Page:An Old Lady of the Last Century.pdf/2



' an often-quoted adage of the celebrated Jewish "lover, king, and sage," that "there is nothing new under the sun." I think that, in the present day, one might rather say "there is nothing old." We are conjugating the verb change, in all its moods and tenses. Coleridge says—

We are atheists to the past, and act upon Wordsworth's principle, — "Of old things, all are over-old; Of good things, none are good enough: We'll help to show that we can frame   A world of other stuff." Trees, streets are passing away as rapidly as their inhabitants, and today has nothing in common with yesterday. Marmontel had "un grand regret pour la fiérie" and I have un grand regret for the old school. In endeavouring to recall a few memorials of Mrs. Lawrence Burgoyne, I do it on the same principle that scientific men collect the bones of a mammoth—the whole exists no longer; but there are sufficient remains to show that it did exist. The few survivors of the old school, such as are kept alive by having life annuities—a plan which has some secret charm for putting off death—even these few are fast disappearing. Mrs. Burgoyne has been dead these two years; she had borne a great deal. Powder and hoops had been left off, guineas had changed into sovereigns, and, like many other things, lost by the change; but the last shock to her nerves was given by her granddaughter. Miss Ellen, an urchin of some six years old, came to see her grandmother during the Christmas holidays. Mrs. Burgoyne having heard that the child was a quiet one—though she had some misgivings about the matter—prepared a book for her entertainment; it was a volume of Mother Goose's Fairy Tales. Plum cake and sweet wine were duly administered in the first instance, and the cat recommended as a playmate in the second: the cat, however, being declined, the book was produced. The young lady opened the pages—turned them over with a solemn air of contempt—and then, throwing the work aside, begged that "she might have something to read that would improve her mind." Her grandmother never got over the shock—but took to her bed, ejaculating "What will this world come to! Improving her mind at six!—why, at sixteen I did not know whether I had a mind or not!" Mrs. Burgoyne passed the last twenty years of her life in a large, solemn-looking house at Kensington; it is now a mad-house. How curiously do these changes in dwelling places, once cheerful and familiar, bring the mutability of our existence home! It would be an eventful chronicle, the history of even a few of the old-fashioned houses in the vicinity of London. You ascended a flight of steps, with a balustrade and two indescribable birds on either side, and a large hall, which, strange to say, was more cheerful in winter than in summer. In summer the narrow windows, the black wood with which it was panelled, seemed heavy and dull; but in winter the huge fire gave its own gladness, and had besides the association with old English hospitality which a blazing grate always brings. You passed next through two long drawing-rooms, whose white wainscoting was almost covered with family portraits.