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LETTER VII.

Mrs. Sibthorpe to Mrs. Williamson.

September 1st.

A LETTER is certainly your due, my dear Catherine; but yours of some fortnight since, -all kind, and lively, and sympathizing, and conceding, as it is, deserves a better reply than this dripping sky will help me to indite. Why is it that I, who ever loved so dearly a rainy day in town, find it suggestive of not melancholy - for melancholy and I are strangers - but of stupid things, in the country? To account for the difference drives me into the region of small philosophies. In the one case there is the quiet that bustle has made precious, the leisure which in visiting weather one is apt to see slip from one's grasp unimproved; a contrast like that which we feel on turning from the dusty pathway into the cool shade - a protected shade, as of a garden, where one locks the gate and looks up with satisfaction at high walls, impassable by foot unprivileged. In the other - the contrary case - we have leisure in sunshine as well as leisure in the rain; we have abundance of quiet at all seasons, and no company at any, so that when the rain comes it can but deprive us of our accustomed liberty of foot. The pattering sound so famed for

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its lulling powers is but too effectual when it falls on roofs not much above our heads; and the disconsolate looking cattle, the poor shivering fowls huddled together under every sheltering covert, and the continuous snore of cat and dog as they doze on the mats - all tend towards our infectious drowsiness, that is much more apt to hint the dreamy sweetness of a canto or two of the Faery Queene, than the duteous and spirited exercise of the pen, even in such service as yours. Yet I have broken the spell of

"Sluggish Idleness, the nurse of sin,"

by the magic aid of a third reading of your letter. And now I defy even the

"Ever drizling raine upon the lofte,
Mixt with a murmuring winde."

I have forsaken the sofa, and put up the pretty mignon volume of Spenser, your own gift, and now I set out resolutely to say nothing at all, in sufficient expansion to cover this fair sheet.

To begin with the beginning of our cottage affairs look more promising. We have had our "raising," and within a week the building has assumed a hopeful distinctness of outline. Two new carpenters have been procured from —, а great way off; and two masons with their assistants; and some lime to replace that which chose to burn itself up a few weeks since. Oh, we are certainly getting on finely! The raising was quite a sight, I assure you, and the rustic feast with which it concluded had much of interest for us. I watched every step of the former, and felt some desire to preside at the latter; but Mrs. Boardman, at whose house it was held, understood the matter much better, and gave, I am told, entire satisfaction, which, I dare say, I could hardly have done. At least, so whispers my indolence. The corner of our garden, which John found time to plant, has yielded us many valuable things for the table, and just now, the first fruits of a fine bed of melons. The specimen that he brought in this morning in triumph quite perfumes the room, and from present appearances we may expect a hundred such. I never saw so luxurious a growth, and the fruit is of such a variety of delicious kinds, that I fancy we shall scarcely regret your peaches.

I have, as you may recollect, become thoroughly American in my predilections for the tomato, and I insisted upon abundant provision of it, much to John's dissatisfaction. Since the weather has become so sultry, I make this vegetable almost my only food, and fancy it to be the most wholesome in the world. Mr. Sibthorpe takes to himself great credit for his fortitude in seeing me eat what is to him an abomination, but I am firm in the faith that I shall yet make a convert of him. I fancy he learned to detest tomatoes while he was in Italy. He has a truly English horror of the indescribable messes which are found on Italian tables. I am told by some Western people that a free use of tomatoes is one of the best preventives against ague.

You will have perceived before this that these quiet and prosperous times afford but little of the stuff that letters are made of. I write principally to tell you that we are going on so smoothly that there is nothing to tell. But you will have letters at all events, and I dare not refuse. If they tire you, you will be able to console yourself with the proverb "Heureux le peuple dont l'histoire ennuie."

Yet I have laughed this morning, and that heartily, but I fear I shall scarce be able to amuse you at second hand with what depends altogether on certain un-writable turns of countenance and manner. The hero of the occasion was an old pedler who came jogging along in his hearse-shaped cart, soon after breakfast, and before this dripping humor beset the weather. He stopped his cart, on seeing several men at work, and it was not long before the laughter of the men, who usually pursue their business in solemn silence, drew my attention. The aspect of the pedler secured it, for he was a personification of Momus. His face was very red, and of a most grotesque turn, and his nut-cracker nose and chin were like nobody but Punch. His gray eyes twinkled through a pair of mock spectacles made of a strip of tin twisted into the requisite form, and placed far down his nose, so that he was obliged to throw his head back in order to look through them. When I went to the window, he was enumerating the contents of his covered cart with a bewildering rapidity, but as soon as he observed me, he stopped short, pulled off the remains of an old straw hat, and made a very low bow in the style of Sir Pertinax, who thought the world was to be won by "booing."

"My dear beautiful lady," said he, "could I sell you any thing this morning? I sell things for nothing, and I've got most every thing you ever heard tell on. Here's fashionable calicoes," -holding up a piece of bright scarlet, "splendid French work collars and capes," and here he displayed some hideous things, the flowers on which were distinctly traceable from where I stood, "elegant milk-pans, and Harrison skimmers, and ne plus ultry dippers! patent pills - cure any thing you like ague bitters - Shaker yarbs - essences, wintergreen, peppermint, lobely - tapes, pins, needles, hooks and eyes - broaches and brasslets - smellingbottles - castor ile corn-plaster mustard garding seeds-silver spoons - pocket-combs tea-pots - green tea - saleratus - tracts, songbooks - thimbles - baby's whistles-copy-books, slates, playin' cards - puddin' sticks butterprints - baskets - wooden bowls

"Any wooden nutmegs, daddy?" said one of