in this week's Saturday, or the flaying alive of Robinson in the Bondstreet Backbiter;-in a word, his "shop" never became wearisome to Charlotte. She listened always with a like rapture and sympathy; she worshipped his favourites of Bookland; she welcomed his friends and fellow-workers with unvarying sweetness; she devised and superintended the fitting-up of a smoking-room that was perfectly paradisaical, a glimpse of the Alhambra in miniature; and that obnoxious dish, the cold shoulder, was never served in Mr. Hawkehurst's dwelling. So sweet a wife, so pleasant a home, popularised the institution of matrimony among the young writer's bachelor friends; and that much-abused and cruelly-maligned member of the human race, the mother-in-law, was almost rehabilitated by Mrs. Sheldon's easy good-nature and evident regard for the interests of her daughter's husband.

And after all the groping among dryasdust records of a bygone century, after all the patient following of those faint traces on the sands of time left by the feet of Matthew Haygarth, this was Charlotte's Inheritance, a heart whose innocence and affection made home a kind of earthly paradise, and gave to life's commonest things a charm that all the gold ever found in California could not have imparted to them. This was Charlotte's Inheritance, the tender, unselfish nature of the Haygarths and the Hallidays; and thus dowered, her husband would not have exchanged her for the wealthiest heiress whose marriage was ever chronicled in Court Circular or Court Journal.

COUNTRY-HOUSE LIFE

FOR the real "working man"-the over-taxed being who slaves all the year round with brain and will and wits, and whose fingers ceaselessly go over the measured distance, doing in their fashion their thousand miles in a thousand half-hours-the country-house visit is the true Convalescent's Home; that is, if he be no mere mole, whose heart is in his miserable drudgery, and who thinks life to be all forms and schedules and abstracts.

But for one with heart and blood, and a keen sense of enjoyment, there is nothing more inspiring than when office-cares and what-not have been shuffled off-not in the common fatal phrase usually applied to actors, but temporarily, say for a week-when the cab waits below, when word is brought up that everything is "on," the last cloak, bag, gun, is "in," and you go gaily down, step in as gaily, and give the word cheerily, "Charing-cross!" or "Great Northern!"-you are starting for a country-house.

You are going home from school-a rather big schoolboy; but somehow it brings back that notion. Someone has called-"the man" that was here the day before yesterday-with a-thing that he wants to be paid. (How importunate tradesmen are growing!) He is to be here the first thing in the morning; say at nine o'clock, so as to be sure of you.

Yet this rather whets the pleasure; and driving to your Charingcross or Great Northern, you rather enjoy the notion of his blank face when he is told that you are "gone to Nupton"-to the country, and have left no information as to date of return.

There is no sensation more agreeable than, after a pleasant travel of an hour, to find your train slackening speed as it draws up to Staghurst, the Nupton Station, on a soft and charming afternoon. Everything is very green and pastoral about Staghurst - the hamlet, smoke curling, and the rest; and I, the only passenger alighting, see Nupton's light open wagonette and pair, and Nupton's coachman waiting in a pastoral dreamy way. All seems innocence and tranquillity, even to the porter who takes the portmanteau, lying abandoned far up on the platform, and puts it with deep respect into the Nupton wagonette.

An establishment of the class of Nupton has great charms, conducted in the palace and great-house style, and yet with a friendly and hospitable and even unceremonious fashion. A fine house or semicastle, newly built and decorated, five or six riding-horses, three or four

carriages, luxurious shooting, fishing, and hunting, two billiard-tables, and a groom of the chambers,-this is the way they do things at Nupton. They say he is outrunning his income (a more rustic class talk of outrunning the constable); but that does not concern us his guests, who at such houses are the most hollow of worldlings; as, indeed, is Nupton himself, and his wife, who merrily "order" guests to fill their house at the correct festival time, as they order Jupp and Holland to send them down buhl cabinets and mirrors. But while it lasts, it is, and will be, very delightful; for it is like going to a theatre, or passing into some false existence for a term: everything being conceived in this spirit and mapped-out by Nupton for this short period of magnificence -extra servants, state liveries, and De Veau-piqué the great cook, who wrote the English Cuisinier, and who has been chartered for ten days only; after which the lamps will be put out, and everybody (guests also) dismissed.

It is very pleasant the driving up to Nupton-noble demesne and park spreading out charmingly, and giving a nobleman-like air-and gazing on Nupton wood and water and deer and ancestral oaks and elms. The connection of Nupton's ancestors, by the way, is by no means assured, for it is well known that it was Nupton's father's money-however, this is ungracious.

Again, the look of the house, which has a tranquil populated airlights twinkling up and down: for it is dressing-time at places like Nupton. A discreet man will always arrive just at dressing-time; the foolish man will take care to come between two and three. With what result? What might have been a whet becomes a drug. He is cast upon the hostess; for he knows no one. Everyone is away shooting or riding; a balance of ladies is left; and before the end of those weary hours the bloom is off the rye-he is stale and stupid. Compare the discreet man, who comes dashing up just as the dinner-gong is sounding. "Dear me, I am afraid I am so late." "Jest in time, sir," says the solemn groom of the chambers; "fust gung only jest rung." The discreet man is into his finery in a moment, and comes down into the crowded room-the new guest. There is a gentle curiosity-he is a mild sensation-it is a novelty. At dinner he is a sort of tonic, for he has the latest town news; and if he be very discreet, he will have come furnished with a little report, rather startling, which may or may not be true. Faces look down from the ends of the table to the interesting stranger who is chattering volubly, relating his adventures. Nupton is pleased with his guest, who is thus doing him credit. But this lasts but for a night, or at most until breakfast, when the envious habitués combine and assert their strength.

Breakfast at the state country-house is always a pleasant starting point. Everyone is fresh. Old Mr. Thompson, our member, over at the side-table cutting up grouse, tells how he has been over at the farm, on a walk. Young Dalton and the son of the house

have been out riding. A pensive lady-"young lady" she claims to be called-was in the garden gathering flowers," and saw Mr. Dalton and his friend ride out." They did not see her. General clatter and chatter. It is wonderful how people eat at these places. Through the din Nupton, who himself enjoys nothing except his state, is settling about the dogs. "I have told Blundell, my head keeper, to be in waiting after breakfast - so you can see him, Philips. I would recommend the new plantation, which has not had a gun fired into it since Lord Tumbletowers was here last year. However, that's all for yourselves." Philips is the selfish campaigner of the party, but of good family, and has "knocked about" a good deal. "Then you will lend me your breech-loader, Nupton," says Philips coolly. "I can't shoot with the thing they gave me yesterday. I told your fellow he ought not to have such a piece-it's a discredit to the house." This is a public rebuke to Nupton, whose muskets and gun-room keeper cost him a fortune. But Philips is "a cool hand."

Pleasant after breakfast the council on the terrace or steps, when cigars are lit, and the "fellows" are going back and forward to and from their rooms, getting ready. Then comes the gun-room and the keeper, and the strange men,-reduced peasants, it would seem, spendthrifts in labour,-and who are practically serfs on Nupton's land. His keeper is their slavedriver. There is always one of the type of Philips to take possession of the keeper and make him his own, or rather one whom the keeper accepts as the can-ning man, the king of the party. No men have the power of contempt, or sarcasm even, in their bearing, to the degree keepers have. They have an undefined manner of respectful depreciation, exerted on certain members of the party, which has always been my admiration and envy. Disguise with them is useless. They pierce through the clumsy but elaborate disguises of straps, breech-loaders, pouches, &c., and expose incompetence in all its nakedness. With them an honest and avowed ignorance is the more respectable.

Nothing is more fresh or inspiring than this going forth of a fresh clear morning, with the ground crackling under foot and the air sharp and stimulating. The lines of the branches are edged with little films of frost, and the great fields and the plantations, and the little hills, and Nupton's own house and park, look charming; and we envy Nupton his acres and happiness, not suspecting that Nupton is at that moment in his study shut up with his agent, with a wistful careworn face, plotting some scheme by which they shall raise money to meet the heavy interest now overdue. None of us suspect this; and we walk on, in our cheerful procession, a dozen strong, with the retainers bringing up the rear, and the keeper's two terriers, themselves wiry and frosty, and with coats that seem made of cocoa-nut fibre, and who enjoy the prospect of the day's sport as much as we do.

We go out through many swinging gates, through the farm at the

back, leap across frozen brooks, and at last draw near to the mysterious plantation, which has been held sacred since last year. Nupton will tell us at dinner what the fattening of that cover cost him; how something "got among the birds," and how he thought it better to get a whole lot from Lord Sowberry's keeper. He had to pay men at night to watch. "Altogether, I suppose," says Nupton at dinner, who has a habit of swinging his censer in his own face, "every bird you shot to-day has cost me about a sovereign a-piece."

At this little gate of the plantation we halt mysteriously, like a storming party, which indeed we are, and scarcely whisper, while our chief posts us. Two or three go round to the right and left, while we wait at the gate. Then the signal is given, and we all enter together in a long line. The unhappy birds, hitherto nursed in the lap of luxury, and actually feeding on some of the courses that Nupton has provided for them-at lunch it may be-or at a late break fast-little dream of the murderers who are stealing on them. Already a flutter and flapping, with a kind of screech-a fatal "bang" far away to the right, and Philips has drawn first blood, and is reloading. We wait for him, and then move on; henceforward it is all flap, whirr, start, and bang. At every pace some fine heavy creature rises slowly; nay, we can see him walking, strutting among the bushes, alarmed and suspicious, yet afraid to rise. It does indeed seem murderous, when the rich black creature comes heavily down, and plunges and flaps on the ground, while the fine glittering black eye rolls red, burning reproach at its slayer. With pheasants it does have more the air of slaughter than with the smaller birds.

It is marvellous what risks, as we move forward in skirmishing order, are invisible to each other. There are some fledglings among us-human I mean-whose every motion with their firearms appals. The sound of the shot rattling too near among the trees and branches a little in front speaks of an escape rather too imminent; but instead of gratitude and thankfulness, there is angry and heated expostulation. One of these raw hands kills some wretches scarcely a perch from him, and the unholy slayer becomes jubilant and excited, blazing away to this side and that, regardless of human life. The same special Providence that is said to take care of the drunken must surely look after these reckless shooters, or rather their possible victims.

An hour past noon; the sun shines out, and we halt at some farm house for lunch. The sandwiches come out, the flask. At most great houses-at Nupton's of course-this is all done en grande, and there is a special boy sent on loaded with a heavy basket containing knives and forks-even table-linen-bottles, and all the appareil of a formal lunch. (If he thought there was warrant for it, Nupton would send down a couple of his footmen to wait and stand behind the banks or trunks of trees.) Far better, and more unconstrained, the little paper packet of sandwiches and the flask, aided by the hospitality of the