360 PICTURES Oi' 1 THE PAST. 



cling group of cottages about the same relative proportion, as 

 well as something of the same relationship, there stands, in 

 the foreground of our picture, an old quaint-looking residence, 

 itself a cottage, but distinguished from the lesser and lowlier 

 of the assemblage by its magnitude, its flight of steps ascending 

 from the pathway to the garden gate, its surrounding shrub- 

 bery and Hanking fir-trees, its trellised porch and arched door- 

 \\ay, its casemented bay-windows, arid its clustered chimneys, 

 from whence (our landscape is a winter one) the smoke is as- 

 cending through the frosty air in sturdy upright columns, that 

 fell, indisputably, of comfort and of cookery within. Three 

 other pictures (family and domestic portraits) we must take 

 down, next, from our memory-furnished gallery. All are of 



dwellers in the cottage just described, the principal residence, 



and rke the \ icarage, of the village of 11 . 



First, we have its reverend master, of build substantial and 

 air unpretending as his abode, of middle age, middle stature, 

 and mediocre features, a man altogether made up of middlings, 

 except that lu- MVMIS invested with a portion more than mid- 

 dling of indolent good humour. Most easy vicar ! dearly did 

 \\ e love thee ; but only in proportion to thy claims upon our 

 \uiing all'ections. Thou wert our kind uncle, and, much more, 

 -earcely less a father unto us than to thine own only little 

 daughter Lucy; and thou wert, moreover, our tutor, our 

 earliest instructor in much of varied knowledge, truly more 

 varied than profound. Tli\>elf an entomologist (albeit of no 



