o complete our felicity;--but Fate, which had frowned
from every sign-board on us for a long time, was now determined to
make up for her bad behaviour, and at that moment put into our hands a
catalogue of household goods to be sold the very next day, a few miles
off, at Oakfield Lodge. The one-horse car was again put in
requisition, and our hostess--the kindest of women--accompanied us to
the sale, and by nodding at intervals to the auctioneer, procured all
the articles required.

A sale is always a melancholy event. A house looks so miserable with
all its carpets and chairs and tables piled in useless heaps--the beds
dismantled--and the rooms filled with a staring crowd, handling every
thing, and passing its vulgar judgment upon curtains and drapery that
the proprietor perhaps thought finer than those of a Grecian
statue--on pier-glasses which had reflected shapes of love or
beauty--on the polish of mahogany that had been set in a roar with
wit,--a low, mean, savage-hearted crowd, bent on making bargains, and
caring nothing for the associations that make commonest furniture more
valuable than cedar and ebony. The auction on this occasion lasted
nearly a week; and day after day the whole population of the
neighbourhood streamed to it like a fair. It was a handsome house, and
the arrangement of the rooms spoke audibly of taste and comfort.
Selling the things that agreed together so well, to go into separate
situations--the library table to one town--the library chairs to
another--seemed very like selling a family of slaves to different
masters; so, after a cursory glance at the dwelling, we betook
ourselves in solitary rumination to the banks of the river. And a
quiet, steady, calm, respectable kind of river the Usk is--not of the
high aristocratic appearance of the Wye, with wild outbursts of
youthful petulance softened immediately into grace and elegance--but a
sedate individual, like a retired citizen, well to do in the world,
and glad to jog on as uninterruptedly as he can. The grounds of
Oakfield slope down to the water--and beautiful grounds they are--a
line of rich meadows, shaded with stately trees, and divided into
numerous portions by invisible wires, stretches for several miles
along the banks; and the abrupt elevation, bounding this level sweep
of grass and stream, affords an admirable site for two or three of the
moderate-sized and tasteful villas that seem the characteristics of
this vicinity. On pursuing