ly and truly of the
effect it produced, that "one felt warm when one looked on her." If we
could abstract from the description a certain chilling transparency, the
following exquisite verses of a forgotten poet might express the purity
and lustre of her countenance:--

"Her face was like the milky way i' the sky,
A meeting of gentle lights without a name."

She was surrounded by pets of all kinds, ugly and handsome,--from Ralph
the raven to Beauty the pheasant, and from Bob, the sheep-dog without a
tail, to Beau, the Blenheim with blue ribbons round his neck; all things
loved her, and she loved all things. It seemed doubtful at that time
whether she would ever have sufficient steadiness and strength of
character. Her beauty and her character appeared so essentially
womanlike--soft yet lively, buoyant yet caressing--that you could
scarcely place in her that moral dependence that you might in a
character less amiable but less yieldingly feminine. Time, however, and
circumstance, which alter and harden, were to decide whether the inward
nature did not possess some latent and yet undiscovered properties.
Such was Lucy Brandon in the year ----; and in that year, on a beautiful
autumnal evening, we first introduce her personally to our readers.

She was sitting on a garden-seat by the river side, with her father, who
was deliberately conning the evening paper of a former week, and gravely
seasoning the ancient news with the inspirations of that weed which
so bitterly excited the royal indignation of our British Solomon. It
happens, unfortunately for us,--for outward peculiarities are scarcely
worthy the dignity to which comedy, whether in the drama or the
narrative, aspires,--that Squire Brandon possessed so few distinguishing
traits of mind that he leaves his delineator little whereby to designate
him, save a confused and parenthetical habit of speech, by which he very
often appeared to those who did not profit by long experience or close
observation, to say exactly, and somewhat ludicrously, that which he did
not mean to convey.

"I say, Lucy," observed Mr. Brandon, but without lifting his eyes from
the paper,--"I say, corn has fallen; think of that, girl, think of that!
These times, in my opinion (ay, and in the opinion of wiser heads than
mine, though I do not mean to say that I have not some experience in
these matters, which is more than can be said of all our neighbours),
are very curious and eve