Shirley

festal purpose; the schools have a grand treat. This morning there were two marriages solemnized in Briarfield church, – Louis Gérard Moore, Esq, late of Antwerp, to Shirley, daughter of the late Charles Cave Keeldar, Esq, of Fieldhead: Robert Gérard Moore, Esq, of Hollow's mill, to Caroline, niece of the Rev. Matthewson Helstone, M.A., Rector of Briarfield.
    The ceremony, in the first instance, was performed by Mr. Helstone; Hiram Yorke, Esq, of Briarmains, giving the bride away. In the second instance, Mr. Hall, Vicar of Nunnely, officiated. Amongst the bridal train, the two most noticeable personages were the youthful bridesmen, Henry Sympson and Martin Yorke.
    I suppose Robert Moore's prophecies were, partially, at least, fulfilled. The other day I passed up the Hollow, which tradition says was once green, and lone, and wild; and there I saw the manufacturer's day-dreams embodied in substantial stone and brick and ashes – the cinder-black highway, the cottages, and the cottage-gardens; there I saw a mighty mill, and a chimney, ambitious as the tower of Babel. I told my old housekeeper when I came home where I had been.
    »Ay!« said she; »this world has queer changes. I can remember the old mill being built – the very first it was in all the district; and then, I can remember it being pulled down, and going with my lake-lasses (companions) to see the foundation-stone of the new one laid: the two Mr. Moores made a great stir about it; they were there, and a deal of fine folk beside, and both their ladies; very bonnie and grand they looked; but Mrs. Louis was the grandest, she always wore such handsome dresses: Mrs. Robert was quieter-like. Mrs. Louis smiled when she talked: she had a real happy, glad, good-natured look; but she had een that pierced a body through: there is no such ladies now-a-days.«
    »What was the Hollow like then, Martha?«
    »Different to what it is now; but I can tell of it clean different again: when there was neither mill, nor cot, nor hall, except Fieldhead, within two miles of it. I can tell, one summer-evening, fifty years syne, my mother coming running in just at the edge of dark, almost fleyed out of her wits, saying, she had seen a fairish (fairy) in Fieldhead Hollow; and that was the last fairish that ever was seen on this country side (though they've been heard within these forty years). A lonesome spot it was – and a bonnie spot – full of oak trees and nut trees. It is altered now.«
    The story is told. I think I now see the judicious reader putting on his spectacles to look for the moral. It would be an insult to his sagacity to offer directions. I only say, God speed him in the quest!
     
     
    1 Find me an English word as good, reader, and I will gladly dispense with the French word. Reflections won't do.