"I'll go home an' _bate_ her, until my heart's sore, Then give her the key of the street evermore!" W. RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD. BY THE AUTHOR OF HEADLONG HALL. THE ABBEY HOUSE. I passed many of my earliest days in a country town, on whose immediate outskirts stood an ancient mansion, bearing the name of the Abbey House. This mansion has long since vanished from the face of the earth; but many of my pleasantest youthful recollections are associated with it, and in my mind's eye I still see it as it stood, with its amiable, simple-mannered, old English inhabitants. The house derived its name from standing near, though not actually on, the site of one of those rich old abbies, whose demesnes the pure devotion of Henry the Eighth transferred from their former occupants (who foolishly imagined they had a right to them, though they lacked the might which is its essence,) to the members of his convenient parliamentary chorus, who helped him to run down his Scotch octave of wives. Of the abbey itself a very small portion remained: a gateway, and a piece of a wall which formed part of the enclosure of an orchard, wherein a curious series of fish-ponds, connected by sluices, was fed from a contiguous stream with a perpetual circulation of fresh water,--a sort of piscatorial panopticon, where all approved varieties of fresh-water fish had been classified, each in its own pond, and kept in good order, clean and fat, for the mortification of the flesh of the monastic brotherhood on fast-days. The road which led to the Abbey House terminated as a carriage-road with the house itself. Beyond it, a footpath over meadows conducted across a ferry to a village about a mile distant. A large clump of old walnut-trees stood on the opposite side of the road to a pair of massy iron gates, which gave entrance to a circular gravel road, encompassing a large smooth lawn, with a sun-dial in the centre, and bordered on both sides with tall thick evergreens and flowering shrubs, interspersed in the seasons with hollyhocks, sun-flowers, and other gigantic blossoms, such as are splendid in distance. Within, immediately opposite the gates, a broad flight of stone steps led to a ponderous portal, and to a large antique hall, laid with a chequered pavement of black and white marble. On the left side of the entrance was the porter's chair, consisting of a cushioned seat, occupying the depth of a capacious recess resembling a niche for a full-sized statue, a well-stuffed body of black leather glittering with gold-headed nails. On the right of this hall was the great staircase; on the left a passage to a wing appropriated to the domestics.