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
night 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 Walcott 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.