"And pray, of what family?"

66

Why I can hardly tell it, the word is so hard, but it is something about sacks and ice, as they tell me, and they say the princess, my lady, was a relation of a great many kings and queens."

Shall I own, this surprising intelligence gave me no pleasure, for it only increased the awe I already felt, in too great a degree for my comfort, for Bertha and her relations. I wished to ask Foljambe to explain it to me, but as he had never mentioned the subject, I did not dare, till a second visit to the summer-house, and the sight of the arms in his company brought it ouą. Being herald enough, from only old Doughty's instructions, to make the observation, I said to him, without alluding to Margaret's information,

"I see that, great as your family is, you have had alliances with still greater rank, for the arms and the crown in that second shield denote something, if not royal, at least very near it."

"Did you not know," said he, "that my mother claimed to be a princess of the empire, from being one of the Ducal House of Saxe Eisenach ?"

This at once solved Mrs. Margaret's difficulty about sacks and ice, but I still held my peace as to her information, and Foljambe went on;

"To be sure she was a confounded poor one; her grandfather, though a sovereign, being only a general officer, receiving pay in the service of Prussia. My father met her at Berlin, when on his travels: they fell in love with each other, and he offered. But though she had not a stiver, and he was rich and in full possession, her father the prince, as he was called, would not listen to it, till mine proved that he came from the

Plantagenets, and bore forty-eight quarterings-three times as many as the prince required."

"Did you know your mother?" asked I.

"Not much, for she died when I was ten years old; but she was very handsome, and very proud, and often told me and Bertha to remember that we had kings and emperors for our ancestors, in Germany. The Vater land, I should observe (I suppose on that account), was always preferred to England in her estimation. However, let me not disparage her highness, for she loved my father, and made him very happy, as well as her very humble servant; for it is astonishing, they say, what an influence she had over him, making him do whatever she pleased;-for the governor is a good, high-minded fellow, but the will of this scion of a sovereign house was to him always law."

Here our conversation ended, and it left me only in a worse plight than ever in regard to my feeling of inferiority, to which I was so much alive.

The flourishing descendants, though remote, of the Plantagenets, were far too high for a decayed gentleman to think of as friends; but how was the distance increased by their being only one generation from a duke and reigning sovereign!

In truth, the discovery, though with no very definite reason for it, filled me with dismay.

There is no world without Verona's walls.

SHAKSPEARE.-Rom. & Juliet.

LET better casuists explain, if they can, how all I I have related could spring up in the mind of a lad so young, wholly new to life, and whose companions had been comparatively clowns.

But so it was; though dazzled and delighted with the lovely vision of Bertha, my feeling was that of distress, to think how out of my place I was in suffering myself to contemplate it. I thought I could have died for her; and if she would command me tasks, could have gone to the world's end to execute them. In short, I felt like Miranda,

"To be your fellow

You may deny me; but I'll be your servant
Whether you will or no."

The event was, as I dare say the reader has anticipated; I discovered that I had a heart, and lost it in the moment of the discovery. It, however, had an effect upon me afterwards, which I ought to record.

Far from wearing out, these first impressions only gained strength, as I grew more acquainted with Ber

tha, and the surprise at my new situation diminished. The grave deportment of her father, indeed, did not much relax, and at first I thought he had put some constraint upon himself, in giving such opportunity for an increase of intimacy between his son and a person so much below him; and yet the respect he always expressed, at least for my name, consoled me.

The history of our broken family was the better known to Mr. Hastings, from the circumstance of his own having been long the possessors of this ancient castle and demesne, which made him study their former lives. He knew more about them than even old Doughty, and once told me, with great complacency, that my ancestor John, third Lord Bardolfe, had been a most distinguished soldier, and even knight banneret under the chivalrous Edward III. I observed, or thought I did, that upon these occasions his daughter seemed not without a participation of the interest which her father took in the subject.

These little incidents sometimes re-assured me in respect to Mr. Hastings, whom I began to like as well as to fear; but my natural jealousy was not without alarm in regard to his son. Not that he was so much the enthusiast of pedigree as of more modern feelings, in his impressions regarding high stations, fashion, and title, in which he did not resemble his father, whose pride seemed confined to the pride of birth.

It is certain that the great burst of feeling while at Sedbergh, which I have recorded, relative to the equality of mankind, and the perfect indifference as to situation which ought to prevail between friends, seemed somewhat to have evaporated in the atmosphere of Eton; and, though I observed no change in his treatment, yet it was evident that he had not.

resided two or three years in that courtly place for nothing. The notice taken of the scholars by the king had not been lost upon him, and the friends he had made there were very different in degree from his companions in North Yorkshire. The Marquis of Albany, and Sir Harry Melford, of whom he was fond of talking, were any thing but the sons of decayed gentlemen.

I watched this, as I have said, with something like jealousy; but as I was his only companion, and he was both cheerful and naturally open, even jealousy had no fault to find; so that my love for him continued to indulge itself unrestrained, spite of a little quizzing, when growing, as he said I was, sentimental.

But Bertha, ever cheerful, ever animated, with a countenance all radiance, and a tongue all nature, seemed not to have a thought to conceal. Completely unsophisticated, she admitted me frankly as a sharer with her brother in all her occupations, whether grave or gay, of study, or diversion. I was allowed to ride, read, and walk with her, to hear her play and sing, to tell her stories, and listen to hers in return.

But it was Shakspeare that most promoted our intimacy. I had been fixed by his historical plays, even in my infancy, probably from the interest I took in Lord Bardolfe, Clifford, and York and Lancaster; and this had produced an admiration and love for his other wonder-moving works; so that, for my age, I was tolerably proficient in them, not to say enthusiastic. What joy to me, to see the young mind of Bertha tinged with the same taste, as I was allowed, nay, sometimes called upon, by Mr. Hastings himself, to read some of his favourite dramas aloud.