covered with pearly blossoms, mingled with the paler foliage of the feathery birch, rising from an undergrowth of fern, amongst which the deer were lying in scattered groups, whilst large herds were grazing upon the rich herbage, approaching close to the mansion, as conscious that they had little to fear from the intrusion of man; a piece of water that might almost be called a lake, piercing the depth of the woods, and giving back in its bright mirror the rich and varied forest scenery, and the light and fleecy cloudlets of the summer sky; a ruined tower on an eminence upon the other side of the mere, whose walls, covered with ivy, were said to have belonged to a watch-tower in the days of the preceptory; and, nearer the house, some broken ground, part of which had been fish-ponds, now filled up with a growth of alders and other moisture-loving trees, whilst under a steep declivity appeared the

low arch of a deserted grotto, half covered with pendent plants; all this, set off by the strong light and shadow of a sunny day in June, formed a picture of no common interest and beauty.

The pleasaunce too, with its rose-bushes and other flowering shrubs, turned into actual trees, bending under the weight of their blossoms, and the formal parterresthanks to Mabel's love of gardening, bright with pinks and sweet-williams, larkheels, (so Fletcher hath it,) marigolds and gillistocks—the pleasaunce exhibited a strange mixture of gaiety and desolation.

The sparkling fountain, whose waters, shimmering in the sunshine, glittered like showers of diamonds, no longer cooled and refreshed the noontide air. That light was extinguished; those streams had ceased to flow. Even the quaint basin, carved like a huge cockle shell, such as a few centuries before might have been seen amongst

the followers of the Knights of the Temple, denoting the pilgrims from the Holy Land, -that shell-like basin, whose small reservoir at once supplied and received the slender jets of water which dropped into the shallow pool with a sound so lulling and so musical, was broken now and dry. Even those twin hedges of holly and yew, the living walls as smooth as masonry, surmounted at regular distances by figures bearing remote resemblances to phoenixes or peacocks, dragons or bears, or other birds and animals, existent or non-existent -those hedges, pride of the old gardener's art, which sheltered at once the flowerplots from the bleak north-east, and the chaste dames of the hall from intrusion or observation, had now, escaped from the shears, broken into a wild luxuriance of vegetation; so that the spreading branches and projecting tops had not merely obliterated all traces of their former trim and

painful clippings, but had by their irregular and disproportioned growth thrown the crowning monsters into inextricable confusion. The closely shaven turf was overrun with moss; the gravel paths were covered with grass and weeds; in short, at Temple Laleham nature was every where triumphing over art.

And amongst the fairest of nature's works might be reckoned the blooming rose-bud, Mabel Goodwin. She had finished her task of twisting the straggling honeysuckle round the old sun-dial, already garlanded with the pink purple flowers of the sweet-pea; and after gazing earnestly from side to side of that flowery prison, the pleasaunce, enclosed as it was by its high walls of yew and holly, and peeping cautiously, in an attitude compounded of looking and listening, through an arch cut in the thick hedge, which led into the chase; after glancing some

what impatiently up at the old clocktower, which still held its stately place amongst the gilded vanes and richly carved pinnacles of the mansion, although the machinery had ceased to perform its office, and the deep solemn tongue which seemed to convey a warning upon the flight of time, as it told the hours, had long been mute,-and casting another fruitless and pettish look at the old sundial, which had lost its gnomon,-and then, holding her fair hand so as to shade her eyes from the glare, gazed to somewhat more purpose upon the bright sun, whose course in the heavens no neglect of man could stay or change; after three several vain attempts to ascertain the hour, she turned rapidly round as a slight sound caught her quick ear, and was aware of a young man, whose simple garb could not conceal the air of high birth and high breeding visible in every mo