mouth, and a grating cast of eye. How yonder bridegroom, just cemented
in an alliance that will not last out his lease of life, "spick and
span new," all eyes, and a double row of buttons ornamenting his
latticed waistcoat, looks at his adored opposite, who holds her
Venetian parasol--sun shade--before her face, glowing like a red brick
wall in the sun. Ah! his regards are attracted by a modest little
nymph of the grove, seated snugly in a sylvan recess, her pretty white
cheeks peeping out beneath the tresses of honeysuckle and woodbine
that veil her beauty. Well, _railing_ is in this case allowable, for
see that brazen front of maiden sixty, guiltless of curls, with a huge
structure of bonnet cocked straight at the top of her head, like the
roof of a market-house, and her broad, square skirts of faded green,
deformed by formal knots of yew and holly. Look with what a blushless
face of triumph she eyes her poor tottering neighbour opposite, who
never appears destined "to suffer a recovery." Oh, 'tis remorseless!
But look down that vista of charity children in slate coloured Quaker
bonnets, stuck one against the other in drab, like pins in a paper,
but not so bright; are they going to stand there for ever, with their
governess at their head, looking as smug and fubsy as the squat house
at the end? Why 'tis--street!--Look at the pump at the other end, that
might pass for an abridgment of a parish clerk--and see, there comes
stalking across the Green the parish beadle, with a great white
placard in his hat--you might well mistake him for Alderman ----'s
monument in red brick with the marble tablet on the top of it. Ah! my
pretty rustic--why your straw hat and brown stuff frock, with white
bib, and that gay flowered apron, with the sprig of jessamine stuck
at your side--you look so homely and comely beneath the shade of that
tall oak, that I could fancy you were only the shepherd's cottage
at the corner of the grange. Bless me--here's a modern antique,
masquerading in the country!--why a village belle of queen Bess' days,