completely did he bury himself in the obscurity of domestic and village life, that he was gradually forgotten as a living author, and the name of Crabbe only remembered through some passages of his poems in the Elegant Extracts.

Of the four years spent in Stathern, he used to speak as the very happiest of his life. He had won a pleasant retreat after his desperate clutch at fortune. His perseverance was rewarded by the society of her who had been the one faithful and congenial friend of his youth, and they could now ramble together at their ease amid the rich woods of Belvoir, without any of the painful feelings which had before checkered his enjoyment of the place. At home, a garden afforded him healthful exercise and unfailing amusement; and, as a mere curate, he was freed from any disputes with the villagers about him. Here he botanized, entomologized, and geologized to his heart's content. At one time he was tempted to turn sportsman, but neither his feelings nor his taste would allow him to continue one; and he employed his leisure hours much more to his satisfaction in exercising his medical skill to relieve the pains of his parishioners.

At the instance of the Duchess of Rutland,—Thurlow having exchanged the poet's Dorsetshire livings for those of Muston, in Leicestershire, and Allington, in Lincolnshire, but near each other,—Mr. Crabbe, in 1789, left Stathern, and entered on his rectory at Muston. Here his life continued much the same, but the country around was open and uninteresting. "Here," says his son, "were no groves, nor dry green lawns, nor gravel roads, to tempt the pedestrian in all weathers; but still, the parsonage and its premises formed a pretty little oasis in the clayey desert. Our front windows looked full on the church-yard, by no means like the common forbidding receptacles of the dead, but truly ornamental ground; for some fine elms partially concealed the small beautiful church and its spire, while the eye traveled through their stems, and rested on the banks of a stream, and a picturesque old bridge. The garden inclosed the other two sides of the church-yard; but the crown of the whole was a gothic archway, cut through a thick hedge and many boughs; for through this opening, as in the deep frame of a picture, appeared, in the center of the aerial canvas, the unrivaled Belvoir."

The home picture of Crabbe, at this period, is given by his son, with a glow of grateful remembrance of the happiness of the time to himself, then a child, that is beautiful. "Always visibly happy in the happiness of others, especially of children, our father entered into all our pleasures, and soothed and cheered us in all our little griefs, with such overflowing tenderness, that it was no wonder we almost worshiped him. My first recollection of him is, of his carrying me up to his private room to prayers, in the summer evenings, about sunset, and rewarding my silence and attention, afterward, with a view of the flower-garden through his prism. Then I recall the delight it was to me to be permitted to sleep with him during a confinement of my mother's—how I longed for the morning; because then he would be sure to tell me some fairy tale of his own invention, all sparkling with gold and diamonds, magic fountains, and enchanted princesses. In the eye of memory I can still see him as he was at this period of his life; his fatherly countenance, unmixed with any of the less lovable expressions that, in too many faces, obscure that character—but preëminently fatherly; conveying the ideas of kindness, intellect, and purity; his manners grave, manly, and cheerful, in unison with his high and open forehead; his very attitudes, whether he sat absorbed in the arrangement of his minerals, shells, and insects, or as he labored in his garden, until his naturally pale complexion acquired a tinge of fresh, healthy red, or as coming lightly toward us with some unexpected present, his smile of indescribable benevolence spoke exultation in the foretaste of our raptures.

"But I think even earlier than these are my first recollections of my mother. I think the very earliest is of her combing my hair one evening, by the light of the fire, which hardly broke the long shadows of the room, and singing the plaintive air of 'Kitty Fell,' till, though I could not be more than two or three years old, my tears dropped profusely."

Equally charming is the writer's recollection of a journey into Suffolk with his father while a boy. This was to Parham, the house of Mrs. Crabbe's uncle Tovell, with whom she had been brought up. The picture presented of the life and establishment of a wealthy yeoman is so vivid, that I must take leave to add it to the passage already quoted.

"My great-uncle's establishment was that of the first-rate yeoman of that period—the yeoman that already began to be styled by courtesy an esquire. Mr. Tovell might possess an estate of some eight hundred pounds per annum, a portion of which he himself cultivated. Educated at a mercantile school, he often said of himself, 'Jack will never make a gentleman;' yet he had a native dignity of mind and manners which might have enabled him to pass muster in that character with any but very fastidious critics. His house was large, and the surrounding moat, the rookery, the ancient dovecote, and the well stored fishponds, were such as might have suited a gentleman's seat of some consequence; but one side of the house immediately overlooked a farmyard, full of all sorts of domestic animals, and the scene of constant bustle and noise. On entering the house there was nothing, at first sight, to remind one of the farm: a spacious hall paved with black and white marble, at one extremity a very handsome drawing-room, and at the other a fine old stair-case of black oak, polished till it was as slippery as ice, and having a chime clock and a barrel organ on its landing-places. But this drawing-room, a corresponding dining-parlor, and a handsome sleeping apartment up stairs, were all tabooed ground, and made use of on great and solemn occasions only, such as rent-days, and an occasional visit with which Mr. Tovell was honored by a neighboring peer. At all other times the family and their visitors lived entirely in the old-fashioned kitchen, along with the servants. My great-uncle occupied an arm-chair, or, in attacks of gout, a couch on one side of a large open chimney. Mrs. Tovell sat at a small table, on which, in the evening, stood one small candle, in an iron candlestick, plying her needle by the feeble glimmer, surrounded by her maids, all busy at the same employment; but in winter a noble block of wood, sometimes the whole circumference of a pollard, threw its comfortable warmth and cheerful blaze over the apartment.

"At a very early hour in the morning, the alarum called the maids and their mistress also; and if the former were tardy, a louder alarum, and more formidable, was heard chiding the delay—not that scolding was peculiar to any occasion, it regularly went on through all the day, like bells on harness, inspiriting the work whether it was done ill or well. After the important business of the dairy and a hasty breakfast, their respective employments were again resumed; that which the mistress took for her especial privilege being the scrubbing the floors of the state apartments. A new servant, ignorant of her presumption, was found one morning on her knees, hard at work on the floor of one of these preserves, and was thus addressed by her mistress:—'You wash such floors as these? Give me the brush this instant, and troop to the scullery, and wash that, madam!… As true as G—d's in heaven, here comes Lord Rochford to call on Mr. Tovell. Here, take my mantle,'—a blue woolen apron—'and I'll go to the door.'

"If the sacred apartments had not been opened, the family dined in this wise: the heads seated in the kitchen at an old table; the farm-men standing in the adjoining scullery, with the door open; the female servants at a side-table, called a bouter; with the principal at the table,