jelly.

* * * * *

"Did you ever see an old abbey before, Mrs. Peters?"

"Yes, miss, a French one; we have got one at Ramsgate; he teaches the
Miss Joneses to parley-voo and is turned of sixty."

Miss Simpkinson closed her album with an air of ineffable disdain.

Mr. Simpkinson from Bath was a professed antiquary, and one of the
first water; he was master of Gwillim's Heraldry, and Mill's History of
the Crusades; knew every plate in the Monasticon; had written an essay
on the origin and dignity of the office of overseer, and settled the
date on a Queen Anne's farthing. An influential member of the
Antiquarian Society, to whose "Beauties of Bagnigge Wells" he had been a
liberal subscriber, procured him a seat at the board of that learned
body, since which happy epoch Sylvanus Urban had not a more
indefatigable correspondent. His inaugural essay on the President's
cocked hat was considered a miracle of erudition; and his account of the
earliest application of gilding to gingerbread, a masterpiece of
antiquarian research. His eldest daughter was of a kindred spirit: if
her father's mantle had not fallen upon her, it was only because he had
not thrown it off himself; she had caught hold of its tail, however,
while it yet hung upon his honored shoulders. To souls so congenial,
what a sight was the magnificent ruin of Bolsover! its broken arches,
its mouldering pinnacles, and the airy tracery of its half-demolished
windows. The party were in raptures; Mr. Simpkinson began to meditate an
essay, and his daughter an ode: even Seaforth, as he gazed on these
lonely relics of the olden time, was betrayed into a momentary
forgetfulness of his love and losses; the widow's eye-glass turned from
her _cicisbeo's_ whiskers to the mantling ivy; Mrs. Peters wiped her
spectacles; and "her P." supposed the central tower "had once been the
county jail." The squire was a philosopher, and had been there often
before, so he ordered out the cold tongue and chickens.

"Bolsover Priory," said Mr. Simpkinson, with the air of a
connoisseur--"Bolsover Priory was founded in the reign of Henry the
Sixth, about the beginning of the eleventh century. Hugh de Bolsover had
accompanied that monarch to the Holy Land, in the expedition undertaken
by way of penance for the murder of his young nephews in the Tower. Upon
the dissolution of the monasteries, the veteran was enfeoffed in the
lands and manor, to which he gave his