now had some kind of frightful seizure'—poor, dear, old friend—'calls for you—insists on seeing you—for God's sake come'—dear me, dear me!" And the doctor wiped his honest old eyes on the back of his tattered old dressing-gown, and poured out a glass of brandy for Sam, and another for himself, and gave the groom the key of the stable, and bade him harness the pony, for he should be ready in five minutes.
The house was all aroused, lights were gleaming in the windows, as the doctor drove up the avenue, and Marian was standing in the hall when he entered. She stepped forward to meet him, but there was something in the old man's look which stopped her from putting out her hand as she had intended, so they merely bowed gravely, and she led the way to her husband's room, where she left him.
Half an hour elapsed before Dr. Osborne reappeared. His face was very grave and his eyes were red. This time it was he who made the advance. A year ago he would have put his arm round Marian's neck and kissed her on the forehead. Those days were past, but he took her hand, and in reply to her hurried question, "What do you think of him?" said, "I think, Mrs. Creswell, that my old friend is very ill. It would be useless to disguise it—very ill indeed. His life is an important one, and you may think it necessary to have another opinion"—this a little pompously said, and met with a gesture of dissent from Marian—"but in mine, no time must be lost in removing him, I should say, abroad, far away from any chance of fatigue or excitement."
"But, Dr. Osborne—the—the election!"
"To go through the election, Mrs. Creswell, would kill him at once! He would never survive the nomination day!"
"It will be a dreadful blow to him," said Marian. But she thought to herself, "Here is the chance of our escape from the humiliation of defeat by Walter Joyce! A means of evoking sympathy instead of contempt!"
As the Crow Flies.
Due East.Sudbury to Lowestoft.
The crow can hardly resist a short slant flight from Ipswich to Sudbury, which lies embowered among its deep sunken green lanes in the valley of the willowy Stour, which is here gay with quick wherries.
The quiet thorough English scenery in which Gainsborough delighted, is to be found all round "Subbry;" deep lanes, winding between steep fern-covered banks, and under the shade of huge elms. The ash feathers at the edge of the swaying cornfields, and beech trees, mantled in ivy, guarding leafy ponds; the church tower, the cottage doors, the rustic children, all remind us of Gainsborough, who was born here in 1727. A wood is still shown where Gainsborough, when a child, used to play truant that he might sketch. One of his earliest efforts was to draw the face of a rustic thief, whom he had seen from behind some bushes, suspiciously eyeing a pear-tree in his (Gainsborough's) father's garden. The clever boy, reluctantly confessed to be a genius, was presently sent to London to study under Gravelot and under Hayman, the rollicking friend of Hogarth. He returned to Suffolk at eighteen, and there, while sketching the woodland scenes, fell in love with a pretty figure in the foreground, one Margaret Burt, a young Scotch lady of good family, supposed to be the natural daughter of the Pretender. The young pair left Sudbury, took a small house at Ipswich at a rent of six pounds a year, and were patronised by Philip Thicknesse, the governor of Landguard Fort, who afterwards, when the painter had the audacity to become independent, maligned him, as Waloott had also maligned his refractory protégé Opie. The governor, a great man at Ipswich, taught the young painter the violin, and gave him a thirty-guinea commission.
This picture of Landguard and the port of Harwich, being engraved by Major, gained the painter great fame; and in 1758, growing like a flower too big for his first pot, he removed to Bath, and took grand lodgings in the Circus. In spite of the alarms of his good but thrifty wife, Gainsborough now threw off the oppressive patronage of Thicknesse, and gradually pushed on his prices for a head from five guineas to eight, and for whole lengths to a hundred. He grew up a rough, humorous, intractable genius, passionately fond of music and landscape painting, but obliged to drudge at portraits to earn bread and cheese. He was always buying some new musical instrument, and trying to learn it, and he filled his house with theorbos, violins, hautboys, and viol-di-gambas. Gainsborough next removed to London, and took the Duke of Schomberg's house in Pall Mall. He had already exhibited for thirteen years in the Royal Academy, and his success was sure. Even Reynolds grew jealous at his fame. He painted the Royal Family, and that at once made him fashionable, in spite almost of himself; for he was brusque, proud, and blunt, and had no more tact than a Bozjesman. He confessed that the Duchess of Devonshire's beauty baffled his pencil, and he fairly threw up the sponge when Garrick and Foote grimaced before him. Though subject to irresistible depressions, Gainsborough was delightfully original in society, and, in the company of Johnson, Sheridan, or Burke, appeared in his best colours. The landscapes of this Suffolk painter were not popular during his life, nor did his natural and entirely ingenuous and bright village children by any means delight the mass. He died, in 1788, of cancer, arising from a cold caught at the trial of Warren Hastings. Al-
