Miss Rachel Pringle to Miss Isabella Tod--LONDON.

My Dear Bell--I take up my pen with a feeling of disappointment such
as I never felt before. Yesterday was the day appointed for the

funeral of the good old king, and it was agreed that we should go to
Windsor, to pour the tribute of our tears upon the royal hearse.

Captain Sabre promised to go with us, as he is well acquainted with
the town, and the interesting objects around the Castle, so dear to

chivalry, and embalmed by the genius of Shakespeare and many a minor
bard, and I promised myself a day of unclouded felicity--but the

captain was ordered to be on duty,--and the crowd was so rude and
riotous, that I had no enjoymentwhatever; but, pining with chagrin

at the little respect paid by the rabble to the virtues of the
departed monarch, I would fainly have retired into some solemn and

sequestered grove, and breathed my sorrows to the listening waste.
Nor was the loss of the captain, to explain and illuminate the

different baronial circumstances around the Castle, the only thing I
had to regret in this ever-memorable excursion--my tender and

affectionate mother was so desirous to see everything in the most
particular manner, in order that she might give an account of the

funeral to Nanny Eydent, that she had no mercy either upon me or my
father, but obliged us to go with her to the most difficult and

inaccessible places. How vain was all this meritorious assiduity!
for of what avail can the ceremonies of a royal funeral be to Miss

Nanny, at Irvine, where kings never die, and where, if they did, it
is not at all probable that Miss Nanny would be employed to direct

their solemn obsequies? As for my brother, he was so entranced with
his own enthusiasm, that he paid but little attention to us, which

made me the more sensible of the want we suffered from the absence
of Captain Sabre. In a word, my dear Bell, never did I pass a more

unsatisfactory day, and I wish it blotted for ever from my
remembrance. Let it therefore be consigned to the abysses of

oblivion, while I recall the more pleasing incidents that have
happened since I wrote you last.

On Sunday, according to invitation, as I told you, we dined with the
Argents--and were entertained by them in a style at once most

splendid, and on the most easy footing. I shall not attempt to
describe the consumable materials of the table, but call your

attention, my dear friend, to the intellectualportion of the
entertainment, a subject much more congenial to your delicate and

refined character.
Mrs. Argent is a lady of considerable personal magnitude, of an open

and affable disposition. In this respect, indeed, she bears a
striking resemblance to her nephew, Captain Sabre, with whose

relationship to her we were unacquainted before that day. She
received us as friends in whom she felt a peculiar interest; for

when she heard that my mother had got her dress and mine from
Cranbury Alley, she expressed the greatest astonishment, and told

us, that it was not at all a place where persons of fashion could
expect to be properly served. Nor can I disguise the fact, that the

flounced and gorgeous garniture of our dresses was in shocking
contrast to the amiablesimplicity of hers and the fair Arabella,

her daughter, a charming girl, who, notwithstanding the fashionable
splendour in which she has been educated, displays a delightful

sprightliness of manner, that, I have some notion, has not been
altogether lost on the heart of my brother.

When we returned upstairs to the drawing-room, after dinner, Miss
Arabella took her harp, and was on the point of favouring us with a

Mozart; but her mother, recollecting that we were Presbyterians,
thought it might not be agreeable, and she desisted, which I was

sinful enough to regret; but my mother was so evidently alarmed at
the idea of playing on the harp on a Sunday night, that I suppressed

my own wishes, in filial veneration for those of that respected
parent. Indeed, fortunate it was that the music was not performed;

for, when we returned home, my father remarked with great solemnity,
that such a way of passing the Lord's night as we had passed it,

would have been a great sin in Scotland.
Captain Sabre, who called on us next morning, was so delighted when

he understood that we were acquainted with his aunt, that he
lamented he had not happened to know it before, as he would, in that

case, have met us there. He is indeed very attentive, but I assure
you that I feel no particular interest about him; for although he is

certainly a very handsome young man, he is not such a genius as my
brother, and has no literary partialities. But literary

accomplishments are, you know, foreign to the military profession,
and if the captain has not distinguished himself by cutting up

authors in the reviews, he has acquired an honourable medal, by
overcoming the enemies of the civilised world at Waterloo.

To-night the playhouses open again, and we are going to the
Oratorio, and the captain goes with us, a circumstance which I am

the more pleased at, as we are strangers, and he will tell us the
names of the performers. My father made some scruple of consenting

to be of the party; but when he heard that an Oratorio was a concert
of sacred music, he thought it would be only a sinless deviation if

he did, so he goes likewise. The captain, therefore, takes an early
dinner with us at five o'clock. Alas! to what changes am I doomed,-

-that was the tea hour at the manse of Garnock. Oh, when shall I
revisit the primitive simplicities of my native scenes again! But

neither time nor distance, my dear Bell, can change the affection
with which I subscribe myself, ever affectionately, yours,

RACHEL PRINGLE.
At the conclusion of this letter, the countenance of Mrs. Glibbans

was evidently so darkened, that it daunted the company, like an
eclipse of the sun, when all nature is saddened. "What think you,

Mr. Snodgrass," said that spirit-stricken lady,--"what think you of
this dining on the Lord's day,--this playing on the harp; the carnal

Mozarting of that ungodly family, with whom the corrupt human nature
of our friends has been chambering?" Mr. Snodgrass was at some loss

for an answer, and hesitated, but Miss Mally Glencairn relieved him
from his embarrassment, by remarking, that "the harp was a holy

instrument," which somewhat troubled the settled orthodoxy of Mrs.
Glibbans's visage. "Had it been an organ," said Mr. Snodgrass,

dryly, "there might have been, perhaps, more reason to doubt; but,
as Miss Mally justly remarks, the harp has been used from the days

of King David in the performances of sacred music, together with the
psalter, the timbrel, the sackbut, and the cymbal." The wrath of

the polemical Deborah of the Relief-Kirk was somewhat appeased by
this explanation, and she inquired in a more diffident tone, whether

a Mozart was not a metrical paraphrase of the song of Moses after
the overthrow of the Egyptians in the Red Sea; "in which case, I

must own," she observed, "that the sin and guilt of the thing is
less grievous in the sight of HIM before whom all the actions of men

are abominations." Miss Isabella Tod, availing herself of this
break in the conversation, turned round to Miss Nanny Eydent, and

begged that she would read her letter from Mrs. Pringle. We should
do injustice, however, to honest worth and patient industry were we,

in thus introducing Miss Nanny to our readers, not to give them some
account of her lowly and virtuous character.

Miss Nanny was the eldest of three sisters, the daughters of a
shipmaster, who was lost at sea when they were very young; and his

all having perished with him, they were indeed, as their mother
said, the children of Poverty and Sorrow. By the help of a little

credit, the widow contrived, in a small shop, to eke out her days
till Nanny was able to assist her. It was the intention of the poor

woman to take up a girl's school for reading and knitting, and Nanny
was destined to instruct the pupils in that higher branch of

accomplishment--the different stitches of the sampler. But about
the time that Nanny was advancing to the requisite degree of

perfection in chain-steek and pie-holes--indeed had made some
progress in the Lord's prayer between two yew trees--tambouring was

introduced at Irvine, and Nanny was sent to acquire a competent
knowledge of that classic art, honoured by the fair hands of the

beautiful Helen and the chaste and domestic Andromache. In this she
instructed her sisters; and such was the fruit of their application

and constant industry, that her mother abandoned the design of
keeping school, and continued to ply her little huxtry in more easy

circumstances. The fluctuations of trade in time taught them that
it would not be wise to trust to the loom, and accordingly Nanny was