Woe to the hapless stepchild or orphan nephew or penniless cousin, or helpless and aged mother-in-law, who falls under this terrible destiny in a country house where there are few eyes to witness the cruelty and no tongue bold enough to denounce it! The misery endured by such beings, the poor young souls which wither under the blight of the perpetual unmerited blame, and the older sufferers mortified and humiliated in their age, must be quite indescribable. Perhaps by no human act can truer charity be done than by resolutely affording moral support, if we can do no more, to such butts and victims; and, if it be possible, to take them altogether away out of their ill-omened conditions, and “deliver him that is oppressed from the hand of the adversary.” It is astonishing how much may be done by very humble spectators to put a check to evils like these, even by merely showing their own surprise and distress in witnessing them; and, on the contrary, how deplorably ready are nine people out of ten to fall in with the established prejudices and unkindnesses of every house they enter. Very little of this kind of thing goes on in towns. People are too busy about their own affairs and pleasures, and their feelings of all kinds are too much diffused among the innumerable men and women with whom they come in contact, to permit of concentrated dislike settling down on any inmate of their homes in the thick cloud it is apt to do in the country. Here we touch, indeed, on one great secret of the difference of Town and Country life. All sentiments, amiable and unamiable, are more are less dissipated in town, and concentrated and deepened in the country. Even a very trifling annoyance, an arrangement of hours of meals too late or too early for our health, a smoky chimney, a bad coachman, a door below stairs perpetually banged, assumes a degree of importance when multiplied by the infinite number of times we expect to endure it in the limitless monotony of country life. Our nerves become in advance irritated by all we expect to go through in the future, and the consequence is that a degree of heat enters into family disputes about such matters which greatly amazes the parties concerned to remember when the wear and tear of travel or of town life have made the whole mode of existence in a country home seem a placid stream, with scarcely a pebble to stir a ripple.