PICTURES OF THE PAST. 415 



tower of the ancient church ; and behind all, caught at intervals, 

 the line of ocean, defined and dark, or mingled almost with the 

 blue horizon. 



Towards the centre of this wood-cradled nest, 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 shrubbery 

 and flanking fir-trees, its trellised porch and arched doorway, 

 its casemented bay-windows, and its clustered chimneys. 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 eke 

 the vicarage, of the village of H . 



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 he seems invested with a portion more than mid- 

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

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

 affections. Thou wert our kind uncle, and, much more, scarcely 

 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. 

 Thyself an entomologist (albeit of no zealous stamp), 'twas thou 

 first set us on our hobby, and for this alone we should revere 

 and love thy memory. 



Two humbler personages hang, in their portraitures, beside 

 our uncle, humble, yet withal of vast importance in his house- 

 hold, which, for several years, had been without a mistress. 



One is the widower's housekeeper, the nurse of his little 

 Lucy, and once his own, old Dolly Dolly Dove than whom 

 no feathered parent of the dove-cot ever spread a wing more 

 tenderly over her cherished nestlings. 



The other portrait is that which presents the figure of Dolly's 



