Complete. From the Lounger.

I HAVE long cultivated a talent very fortunate for a man of my disposition, that of traveling in my easy-chair; of transporting myself, without stirring from my parlor, to distant places and to absent friends; of drawing scenes in my mind’s eye, and of peopling them with the groups of fancy, or the society of remembrance. When I have sometimes lately felt the dreariness of the town, deserted by my acquaintance; when I have returned from the coffeehouse, where the boxes were unoccupied, and strolled out from my accustomed walk, which even the lame beggar had left, I was fain to shut myself up in my room, order a dish of my best tea (for there is a sort of melancholy which disposes one to make much of oneself), and calling up the powers of memory and imagination, leave the solitary town for a solitude more interesting, which my younger days enjoyed in the country, which I think, and if I am wrong I do not wish to be undeceived, was the most Elysian spot in the world.

  ’Twas at an old lady’s, a relation and godmother of mine, where a particular incident occasioned my being left during the vacation of two successive seasons. Her house was formed out of the remains of an old Gothic castle, of which one tower was still almost entire; it was tenanted by kindly daws and swallows. Beneath, in a modernized part of the house, resided the mistress of the mansion. The house was skirted by a few majestic elms and beeches, and the stumps of several others showed that once they had been more numerous. To the west a clump of firs covered a rugged rocky dell, where the rooks claimed a prescriptive seigniory. Through this a dashing rivulet forced its way, which afterwards grew quiet in its progress, and gurgling gently through a piece of downy meadow ground, crossed the bottom of the garden, where a little rustic paling inclosed a washing green, and a wicker seat, fronting the south, was placed for the accommodation of the old lady, whose lesser tour, when her fields did not require a visit, used to terminate in this spot. Here, too, were ranged the hives for her bees, whose hum, in a still warm sunshine, soothed the good old lady’s indolence, while their proverbial industry was sometimes quoted for the instruction of her washers. The brook ran brawling through some underwood on the outside of the garden, and soon after formed a little cascade, which fell into the river that winded through a valley in front of the house. When haymaking or harvest was going on, my godmother took her long stick in her hand, and overlooked the labors of the mowers or reapers; though I believe there was little thrift in the superintendency, as the visit generally cost her a draught of beer or a dram, to encourage their diligence.

  Within doors she had so able an assistant, that her labor was little. In that department an old manservant was her minister, the father of my Peter, who serves me not the less faithfully that we have gathered nuts together in my godmother’s hazel bank. This old butler (I call him by his title of honor, though in truth he had many subordinate offices) had originally enlisted with her husband, who went into the army a youth (though he afterwards married and became a country gentleman), had been his servant abroad, and attended him during his last illness at home. His best hat, which he wore on Sundays, with a scarlet waistcoat of his master, had still a cockade in it.

  Her husband’s books were in a room at the top of a screw staircase, which had scarce been opened since his death; but her own library, for Sabbath or rainy days, was ranged in a little book press in the parlor. It consisted, so far as I can remember, of several volumes of sermons, a Concordance, Thomas à Kempis, Antoninus’s “Meditations,” the works of the author of the “Whole Duty of Man,” and a translation of Boethius; the original editions of the Spectator and Guardian, Cowley’s “Poems” (of which I had lost a volume soon after I first came about her house), Baker’s “Chronicle,” Burnet’s “History of His Own Times,” Lamb’s “Royal Cookery,” Abercromby’s “Scots Warriors,” and Nisbet’s “Heraldry.”

  The subject of the last-mentioned book was my godmother’s strong ground; and she could disentangle a point of genealogy beyond any one I ever knew. She had an excellent memory for anecdotes, and her stories, though sometimes long, were never tiresome; for she had been a woman of great beauty and accomplishment in her youth, and had kept such company as made the drama of her stories respectable and interesting. She spoke frequently of such of her own family as she remembered when a child, but scarcely ever of those she had lost, though one could see that she thought of them often. She had buried a beloved husband and four children. Her youngest, Edward, “her beautiful, her brave,” fell in Flanders, and was not entombed with his ancestors. His picture, done when a child, an artless red and white portrait, smelling at a nosegay, but very like withal, hung at her bedside, and his sword and gorget were crossed under it. When she spoke of a soldier, it was in a style above her usual simplicity; there was a sort of swell in her language, which sometimes a tear (for her age had not lost the privilege of tears) made still more eloquent. She kept her sorrows, like her devotions that solaced them, sacred to herself. They threw nothing of gloom over her deportment; a gentle shade only, like the fleckered clouds of summer, that increase, not diminish, the benignity of the season.

  She had few neighbors, and still fewer visitors; but her reception of such as did visit her was cordial in the extreme. She pressed a little too much, perhaps; but there was so much heart and good-will in her importunity, as made her good things seem better than those of any other table. Nor was her attention confined only to the good fare of her guests, though it might have flattered her vanity more than that of most exhibitors of good dinners, because the cookery was generally directed by herself. Their servants lived as well in her hall, and their horses in her stable. She looked after the airing of their sheets, and saw their fires mended if the night was cold. Her old butler, who rose betimes, would never suffer anybody to mount his horse fasting.

  The parson of the parish was her guest every Sunday, and said prayers in the evening. To say truth, he was no great genius, nor much of a scholar. I believe my godmother knew rather more of divinity than he did; but she received from him information of another sort,—he told her who were the poor, the sick, the dying of the parish, and she had some assistance, some comfort for them all.

  I could draw the old lady at this moment! dressed in gray, with a clean white hood nicely plaited (for she was somewhat finical about the neatness of her person), sitting in her straight-backed elbowchair, which stood in a large window, scooped out of the thickness of the ancient wall. The middle panes of the window were of painted glass—the story of Joseph and his brethren. On the outside waved a honeysuckle tree, which often threw its shade across her book or her work; but she would not allow it to be cut down. “It has stood there many a day,” said she, “and we old inhabitants should bear with one another.” Methinks I see her thus seated, her spectacles on, but raised a little on her brow for a pause of explanation, their shagreen case laid between the leaves of a silver-clasped family Bible. On one side, her bell and snuffbox; on the other, her knitting apparatus in a blue damask bag. Between her and the fire an old Spanish pointer, that had formerly been her son Edward’s, teased, but not teased out of his gravity, by a little terrier of mine. All this is before me, and I am a hundred miles from town, its inhabitants, and its business. In town I may have seen such a figure; but the country scenery around, like the tasteful frame of an excellent picture, gives it a heightening, a relief, which it would lose in any other situation.

  Some of my readers, perhaps, will look with little relish on the portrait. I know it is an egotism in me to talk of its value; but over this dish of tea, and in such a temper of mind, one is given to egotism. It will be only adding another to say that when I recall the rural scene of the good old lady’s abode, her simple, her innocent, her useful employments, the afflictions she sustained in this world, the comforts she drew from another, I feel a serenity of soul, a benignity of affections, which I am sure confer happiness, and, I think, must promote virtue.