F. Shoberl, Jun., Printer to H.R.H. Prince Albert, Rupert Street.

TEMPTATION AND ATONEMENT.

A SUSSEX STORY.

CHAPTER I.

Peasants must weep,

And kings endure;

That is a fate that none can cure.
Yet Spring doeth all she can, I trow :
She bringeth bright hours,

She weaveth sweet flowers,

She dresseth her bowers,
For all below.

PROCTOR.

Hartington is one of the pleasantest villages of the county of Sussex, where pleasant villages abound. No where is brighter verdure to be met with: no where a clearer or more rapid stream. The district, in a green nook of which it lies imbedded, is essentially rural. For ten miles round, nothing in the shape of a factory is in existence. No mechanic employs more than his single pair of hands, whether

shoemaker, saddler, wheelwright, or carpen

ter.

The main cause, however, of the cheerful aspect of Hartington is a pleasant village green; having at one extremity a group of fine lime trees, whose blossoms form the sustenance of all the beehives in the neighbourhood, and whose shade the refuge of the village children during the six brighter months of the year; and at the other a duck-pond, the watering-place and rendezvous of all the carters and cowboys of the place.

On a strip of ground beyond the road skirt-" ing one portion of the green, is a sawpit, surrounded by the usual depository of planks and timber; a happy resource for the urchins of Hartington, to form seesaws, or benches when weary of flinging stones at the ducks and injuring the branches of the lime trees.

Around the green are dotted the more thriving and sightly cottages of the village; and, at a turning of the lane leading from its southernmost corner, you catch a glimpse of the wicket-gate of the churchyard: the curious