ignorance and passive stupidity—when a sycophantic subserviency paved the way to wealth and honors—when the gross vice of manly independence was unknown, and no class acknowledged among men, but the high and low, or the rich and poor.—Days that—(to finish this retrospective eulogy,) that, alas! are no more. Although our hero’s mother could not be called a woman of letters, she certainly possessed qualities more original than generally fell to the lot of persons in her station. At carding wool or spinning it, knitting stockings or mittins, the most envious admitted her superiority to every woman in Tregaron. She moreover had gained no small consideration in another character, which her jealous neighbours satirically denominated a hedge milliner, whose province it was to make hedging gloves and coarse frocks for ploughmen, to darn the heels of their stout woollen stockings, and also to make and mend horses’ collars; the latter branch of her occupation, which required a delicate hand to cut the slender sewing thongs from the raw bull hides, caused her to be called a horse milliner, which after all, was not much more applicable than if she had been described as a bull tailor. This malignant waggery, however, was unable to disturb the tranquil soul of Catti; she loved horses, and in her juvenile days had often whiled away her mornings and evenings in the rural pastimes driving of them, both in the plough and barrow, while carolling some rural ditty, till the rocks and mountains echoed with the cadence of her harmony.