She was the very _beau ideal_ of an old servant; all simplicity and fidelity, full of the history of the family; wrapped up in its fortunes and its honours--a part and parcel of the race and place, for she had been in the family above sixty years,--being taken, as she said, when she was ten years old, by Mary Chaworth’s grandfather, and put to school, and taught to read and write, to mark and to flower; for she would, he said, be a nice sharp girl to wait on him. “Oh! he was a pretty man--a very pretty, well-behaved gentleman,” said she with a sigh. Old Nanny Marsland, for such was her name, seemed a pure and unsophisticated creature; the regular influx of visiters had not spoiled her; the curious and the pert, and the idle, the insolent and the foolish, had not troubled the clear sincere current of her thoughts; had not made her heart and spirit turn inward, in self-defence, and converted her into the subtle and parrot shew-woman. She never dreamt of any thing being blameable that had been done by any of _the family_. She delighted to talk of the Hall and its people; and feeling her solitude,--for she was the sole regular occupant,--some one to talk to was a luxury. Could we have hoped for a creature more to our hearts’ desire? Under her guidance we progressed through this most interesting old place; thoughts and feelings, never to be forgotten, springing up at every step. The house is not large; and desertion had stamped within, the same characters as on all without. Damp had disfigured the walls; a fire of cheerful pine-logs blazed in the hall and in the kitchen; but everywhere else was the chill and gloom of the old neglected mansion. All the more modern furniture, and most of the paintings, had been removed, and thereby the keeping of the abode was but the better preserved. We know not how to describe the feelings with which we traversed these rooms. It was as if the hall of one of our old English families had been hidden beneath a magic cloud for ages, and suddenly revealed to our eyes, now, at a time when every thing belonging to this country is so much changed;--houses, men, manners, and opinions. When we entered the old-fashioned family hall, standing as it stood ages ago, furnished as it was ages ago, with its antique stove, its antique sofas, if so they can be called, made of wood carved, and curiously painted, and cushioned with scarlet, standing on each side of the fire; the antique French timepiece on its bracket; its various old cabinets and tables standing by walls; and its floor of large and small squares of alternating black marble and white stone--the domestic sanctuary of a race whom we regard as our progenitors, but widely different to ourselves, seemed suddenly revealed to us, and we could almost have expected to see the rough, boisterous squire, or the stately baron, issue from one of the side-doors; or to hear the rustling of the silken robe of some long-waisted dame, who could occasionally leap a five-barred gate as