quite unlimited. Venison, Turtle, Burgundy, Champaign, Hock, Claret, and Madeira were served in abundance."

On the decease of the Duke of St. Alban's her grace adopted Miss Angelina Burdett, a relative of her deceased husband, Mr. Coutts, and on her death, in 1837, bequeathed the whole of her immense property to that young lady on her adopting the name of Coutts. Miss Burdett-Coutts thus became the maiden millionaire. Like her predecessors, she lays out her unbounded wealth in works of mercy and charity, until the name of the benevolent lady is almost a synonymous term for charity.

“In many ways, of which we have not here time to speak, Miss Coutts displays a large-heartedness, a Christian charity, and a public spirit rare. Her reception of the Belgian volunteers at her beautiful country villa at Highgate is still fresh in our memory, and what she has done to promote the education and happiness, spiritual and temporal, of her own sex, can never, at any rate in her life-time, be fully known. The love of money is the root of all evil, but the use of it in Miss Coutts's case illustrates what a blessing money may become when employed, under the influence of religion, for the welfare of man and the glory of God. To her own order, to the titled and the wealthy, Miss Coutts sets a noble example, and we rejoice to think that her example has not been in vain. Her friends are the purest and truest of her sex: Florence Nightingale is one of them, our widowed Queen another. Can we say more?

We need scarcely add that the Burdetts are a very old family. Her brother, Sir Robert Burdett, is the sixth baronet. She has two sisters living; Susannah, married in 1830 to John Bettesworth Trevanion, Esq.,

and Clara Maria, married in 1850 to the Rev. James Drummond Money. In taking leave of the subject of this memoir, we can only hope that she may be providentially spared to continue her course of untiring philanthrophy, Christian usefulness, and unbounded munificence for many years to come."

HOLLY VILLAGE.

This is a group of nine detached cottages at the southern boundary of Holly Lodge. The ground on which this little model village is built is triangular in form, and the cottages have been erected to form picturesque and ornamental features from Miss Coutts's residence. This group of buildings, of which Mr. Darbishire is the architect, was designed to be something more than an ornament to the pleasure-grounds of Holly Lodge. They were intended, in the first instance, to provide cottage accommodation of a superior description for Miss Coutts's own workpeople; this idea, however, was abandoned, and the houses are now occupied by a higher class in the social scale. The whole village has been erected with an amount of care and finish such as is seldom bestowed on work of this description, or even work of a much more pretentious description. Some of the houses are single, some comprise two dwellings. They are built of yellow brick, some with white or moulded brick, some with stone dressings. Although bearing a general resemblance, and in one or two instances arranged as corresponding pairs, they all differ more or less in form, and considerably in the details. All of them have a quiet elegance that is very uncommon in buildings of their class. The entrance is rather elaborate, with two carved statues of females

holding a lamb and a dove, and there is some pretty carving elsewhere. Some idea of the care and finish with which the whole village has been built may be gathered from the examination of one cottage, designed to be occupied by a family, and by a lodger who requires good, and at the same time retired apartments, and whose wants can be attended to by the family who let the rooms, without interfering with the privacy of either. The arrangement of the rooms on the principal floor has been so contrived as to secure for the lodger all the quiet of a separate dwelling, without the responsibilities of a household. The family house contains a parlour, kitchen, washhouse, and offices, all very conveniently placed. The upper floor contains three good bedrooms, the doors of which are all well contrived to prevent draughts and screen the position of the beds. As all the materials and workmanship have been of the very best description, Holly Village offers no criterion for the cost at which cottages of the same design and dimensions could be erected in a substantial but more ordinary manner. The whole external woodwork is constructed of Moulmein teak, well varnished; all the internal woodwork of the best Baltic timber. This beautiful and expensive teak was adopted for the external work in preference to oak (than which it is more expensive and more difficult to work) on account of its fine colour, its durability, and non-liability to warp and split, though long exposed to the influence of the weather. The roofs are first covered with Croggan's Patent Asphalted Felt laid on rough boarding, and then slated with Cumberland slates of a delicate green colour, having ornamental bands and figures executed in darker shades of slate. The ornamental ridges are of Staffordshire blue tile. All the windows are casements, glazed with heavy crown glass, and made to

open outwards, checked to prevent the ingress of the weather, and secured by a fastener which serves as a stay-bar when the windows are open, and secures them effectively when they are shut. From this description of Holly Village, it is clear that there is one place in the neighbourhood of London which is exempt from Mr. Carlyle's sweeping denunciations, and that will not need to be rebuilt in the course of seventy years. The state of London houses and London housebuilding is indeed detestable enough, but that truth in architecture and truth in building are not quite things of the past, any one may see who pays Holly Village a visit.

SEVEN PONDS.

These beautiful ponds are on the estate of the Earl of Mansfield, and lie behind Mansfield House, in the fields leading from Highgate Road to Hampstead, and between that house and Traitors' Hill. In the summer season they are the resort of thousands of Londoners, who love to walk by their sides. They were lately leased to the Hampstead Waterworks Company, which has since become incorporated with the New River Company. They for a long time supplied a considerable portion of the parish with water.

REV. WILLIAM HARNESS,

INCUMBENT OF REGENT SQUARE CHAPEL.

This clergyman died in November, 1869. He was in his 80th year, and was one of the last links which united the present generation with the literary era which shone in the earlier decade of this century. During his school days, at Harrow, he became intimate with Lord Byron, and their friendship was only terminated by death. If any could doubt whether Byron was capable of true and noble feeling, this brotherly attachment, equally honourable to both, would be a sufficient answer; and it is worthy of remark that, notwithstanding the extent of their correspondence, the maligned poet never wrote a single line to him "which might not have been addressed to the most delicate woman." Many of these letters are published in Moore's "Life of Byron." Mr. Harness indignantly repudiated the charge lately brought against his friend, and considered that Lady Byron entirely misunderstood his erratic but not unamiable character. On leaving Christ's College, Cambridge, Mr. Harness was ordained to the curacy of Kilmerston, and made himself so happy with his books and country duties, that only the earnest representations of his family rescued his talents from obscurity, and placed him in a more prominent position. He then became incumbent of Regent Square Chapel, St. Pancras, where his liberal views and genial temperament made him beloved by all. He sought to persuade men by setting forth the beauty of godliness-by dwelling more upon the promises than the threats of Scripture; and he had a powerful aid to his eloquence