known young ladies so thoroughly steeled against all the ordinary host of petty maladies which, by way of antithesis to the capital warfare of dangerous complaints, might be called the _guerilla_ nosology; influenza, for instance, in milder forms, catarrh, headache, toothache, dyspepsia in transitory shapes, etc. Always the spirits of the two girls were exuberant; the enjoyment of life seemed to be intense, and never did I know either of them to suffer from _ennui_. My conscious knowledge of them commenced when I was about two years old, they being from ten to twelve years older. Mrs. Schreiber had been amongst my mother's earliest friends as Mrs. Harvey, and in days when my mother had opportunities of doing her seasonable services. And as there were three special advantages which adorned my mother, and which ranked in Mrs. Schreiber's estimate as the highest which earth could show, namely: 1°, that she spoke and wrote English with singular elegance; 2°, that her manners were eminently polished; and 3°, that, even in that early stage of my mother's life, a certain tone of religiosity, and even of ascetic devotion, was already diffused as a luminous mist that served to exalt the coloring of her morality. To this extent Mrs. Schreiber approved of religion; but nothing of a sectarian cast could she have tolerated; nor had she anything of that nature to apprehend from my mother. Viewing my mother, therefore, as a pure model of an English matron, and feeling for her, besides, a deeper sentiment of friendship and affection than for anybody else on her visiting list, it was natural enough that she should come with her wards on an annual visit to "The Farm" (a pretty, rustic dwelling occupied by my father in the neighborhood of Manchester), and subsequently (when _that_ arose) to Greenhay. [Footnote: "_Greenhay_."--As this name might, under a false interpretation, seem absurd as including incongruous elements, I ought, in justification of my mother, who devised the name, to have mentioned that _hay_ was meant for the old English word (derived from the old French word _haie_) indicating a rural enclosure. Conventionally, a _hay_ or _haie_ was understood to mean a country-house within a verdant ring-fence, narrower than a park: which word park, in Scotch use, means any enclosure whatever, though not twelve feet square; but in English use (witness Captain Burt's wager about Culloden parks) means an enclosure measured by square miles, and usually accounted to want its appropriate furniture, unless tenanted by deer. By the way, it is a singular illustration of a fact illustrated in one way or other every hour, namely, of the imperfect knowledge which England possesses of England, that, within these last eight or nine months, I saw in the _Illustrated London News_ an article assuming that the red deer was unknown in England. Whereas, if the writer had ever been at the English lakes during the hunting season, he might have seen it actually hunted