Nell,
Nell!" he says, stroking, at the same time, the fair tresses that grace
the head of a pretty boy, her son, "you are like the fruit that will
come of yonder trees, a rough and bitter outside, but a sweet and
pleasant soul within."

We composed our thoughts, or rather we aroused from those waking dreams
in which all indulge sometimes--more or less. The house contains
fourteen rooms--and must have been pleasant, long ago, as a retreat
where poor Nell could bring her titled children--whom she doubtless
loved with all the enthusiasm of her ardent nature. We crossed the
garden, but could find no trace of the pond in which tradition reports
Madam Ellen's mother to have been drowned. Not long ago, a very old
woman resided in Chelsea, whose grandmother, it was said, was Nell's
stage-dresser; this was before old Ranelagh was built over, and when the
site of Eaton Square was intersected by damp pathways and
nursery-gardens. We entered the meadows at the back, to see how the
house looked from thence, which greatly delighted the rat-catcher's
terriers.

Modern "improvement" long spared this locality. When we knew and loved
it first, we could see the Thames from our windows in one direction, and
Kensington Gardens in another. But old houses, standing within their own
park-like inclosures, and old trees and green fields, are nearly all
gone.[I] We used to have the nightingales in the elm-avenue leading to
Hereford Lodge, but the only nightingale we had last spring was one who
came from the FAR NORTH. Many hereafter will do pilgrimage to her shrine
with a far deeper feeling of respect, than, with all our charity, we can
bestow upon Sandford Manor House.

If the women of England could forget this period of our history, which,
as Mrs. Jameson truly and beautifully observes, "saw them degraded from
objects of adoration to servants of pleasure, and gave the first blow to
that chivalrous feeling with which their sex had hitherto been regarded,
by levelling the distinction between the unblemished matron and her 'who
was the ready spoil of opportunity'"--if this were possible, it might be
well, like Claire, when she threw the pall over the perishing features
of Julie, to exclaim--

"Maudite soit l'indigne main qui jamais soulevera ce voile,"

but so it is not; and it becomes our duty to look on Charles, and those
who were corrupted by his example and his influence, as plague-spots
upon the fair brow of our beloved country. We