is every body's Aunt. Martha-and a very charming Aunt Martha she is.

First of all, she is, as all women should be if they can, remarkably handsome. She may be-it is a de licate matter to speak of a lady's age!-she must be five-and-forty; but few beauties of twenty could stand a comparison with her loveliness. It is such a fulness of bloom, so luxuriant, so satiating; just tall enough to carry off the plumpness which at forty-five is so becoming; a brilliant. complexion; curled pouting lips! long, clear, bright grey eyes-the colour for expression, that which unites the quickness of the black with the softness of the blue; a Roman regularity of feature; and a profusion of rich brown hair.-Such is Aunt Martha. Add to this a very gentle and pleasant speech, always kind, and generally lively; the sweetest temper; the easiest manners; a singular rectitude and singleness of mind; a perfect open-heartedness; and a total unconsciousness of all these charms; and you will wonder a little that she is Aunt Martha still. I have heard hints of an early engagement broken by the fickleness of man ;—and there is about her an aversion to love in one particular direction-the love matrimonial-and an overflowing of affection in all other channels, that it seems as if the natural course of the stream had been violently dammed up. She has many lovers -admirers I should say, for

there is, amidst her

good-humoured gaiety, a coyness that forbids their going farther; a modesty almost amounting to shyness, that checks even the laughing girls, who sometimes accuse her of stealing away their beaux. I do not think any man on earth could tempt her into wedlock; it would be a most unpardonable monopoly if any one should; an intolerable engrossing of a general blessing; a theft from the whole community...

Her usual home is the white house covered with roses; and her station in the family is rather doubtful. She is not the mistress, for her charming nieces are oldenough to take and to adorn the head of the table; nor the housekeeper, though, as she is the only lady of the establishment who wears pockets, those ensigns of aùthority, the keys will sometimes be found, with other strays, in that goodly receptacle: nor a guest; her spirit is too active for that lazy post; her real vocation there, and every where, seems to be comforting, cheering, welcoming, and spoiling every thing that comes in her way; and, above all, nursing and taking care. Of all kind employments, these are her favourites. Oh the shawlings, the cloakings, the cloggings! the cautions against cold, or heat, or rain, or sun! the remedies for diseases not arrived! colds uncaught! incipient tooth-aches! rheumatisms to come! She loves nursing so well, that we used to accuse her of inventing maladies for other people, that she might have the pleasure

so attended.

of curing them; and when they really come-as come they will sometimes in spite of Aunt Martha-what a nurse she is! It is worth while to be a little sick to be All the cousins, and cousins' cousins of her connection, as regularly send for her on the occasion of a lying-in, as for the midwife. I suppose she has undergone the ceremony of dandling the baby, sitting up with the new mamma, and dispensing the caudle, twenty times at least. She is equally important at weddings or funerals. Her humanity is inexhaustible. She has an intense feeling of fellowship with her kind, and grieves or rejoices in the sufferings or happiness of others with a reality as genuine as it is rare.

Her accomplishments are exactly of this sympathetic order; all calculated to administer much to the pleasure of her companions, and nothing to her own importance or vanity. She leaves to the sirens, her nieces, the higher enchantments of the piano, the harp, and the guitar, and that noblest of instruments, the human voice; ambitious of no other musical fame than such as belongs to the playing of quadrilles and waltzes for their little dances, in which she is indefatigable: she neither caricatures the face of man nor of nature under pretence of drawing figures or landscapes; but she ornaments the reticules, bell-ropes, ottomans, and chair-covers of all her acquaintance, with flowers as rich and luxuriant as her own beauty. She draws patterns for the igno

rant, and works flounces, frills, and baby-linen, for the idle; she reads, aloud to the sick, plays at cards with the old, and loses at chess to the unhappy. Her gift in gossiping, too, is extraordinary; she is a gentle newsmonger, and turns her scandal on the sunny side. But she is an old maid still; and certain small peculiarities hang about her. She is a thorough hoarder ; whatever fashion comes up, she is sure to have some thing of the sort by her or, at least, something thereunto convertible. She is a little superstitious; sees strangers in her tea-cup, gifts in her finger-nails, letters and winding-sheets in the candle, and purses and coffins in the fire; would not spill the salt "for all the worlds that one ever has to give ;" and looks with dismay on a crossed knife and fork. Moreover, she is orderly to fidgetiness;-that is her greatest calamity! -for young ladies now-a-days are not quite so tidy as they should be, and ladies' maids are much worse; and drawers are tumbled, and drawing-rooms in a litter. Happy she to whom a disarranged drawer can be a misery! Dear and happy Aunt Martha !

WALKS IN THE COUNTRY.

3

THE VISIT.

OCTOBER 27th.-A lovely autumnal day; the air soft, balmy, genial; the sky of that softened and delicate blue upon which the eye loves to rest, the blue which gives such relief to the rich beauty of the earth, all around glowing in the ripe and mellow tints of the most gorgeous of the seasons. Really such an autumn may well compensate our English climate for the fine spring of the south, that spring of which the poets talk, but which we so seldom enjoy. Such an autumn glows upon us like a splendid evening; it is the very sunset of the year; and I have been tempted forth into a wider range of enjoyment than usual. This walk (if I may use the Irish figure of speech called a bull) will be a ride. A very dear friend has beguiled me into ac companying her in her pretty equipage to her beautiful home, four miles off; and having sent forward in the