another instance of the ruling passion strong in death for only three days before he expired being told that an old acquaintance was lately married having recovered from a long illness by eating eggs and that the wits said that he had been on to matrimony he im a of jane the joke saying then may the yoke sit easy on him i do not know from what common the master of and his great niece jane with some others of the family may have derived the keen sense of humor which they certainly possessed mr and george resided first at hut removed in to which was their residence for about thirty years they commenced their married life with the charge of a little child a son of the celebrated who had been committed to the care of mr before his marriage probably through the influence of his sister mrs whose husband at that time held some office under in india mr in his life of says that his son george the offspring of his first marriage was sent to england in for his education but that he had never been able to ascertain to whom this precious charge was nor what became of him i am able to state from family tradition that he died young of what was then called sore throat and that mrs had become so much attached to him that she always declared that his death had been as great a grief to her as if he had been a child of her own about this time the grandfather of mary dr was of the adjoining parish of so that the parents of two popular female writers must have been intimately acquainted with each other as my subject carries me back about a hundred a of years it will afford for observing many changes gradually effected in the manners and habits of society which i may think it worth while to mention they may be little things but time gives a certain importance even to trifles as it a peculiar flavor to wine the most ordinary articles of domestic life are looked on with some interest if they are brought to light after being long buried and we feel a natural curiosity to know what was done and said by our forefathers even though it may be nothing wiser or better than what we are daily doing or saying ourselves some of this generation may be little aware how many now considered to be necessaries and matters of course were unknown to their and the lane between d� and has long been as smooth as the best road but when the family removed from the one residence to the other in it was a mere cart track so cut up by deep as to be for a light carriage mrs who was not then in strong health performed the short journey on a feather bed placed upon some soft articles of furniture in the wagon which held their household goods in those days it was not unusual to set men to work with and to fill up and holes in roads seldom used by carriages on such special occasions as a funeral or a wedding ignorance and of language also were still lingering even upon higher of society than might have been expected to retain such mists about this time a neighboring squire a a of man of many acres referred the following difficulty to mr s decision you know all about these sort of things do tell us is paris in france or france in paris for my wife has been with me about it the same gentleman some conversation which he had heard between the and his wife represented the latter as beginning her reply to her husband with a round oath and when his daughter called him to task reminding him that mrs never swore he replied now why do you pull me up for nothing that s neither here nor there you know very well that s only my way of telling the story attention has lately been called by a celebrated writer to the inferiority of the clergy to the of england two centuries ago the charge no doubt is true if the rural clergy are to be compared with that higher section of country gentlemen who went into parliament and in london society and took the lead in their several but it might be found less true if they were to be compared as in all they ought to be with that lower section with whom they usually associated the smaller landed who seldom went farther from home than their county town from the squire with his thousand acres to the who cultivated his hereditary property of one or two hundred then formed a numerous class � each the of his own parish and there was probably a greater difference in manners and refinement between this class and that immediately above them than could now be found between any two persons who rank a of as for in tlie progress of though all orders may make some progress yet it is most perceptible in the lower it is a process of up the rear rank dressing up as it were close to the front rank when hamlet as something which he had for three years taken note of that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the it was probably intended by as a satire on his own times but it expressed a principle which is working at all times in which society makes any progress i believe that a century ago the improvement in most country began with the clergy and that in those days a who chanced to be a gentleman and a scholar found himself superior to his chief in information and manners and became a sort of centre of refinement and politeness mr was a remarkably good looking man both in 