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WALKS IN THE COUNTRY.

THE WOOD.

APRIL 20th.-Spring is actually come now, with the fulness and almost the suddenness of a northern summer. To-day is completely April;-clouds and sunshine, wind and showers; blossoms on the trees, grass in the fields, swallows by the ponds, snakes in the hedgerows, nightingales in the thickets, and cuckoos every where. My young friend Ellen G. is going with me this evening to gather wood sorrel. She never saw that most elegant plant, and is so delicate an artist that the introduction will be a mutual benefit; Ellen will gain a subject worthy of her pencil, and the pretty weed will live;-no small favour to a flower, almost as transitory as the gum cistus; duration is the only charm which it wants, and that Ellen will give it. The weather is, to be sure, a little threatening, but we are not people to mind the weather when we have an object in view; we shall certainly go in quest of the wood-sorrel, and will take May, provided we can escape May's follower; for, since the adventure of the lamb, Saladin has had an affair with a gander, furious in defence of his goslings, in which rencontre the gander came off conqueror; and as geese abound in the wood to which we are going (called by the country people the Pinge,) and the victory may not always incline to the right side, I should be very sorry to lead the Soldan to fight his battles over again. We will take nobody but May.

So saying, we proceeded on our way through winding lanes, between hedge-rows tenderly green, till we reached the hatch-gate, with the white cottage beside it embosomed in fruittrees, which forms the entrance to the Pinge, and in a moment the whole scene was before our eyes.

"Is not this beautiful, Ellen?" The answer could hardly be other than a glowing rapid "Yes!"-A wood is generally a pretty place; but this wood-Imagine a smaller forest, full of glades and sheep-walks, surrounded by irregular cottages with their blooming orchards, a clear stream winding about the brakes, and a road intersecting it, and giving life and light to the picture; and you will have a faint idea of the Pinge. Every step was opening a new point of view, a fresh combination of glade and path and thicket. The accessories too were changing every moment. Ducks, geese, pigs, and children, giving way, as we advanced into the wood, to sheep and forest ponies; and they again disappearing as we became more entangled in its mazes, till we heard nothing but the song of the nightingale, and saw only the silent flowers.

What a piece of fairy land! The tall elms overhead just bursting into tender vivid leaf, with here and there a hoary oak or a silver

barked beech, every twig swelling with the brown buds, and yet not quite stripped of the tawny foliage of Autumn; tall hollies and hawthorn beneath, with their crisp brilliant leaves mixed with the white blossoms of the sloe, and woven together with garlands of woodbines and wild briars;-what a fairy land!

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Primroses, cowslips, pansies, and the regular open-eyed white blossom of the wood anemone (or to use the more elegant Hampshire name, the windflower) were set under our feet as thick as daisies in a meadow; but the pretty weed we came to seek was coyer; and Ellen began to fear that we had mistaken the place or the season.-At last she had herself the pleasure of finding it under a brake of holly" Oh look! look! I am sure that this is the wood-sorrel! Look at the pendent white flower, shaped like a snow-drop and veined with purple streaks, and the beautiful trefoil leaves folded like a heart,-some, the young ones, so vividly yet tenderly green that the foliage of the elm and the hawthorn would show dully at their side,-others of a deeper tint, and lined, as it were, with a rich and changeful purple! Don't you see them?" pursued my dear young friend, who is a delightful piece of life and sunshine, and was half inclined to scold me for the calmness with which, amused by her enthusiasm, I stood listening to her ardent exclamations"Don't you see them? Oh how beautiful! and in what quantity! what profusion! See how the dark shade of the holly sets off the. light and delicate colouring of the flower!— And see that other bed of them springing from the rich moss in the roots of that old beech tree! Pray let us gather some. are baskets." So quickly and carefully we began gathering, leaves, blossoms, roots and all, for the plant is so fragile that it will not brook separation!-quickly and carefully we gathered, encountering divers petty misfortunes in spite of all our care, now caught by the veil in a holly bush, now hitching our shawls in a bramble, still gathering on, in spite of scratched fingers, till we had nearly filled our baskets and began to talk of our departure:

Here

"But where is May? May! May! No going home without her. May! Here she comes galloping, the beauty !"-(Ellen is almost as fond of May as I am.)-"What has she got in her mouth? that rough, round, brown substance which she touches so tenderly? What can it be? A bird's nest? Naughty May!"

"No! as I live, a hedgehog! Look, Ellen, how it has coiled itself into a thorny ball! Off with it May! Don't bring it to me !". And May, somewhat reluctant to part with her prickly prize, however troublesome of carriage, whose change of shape seemed to me to have puzzled her sagacity more than any

event I ever witnessed, for in general she has perfectly the air of understanding all that is going forward-May at last dropt the hedgehog; continuing however to pat it with her delicate cat-like paw, cautiously and daintily applied, and caught back suddenly and rapidly after every touch, as if her poor captive had been a red-hot coal. Finding that these pats entirely failed in solving the riddle, (for the hedgehog shammed dead, like the lamb the other day, and appeared entirely motionless), she gave him so spirited a nudge with her pretty black nose, that she not only turned him over, but sent him rolling some little way along the turfy path,-an operation which that sagacious quadruped endured with the most perfect passiveness, the most admirable non-resistance. No wonder that May's discernment was at fault: I myself, if I had not been aware of the trick, should have said that the ugly rough thing which she was trundling along, like a bowl or a cricket-ball, was an inanimate substance, something devoid of sensation and of will. At last my poor pet thoroughly perplexed and tired out, fairly relinquished the contest, and came slowly away, turning back once or twice to look at the object of her curiosity, as if half inclined to return and try the event of another shove. The sudden flight of a wood-pigeon effectually diverted her attention; and Ellen amused herself by fancying how the hedgehog was scuttling away, till our notice was also attracted by a very different object.

We had nearly threaded the wood, and were approaching an open grove of magnificent oaks on the other side, when sounds other than of nightingales burst on our ear, the deep and frequent strokes of the woodman's axe, and emerging from the Pinge we discover the havoc which that axe had committed. About twenty of the finest trees lay stretched on the velvet turf. There they lay in every shape and form of devastation: some, bare trunks stripped ready for the timber carriage, with the bark built up in long piles at the side; some with the spoilers busy about them, stripping, hacking, hewing; others with their noble branches, their brown and fragrant shoots all fresh as if they were alive-majestic corses, the slain of to-day! The grove was like a field of battle. The young lads who were stripping the bark, the very children who were picking up the chips, seemed awed and silent, as if conscious that death was around them. The nightingales sang faintly and interruptedly-a few low frightened notes like a requiem.

Ah! here we are at the very scene of murder, the very tree that they are felling; they have just hewn round the trunk with those slaughtering axes, and are about to saw it asunder. After all it is a fine and thrilling operation, as the work of death usually is. Into how grand an attitude was that young

man thrown as he gave the final stroke round the root; and how wonderful is the effect of that supple and apparently powerless saw, bending like a riband, and yet overmastering that giant of the woods, conquering and overthrowing that thing of life! Now it has passed half through the trunk, and the woodman has begun to calculate which way the tree will fall; he drives a wedge to direct its course;

now a few more movements of the noiseless saw; and then a larger wedge. See how the branches tremble! Hark how the trunk begins to crack? Another stroke of the huge hammer on the wedge, and the tree quivers, as with a mortal agony, shakes, reels, and falls. How slow and solemn and awful it is! How like to death, to human death in its grandest form! Cæsar in the Capitol, Seneca in the bath, could not fall more sublimely than that oak.

Even the heavens seem to sympathise with the devastation. The clouds have gathered into one thick low canopy, dark and vapoury as the smoke which overhangs London; the setting sun just gleaming underneath with a dim and bloody glare, and the crimson rays spreading upwards with a lurid and portentous grandeur, a subdued and dusky glow, like the light reflected on the sky from some vast conflagration. The deep flush fades away, and the rain begins to descend; and we hurry homeward rapidly yet sadly, forgetful alike of the flowers, the hedgehog, and the wetting, thinking and talking only of the fallen tree.

THE VICAR'S MAID.

village, the little hamlet of Aberleigh, receivABOUT three years ago, our neighbouring ed one of the greatest blessings which can befall a country parish, in the shape of an active, pious, and benevolent Vicar. Chaucer shall describe him for me, for I prefer the real words of the old poet, to the more elaborate and ornamented version of Dryden :

"A good man ther was of religioun

That was a poure parsone of a toun;
But riche he was of holy thought, and werk;
He was also a lerned man, a clerk,
That Cristes gospel trewely wolde prech;
His parishens devoutly wolde he teche;
Benigne he was and wonder diligent
And in adversite ful patient;

And swiche he was yproved often sithes
Ful loth were him to cursen for his tithes,
But rather wolde he geven out of doute
Unto his poure parishens aboute
Of his offring, and eke of his substance;
He coude in litel thing have suffisance.
Wide was his parish, and houses fer asonder,
But he ne left nought for no rain ne thonder
In sikeness and in mischief to visite
The feuest in his parish moche, and lite
Upon his fete, and in his hand a staff:
This noble ensample to his shepe he yaf,

That first he wrought and afterward he taught;
Out of the gospel he the wordes caught.-
And though he holy were, and vertuous,
He was to sinful men not dispitous;
Ne of his speche dangerous ne digne,
But in his teching discrete and benigne.
To drawen folk to heven with fairnesse,
By good ensample was his businesse;
But if were any persone obstinat,
What so he were of highe or low estat,
Him wolde he snibben sharply for the nones.
A better preest I trowe that no wher non is,
He waited after no pompe ne reverence,
Ne maked him no spiced conscience;
But Cristes lore and his apostles twelve
He taught, but first he folwed it himselve."

Prologue to the CANTERBURY TALES.

Such was Mr. Mansfield. And he brought to Aberleigh a still greater blessing than the Roman Catholic Priest of Chaucer could do, (although, by the way, the old bard was a follower of Wickliffe, the herald of the Reformation) in a wife, as good as himself: two lively promising girls; and a rosy, frankhearted boy, quite worthy of such parents. One shall seldom see together a finer family, for our "gode parsone" was not only "lite of foot," a man in the prime of life, full of vigour and activity, but united the intellectual countenance of the scholar, to the elegance and polish of a gentleman. Mrs. Mansfield was remarkably pretty; and the young people had about them all the glow and the brightness of their fresh and happy age. But the beauty of the vicarage, the beauty of the parish, was a female servant who accompanied them, their maid Mary. She was five or six and twenty, and looked as much; of middle height, and middle size, rather inclining to the fullness and luxuriance of womanhood; fair, blooming, smiling, and bright-eyed, yet with an expression so chastised, so perfected by modesty, that no one could look on her without being sure that she was as good as she was lovely. Her voice, and dress, and manner too, were all in keeping with her sweet face, gentle, quiet, and retiring. In short she had not been a week in the village, before all the neighbours were asking each other-" Have you seen the vicar's pretty maid ?"

The home which received this delightful family was every way worthy of its inhabitants. A country parsonage is generally in itself and its associations a happy mixture of the unpretending and the comfortable; and of all parsonages Aberleigh is the most beautiful. It stands amidst a labyrinth of green lanes, running through a hilly and richlywooded country, whose valleys are threaded by the silver Loddon. On one side is the magnificent wreck of a grand, but deserted mansion-house, built with porch and pinnacle, and rich gothic windows, in the style of Elizabeth's day on the other the old village church; its tower fancifully ornamented with brick-work, and the church-yard planted with broad flowering limes, and funeral yew-trees;

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| leading up to the church, a short avenue of magnificent oaks; and behind the avenue, and divided from a lane by a considerable space, partly lawn, partly court, and partly flowergarden, stands the vicarage.

The house is a low irregular building, covered to the very roof with creeping shrubs, roses, woodbine, jessamine, clematis, and myrtles, flowering into the very chamber windows, -such myrtles as were never before seen in this part of England. One of them died in the hard winter, twelve years ago, and a chair and a stool were made of the wood. It took no polish, but still it had a pretty look and a pretty name; that English myrtle, it almost sounded like a contradiction. The garden is just suited to the house; large squares of fine turf with beds and borders of flowers divided by low box hedges, so thick and broad and level, that you might walk on them two abreast; with a long piece of water, in one compartment, stocked with gold and silver fish; a tall yew-hedge, fencing off the kitchen garden, and a sun-dial rising from the green turf opposite the house, that voiceless monitor, whose silence is so eloquent, and whose gliding finger realizes, and perhaps suggested the sublime personification of Wordsworth"Time the Shadow."

The Mansfields were exceedingly struck with their new habitation. They had hitherto resided on the coast of Sussex, the South Downs; so that accustomed to those green hills, and the fertile but unsheltered plains beyond them, the absolute nakedness of the land, and the vast and bare expanse of the ocean, they were almost as much unaccustomed to trees as a negro to snow, and first wondered at, then complained of, and at last admired our richly-wooded valleys, and the remains of old chases, and bits of wild forest scenery in which we abound. The artlessness with which these feelings were confessed, added a fresh charm to this interesting family. There is always something very attractive in the ignorance of any particular subject which we sometimes meet with amongst clever and cultivated people. Their questions are so intelligent, so poignant, so (to use a bold phrase) full of answers. They instruct our knowledge, and make us feel far more sensibly that which we teach. It was the pleasantest thing in the world, to walk through Aberleigh Wood with Clara Mansfield and Evelyn's Sylva, showing her, by the help of that delightful book, the differences of form and growth, and bark and foliage; sometimes half puzzled myself by some freak of nature, or oftener forgetting our avowed object in admiration of the pictorial beauty, the varied colouring, the play of light and shadow, and the magical perspective of that delightful spot.

The young people caught my enthusiasm, and became almost as completely foresters as the half-wild ponies, who owned the name,

or the still wilder donkies, whom we used to meet in the recesses of the wood, and whose picturesque forms and grouping, added the interest of life and motion to the landscape.

All the family became denizens of Aberleigh wood, except Mary, who continued a perfect Nereide, constant to the coast to a degree that rendered her quite unjust to our inland scenery. She languished under the reverse disease of a Calenture, pined for the water, and was literally, in a new sense of the word, sea-sick. To solace her malady, she would sometimes walk across the park to the Loddon, especially at sun-set; for to hear Mary, any one would have thought that that bright luminary never did make a set worth talking of, except when he could look at himself in a watery mirror; and then, when she reached the Loddon, provoked at the insufficiency of the spectacle, she would turn back without vouchsafing a second glance, although it is but justice to that poetical river to declare, that at Aberleigh bridge it is as broad, as glassy, and as beautiful a stream as ever the sun showed his face in, with much of the character of a lake; but Ullswater, or Winandermere, would have fared equally ill with Mary; nothing but the salt sea could content her.

It was soon obvious that our inland beaux were no better suited to her taste than our inland scenery. Half the young men in the village offered her suit and service. First, George Ellis the farrier, a comely youth, and well to do in the world, who kept an apprentice, and a journeyman, a horse and cart, two greyhounds, three spaniels, and one pointer, being indeed, by many degrees, the keenest sportsman in these parts;-George Ellis proffered to make her mistress of himself, his household, his equipage, and his stud; but was civilly rejected. The next candidate who presented himself was Ben Appleton, the son of a neighbouring farmer; Ben Appleton is a wag, and has a face and figure proper to the vocation: a shape tall, stout, and square, that looks stiff and is active; with a prodigious power of putting himself into all manner of out-of-the-way attitudes, and of varying and sustaining this pantomime to an extent that really seems inexhaustible. The manner in which he can, so to say, transpose that sturdy form of his, put his legs where his arms should be, and his arms in the place of his legs, walk on his hands, stand on his head, tumble, hop, and roll, might raise some envy in Grimaldi himself. His features are under the same command. Originally I suspect him to have been good-looking; but who can ever say that he has seen Ben Appleton's real face? He has such a roll of the eye, such a twist of the nose, such a power of drawing to either ear that broad mouth, filled with strong white teeth. His very talk is more like a piece of a laugh, than the speech of an ordinary man;

and his actions have all the same tendencyfull of fun, with a dash of mischief. But Bcn is a privileged person, an universal favourite; and Mary, never dreaming of such a catastrophe as his falling in love, used to contemplate his tricks from afar, with something of the same amusement which she might have felt in watching a kitten or a monkey. For a long time he made his addresses with impunity; unsuspected and unrepelled; no one believed him in earnest. At last, however, Ben and his case became serious, and then Mary became serious too: he received a firm though gentle dismissal, and looked grave for a whole week. Next came Aaron Keep the shoemaker, the wisest man in the parish, noted all over the country for his knowledge of the stars, and judgment in the weather, and almost as notorious for his aversion to matrimony and his contempt for women. Aaron was said to have been jilted in his youth, which soured a kindly temper and put mistrust into his heart. Him, even him, did Mary's beauty and Mary's modesty vanquish. He who had been abusing the sex for the last forty years actually made her an offer. I suppose the happiest moment in his life must have been that in which she refused him. One can fancy him trembling over the narrowness of his escape, like the man who did not fall over Dover Cliff-but the offer was made.

The cause of all this obduracy at last appeared. A young sailor arrived at the vicarage, whom the most graphical of our poets shall assist me in describing:

"Fresh were his features, his attire was new;
Clean was his linen, and his jacket blue;
Of finest jean his trowsers, tight and trim,
Brushed the large buckle at the silver rim."
CRABBE.

He arrived at the vicarage towards the end of winter, and was introduced by Mary to mine hostess of the Eight Bells as her half-brother; although Mary was so little used to telling fibs, that her blushes, and downcast looks and smiles between, in short, the whole pervading consciousness would have betrayed her, as Mrs. Jones, the landlady, observed, to any one who had but half an eye; to say nothing of Miss Clara's arch look as she passed them. Never was half-brother so welcomed; and in good truth he was well worthy of his welcome.

Thomas Clere was an exceedingly fine young man, of six or seven and twenty, with a head of curly black hair, a sun-burnt complexion, a merry, open countenance, and a bluff hearty voice that always sounded as if transmitted through a speaking-trumpet. He established himself at the Eight Bells, and soon became very popular in that respectable hostelry. Besides his good humour, his liberality, and his sea jokes, next to Irish jokes always the most delightful to rustic ears, perhaps because next to Irish, the least intelligi

groom. How beautiful she looked in her neat and delicate dress, her blushes and her smiles! The young ladies of the vicarage, with whose family she had lived from childhood, went to church with her, and every body cried as usual on such occasions. Clara, who had never been at a wedding before, had resolved against crying; but tears are contagious things, and poor Clara's flowed, she did not well know why. This too was afterwards thought an ill omen.

Thomas and Mary had hired a room for a

ble-your country bumpkin loves a conundrum, and laughs heartiest at what he does not understand; besides these professional qualifications, Thomas was eminently obliging and tolerably handy; offered his assistance in every emergency, and did more good, and less harm than most amateur helpers, who, generally speaking, are the greatest hindrances under the sun. Thomas was really useful. To be sure, when engaged in aiding Mary, a few casualties did occur from pre-occupation; once, for instance, they contrived to let down a whole line of clothes which he had been as-week in a neighbouring town, after which she sisting to hang out. Neither party could ima- was to return for a while to her good master gine how the accident happened, but the wash- and mistress; and he was to go to sea again ing was forced to be done over again. Another in the good merchant-ship, the Fair Star. To time, they, between them, overset the milk- go to sea again for one last voyage, and then bucket, and the very same day so over-heated to return rich, quite rich for their simple wishthe oven, that a whole batch of bread, and es, (Thomas's savings already yielded an inthree apple-pies were scorched to a cinder. come of twelve shillings a week) set up in But Thomas was more fortunate with other some little trade, and live together all the rest coadjutors. He planted a whole patch of cab- of their lives-such were their humble plans. bages in a manner perfectly satisfactory, and They found their short honeymoon, passed in even made a very decent cucumber-bed in a strange place, and in idleness, a little long, mine host's garden. He churned Mrs. Jones's I fancy, in spite of true love, as greater peobutter as well as Mary herself could have done ple have done before them. Yet Mary would it. He shaped bats, and cut wickets for the willingly have remained even under the sad great boys, plaited wicker baskets for the penalty of want of occupation, rather than part younger ones, and even dug a grave for the with Thomas for the sea, which now first besextoness, an old woman of eighty, the widow gan to appear formidable in her eyes. But of a former sexton who held that office (cor- Thomas had promised, and must go on this ruptly, as our village radicals were wont to one last voyage to Canada; he should be home say) in conjunction with that of the pew-open-in six months, six months would be soon gone, er, and used to keep the children in order by one nod of her grey head, and to compound for the vicar every Sunday a nosegay of the choicest flowers of the season. Thomas, although not very fond of the job, dug a grave, to save sixpence for poor Alice. Afterwards this kindness was thought ominous.

No wonder that our seaman was popular. The only time he got into a scrape at Aberleigh, was with two itinerant showmen, who called themselves sailors, but who were, Thomas was sure, "nothing but land-lubbers," and who were driving about an unhappy porpoise in a wheelbarrow, and showing it at two-pence a head, under the name of a sea pig. Thomas had compassion on the creature of his own element, who was kept half alive by constant watering, and threatened to fight both the fellows unless they promised to drive it instantly back to the sea; which promise was made and broken, as he might have expected, if a breach of promise could ever enter into a sailor's conception. Our sailor was too frank even to maintain his Mary's maidenly artifice, and had so many confidants, that before Mr. Mansfield published the banns of marriage between Thomas Clere and Mary Howell, all the parish knew that they were lovers.

At last the wedding-day came. Aaron Keep left his work to take a peep at the bride, and Ben Appleton paid her the high compliment of playing no trick either on her or the bride

and then they would never part again. And so he soothed, and comforted, and finally brought her back to the vicarage, and left her there; and she, when the trial came, behaved as well as possible. Her eyes were red, to be sure, for a week or two, and she would turn pale when praying for "those who travel by land or by water," but still she was calm, and cheerful, and apparently happy.

An accident about six weeks after their separation, first disturbed her tranquillity. She contrived, in cutting a stick to tie up a tree carnation belonging to her dear Miss Clara, to lacerate very considerably the third finger of her left hand. The injury was so serious, the surgeon insisted on the necessity of sawing off the ring, the wedding-ring! She refused. The hurt grew worse and worse. Still Mary continued obstinate, in spite of Mrs. Mansfield's urgent remonstrances; at length it came to the point of sawing off the ring or the finger, and then, and not till then, not till Mr. Mansfield had called to aid all the authority of a master, did she submit-evidently with more reluctance and more pain than she would have felt at an amputation. The finger got well, and her kind mistress gave her her own mother's wedding-ring to supply the place of the severed one, but it would not do; a superstitious feeling had seized her, a strange vague remorse; she spoke of her compliance as sinful; as if by divesting herself of the

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