↑ Now, had Miss Lavinia been informed that her despised relative pursued her old vocation, or showed peculiar aptitude for domestic drudgery, she would as surely have imputed it to her as a fault, and arising from her humble origin, as she now affected disgust at her airs of gentility. "There is one great comfort," said she, musing to herself after listening to accounts of this malicious description. "They will come to beggary!—They will assuredly come to beggary!One child already born,-doubtless half-a-dozen to follow; and all to be fed, in these hard times, out of a Captain's half-pay! Ay, ay! they will come to beggary; and then, in the midst of their misery and starvation, let them apply to me, and see what will come of it!" On quitting her house to renew the offer of his hand to Margaret at the penalty of disinheritance, Captain Erskine had of course determined, not alone that he never would apply to her for assistance, but that nothing should induce him to hold the smallest communication with her of any kind. But on the birth of his little girl, in the almost frantic exultation of finding himself a father, when, for twenty-four hours past, he had been on the brink of finding himself a widower,-his better feelings overmastered his resentment. In his wild extremity of joy, after contemplating the young mother and her lovely infant, he wished to be in charity with all the world, he wished all the world to be as happy as himself; and under the influence of this Christianly sentiment, sat down and indited a letter to his kinswoman, acquainting her with the happy event, and entreating that all recollection of offence might be banished between them. Unluckily, Toady Toddles was at hand when these overtures of peace reached the White House, to suggest further implacability, and point out the interested motives of this tardy act of submission. "They want you to stand godmother to the mantua-maker's brat, my dear Ma'am," said she. "They will be inviting you next to drink caudle, and serve it to you, perhaps,-he, he, he !—in thimbles! Excuse me, my dear friend; but I cannot bear to see you so imposed upon." And lo! the toady hardened Miss Lavinia's heart; and she returned back Captain Erskine's letter in a blank envelope. He never wrote again; not even when, at the end of his second year of marriage, he found himself father of a son. handy he contrived to make himself in the little household; superior to no office which it was a relief to his over-tasked wife to find taken off her hand. The elder of the Misses Prebbles, who had married a rich attorney, and several other ladies of the wealthier class of Apstonians, could not refrain from glancing, with an eye of envy, at the wife of one whose devotedness and serviceability transpired through some of those inexplicable cracks and fissures that betray the secrets of even the most domestic privacy. Any one of them would have exchanged her joyless luxury, to be waited on as Margaret was waited on,―to be loved as Margaret was loved. Erskine was fortunately of a mechanical turn; and the chances of his foreign campaigns had often compelled him to turn his abilities to account. Now, there was some pleasure in rendering them available. To promote the comfort of his wife and children, was a purpose worth working for; and often, when his neighbours were enjoying their summer pastimes, the hammer of his workshop might be heard, constructing furniture for his little nursery, or toys for its grateful inmates. Once or twice, when an old brother-officer visited him in his retreat, though civil enough to congratulate the half-pay Captain on the joys of his domestic life, and his good fortune in being able to do so much for its promotion, he quitted Apston full of secret compassion towards the man who had been compelled to exchange field-days for nursery cares, and the bustle of a garrison life for the drudgery of a cabinet-maker. For though the taste of the happy couple for botany was strong as ever, they had no leisure to indulge it. No summer rambles now in the green pastures of Bournefields,-no stooping after the myosotis, no poeticizing upon the reckless flight of the swallows. It was too far to drag the children, -too far to admit of leaving them behind during so long an absence; and Margaret had so much mending and making to get through for her darlings, (more mending, however, than making,) that even during the sultry summer weather, she was often forced to deny herself the enjoyment of fresh air. The old cress-woman at the cottage had been dead nearly a year, before the Erskines so much as heard a word about the matter. All this, however, Margaret assured her husband, was no privation to her. She had been accustomed from her early years to sit at home over her needlework. The natural habits of her life were seden wise accustomed, would not forego his usual exercise on her account. It gave her sufficient pleasure, she assured him, to know that he, at least, was enjoying the summer verdure of the woods, and freshness of their dear old Severn. And now, the struggles of the happy pair were beginning. For if scarcely able to support them-tary. All she desired was, that he who was otherselves at first on their small pittance, how were they to make it suffice for four, nay, for five, instead of two? For though Margaret was proud as ever to officiate in the most menial offices for the husband who had sacrificed so much for her sake, the services of a domestic were essential to the children while their mother was laid up. Yet, (as she sometimes said to Farmer Hobart's family, and others of her former customers who had never lost sight of her,) "Alexander was worth twenty nurses; so kind, so thoughtful, so attentive, so patient!" and it was really surprising, considering the former habits of the manly soldier, how And when, in compliance with her entreaties, he took his hat, and indulged himself with a stretch across the fields, then was the time for her most arduous industry. During his absence, she would set about a thousand miserable little tasks of reparation, which she knew it humiliated him to see her perform; and before he found his way home again, his workshop was cleaned out and set in order, or his wretched wardrobe refreshed by [ to found courage to refrain. Not that she was desome of those expedients of good housewifery barred by pride, or any sense of superiority to her usually devised and practised by a wife so good and thoughtful as to deserve better fortunes than necessitate their practice. Poor Erskine was sure, on his return, to find his house swept and garnished, and smiling faces awaiting him on the threshold. former condition; but she exulted too truly in bearing his name, not to recoil from the idea of degrading his children by the humiliation of their mother. Erskine's son was an object of worship in the eyes of poor Margaret. Such were their struggles; supported with all the fortitude of a strong affection: for there is no courage so great as that which has its roots in the heart of another. They never complained, either to themselves, each other, or the world; perhaps because aware that, in the world, nobody would have cared a jot for their complaining. On the contrary, when the scarlet fever was in their house, and Toady Toddles (whose brother had been called in by the parish apothecary) apprized Miss Lavinia that it was likely enough she might soon have to wear mourning for the plebeian wife of her cousin, the maiden lady observed, that "it would be a mercy if the disease were to carry off two or three of their half-starved children; but that not a shred of mourning should ever enter her house in behalf of anything akin to the quondam milliner of the Market Place." Sometimes, indeed-for the eye of affection is terribly discerning-he fancied he could perceive, amid all those cheering smiles and affectionate services, the trace of tears on the eyelids of his dear Margaret. But the conjecture did not inspire even a momentary fear that she loved him less than formerly, or was less happy in slaving for him and for her children. He guessed exactly the truth ;—that when he was not present to be grieved by the sight of her weeping, she no longer restrained her bitter consciousness of the alarming poverty threatening their little household, that her sickness would be fatal to their comfort, that his death would render her a widow indeed, that, little as they had to live upon,-for their childrens' sake, they must not, must not die! Nay, so fully did he understand the generous dispositions of his wife, that he fancied he could see Perhaps it might be her ill-will that prospered her, after reflections dispiriting as these, suddenly the poor babies; for they struggled through their brush away her tears,-resume her courage, in- fearful malady: and their poor parents thanked voke, for self-support, her duty as a mother, her Heaven on their knees as heartily for their presertenderness as a wife, then resume, with re-vation, as though the remainder of their little newed industry and cheerfulness, the trivial offices of life. But even poor Erskine, with all the closeness of his sympathy, could not so fully enter into the meditations of Margaret, as to overhear her reviling herself, as he might have done, for having withdrawn him from his prosperous career of professional duty, into that depth of adversity. "He was not born for all this!" she would falter, while holding one infant to her bosom, and with her foot rocking the cradle of an elder child; "he has the spirit of a prince; he was intended for a manly life; for all the pleasures and pursuits of a gentleman. How shall I ever forgive myself for having degraded him from his condition to this wretchedness?" lives were not to be labour and sorrow. But what parents think of such things, when smoothing the pillow of a convalescent child? They lived, which was enough for thankfulness. He who findeth meat for the young ravens, would provide sustenance for them hereafter. Nevertheless, when the claims collected by that heavy sickness came to be enforced,-when the severity of a hard winter added its pangs to the privations created by a summer of affliction,— when Margaret, who had often seen her husband silently deny himself the necessaries of life, found him sometimes compelled to withhold them from herself, in order that there might be enough for the children,—she turned aside her head in agony, that she might not be forced to look upon the ghastliness of his face. All her own little possessions she had long made away with ;-a few sets of richly-bound books, presents to her father from his favourite pupils,— a few articles of plate, family devisals to her mother. What remained to them was the property of poor Erskine-little enough, indeed—but cer Still, even after such heart-aching moments as these, she contrived to be cheerful when he came back to her, glowing from the fresh air of the country, and bringing hedge-flowers or fruit for the children, the produce of his walk: just as he described only the pleasures and incidents of his expedition, without adverting to the heaviness of spirit which had prevented him from really enjoy-tain trinkets and trifles of family inheritance, ing the elasticity of the atmosphere, or the cheering influence of the summer sun. They hoarded their griefs from each other, as though the only possessions they had not generosity enough to share in common. Sometimes, when some sharper necessity than usual brought the frightfulness of poverty to stare them in the face, Margaret was on the brink of asking her husband's permission to return to her old vocation. She might serve him better, she thought, by working on hire for strangers, than by working for him and his. Still, she had hither with which it would have been painful to him to part. But she saw that the time was coming when these must go. They had no debts; but between the present and the day for the quarterly payment of his miserable half-pay-(the Golconda of their starvation)—there must come a moment for them to have recourse to a credit hard to obtain in circumstances such as theirs; or the sacred treasures connected with the memory of the dead must be defiled. Yet from the half-warmed, half-fed, half-furnished house in which these grievous considera. tions were perpetually agitated, was visible the "And no great loss either;" cried Miss Toddles, 'There is a fifth coming, I'm told!” added one of the tabby chorus. "Much good may it do the workhouse; for to that they must all come." "No such thing!" retorted the malignant old cousin. "There is an alternative. Captain Erskine, who has long forfeited all claims to the name and appearance of gentleman, has sold his sword, I am told, and will doubtless soon mortgage his half-pay. Still, there is a resource for the family. The schoolmaster's daughter may set up shop again, and take in dressmaking; that is, if people can be found rash enough to trust her with their materials." Soon afterwards, the gossip of Apston announced the birth of the fifth sharer of the scanty sustenance of the Erskines; and the fact that, for want of proper assistance, the mother of that helpless little family had nearly lost her life. Under this trying circumstance, no one was surprised at the pertinacity with which the poor family kept the house. For weeks, they were neither seen nor heard of; and as they could not all have been translated at once to a higher sphere, curiosity began to be excited concerning the origin of their seclusion. If Captain Erskine were put in prison, it must be for some old debt elsewhere, for he owed not a guinea at Apston: and if such a catastrophe had occurred, the news would certainly have transpired in the town. "Something out of the common must have happened to those Erskines," observed Mrs. Latitat, the former Miss Prebbles, one evening, over a pool of commerce at the White House, which purported to enliven the party. "As I passed their pigeonhole of a house, this afternoon, I observed all the window-shutters closed." "I could have told you as much yesterday," added one of her sisters," had I considered such people worth speaking of." "I should think one of the family must be dead," added Mrs. Latitat. "Likely enough; as they have nothing to live upon;" interposed Miss Lavinia, who had just accepted a life of grace, and was again dealing. "Why, bless my soul!" exclaimed old Mrs. Mumbleton, (whose vicarage gates commanded a view of the Erskines' habitation,) "is it possible that you are none of you aware of what has occurred to them? (Miss Toddles, my dear Ma'am, I'll trouble you to pass me that ten of Clubs.) I promise you, ladies, you have seen the last of them." Even above the confusion of the game, however, rose the shrill interrogations of their hostess. "Where were the Erskines gone? When did they go; and why? What could possibly have become of them; and who had afforded them the means of departure?" All Mrs. Mumbleton had to unfold, in reply, was, that a cart had carried away their household goods to the London wagon; and that the London coach had conveyed away themselves and children. They had paid their rent to the last shilling; given up their house to the landlord,—taken leave of no one in that old familiar place which had been to them crueler and more hard-hearted than a land of strangers. But beyond these facts, which were self-evident, the vicar's lady had nothing to tell ; nor could subsequent inquiry, throughout all Apston, obtain a syllable more. One thing alone was clear to Miss Lavinia : whatever further mischance might happen to her poor relations, she should be denied the pleasure of witnessing. They had escaped her. And like some tyrant, whose victim evades a public execution by dying in prison, she could scarcely refrain from arraigning Providence for having robbed her of her prey. But the explanations denied to Captain Erskine's obdurate kinswoman, need not be withheld from the reader; who, if kind enough to have afforded a trifle of sympathy to his woes, deserves to be informed that, about six weeks after the birth of the little boy who had nearly cost so dear to his family, poor Erskine received one day a letter by the London post, nearly as startling as the one which had formerly staggered him from the Horse Guards; with the additional disadvantage, that the present missive, not being On His Majesty's Service, had to be paid for in hard silver to the postman. The letter, which was from an old brother officer, ran as follows: "With every disposition, my dear Erskine, to make excuses for the preoccupations of a family man, I must say I take it rather unkind, aware as you are of my permanent address in town, never to give me a syllable of tidings of your welfare. How, in the name of all that is mysterious, was I to find out that you were settled at Apston? I fancied you gone out to Prince Edward's Island, where I thought some remnants of your family must still abide; and addressed letters to you there, which were duly returned to me by the Post-office. For you cannot suppose me to have forgotten the extent of my obligations towards you, or indifferent to the welfare of the man who saved my life in the Peninsula, by a display of gallantry which deserved to have been exercised in behalf of a less unworthy object. Be that as it may, my family, with becoming partiality, do not consider it thrown away; and have long felt to- | crushed under its wheels, call Government. The wards you an esteem which, I must say, you have old gentleman has considerable patronage in his taken most ungracious pains to deny them the own department, and considerable influence in pleasure of expressing. the departments of his colleagues; and I feel, of course, that I am doing him a double favour, by enabling him to discharge, in some small degree, the debt of gratitude of his scape-grace son, and to procure for his Majesty's Civil Service, a servant whom his Majesty's military service so cavalierly dispensed with. "However, (laud we the caprices of the blind goddess!) a few months ago, I happened to be staying in a country-house with an old fogrum, whose stupidity I thought unpardonable, considering he bore the same name with my Talavera preserver. On cross-questioning Sir John Erskine, I found that he had the honour to be your uncle; and that you, whom I sometimes feared had been "catawampously chawed up" by the Yankees, were married, and quietly settled as the father of a family at Apston in Shropshire. I scarcely knew whether to be glad or indignant, at finding you still alive. I suppose, however, I must have been a little pleased for, the first leisure moment I could command, I hastened down to your retreat, hoping to find you surrounded with the domestic happiness and comfort which no man more richly deserves. 66 And so, my dear Erskine, even let Somerset House atone for the wrongs of the Horse-Guards. The appointment (of which the enclosed letter from my father's secretary more exactly explains the nature) conveys with it a comfortable residence, and a salary of nearly £500 per annum. By accepting it, you will confer a favour on my whole family. By allowing me to meet the difficulties of your removal from Shropshire by becoming your banker for your first quarter's salary, a further obligation on myself. Do not be at the trouble of writing me a long letter of thanks. We shall meet shortly; when I hope to "Alas! my dear Erskine, on my arrival at Apston, your poor wife was at the point of death; and while waiting a day or two at the inn, trust-disclose in person to Mrs. Erskine all the pleasure ing her recovery might justify my presenting myself again at your door, I heard from vulgar report enough of your family affairs, to be satisfied that Fortune had treated you less liberally than would have done her credit. My visit could only be a troublesome intrusion. "In short, my dear fellow, (for to this conclusion must we come at last,) I have ever since been cudgelling my brains to discover some way in which to better your condition, without compromising those honourable feelings of a gentleman, with which you were always so eminently endowed. My father, I need not tell you, forms part of the great lumbering car of Juggernaut, which we devotees, who allow ourselves to be I heard expressed by humble well-wishers of hers, "POWDERHAM HOUSE, PICCADILLY, (To be continued.) "BALTIMORE. LORD JEFFREY'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE EDINBURGH REVIEW.* AMONG the extraordinary pranks ever playing | had but a slender control over his greater Baronsby the Old Juggler Time, none can seem more diverting to those whose literary memories reach back for thirty years, than to see the great Aristarch of the North, the incarnate WE of the once all-powerful Edinburgh Review, an abdicated monarch; stripped of every attribute of supremacy, and laid on the dissecting table of the modern critics, much in the same condition as any other fallible penman. It required some courage, and great magnanimity in Lord Jeffrey to submit to the ordeal of publication; virtually to plead before that tribunal of which he was once the Supreme Judge, and tacitly to submit to the award of those to whom it might now be a malicious satisfaction To make the cruel feel the pangs they give. On this score, we imagine, however, that the author of these Contributions had little to appre hend. The eminent services which he and his band of brothers, but more especially himself, have rendered to literature and science; and " in familiarizing the public mind with higher speculations, and sounder and larger views of the great objects of human pursuit than had ever before been brought effectually home to their apprehensions, and also in permanently raising the standard, and increasing the influence of all such occasional writings," can never either be forgotten, nor lightly valued. As an immense improvement upon every thing of the same sort that had been previously known or contemplated, either in this country or in continental Europe, it is, indeed, impossible to rate the character and influence of The Edinburgh Review too highly. Its appearance, as soon as it had surmounted the blunders and crudities of extreme and presumptuous youth, constituted a new and brighter era in periodical literature. Literature was, for the moment, eclipsed by its own creature, criticism. And for this we are persuaded that the world is mainly indebted to Mr. Jeffrey; who from the first bestowed a large share of his time and attention in working out the original happy idea of Mr. Sydney Smith with singular ability and sagacity; and an aptitude for the delicate office, which we think could not have been found in any other of his associates, however great their intellectual powers. With the single exception of Mr. Horner, we cannot indeed conceive of any one of Jeffrey's colleagues that could have been trained to fulfil the onerous duties of conducting this great organ of literature and opinion, and of forming the cement and animating spirit of the confraternity. And it is but too probable, that though Mr. Horner's temper could have stood all the trials and assaults made upon it, his animal spirits must have failed. Lord Jeffrey intimates his early difficulties when he says, in explaining a particular circumstance, "I was but a Feudal monarch; who * Contributions to The Edinburgh Review, By Francis Jeffrey, now one of the Judges of the Court of Session in Scotland. In 4 volumes, octavo, London: Longman & Co. and really could not prevent them from occasionally waging a little private war, upon griefs or resentments of their own." He had also the difficulties to contend against which beset every party organ that affects anything like independence, and aspires to influence opinion and action beyond the limits of its party. Whatever difference of opinion may exist as to the justice or propriety of" the high place" which The Review at once assumed, as if of right, over literature and politics, it is certain that the boldness of the course succeeded for a very great length of time. Trembling and cowed, authors appeared at the critical tribunal, not as of yore, to have their smaller faults civilly pointed out and gently censured, but to be schooled in the principles of their own art by their master, the reviewer; who, with the most natural air in virtue of his office, understood the principles of the world, and quite as a matter of course, or in poetry better than all the poets, and of fiction better than all the fictionists; who was, in short, the Pope of literature and science, throned on the seven hills of Philosophy, Politics, History, Physics and Metaphysics, Poetry and Romance. "The Edinburgh Review," says Lord Jeffrey, "aimed high from the beginning." It aimed high, indeed; at no less than the establishment of a literary despotsible to succeed. But wherever its aims were just, ism in Europe: in which it was fortunately imposit succeeded abundantly; and, unable to misdirect or impede the course of original genius, or long to mislead the public taste, the habits of literary discussion, and of mental activity to which it stimulated millions of minds, again reacting on tens of millions, must have produced vast and salutary effects upon society. We do not observe that Lord Jeffrey offers any apology for what some will regard as the cardinal vice of The Review, namely, the cool assumption of the critic's superiority to the author, whoever he might be: Byron, Scott, Southey, Wordsthe master-policy. To have given up this, would worth, it was all the same. This was, indeed, have been to descend to the level of ordinary Journalists; and it must be confessed, that, in many instances, this claim was sustained with great ability, and not unfrequently established, by views of important questions more original and profound than any to be met with in the work professing to discuss them. Neither for the smaller airs of petulant assumption, or of a gracious condescension not over graceful, which the Review occasionally exhibited, do we see any apology offered; yet blemishes of this petty sort were, we apprehend, among the most irritating of the juvenile delinquencies of the Oracle of the Northern Literary Confederacy; who sometimes gave more offence by the arrogant manner of dealing out counsel, advice, and praise, than censure could have provoked. It is but a shabby apology, and one which, we are sure, Lord Jeffrey would disdain to use, that the worst faults of The Edinburgh Re |