MODERN ANTIQUES.

EARLY in the present century there lived in the ancient town of B. two complete and remarkable specimens of the ladies of eighty years ago-ladies cased inwardly and outwardly in Addison and whalebone. How they had been preserved in this entireness, amidst the collision and ridicule of a country town, seemed as puzzling a question as the preservation of bees in amber, or mummies in pyramids, or any other riddle that serves to amuse the naturalist or the antiquarian. But so it

was. They were old maids and sisters, and so alike in their difference from all other women, that they may be best described together; any little non-resemblance may be noted afterwards; it was no more than nature, prodigal of variety, would make in two leaves from the same oak-tree.

Both, then, were as short as women well could be without being entitled to the name of dwarf, or carried about to fairs for a show ;-both were made considerably shorter by the highest of all high heels, and the

tallest of all tall caps, each of which artificial elevations was as ostentatiously conspicuous as the legs and cover of a pipkin, and served equally to add to the squatness of the real machine; both were lean, wrinkled, withered, and old; both enveloped their aged persons in the richest silks, displayed over large hoops, and stays the tightest and stiffest that ever pinched in a beauty of George the Second's reign. The gown was of that make formerly, I believe, called a sacque, and of a pattern so enormous, that one flower, with its stalk and leaves, would nearly cover the three quarters of a yard in length, of which the tail might, at a moderate computation, consist. Over this they wore a gorgeously figured apron, whose flourishing white embroidery vied in size with the plants on the robe; a snowy muslin neckerchief, rigidly pinned down; and over that a black lace tippet of the same shape, parting at the middle, to display a gay breast-knot. The riband of which this last decoration was composed was generally the same which adorned the towering lappeted cap, a sort of poppy colour, which they called Pompadour. The sleeves were cut off below the elbows with triple ruffles of portentous length. Brown leather mittens, with peaks turned back, and lined with blue satin, and a variety of tall rings in an odd, out-of-fashion variety of enamelling, and figures of hair,

completed the decoration of their hands and arms. The carriage of these useful members was at least equally singular; they had adapted themselves in a remarkable manner to the little taper wasp-like point in which the waist ended, to which the elbows, ruffles and all, adhered as closely as if they had been glued, whilst the ringed and mittened hands, when not employed in knitting, were crossed saltier-wise, in front of the apron, The other termination of their figure was adorned with black stuff shoes, very peaked, with points upwards, and massive silver buckles. Their walking costume was, in winter, a black silk cloak, lined with rabbit-skins, with holes for the arms; in summer, another tippet and a calash,-no bonnet could hold the turreted cap. Their motion out of doors was indescribable; it most nearly resembled sailing. They seemed influenced by the wind in a way incidental to no moving thing, except a ship or a shuttlecock; and, indeed, one boisterous blowing night, about the equinox, when standing on some high stone steps, waiting for a carriage to take her home from a party, the wind did catch one of them, and, but for the intervention of a tall footman, who seized her as one would seize a flyaway umbrella, and held her down by main force, the poor little lady would have been carried up like an airballoon. Her feelings must have been pretty much si

milar to those of Gulliver in Brobdignag, when flown away with by the eagle. Half a minute later, and she

was gone.

The chief va

So far they were exact counterparts. riation lay in the face. Amidst the general hue of age and wrinkles, you could just distinguish that Mrs. Theodosia had been brown, and Mrs. Frances fair. There was a yellow shine here and there amongst the white hairs, curiously rolled over a cushion high above the forehead, that told of Fanny's golden locks; whilst the purely grey rouleau of Mrs. Theodosia showed its mixture of black and white still plainer. Mrs. Frances, too, had the blue eye, with a laughing light, which so often retains its flash to extreme age; whilst Mrs. Theodosia's orbs, bright no longer, had once been hazel. Mrs. Theodosia's aquiline nose, and long sociable chin, evinced that disposition to meet which is commonly known by the name of a pair of nut-crackers; Mrs. Frances' features, on the other hand, were rather terse and sharp. Still there was, in spite of these material differences, that look of kindred, that inexplicable and indefinable family likeness, which is so frequently found in sisters; greatly increased in the present case by a similarity in the voice that was quite startling. Both tongues were quick and clear, and high and rattling, to a degree that seemed rather to belong to machinery than to human articulation; and

when welcomes and how-d'ye-dos were pouring both at once on either side, a stranger was apt to gaze in ludicrous perplexity, as if beset by a ventriloquist, or haunted by strange echoes. When the immediate cackle subsided, they were easily distinguished. Mrs. Theodosia was good, and kind, and hospitable, and social; Mrs. Frances was all that, and was besides shrewd, and clever, and literary, to a degree not very common in her day, though not approaching to the pitch of a blue-stocking lady of the present. Accident was partly the cause of this unusual love of letters. They had known Richardson; had been admitted amongst his flower-garden of young ladies; and still talked familiarly of Miss Highmore, Miss Fielding, Miss Collier, and Miss Mulso, they had never learned to call her Mrs. Chapone. Latterly the taste had been renewed and quickened, by their having the honour of a distant relationship to one of the most amiable and unfortunate of modern poets. So Mrs. Frances studied novels and poetry, in addition to her sister's sermons and cookery-books; though (as she used to boast) without doing a stitch the less of knitting, or playing a pool the fewer in the course of the year. Their usual occupations were those of other useful old ladies; superintending the endowed girls' school of the town with a vigilance and a jealousy of abuses that might have done honour to Mr. Hume; taking an active part in the