Buttermere, and consisted of four farm-houses, seven cottages, two Squires' residences, and two inns.
The census of the nine families who resided in the fifteen houses of Buttermere—for many of these same families were the sons and nephews of the elders—was both curious and interesting. There were the Flemings, the Nelsons, the Cowmans, the Clarks, the Riggs, the Lancasters, the Branthwaites, the Lightfoots—and The Jopson, the warm-hearted Bachelor Squire of the place. The remaining Squire—also, be it said, a Bachelor—had left, when but a stripling, the cool shades of the peaceful vales for the wars of India. His name was but as a shadow on the memory of the inhabitants; once he had returned with—so the story ran—"an Arabian Horse;" but "his wanderings not being over," as his old housekeeper worded it, with a grave shake of her deep-frilled cap, he had gone back "t' hot country with Sir Henry Hardinge to fight t' Sikhs," promising to return again and end his days beside his native Lake of Buttermere.
Of the families above cited, two were related by marriage. The Clarks had wedded with the Riggs, and the Cowmans with the Lightfoots, so that, in reality, the nine were but seven; and, strange to say, only one of these—the Clarks—-were native to the place. It was curious to trace the causes that had brought the other settlers to so sequestered a spot. The greatest distance, however, that any of the immigrants had come from was thirty miles, and some had travelled but three; and yet, after five-and-twenty years' residence, were spoken of by the aboriginal natives as "foreigners."
Only one family—Buttermere born—had been known to emigrate, and they had been led off, like the farmers who had immigrated, by the lure of more fertile or more profitable tenancies. Three, however, had become extinct; but two in name only, having been absorbed by marriage of their heiresses, while the other one—the most celebrated of all—was utterly lost, except in tradition, to the place. This was the family of Mary Robinson, the innkeeper's daughter, and the renowned Beauty of Buttermere, known as the lovely, simple-hearted peasant girl, trapped by the dashing forger into marriage, widowed by the hangman, amidst a nation's tears, and yet—must we write it—not dying broken-hearted,—but—alas, for the romance and constancy of the sex!—remarried ere long to a comfortable farmer, and ending her days the stout well-to-do mother of seven bouncing boys and girls.
Mr. Thornton, the eminent populationist, has convinced every thinking mind, that, in order that the increase of the people may be duly regulated, every husband and wife throughout the country should have only one child and a quarter. In Buttermere, alas! (we almost weep as we announce the much-to-be-regretted fact) there are seventeen parents and twenty-nine children, which is at the frightful rate of one child and three-quarters and a fraction, to each husband and wife!
Within the last ten years, too, Buttermere has seen, unappalled, three marriages and nine births. The marriages were all with maids
