la Nature, the meanest cottager can enjoy and understand." "When I consider your rank and condition of life," said I, "this is at least new to me."

tell

Why, no doubt," he replied, "you will wonder when I you that to watch these creatures is one of my daily and favourite amusements. I, who have figured (that is, made an exhibition of myself) in drawing-rooms (nay, the drawingroom), reduced, you will say, to content myself with figuring in a bee garden. But, independent of the reasons I have alluded to, drawn from the study of nature, this was one of the pleasantest amusements of my youth, and, thus it belongs to early recollections; which is quite enough to explain its agreeableness. Add to this, that honey is of great use as a medicine, and an exquisite compound in arte coquinaria; for which, if only because it falls within my creed that it is one of the natural pleasures, I am not ashamed of confessing my reverence. I will, therefore, when we return to the house, show you the best receipt for fattening fowls, as Sir Roger de Coverley showed his grandmother's receipt, in her own hand, for a milk-pot, though she had been a maid of honour. What is better still, you shall at dinner have a convincing proof of its efficacy, in the fowl that will be served up to you."

"I rejoice to find by this," said I, "that the study of cookery, which it seems, with you, is one of the studies of nature, is not incompatible with high rank, and still higher education."

"It is, as you say," replied he, "a study of nature, and this would be proved if only by the pleasure children take in it themselves, or watching its process by others, who are removed by situation from following it up as a profession. I had once an aunt Dinah, a kind and grave old lady, of the very old school. When dressed in an evening, she wore a large hoop, and long and expensive laced ruffles, but the

strongest reason I have for remembering her is,that on a morning, with tucked-up sleeves, she handled the rolling-pin so well in making cakes for tea. I think I see her now in the houskeeper's room, weighing out the flour. Yet she had two waiting-maids and a footman at her command. Will you say she was not as happy in this as a finer lady, who perhaps would do the same if she dared?"

I found from this, and other observations, that I should every minute gain more and more from this new acquaintance which I had so fortuitously and luckily made, and listened to him with pleasure as in our walk back to the house he gave me further instances of his observing mind.

"In regard to happiness," said he, "who can give rules as to the circumstances which confer it, whether in cultivating bees in a grange like this, or dancing with a maid of honour at a court ball? I have experienced both. I have tried happiness in a palace; I have tried it in a cottage; I have found it in both; I have found it in neither. The reason? because the true place for it is the mind; and it depends not upon either palace or cottage the cour royale, or the basse cour -to find it. Whoever is greatly interested by what is within, or not greatly out of his reach, is happy."

"This, perhaps, is the reason," I ventured to observe (though I fear with some consciousness), "why we hear so much of love in a cottage."

"Undoubtedly," said he; "and I have sometimes seen with pleasure the happiness enjoyed there. But, then, it was because of the love, not of the cottage, love so absorbing, that it made place a matter of indifference. This, indeed, may be added, that a cottage is generally associated with spring or summer, and the country. A small lodging in a close street in London would, I allow, make love a very different affair, and require something of the palace to point its charms."

More and more admiring the variety of topics on which the mind of my enlightened companion had employed itself, and hoping for still farther investigations, I was glad, on returning to the house, to be introduced into a library, full of all varieties of literature in different languages, but chiefly those of belles lettres and moral and natural philosophy.

Mr. Manners saw, with some pleasure, that which my countenance exhibited at the sight thus presented. "Il y a de

quoi s'amuser," said he (for,from having been much in France he frequently adopted French phrases), "and if ever man can do without his fellow-men, and look down on the world, it is in such a room and in such a seat as this."

Here he threw himself into an easy chair close to a window, which let in a quiet and soothing, but variegated prospect of fields and woods, with a tower of Binfield church in the distance.

"Has a man," said he, "who thinks he has seen enough and to spare of the world, any thing to wish for beyond this?"

"Or," as you might have added, observed I, "who has not seen the world at all."

"No; young gentleman, that won't do. It is not, and ought not to be your creed. Fothergill would tell you there is a great deal more for a tyro to do, before he has a right to what I am now enjoying."

Here he stretched himself out in a kind of voluptuous listlessness: then went on

"No; you may read, nay, you must, to fit yourself for the part you are to take in life; but not till you have finished your course in the actual scenes of it have you the right to sit still and look back upon it in books."

Wishing him to go on, I ventured to dissent from this.

"You are wrong," said he, "and I am sure that is not what friend Fothergill has taught you. Yet it is a pardonable mistake, and what I myself fell into at your age, in the days of my romance, when, as I told you at the Warren House, I used to lie under the trees, and watch the rabbits, and read La Fontaine."

"La Fontaine ?"

"Yes! I will give you a passage of him, which I got by heart, I read it so often. You understand French ?"

Tolerably," I answered,but coloured sadly, for I thought of Bertha and Gresset.

"I beg your pardon," said he, "for the question; for when I was at Oxford, ninety-nine out of a hundred, though full fraught with Horner, scarcely knew there was such a language. Well, then, my master in philosophy was La Fontaine at nineteen, though I afterwards discarded him. Hear, therefore, what he says of that retirement which I now