across the lea, past the workhouse, along by the great pond, till we slide into the deep narrow lane, whose hedges seem to meet over the water, and win our way to the little farmhouse at the end. 66 Through the farm-yard, Lizzy; over the gate; never mind the cows; they are quiet enough."-"I don't mind 'em," said Miss Lizzy, boldly and truly, and with a proud affronted air, displeased at being thought to mind any thing, and showing by her attitude and manner some design of proving her courage by an attack on the largest of the herd, in the shape of a pull by the tail. "I don't mind 'em.""I know you don't, Lizzy; but let them alone, and don't chase the turkeycock. Come to me, my dear!" and, for a wonder, Lizzy came. In the mean time my other pet, Mayflower, had also gotten into a scrape. She had driven about a huge unwieldy sow, till the animal's granting had disturbed the repose of a still more enormous Newfoundland dog, the guardian of the yard. Out he sallied growling from the depth of his kennel, erecting his tail, and shaking his long chain. May's attention was instantly diverted from the sow to this new playmate, friend or foe, she cared not which: and he of the kennel, seeing his charge unhurt and out of danger, was at leisure to observe the charms of his fair enemy, as she frolicked round him, always beyond the reach of his chain, yet always with the natural instinctive coquetry of her sex, alluring him to the pursuit which she knew to be vain. I never saw a prettier flirtation. At last the noble animal, wearied out, retired to the inmost recesses of his habitation, and would not even approach her when she stood right before the entrance. "You are properly served, May. Come along, Lizzy. Across this wheatfield, and now over the gate. Stop! let me lift you down. No jumping, no breaking of necks, Lizzy!" And here we are in the meadows, and out of the world. Robinson Crusoe, in his lonely island, had scarcely a more complete, or a more beautiful solitude. * sinks softly away, like some tiny bay, and the water flows between, so clear, so wide, so shallow, that Lizzy, longing for adventure, is sure she could cross unwetted; now dashing through two sand-banks, a torrent deep and narrow, which May clears at a bound; now sleeping half-hidden beneath the alders and hawthorns and wild roses, with which the banks are so profusely and variously fringed, whilst flags, lilies, and other aquatic plants, almost cover the surface of the stream. In good truth it is a beautiful brook, and one that Walton himself might have sitten by and loved, for trout are there; we see them as they dart up the stream, and hear and start at the sudden plunge when they spring to the surface for the summer flies. Izaac Walton would have loved our brook and our quiet meadows; they breathe the very spirit of his own peacefulness, a soothing quietude that sinks into the soul. There is no path through them, not one; we might wander a whole spring day, and not see a trace of human habitation. They belong to a number of small proprietors, who allow each other access through their respective grounds, from pure kindness and neighbourly feeling, a privilege never abused; and the fields on the other side of the water are reached by a rough plank, or a tree thrown across, or some such homely bridge. We ourselves possess one of the most beautiful; so that the strange pleasure of property, that instinct which makes Lizzy delight in her broken doll, and May in the bare bone which she has pilfered from the kennel of her recreant admirer of Newfoundland, is added to the other charms of this enchanting scenery; a strange pleasure it is, when one so poor as I can feel it! Perhaps it is felt most by the poor, with the rich it may be less intense-too much diffused and spread out, becoming thin by expansion, like leafgold; the little of the poor may be not only more precious, but more pleasant to them: certain that bit of grassy and blossomy earth, with its green knolls and tufted bushes, its old pollards wreathed with ivy, and its bright and babbling waters, is very dear to me. But These meadows consist of a double row of small enclosures of rich grass-land, a mile or two in length, sloping down from high arable grounds on either side, to a little nameless *Walking along these meadows one bright sunny brook that winds between them, with a course afternoon, a year or two back, and rather later in the which in its infinite variety, clearness, and season, I had an opportunity of observing a curious rapidity, seems to emulate the bold rivers of circumstance in natural history. Standing close to the aorth, of whom, far more than of our lazy ance on a large tuft of flags. It looked like bunches the edge of the stream, I remarked a singular appearsouthern streams, our rivulet presents a mi- of flowers, the leaves of which seemed dark, yet niature likeness. Never was water more ex-transparent, intermingled with brilliant tubes of bright quisitely tricksy :-now darting over the bright probles, sparkling and flashing in the light with a babbling music, as sweet and wild as the song of the woodlark; now stretching nietly along, giving back the rich tufts of the golden marsh-marygolds which grow on its margin: now sweeping round a fine reach of green grass, rising steeply into a high mound, 2 mimic promontory, whilst the other side blue or shining green. On examining this phenoclusters of dragon-flies, just emerged from their demenon more closely, it turned out to be several formed crysalis state, and still torpid and motionless from the wetness of their filmy wings. Half an hour later we returned to the spot, and they were gone. We had seen them at the very moment when beauty was complete, and animation dormant. I have since found nearly a similar account of this curious process in Mr. Bingley's very entertaining work, called “Animal Biography." I must always have loved these meadows, so fresh, and cool, and delicious to the eye and to the tread, full of cowslips, and of all vernal flowers: Shakspeare's Song of Spring bursts irrepressibly from our lips as we step on them: "When daisies pied, and violets blue, Do paint the meadows with delight, "Cuckoo! cuckoo!" cried Lizzy, breaking in with her clear childish voice; and immediately, as if at her call, the real bird, from a neighbouring tree (for these meadows are Idotted with timber like a park), began to echo my lovely little girl, "cuckoo! cuckoo!" I have a prejudice very unpastoral and unpoetical (but I cannot help it, I have many such), against this "harbinger of spring." His note is so monotonous, so melancholy; and then the boys mimic him; one hears "cuckoo! cuckoo!" in dirty streets, amongst smoky houses, and the bird is hated for faults not his own. But prejudices of taste, likings and dislikings, are not always vanquishable by reason; so, to escape the serenade from the tree, which promised to be of considerable duration, (when once that eternal song begins, on it goes ticking like a clock)—to escape that noise I determined to excite another, and challenged Lizzy to a cowslip-gathering; a trial of skill and speed, to see which should soonest fill her basket. My stratagem succeeded completely. What scrambling, what shouting, what glee from Lizzy! twenty cuckoos might have sung unheard whilst she was pulling her own flowers, and stealing mine, and laughing, screaming, and talking through all. At last the baskets were filled, and Lizzy declared victor: and down we sate, on the brink of the stream, under a spreading hawthorn, just disclosing its own pearly buds, and surrounded with the rich and enamelled flowers of the wild hyacinth, blue and white, to make our cowslip-ball. Every one knows the process; to nip off the tuft of flowerets just below the top of the stalk, and hang each cluster nicely balanced across a riband, till you have a long string like a garland; then to press them closely together, and tie them tightly up. We went on very prosperously: considering, as people say of a young lady's drawing, or a Frenchman's English, or a woman's tragedy, or of the poor little dwarf who works without fingers, or the ingenious sailor who writes with his toes, or generally of any performance which is accomplished by means seemingly inadequate to its production. To be sure, we met with a few accidents. First, Lizzy spoiled nearly all her cowslips by snapping them off too short; so there was a fresh gathering; in the next place, May overset my full basket, and sent the blossoms floating, like so many fairy favours, down the brook; then when we were going on pretty steadily, just as we had made a superb wreath, and were thinking of tying it together, Lizzy, who held the riband, caught a glimpse of a gorgeous butterfly, all brown and red and purple, and skipping off to pursue the new object, let go her hold; so all our treasures were abroad again. At last, however, by dint of taking a branch of alder as a substitute for Lizzy, and hanging the basket in a pollardash, out of sight of May, the cowslip-ball was finished. What a concentration of fragrance and beauty it was! golden and sweet to satiety! rich to sight, and touch, and smell! Lizzy was enchanted, and ran off with her prize, hiding amongst the trees in the very coyness of ecstasy, as if any human eye, even mine, would be a restraint on her innocent raptures. In the mean while I sate listening, not to my enemy the cuckoo, but to a whole concert of nightingales, scarcely interrupted by any meaner bird, answering and vying with each other in those short delicious strains which are to the ear as roses to the eye; those snatches of lovely sound which come across us as airs from heaven. Pleasant thoughts. delightful associations, awoke as I listened; and almost unconsciously I repeated to myself the beautiful story of the Lutist and the Nightingale, from Ford's Lover's Melancholy. Here it is. Is there in English poetry any thing finer? Passing from Italy to Greece, the tales To Thessaly I came, and living private, That art and nature ever were at strife in. down. He could not run divisions with more art Some time thus spent, the young man grew at last Fail'd in, for grief down dropt she on his lute, And brake her heart. It was the quaintest sadness To weep a funeral elegy of tears. He look'd upon the trophies of his art, had the misfortune to lose a shoe in the mud, which we left the boy to look after. Here we are at home-dripping; but glowing and laughing, and bearing our calamity most manfully. May, a dog of excellent sense, went instantly to bed in the stable, and is at this moment over head and ears in straw; Lizzy is gone to bed too, coaxed into that wise measure by a promise of tea and toast, and of not going home till to-morrow, and the Then sigh', then wiped his eyes; then sigh'd and story of Little Red Riding-Hood; and I am cried, Alas! poor creature, I will soon revenge Henceforth this lute, guilty of innocent blood, When I had finished the recitation of this exquisite passage, the sky, which had been all the afternoon dull and heavy, began to look more and more threatening; darker clouds, like wreaths of black smoke, flew across the dead leaden tint; a cooler, damper air blew over the meadows, and a few large heavy drops plashed in the water. "We shall have a storm. Lizzy! May! where are ye? Quick, quick, my Lizzy! run, run! faster faster!" And off we ran; Lizzy not at all displeased at the thoughts of a wetting, to which indeed she is almost as familiar as a duck; May, on the other hand, peering up at the weather, and shaking her pretty ears with manifest dismay. Of all animals, next to a cat, a greyhound dreads rain. She might have escaped it; her light feet would have borne her home long before the shower; but May is too faithful for that, too true a comrade, understands too well the laws of good fellowship; so she waited for us. She did, to be sure, gallop on before, and then stop and look back, and beckon, as it were, with some scorn in her black eyes at the slowness of our progress. We in the mean while got on as fast as we could, encouraging and reproaching each other.Faster, my Lizzy! Oh what a bad runner!" Faster, faster! Oh what a bad runner,' echoed my saucebox. "You are so fat, Lizzy, you make no way!"-"Ah! who else is fat?" retorted the darling. Certainly her mother is right; I do spoil that child. enjoying the luxury of dry clothing by a good fire. Really getting wet through now and then is no bad thing, finery apart; for one should not like spoiling a new pelisse or a handsome plume; but when there is nothing in question but a white gown and a straw bonnet, as was the case to-day, it is rather pleasant than not. The little chill refreshes, and our enjoyment of the subsequent warmth and dryness is positive and absolute. Besides, the stimulus and exertion do good to the mind as well as body! How melancholy I was all the morning! how cheerful I am now! Nothing like a shower-bath-a real shower-bath, such as Lizzy and May and I have undergone, to cure low spirits. Try it, my dear readers, if ever ye be nervous-I will answer for its success. A COUNTRY CRICKET-MATCH. I DOUBT if there be any scene in the world more animating or delightful than a cricketmatch:-I do not mean a set match at Lord's Ground for money, hard money, between a certain number of gentlemen and players, as they are called-people who make a trade of that noble sport, and degrade it into an affair of bettings, and hedgings, and cheatings, it may be, like boxing or horse-racing; nor do I mean a pretty fête in a gentleman's park, where one club of cricketing dandies encounter another such club, and where they show off in graceful costume to a gay marquée of admiring belles, who condescend so to purchase admiration, and while away a long summer morning in partaking cold collations, conversing occasionally, and seeming to understand the game-the whole being conducted acBy this time we were thoroughly soaked, cording to ball-room etiquette, so as to be exall three. It was a pelting shower, that ceedingly elegant and exceedingly dull. No! drove through our thin summer clothing and the cricket that I mean is a real solid oldpoor May's short glossy coat in a moment. fashioned match between neighbouring parishAnd then, when we were wet to the skin, the es, where each attacks the other for honour sun came out, actually the sun, as if to laugh and a supper, glory and half-a-crown a man. at our plight; and then, more provoking still, If there be any gentlemen amongst them, it is when the sun was shining, and the shower well-if not, it is so much the better. Your rver, came a maid and a boy to look after us, gentleman cricketer is in general rather an loaded with cloaks and umbrellas enough to anomalous character. Elderly gentlemen are fence us against a whole day's rain. Never obviously good for nothing; and young beaux mind! on we go, faster and faster; Lizzy are, for the most part, hampered and tramobliged to be most ignobly carried, having melled by dress and habit; the stiff cravat, F the pinched-in waist, the dandy-walk-oh they will never do for cricket! Now, our country lads, accustomed to the flail or the hammer (your blacksmiths are capital hitters,) have the free use of their arms; they know how to move their shoulders; and they can move their feet too-they can run; then they are so much better made, so much more athletic, and yet so much lissomer-to use a Hampshire phrase, which deserves at least to be good English. Here and there, indeed, one meets with an old Etonian, who retains his boyish love for that game which formed so considerable a branch of his education; some even preserve their boyish proficiency, but in general it wears away like the Greek, quite as certainly, and almost as fast; a few years of Oxford, or Cambridge, or the continent, are sufficient to annihilate both the power and the inclination. No! a village match is the thing,-where our highest officer -our conductor (to borrow a musical term) is but a little farmer's second son; where a daylabourer is our bowler, and a blacksmith our long-stop; where the spectators consist of the retired cricketers, the veterans of the green, the careful mothers, the girls, and all the boys of two parishes, together with a few amateurs, little above them in rank, and not at all in pretension; where laughing and shouting, and the very ecstasy of merriment and good humour, prevail: such a match, in short, as I attended yesterday, at the expense of getting twice wet through, and as I would attend toat the certainty of having that duck morrow, haps, that no great good resulted from the substitution of public houses for out-of door ĉiversions, relaxed. In short the practice recommenced, and the hill was again alive with mea and boys, and innocent merriment; but farther than the riband matches amongst ourselves! nobody dreamed of going, till this challenge: -we were modest, and doubted our own strength. The B. people, on the other hand, must have been braggers born, a whole parish of gasconaders. Never was such boasting! such crowing! such ostentatious display of practice! such mutual compliments from man to man-bowler to batter, batter to bowler! It was a wonder they did not challenge all England. It must be confessed that we were. a little astounded; yet we firmly resolved not to decline the combat; and one of the most spirited of the new growth, William Grey by name, took up the glove in a style of manly, courtesy, that would have done honour to a knight in the days of chivalry." We were not professed players," he said; "being little better than school-boys, and scarcely older: but, since they had done us the honour to challenge us, we would try our strength. It would be no discredit to be beaten by such a field." Having accepted the wager of battle, our champion began forthwith to collect his forces. William Grey is himself one of the finest youths that one shall see,-tall, active, slender, and yet strong, with a piercing eye full of sagacity, and a smile full of good humour,a farmer's son by station, and used to hard work as farmers' sons are now, liked by every For the last three weeks our village has body, and admitted to be an excellent cricketer. been in a state of great excitement, occasioned He immediately set forth to muster his men, by a challenge from our north-western neigh-remembering with great complacency that bours, the men of B., to contend with us at cricket. Now we have not been much in the habit of playing matches. Three or four years ago, indeed, we encountered the men of S., our neighbours south-by-east, with a sort of doubtful success, beating them on our own ground, whilst they in the second match returned the compliment on theirs. This discouraged us. Then an unnatural coalition between a highchurch curate and an evangelical gentlemanfarmer drove our lads from the Sunday-evening practice, which, as it did not begin before both services were concluded, and as it tended to keep the young men from the ale-house, our magistrates had winked at, if not encouraged. The sport therefore had languished until the present season, when under another change of circumstances the spirit began to revive. Half a dozen fine active lads, of influence amongst their comrades, grew into men and yearned for cricket: an enterprising publican gave a set of ribands: his rival, mine host of the Rose, an out-doer by profession, gave two; and the clergyman and his lay-ally, both well-disposed and good-natured men, gratified by the submission to their authority, and finding, per Samuel Long, a bowler comme il y en a peu, the very man who had knocked down nine wickets, had beaten us, bowled us out at the fatal return match some years ago at S., had luckily, in a remove of a quarter of a mile last Lady-day, crossed the boundaries of his old parish, and actually belonged to us. Here was a stroke of good fortune! Our captain applied to him instantly; and he agreed at a word. Indeed Samuel Long is a very civilized person. He is a middle-aged man who looks rather old amongst our young lads, and whose thickness and breadth give no token of remarkable activity; but he is very active, and so steady a player! so safe! We had half gained the match when we had secured him. He is a man of substance, too, in every way; owns one cow, two donkeys, six pigs, and geese and ducks beyond count; dresses like a farmer, and owes no man a shilling;—and all this from pure industry, sheer day-labour. Note that your good cricketer is commonly the most industrious man in the parish; the habits that make him such are precisely those which make him a good workman-steadiness, sobriety, and activity-Samuel Long might pass for the high! We were all afraid that, in spite of his name, his strength would never hold out. Grey, with all the dignified seniority of twenty speaking to eighteen. "Coper's a year younger," said John. "Coper's a foot shorter," replied William: so John retired; and the eleventh man remained unchosen, almost to the eleventh hour. The eve of the match arrived, and the post was still vacant, when a little boy of fifteen, David Willis, brother to Harry, admitted by accident to the last practice, saw eight of them out, and was voted in by acclamation. beau ideal of the two characters. Happy were we to possess him! Then we had another piece of good luck. James Brown, a journeyman"Wait till next year, John," quoth William blacksmith and a native, who, being of a rambling disposition, had roamed from place to place for half a dozen years, had just returned to settle with his brother at another corner of our village, bringing with him a prodigious reputation in cricket and in gallantry-the gay Lothario of the neighbourhood. He is said to have made more conquests in love and in cricket than any blacksmith in the county. To him also went the indefatigable William Grey, and he also consented to play. No end to our good fortune! Another celebrated batter, called Jo- That Sunday evening's practice (for Monday seph Hearne, had likewise recently married was the important day) was a period of great into the parish. He worked, it is true, at the anxiety, and, to say the truth, of great pleaA. mills, but slept at the house of his wife's sure. There is something strangely delightful father in our territories. He also was sought in the innocent spirit of party. To be one of and found by our leader. But he was grand a numerous body, to be authorized to say we, and shy; made an immense favour of the thing; to have a rightful interest in triumph or defeat, courted courting and then hung back;-"Did is gratifying at once to social feeling and to not know that he could be spared; had partly personal pride. There was not a ten-year old resolved not to play again-at least not this urchin, or a septuagenary woman in the parish, season, thought it rash to accept the challenge; who did not feel an additional importance, a thought they might do without him- -"reflected consequence, in speaking of "our Truly I think so too," said our spirited champion; we will not trouble you, Mr. Hearne." Having thus secured two powerful auxiliaries, and rejected a third, we began to reckon and select the regular native forces. Thus ran our list:-William Grey, 1.-Samuel Long, 2. -James Brown, 3.-George and John Simmons, one capital, the other so, so,—an uncertain hitter, but a good fieldsman, 5.-Joel Breut, excellent, 6.-Ben Appleton-Here was a little pause-Ben's abilities at cricket were not completely ascertained; but then he was so good a fellow, so full of fun and waggery! no doing without Ben. So he figured in the list, 7.-George Harris-a short halt there too! Slowish-slow but sure. I think the proverb brought him in, 8.-Tom Coper-oh, beyond the world, Tom Coper! the red-headed garide ning lad, whose left-handed strokes send her (a cricket-ball, like that other moving thing a ship, is always of the feminine gender,) send her spinning a mile, 9.-Harry Willis, another blacksmith, 10. We had now ten of our eleven, but the choice of the last occasioned some demur. Three young Martins, rich farmers of the neighbourhood, successively presented themselves, and were all rejected by our independent and imparmal general for want of merit-cricketal merit. Not good enough," was his pithy answer. Then our worthy neighbour, the halfpay lieutenant, offered his services-he, too, hough with some hesitation and modesty, zas refused-"not quite young enough," was his sentence. John Strong, the exceeding long ng of our dwarfish mason, was the next candulate a nice youth-every body likes John Song and a willing, but so tall and so limp, bent in the middle-a thread-paper, six feet side." An election interests in the same way; but that feeling is less pure. Money is there, and hatred, and politics, and lies. Oh, to be a voter or a voter's wife, comes nothing near the genuine and hearty sympathy of belonging to a parish, breathing the same air, looking on the same trees, listening to the same nightingales! Talk of a patriotic elector!-Give me a parochial patriot, a man who loves his parish! Even we, the female partisans, may partake the common ardour. I am sure I did. I never, though tolerably eager and enthusiastic at all times, remember being in a more delicious state of excitation than on the eve of that battle. Our hopes waxed stronger and stronger. Those of our players, who were present, were excellent. William Grey got forty notches off his own bat; and that brilliant hitter Tom Coper gained eight from two successive balls. As the evening advanced, too, we had encouragement of another sort. A spy, who had been despatched to reconnoitre the enemy's quarters, returned from their practising ground, with a most consolatory report. Really," said Charles Grover, our intelligencer-a fine old steady judge, one who had played well in his day-they are no better than so many old women. Any five of ours would beat their eleven." This sent us to bed in high spirits. Morning dawned less favourably. The sky promised a series of deluging showers, and kept its word, as English skies are wont to do on such occasions; and a lamentable message arrived at the head-quarters from our trusty comrade Joel Brent. His master, a great farmer, had begun the hay-harvest that very morning, and Joel, being as eminent in one field as in another, could not be spared. Imagine Joel's plight! the most ardent of all our eleven! a 66 |