tility? Thou wert first in my morning eyes; and of nights hast detained my steps from bedward, till it was but a step from gazing at thee to dreaming on thee.

This is the only true gentry by adoption; the veritable change of blood, and not, as empirics have fabled, by transfusion.

Who it was by dying that had earned the splendid trophy, I know not, I inquired not; but its fading rags, and colors cobweb-stained, told that its subject was of two centuries back.

And what if my ancestor at that date was some Damotas,-feeding flocks-not his own, upon the hills of Lincoln,—did I in less earnest vindicate to myself the family trappings of this once proud Ægon? repaying by a backward triumph, the insults he might possibly have heaped in his lifetime upon my poor pastoral progenitor.

If it were presumption so to speculate, the present owners of the mansion had least reason to complain. They had long forsaken the old house of their fathers for a newer trifle; and I was left to appropriate to myself what images I could pick up, to raise my fancy, or to soothe my vanity.

I was the true descendant of those old W―s; and not the present family of that name, who had fled the old waste places.

Mine was that gallery of good old family portraits, which as I have gone over, giving them in fancy my own family name, one-and then another-would seem to

smile, reaching forward from the canvas, to recognize the new relationship; while the rest looked grave, as it seemed, at the vacancy in their dwelling, and thoughts of fled posterity.

That Beauty with the cool blue pastoral drapery, and a lamb that hung next the great bay window-with the bright yellow H—shire hair, and eye of watchet hueso like my Alice !-I am persuaded she was a true Elia,— Mildred Elia, I take it.

Mine, too, BLAKESMOOR, was thy noble Marble Hall with its mosaic pavements, and its Twelve Cæsars,stately busts in marble,-ranged round; of whose countenances, young reader of faces as I was, the frowning beauty of Nero, I remember, had most of my wonder; but the mild Galba had my love. There they stood in the coldness of death, yet freshness of immortality.

Mine, too, thy lofty Justice Hall, with its one chair of authority, high-backed and wickered, once the terror of luckless poacher, or self-forgetful maiden-so common since, that bats have roosted in it.

Mine, too,-whose else?-thy costly fruit-garden, with its sun-baked southern wall; the ampler pleasure garden, rising backwards from the house in triple terraces, with flower-pots now of palest lead, save that a speck here and there, saved from the elements, bespake their pristine state to have been gilt and glittering; the verdant quarters backwarder still; and, stretching still beyond, in old formality, thy firry wilderness, the haunt of the squirrel,

and the day-long murmuring wood-pigeon, with that antique image in the centre, God or Goddess I wist not; but child of Athens or old Rome paid never a sincerer worship to Pan or to Sylvanus in their native groves, than I to that fragmental mystery.

Was it for this, that I kissed my childish hands too fervently in your idol-worship, walks and windings of BLAKESMOOR! for this, or what sin of mine, has the plough passed over your pleasant places? I sometimes think that as men, when they die, do not die all, so of their extinguished habitations, there may be a hope-a germ to be revivified.

POOR RELATIONS.

A POOR Relation-is the most irrelevant thing in nature, a piece of impertinent correspondency,—an odious approximation,—a haunting conscience, a preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noontide of our prosperity, an unwelcome remembrancer,--a perpetually recurring mortification,-a drain on your purse, a more intolerable dun upon your pride,-a drawback upon success, -a rebuke to your rising, a stain in your blood,— a blot on your 'scutcheon,-a rent in your garment,—a death's head at your banquet,-Agathocles's pot,—a Mordecai in your gate, a Lazarus at your door,—a lion in your path,—a frog in your chamber,-a fly in your ointment, a mote in your eye,-a triumph to your enemy,

an apology to your friends,-the one thing not needful, -the hail in harvest,-the ounce of sour in a pound of

sweet.

He is known by his knock. Your heart telleth you "That is Mr. -." A rap, between familiarity and respect; that demands, and at the same time seems to despair of, entertainment. He entereth smiling andembarrassed. He holdeth out his hand to you to shake, and-draweth it back again. He casually looketh in about dinner-time-when the table is full. He offereth to go away, seeing you have company,-but is induced to stay. He filleth a chair, and your visitor's two children are accommodated at a side table. He never cometh upon open days, when your wife says with some complacency, "My dear, perhaps Mr. will drop in to-day." He remembereth birthdays,—and professeth he is fortunate to have stumbled upon one. He declareth against fish, the turbot being small-yet suffereth himself to be importuned into a slice, against his first resolution. He sticketh by the port,-yet will he be prevailed upon to empty the remainder glass of claret, if a stranger press it upon him. He is a puzzle to the servants, who are fearful of being too obsequious, or not civil enough, to him. The guests think "they have seen him before." Every one speculateth upon his condition; and the most part take him to be-a tide-waiter. He calleth you by your Christian name, to imply that his other is the same with your own. He is too familiar by half, yet you wish