A Cotswold Village; Or, Country Life and Pursuits in Gloucestershire

by J. Arthur Gibbs

CRICKET.

In an agricultural district such as the Cotswolds it is inevitable that the game of cricket should be somewhat neglected. Men who work day after day in the open air, and to whom a half-holiday is a very rare experience, naturally seek their recreations in less energetic fashion than the noble game of cricket demands of its votaries. The class who derive most benefit from this game spring as a rule from towns and manufacturing centres and those whose work and interests confine them indoors the greater part of their time. Among the Cotswold farmers, however, a great deal of interest is shown; the scores of county matches are eagerly pursued in the daily papers; and if there is a big match on at Cheltenham or any other neighbouring town, a large number invariably go to see it. There is some difficulty in finding suitable sites for your ground in these parts, for the hill turf is very stony and shallow; it is not always easy to find a flat piece of ground handy to the villages. A cricket ground is useless to the villagers if it is perched up on the hill half a mile away. It must be at their doors; and even then, though they may occasionally play, they will never by any chance trouble to roll it. We made a ground in the valley of the Coln some years ago, and went to some expense in the way of levelling, filling up gravel pits, and removing obstructions like cowsheds; but unless we had looked after it ourselves and made preparations for a match, it would have soon gone back to its original rough state again. And yet two of the young Peregrines in the village are wonderfully good cricketers, and as "keen as mustard" about it; though when it comes to rolling and mowing the ground they are not quite as keen. They will throw you over for a match in the most unceremonious way if, when the day comes, they don't feel inclined to play. We have often tried to persuade these two young fellows to become professional cricketers, there being such a poor prospect in the farming line; but they have not the slightest ambition to play for the county, though they are quite good enough; so they "waste their sweetness on the desert air."

Old Mr. Peregrine, a man of nearly eighty years of age, is splendid fun when he is watching his boys play cricket. He goes mad with excitement; and if you take them off bowling, however much the batsmen appear to relish their attack, he won't forgive you for the rest of the day.

His eldest son, Tom--our old friend the keeper--generally stands umpire; he is not so useful to his side as village umpires usually are, because he hasn't got the moral courage to give his side "in" when he knows perfectly well they are "out." The other day, however, he made a slight error; for, on being appealed to for the most palpable piece of "stumping" ever seen in the cricket field, the ball bouncing back on to the wicket from the wicket-keeper's pads while the batsman was two yards out of his ground, he said, "Not out; it hit the wicket-keeper's pads." He imagined he was being asked whether the batsman had been bowled, and it never occurred to him that you could be "stumped out" in this way. Altogether, Cotswold cricket is great fun.

The district is full of memories of the prehistoric age, and in certain parts of the country prehistoric cricket is still indulged in. Never shall I forget going over to Edgeworth with the Winson Cricket XI. to play a grand match at that seat of Roman antiquities. The carrier drove us over in his pair-horse brake--a rickety old machine, with a pony of fourteen hands and a lanky, ragged-hipped old mare over sixteen hands high in the shafts together. A most useful man in the field was the honest carrier, whether at point or at any other place where the ball comes sharp and quick; for, to quote Shakespeare,

"he was a man
Of an unbounded stomach."

The rest of our team included the jovial miller; two of the village carpenter's sons--excellent folk; the village curate, who captained the side, and stood six feet five inches without his cricket shoes; one or two farmers; a footman, and a somewhat fat and apoplectic butler.

The colours mostly worn by the Winson cricketers are black, red, and gold--a Zingaric band inverted (black on top); their motto I believe to be "Tired, though united."

As the ground stands about eight hundred feet above sea level, all of us, but especially the fat butler, found considerable difficulty in getting to the top of the hill, after the brake had set us down at the village public. But once arrived, a magnificent view was to be had, extending thirty miles and more across the wolds to the White Horse Hill in Berkshire. However, we had not come to admire the view so much as to play the game of cricket. We therefore proceeded to look for the pitch. It was known to be in the field in which we stood, because a large red flag floated at one end and proclaimed that somewhere hereabouts was the scene of combat. It was the fat butler, I think, who, after sailing about in a sea of waving buttercups like a veritable Christopher Columbus, first discovered the stumps among the mowing grass.

Evident preparations had been made either that morning or the previous night for a grand match; a large number of sods of turf had been taken up and hastily replaced on that portion of the wicket where the ball is supposed to pitch when it leaves the bowler's hand. There had been no rain for a month, but just where the stumps were stuck a bucket or two of water had been dashed hastily on to the arid soil; while, to crown all, a chain or rib roller--a ghastly instrument used by agriculturists for scrunching up the lumps and bumps on the ploughed fields, and pulverising the soil--had been used with such effect that the surface of the pitch to the depth of about an inch had been reduced to dust.

In spite of this we all enjoyed ourselves immensely. Delightful old-fashioned people, both farmers and labourers, were playing against us; quaint (I use the word in its true sense) and simple folk, who looked as if they had been dug up with the other Saxon and Roman antiquities for which Edgeworth is so famous.

I was quite certain that the man who bowled me out was a direct descendant of Julius Caesar. He delivered the ball underhand at a rapid rate. It came twisting along, now to the right, now to the left; seemed to disappear beneath the surface of the soil, then suddenly came in sight again, shooting past the block. Eventually they told me it removed the left bail, and struck the wicket-keeper a fearful blow on the chest. It was generally agreed that such a ball had never been bowled before. "'Twas a pretty ball!" as Tom Peregrine pronounced it, standing umpire in an enormous wideawake hat and a white coat reaching down to his knees, and smoking a bad cigar. "A very pretty ball," said my fellow batsman at the other wicket "A d--d pretty ball," I reiterated sotto voce, as I beat a retreat towards the flag in the corner of the field, which served as a pavilion.

When I went on to bowl left-handed "donkey-drops," Tom Peregrine (my own servant, if you please) was very nearly no-balling me. "For," said he, "I 'ate that drabby-handed business; it looks so awkid. Muddling work, I calls it." But I am anticipating.

As I prepared myself for the fray, and carefully donned a pair of well-stuffed pads and an enormously thick woollen jersey for protection, not so much against the cold as against the "flying ball," it flashed across me that I was about to personify the immortal Dumkins of Pickwick fame; whilst in my companion, the stout butler, it was impossible not to detect the complacent features and rounded form of Mr. Podder. Up to a certain point the analogy was complete. Let the Winson Invincibles equal the All Muggleton C.C., while the Edgeworth Daisy Cutters shall be represented by Dingley Dell; then sing us, thou divine author of Pickwick, the glories of that never-to-be-forgotten day.

"All Muggleton had the first innings, and the interest became intense when Mr. Dumkins and Mr. Podder--two of the most renowned members of that distinguished club--walked bat in hand to their respective wickets. Mr. Luffy, the highest ornament of Dingley Dell, was pitched to bowl against the redoubtable Dumkins, and Mr. Struggles was selected to do the same kind office for the hitherto unconquered Podder...The umpires were stationed behind the wickets [Tom Peregrine had been suborned for Winson, and proved the most useful man on the side], the scorers were prepared to notch the runs. A breathless silence ensued. Mr. Luffy retired a few paces behind the wicket of the passive Podder, and applied the ball to his right eye for several seconds. Dumkins [the author] confidently awaited its coming with his eyes fixed on the motions of Mr. Luffy. 'Play!' suddenly cried the bowler. The ball flew from his hand straight and swift towards the centre stump of the wicket. The wary Dumkins was on the alert; it fell upon the tip of his bat...."

Here, with deep sorrow, let it be stated that the writer failed to evince the admirable skill displayed by his worthy prototype; the Dumkins of grim reality was unable to compete with the Dumkins of fiction. Instead of "sending the ball far away over the heads of the scouts; who just stooped low enough to let it fly over them," I caught it just as it pitched on a rabbit-hole, and sent it straight up into the air like a soaring rocket. "Right, right, I have it!" yelled bowler and wicket-keeper simultaneously. "Run two, Podder; they'll never catch it!" shouted Dumkins with all his might. "Catch it in your 'at, Bill!" screamed the Edgeworth eleven. Never was such confusion! I was already starting for the second run, whilst my stout fellow batsman was halfway through the first, when the ball came down like a meteor, and, narrowly shaving the luckless "Podder's" head, hit the ground with a loud thud about five yards distant from the outstretched hands of the anxious bowler, who collided with his ally, the wicket-keeper, in the middle of the pitch. Half stunned by the shock, and disappointed at his want of success in his attempt to "judge" the catch, the bowler had yet presence of mind enough to seize the ball and hurl it madly at the stumps. But the wicket-keeper being still hors de combat, it flew away towards the spectators, and buried itself among the mowing grass. "Come six, Podder!" I shouted, amid cries of "Keep on running!" "Run it out!" etc., from spectators and scouts alike. And run we did, for the umpire forgot to call "lost ball," and we should have been running still but for the ingenuity of one of our opponents; for, whilst all were busily engaged in searching among the grass, a red-faced yokel stole up unawares, with an innocent expression on his face, raced poor "Podder" down the pitch, produced the ball from his trouser pocket, and knocked off the bails in the nick of time. "Out," says Peregrine, amid a roar of laughter from the whole field; and Mr. "Podder" had to go.

Now came the question how many runs should be scored, for I had passed my fellow batsman in the race, having completed seven runs to his five. Eventually it was decided to split the difference and call it a sixer; the suggestion of a member of our side that seven should be scored to me and five to Mr. "Podder" (making twelve in all) being rejected after careful consideration.

Thus, from the first ball bowled in this historic match there arose the whole of the remarkable events recorded above. Therein is shown the complete performances with the bat of two renowned cricketers; for, alas I in once more trying to play up to the form of Dumkins, I was bowled "slick" the very next ball, "as hath been said or sung."

There was much good-natured chaff flying about during the match, but no fighting and squabbling, save when a boundary hit was made, when the batsman always shouted "Three runs," and the bowler "No, only one." The scores were not high; but I remember that we won by three runs, that the carpenter's son got a black eye, that we had tea in an old manor house turned into an inn, and drove home in the glow of a glorious sunset, not entirely displeased with our first experience of "prehistoric" cricket.

Some of the pleasantest matches we have ever taken part in have been those at Bourton-on-the-Water. Owing to the very soft wicket which he found on arriving, this place was once christened by a well-known cricketer Bourton-on-the-Bog. Indeed, it is often a case of Bourton-under-the-Water; but, in spite of a soft pitch, there is great keenness and plenty of good-tempered rivalry about these matches. Bourton is a truly delightful village. The Windrush, like the Coln at Bibury, runs for some distance alongside of the village street.

The M.C.C., or "premier club"--as the sporting press delight to call the famous institution at Lord's--generally get thoroughly well beaten by the local club. For so small a place they certainly put a wonderfully strong team into the field; on their own native "bog" they are fairly invincible, though we fancy on the hard-baked clay at Lord's their bowlers would lose a little of their cunning.

In the luncheon tent at Bourton there are usually more wasps than are ever seen gathered together in one place; they come in thousands from their nests in the banks of the Windrush.

If you are playing a match there, it is advisable to tuck your trousers into your socks when you sit down to luncheon. This, together with the fact that the tent has been known to blow down in the middle of luncheon, makes these matches very lively and amusing. What more lively scene could be imagined than a large tent with twenty-two cricketers and a few hundred wasps hard at work eating and drinking; then, on the tent suddenly collapsing, the said cricketers and the said wasps, mixed up with chairs, tables, ham, beef, salad-dressing, and apple tart, and the various ingredients of a cricket lunch, all struggling on the floor, and striving in vain to find their way out as best they can? Fortunately, on the only occasion that the tent blew down when we were present, it was not a good wasp year.

Besides the matches at Bourton, there is plenty of cricket at Cirencester, Northleach, and other centres in the Cotswolds. The "hunt" matches are great institutions, even though hunting people as a rule do not care for cricket, and invariably drop a catch. A good sportsman and excellent fellow has lately presented a cup to be competed for by the village clubs of this district. This, no doubt, will give a great impetus to the game amongst all classes; our village club has already been revived in order to compete. Our only fear with regard to the cup competition is that when you get two elevens on to a ground, and two umpires, none of whom know the rules (for cricket laws are the most "misunderstandable" things in creation), the final tie will degenerate into a free fight.

Be this as it may, anything that can make the greatest pastime of this country popular in the "merrie Cotswolds" is a step in the right direction. It is pleasing to watch boys and men hard at work practising on summer evenings. The rougher the ground the more they like it. Scorning pads and gloves, they "go in" to bat, and make Herculean efforts to hit the ball. And this, with fast bowling and the bumpy nature of the pitch, is a very difficult thing to do. They play on, long after sunset,--the darker it gets, and the more dangerous to life and limb the game becomes, the happier they are. We are bound to admit that when we play with them, a good pitch is generally prepared. It would be bad policy to endeavour to compete in the game they play, as we should merely expose ourselves to ridicule, and one's reputation as the man who has been known "to play in the papers," as they are accustomed to call big county matches, would very soon be entirely lost.

I was much amused a few years ago, on arriving home after playing for Somersetshire in some cricket matches, when Tom Peregrine made up to me with "a face like a benediction," and asked if I was the gentleman who had been playing "in the papers."

While on the subject of cricket, for some time past we have made experiments of all sorts of cricket grounds, and have come to the conclusion that the following is the best recipe to prepare a pitch on a dry and bumpy ground. A week before your match get a wheelbarrow full of clay, and put it into a water-cart, or any receptacle for holding water. Having mixed your clay with water, keep pouring the mixture on to your pitch, taking care that the stones and gravel which sink to the bottom do not fall out. When you have emptied your water-cart, get some more clay and water, and continue pouring it on to the ground until you have covered a patch about twenty-two yards long and three yards wide, always remembering not to empty out the sediment at the bottom of the water-cart, for this will spoil all. Then, setting to work with your roller, roll the clay and water into the ground. Never mind if it picks up on to the roller: a little more water will soon put that to rights. After an hour's rolling you will have a level and true cricket pitch, requiring but two or three days' sun to make it hard and true as asphalt. You may think you have killed the grass; but if you water your pitch in the absence of rain the day after you have played on it, the grass will not die. It is chiefly in Australia that cricket grounds are treated in this way; they are dressed with mud off the harbours, and rolled simultaneously. Such grounds are wonderfully true and durable.

If the pitch is naturally a clay one, it might be sufficient to use water only, and roll at the same time; but for renovating a worn clay pitch, a little strong loamy soil, washed in with water and rolled down will fill up all the "chinks" and holes. It will make an old pitch as good as new.

The reason that nine out of ten village grounds are bad and bumpy is that they are not rolled soon enough after rain or after being watered. Roll and water them simultaneously, and they will be much improved.

Another excellent plan is to soak the ground with clay and water, and leave it alone for a week or ten days before rolling. Permanent benefit will be done to the soil by this method. For golf greens and lawn-tennis courts situated on light soil, loam is an indispensable dressing. Any loamy substance will vastly improve the texture of a light soil and the quality of the herbage. Yet it is most difficult to convince people of this fact. We have known cases in which hundreds of pounds have been expended on cricket grounds and golf greens when an application of clay top-dressing would have put the whole thing to rights at the cost of a few shillings. One committee had artificial wells made on every "putting green" of their golf course, in order to have water handy for keeping the turf cool and green. What better receptacle for water could they have found than a top-dressing of half an inch of loam or clay, retaining as it does every drop of moisture that falls in the shape of dew or rain, instead of allowing it to percolate through like a sieve, as is the case with an ordinary sandy soil? Yet this clay dressing, while retaining water, becomes hard, firm, and as level as a billiard table on the timely application of the roller.

Those who look after cricket grounds and the like have seldom any acquaintance with the constitution of soils; they are apt to treat all, whether sand, light loam, strong loam, heavy clay, or even peat, in exactly the same way, instead of recollecting that, as in agriculture, a judicious combination will alone give us that ideal loam which produces the best turf, and the best soil for every purpose. I am quite convinced that our farmers do not realise how much worthless light land may be improved by a dressing of clay or loam. Such dressings are expensive without a doubt, but the amelioration of the soil is so marked that in favourable localities the process ought to pay in the long run.

Turning to cricket in general, perhaps the modern game, as played on a good wicket, is in every respect, save one, perfection. If only something could be done to curtail the length of matches, and rid us of that awful nuisance the poking, time-wasting batsman, there would be little improvement possible.

"All the world's a stage," and even at cricket the analogy holds good. Thus Shakespeare:

"As in a theatre the eyes of men,
After a well-graced actor leaves the stage,
Are idly bent on him that enters next,
Thinking his prattle to be tedious."

So also one may say of some dull and lifeless cricketer who, after the famous Gloucestershire hitter has made things merry for spectators and scouts alike, "enters next":

"As in a cricket field the eyes of men,
After a well-Graced player leaves the sticks,
Are idly bent on him that enters next,
Thinking his batting to be tedious."

On the other hand, if we sow the wild oats of cricket--in other words, if we risk everything for the fleeting satisfaction of a blind "slog"--we shall be bowled, stumped, or caught out for a moral certainty. It is only a matter of time.

Perhaps the addition of another stump might help towards the very desirable end of shortening the length of matches, and thus enable more amateurs to take part in them. I cannot agree with those who lament the improved state of our best English cricket grounds; if only the batsmen play a free game and do not waste time, the game is far more entertaining for players and spectators alike, when a true wicket is provided. The heroes of old,

"When Bird and Beldham, Budd, and such as they,--
Lord Frederick, too, once England's chief and flower,--
Astonished all who came to see them play,"

those "scorners of the ground" and of pads and gloves doubtless displayed more pluck on their rough, bumpy grounds than is now called forth in facing the attack of Kortright, Mold, or Richardson. But on the other hand, on rough grounds much is left to chance and luck; cricket, as played on a billiard-table wicket certainly favours the batsman, but it admits of a brilliancy and finish in the matter of style that are impossible on the old-fashioned wicket. Whilst the modern bowler has learnt extraordinary accuracy of pitch, the batsman has perfected the art of "timing" the ball. And what a subtle, delicate art is correct "timing"!--the skilful embodiment of thought in action, depending for success on that absolute sympathy of hand and eye which only assiduous practice, confidence, and a good digestion can give. And on uncertain, treacherous ground confident play is never seen. A ball cannot be "cut" or driven with any real brilliancy of style when there is a likelihood of its abruptly "shooting" or bumping. No; if we would leave as little as possible to chance, our grounds cannot be too good. Even from a purely selfish point of view, apart from the welfare of our side, the pleasure derived from a good "innings" on a first-rate cricket ground is as great as that bestowed by any other physical amusement.

Perhaps one ought not to think of comparing the sport of fox-hunting, with its extraordinary variety of incident and surroundings, the study of a lifetime, to the game of cricket. At the same time, for actual all-round enjoyment, and for economy, the game holds its own against all amusements.

Bromley-Davenport has said that given a good country and a good fox, and a burning scent, the man on a good horse with a good start, for twenty or thirty minutes absorbs as much happiness into his mental and physical organisation as human nature is capable of containing at one time. This is very true. But how seldom the five necessary conditions are forthcoming simultaneously the keen hunting man has learnt from bitter experience. You will be lucky if the real good thing comes off once for every ten days you hunt. In cricket a man is dependent on his own quickness of hand and eye; in hunting there is that vital contingency of the well-filled purse. "'Tis money that makes the mare to go."

Then what a grand school is cricket for some of the most useful lessons of life! Its extraordinary fluctuations are bound to teach us sooner or later

"Rebus angustis animosus atque
Fortis appare."

The rebus angustis are often painfully impressed on the memory by a long sequence of "duck's eggs"; and how difficult is the animosus atque fortis appare when we return to the pavilion with a "pair of spectacles" to our credit!

Then, again, cricketers are taught to preserve a mind

"Ab insolenti temperatam
Laetitiâ."

We must not permit the laetitiâ insolenti to creep in when we have made a big score. How often do we see young cricketers over-elated under these circumstances, and suffering afterwards from temporary over-confidence and consequent carelessness!

But we must have no more Horace, lest our readers exclaim, with Jack Cade, "Away with him! away with him! he speaks Latin!"

Hope, energy, perseverance, and courage,--all these qualities are learnt in our grand English game. There is always hope for the struggling cricketer. In no other pursuit are energy and perseverance so absolutely sure of bearing fruit, if we only stick to it long enough.

The fact is that cricket, like many other things, is but the image and prototype of life in general. And the same qualities that, earnestly cultivated in spite of repeated failure and disappointment, make good cricketers lead ultimately to success in all the walks of life. In spite of the improvement in grounds, cricket is still an excellent school for teaching physical courage. Many grounds are somewhat rough and bumpy to field on, beautifully smooth though they look from the pavilion. We have only to stand "mid-off" or "point" on a cold day at the beginning of May whilst a hard-hitting batsman, well set on a true wicket, is driving or cutting ball after ball against our hands and shins, to realise what a capital school for courage the game is!

How exacting is the critic in this matter of fielding! and how delightfully simple the bowling looks from that admirably safe vantage-ground, the pavilion! Just as to a man comfortably stationed in the grand-stand at Aintree nothing looks easier than the way in which the best horses in the world flit over the five-foot fences, leaving them behind with scarcely an effort, their riders sitting quietly in the saddle all the while, so does the pavilion critic pride himself on the way he would have "cut" that short one instead of merely stopping it, or blocked that simple ball that went straight on and bowled the wicket. Everything that is well and gracefully performed appears easy to the looker-on. But that ease and grace, whether in the racehorse or in the man, has only been acquired by months and years of training and practice.

It is seldom that the spectator is able to form a true and unbiassed opinion as to the varied contingencies which lead to victory or defeat in cricket. The actual players and the umpires are perhaps alone qualified to judge to what extent the fluctuations of the game are affected by the vagaries of weather and ground. For this reason it is well to take newspaper criticism cum grano salis.

What is the cause of the extraordinary fluctuations of form which all cricketers, from the greatest to the least, are more or less subject to? It cannot be set down altogether to luck, for a run of bad luck, such as all men have at times experienced, is often compatible with being in the very best form. A man who is playing very well at the net often gets out directly he goes in to bat in a match, whilst many a good player, who tells you "he has not had a bat in his hand this season," in his very first innings for the year makes a big score. In subsequent innings's, oddly enough, he feels the want of net practice. Confidence would seem to be the sine quâ non for the successful batsman. Nothing succeeds like success; and once fairly started on a sequence of big scores, the cricketer goes on day by day piling up runs and vires acquirit eundo.

Perhaps "being in form" does not depend so much on the state of the digestion as on the state of the mind. Anxiety or excitement, fostered by over-keenness, usually results in a blank score-sheet. Some men, like horses, are totally unable to do themselves credit on great occasions. They go off their feed, and are utterly out of sorts in consequence. On the other hand, sheer force of will has often enabled men to make a big score. Many a good batsman can recall occasions on which he made a mental resolve on the morning of a match to make a century, and did it.

How curious it is that really good players, from staleness or some unknown cause, occasionally become absolutely useless for a time! Every fresh failure seems to bring more and more nervousness, until, from sheer lack of confidence, their case becomes hopeless, and a child could bowl them out. Ah well! we must not grumble at the ups and downs of the finest game in creation: "every dog will have his day" sooner or later; of that we may be sure.

And not the least of the advantages of cricket is the large number of friends made on the tented field. For this reason the jolliest cricket is undoubtedly that which is played by the various wandering clubs. Whether you are fighting under the banner of the brotherhood whose motto is "United though untied," [6] or under the flag of the "Red, Black, and Gold," [7] or with any other of the many excellent clubs that abound nowadays, you will have an enjoyable game, whether you make fifty runs or a duck's egg.

[6] The Free Foresters.

[7] The I Zingari.

County cricket is nowadays a little over done. Two three-day matches a week throughout the summer don't leave much time for other pursuits. A liberal education at a good public school and university seems to be thrown away if it is to be followed by five or six days a week at cricket all through the summer year after year. Most of our best amateurs realise this, and, knowing that if they go in for county cricket at all they must play regularly, they give it up, and are content to take a back seat. They do wisely, for let us always remember that cricket is a game and not a business.

On the other hand, much good results from the presence in county cricket of a leavening of gentle; for they prevent the further development of professionalism. It is doubtless owing to the "piping times of peace" England has enjoyed during the past fifty years that cricket has developed to such an abnormal extent. The British public are essentially hero worshippers, and especially do they worship men who show manliness and pluck; and those feelings of respect and admiration that it is to be hoped in more stirring times would be reserved for a Nelson or a Wellington have been recently lavished on our Graces, our Stoddarts, our Ranjitsinhjis, and our Steels.

As long as war is absent, and we "live at home at ease," so long will our sports and pastimes flourish and increase. And long may they flourish, more especially those in which the quality of courage is essential for success! It will be a bad day for England when success in our sports and pastimes no longer depends on the exercise of pluck and manliness; when hunting gives place to bicycling, and cricket to golf; when, in fact, the wholesome element of danger is removed from our recreation and pursuits. Should, in the near future, the long-talked-of invasion of this country by a combination of European powers become an accomplished fact, Englishmen may perchance be glad, as the cannon balls and musket shots are whizzing round their heads, that on the mimic battlefields of cricket, football, polo, and fox-hunting they learnt two of the most useful lessons of life--coolness and courage.

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CHAPTER XII.

THE COTSWOLDS THREE HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

Nowadays, thanks in a great measure to Mr. Madden's book, the "Diary of Master William Silence," it is beginning to dawn on us that the Cotswolds are more or less connected with the great poet of Stratford-on-Avon.

Mr. Blunt, in his "Cotswold Dialect," gives no less than fifty-eight passages from the works of Shakespeare, in which words and phrases peculiar to the district are made use of. Up to the reign of Queen Anne this vast open tract of downland formed a happy hunting ground for the inhabitants of all the surrounding counties. Warwickshire, Oxfordshire, and Wiltshire, as well as Gloucestershire folk repaired to the wolds for hunting, coursing, hawking, and other amusements; and in olden times, even more than to-day, Cotswold was, as Burton described it, "a type of what is most commodious for hawking, hunting, wood, waters, and all manner of pleasures." There never was a district so well adapted for stag-hunting. Nowadays the Cotswold district falls short in one desideratum, and that a most essential one, of being a first-rate hunting country. The large extent of ploughed land and the extreme dryness and poverty of the soil cause it on four days out of five to carry a most indifferent scent. But to-day we pursue the fox; in Shakespeare's time the stag was the quarry. And, as hunting men are well aware, the scent given off by a stag is not only ravishing to hounds, but it actually increases as the quarry tires, whilst that from a fox "grows small by degrees and beautifully less."

As with hunting, so also with coursing and hawking; the Cotswolds were the grand centre of Elizabethan sport. Here it was that Shakespeare marked the falcon "waiting on and towering in her pride of place." Here he saw the fallow greyhounds competing for the silver-studded collar.

What an interest and a dignity does a district such as this draw from even the slenderest association with the splendid name of William Shakespeare! For my part I freely confess that scenery, however grand and sublime, appeals but little to the imagination unless it be hallowed by association or blended in the thoughts with the recollection of those we have either loved or admired. Thus in India, in Natal and Cape Colony, in glorious Ceylon, I could admire those wonderful purple mountains and that tropical luxuriance of fertility and verdure; but I could not feel them. The boundless wolds of Africa, reminding one so much of Gloucestershire, yet far grander and far finer than anything of the kind in England, were to me a dreary wilderness. Passing through the fine broken hill country of Natal was like visiting chaos, a waste, inhospitable land,

"Where no one comes
Or hath come since the making of the world."

How well I remember the first sight of the wolds of South Africa! It was the hour of uncertain light that comes before the dawn; and as our railway train wound its tortuous course like a snake up the awful heights that would ultimately end in Majuba Hill--to which ill-fated spot I was bound--the billowy waves of rolling down seemed gradually to change to an immensely rough ocean running mountains high, and the mimosa trees dotting the plain for hundreds of miles appeared like armies of the souls of all the black men that ever lived on earth since the world began. There were passes and chasms like the portals of far-off, inaccessible Paradise,

"With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms."

And then the scene changed. The hills rose like graves of white men and barrows to the long-forgotten dead. Great oblong barrows, round Celtic barrows, and stately sarcophagi. Monumental effigies in alabaster, granite and porphyry; grim Gothic castles dating back to the foundation of the world, and grim Gothic cathedrals with long-drawn aisles, where the "great organ of Eternity" kept thundering ceaselessly. For the lightning and the thunder are powers to be reckoned with in those awful realms of chaos. And then the scene changed again. There suddenly uprose weird shapes of giants and leviathans, huge mammoths and whole regiments of fantastic monsters that looked like clouds and yet were mountains; and there were fortresses and towers of silence, with vultures hovering over them, and cliffs and crags and jutting promontories that looked like mountains, but were really clouds: for the black clouds and the frowning hills were so much alike that, save when the lightning shone, you could not say where the sky ended and the land began. But there was one gleam of hope in this weird and dismal scene, for on the farthest verge of the horizon there appeared, as it were, a lake--such a lake as saw the passing of Arthur, vanishing in mystery and silently floating away upon a barge towards the east. It was a lake of beryl, whose far-off golden shores were set with rubies and sardonyx, and beyond these, again, were the more distant waters of the silver sea; and as when Sir Bedivere

"... saw,
Straining his eyes beneath an arch of hand,
Or thought he saw, the speck that bare the King,
Down that long water opening on the deep
Somewhere far off, pass on and on, and go
From less to less and vanish into light.
And the new sun rose bringing the new year,--"

so over the plains of Africa rose the mighty Alchemist and great revealer of truth, the scatterer of dreary darkness and secret night, turning those shadowy hills to purple and those mystic waters in the eastern sky to gold.

How different are our feelings when we traverse, either in reality or in fancy, such parts of the earth as are deeply blended in our hearts and minds with old familiar associations! Whilst wandering through the Lake District of England, how are we reminded of Wordsworth and the "Excursion"! How can we visit Devonshire and the West Country without summoning up pleasant thoughts of Charles Kingsley and Amyas Leigh; of the men of Bideford, Sir Richard Grenville, Kt., and "The little Revenge"? How vividly do the Trossachs recall "The Lady of the Lake" and Walter Scott! How with Edinburgh do we connect the sad story of Mary, the ill-fated queen! At Killarney, or standing amid the Gothic tracery of Tintern, how do we think on Alfred Tennyson and "the days that are no more"! These are only a few of the places in the British Isles that by universal consent are hallowed by tender associations. Of those spots in England which are dear to our hearts for personal reasons, there are of course hundreds. Every man has his own peculiar prejudices in this respect. To some London is the most sacred spot on earth. And who shall deny that with all her faults London is not a vastly interesting place? Is not every street hallowed by its associations with some great name or some great event in English history? Which of us can stand amid the Gothic tracery and the crumbling cloisters of Westminster, or under the shadow of the old grey towers of Whitehall, without recalling heart-stirring scenes and "paths of glory that lead but to the grave"? Who can stand unmoved on any of the famous bridges that span the silent river? Dr. Johnson, who acted up to Pope's well-known motto,

"The proper study of mankind is man,"

thought Fleet Street the most interesting place on the face of the earth; and perhaps he was right. Let us hear what he has to say about this halo of old association: "To abstract the mind from all local emotion would be impossible if it were endeavoured; and would be foolish if it were possible. Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses; whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me and from my friends be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue."

This, then, is the difference between the plains of Africa and the hills and valleys of England. The one is at present a vast inhospitable chaos, the other a land in which there is scarcely an acre that has not been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. Such are the signs by which we are to distinguish Cosmos from Chaos.

How far into the Cotswold Hills the halo of Stratford-on-Avon's glory may be said to extend it is not easy to determine. Let us allow at all events that the reflection from the arc reaches across the whole extent of the wolds as far as Dursley. For here on the western edge of the Cotswolds it is probable that Shakespeare spent that portion of his life which has always been involved in obscurity--the interval between his removal from Warwickshire and his arrival in London.

On a fine autumnal evening in the year 1592 a horseman, mounted on a little ambling nag, neared the Cotswold village of Bibury. Both man and steed showed unmistakable signs of weariness. The horse especially, though of that wiry kind known as the Irish hobby, hard as iron, and accustomed to long journeys, evinced by that sober and even dejected expression of countenance so well known to hunting men, that he had been ridden both far and fast. The saddle too, as well as the legs, chest, and flanks of the nag, appeared wet and mud-stained, as if some brook had been swum or some deep and muddy river forded, whilst the left shoulder and knee of the rider bore marks which told tales of a fall. The personal appearance of the man was not such as to excite the interest of the casual passer-by; for his dress, though extremly neat, was that worn by clerks and other townsfolk of the day; yet a keen observer might have noticed that the features were those of a man of uncommon character, in whom, as Carlyle would have said, a germ of irrepressible force had been implanted.

It had indeed been a glorious day. The hounds, after meeting close to Moreton-in-the-Marsh, in Warwickshire, had found a great hart in the forest near Seizincote, and had hunted him "at force" over the deep undrained vale up on to the Cotswold Hills, away past Stow-on-the-Wold and Bourton-on-the-Water, towards the great woods of Chedworth. But the stag, after crossing the Windrush close to Mr. Dutton's house at Sherborne, had failed to make his point, and had "taken soil" in a deep pool of the river Coln, near the little village of Coln-St-Dennis, where eventually the mort had sounded. Such a run had not been seen for many a long day; for it measured no less than fourteen miles "as the crow flies," and about five-and-twenty as the hounds ran. The time occupied had been close on seven hours. There had of course been several checks; but so strong had been the scent of this hart that, in spite of two "lets" of some twenty minutes' duration, the pack had been able to hunt their quarry to the bitter end. Only two men had seen the end. The pride and chivalry of Warwickshire, mounted on their high-priced Flanders mares, their Galway nags, and their splendid Barbaries, had been hopelessly thrown out of the chase; and besides the huntsman, on his plain-bred little English horse, the only remnant of the field was our friend with his tough and wiry Irish hobby.

It is five o'clock, and the sun as it disappears beyond a high ridge of the wolds, is tinging the grey walls of an ancient Gothic fane with a rosy glow. This our sportsman does not fail to notice; but in spite of his keen appreciation of the beauties of nature, the question uppermost in his mind, as he jogs along the rough, uneven road or track which leads to Bibury, is where to spend the night. The thought of returning home at that late hour does not enter his head; for the stag having gone away in exactly the opposite direction to that from which the Warwickshire man had set out early in the morning, there are no less than three-and-thirty long and weary miles between the hunter and his home. In the days of good Queen Bess, however, hospitality was proverbially free, and any decently set up Englishman was tolerably sure of a welcome at any of the country houses which were then, as now, scattered at long intervals over this wild, uncultivated district. And as he rides round a bend in the valley, a fair manor house comes into view, pleasantly placed in a sheltered spot hard by the River Coln. It was built in the style which had just come into vogue--the Elizabethan form of architecture; and in honour of the reigning monarch its front presented the appearance of the letter E. The windows, instead of being made of horn, were of glass; and tall stone chimneys (a modern luxury but lately invented) carried away the smoke from the chambers within.

It so happened that at the moment the stranger was passing, the owner of the house--a squire of some sixty years of age, but hale and hearty--was standing in front of his porch taking the evening air. This fact the horseman did not fail to notice, and with a ready eye to the main chance, which showed its possessor to be a man of no ordinary apprehension, he glanced approvingly at the groined porch, the richly carved pinnacles above it, and at the quaint belfry beyond, exclaiming with great enthusiasm:

"'Fore God, you have a goodly dwelling and a rich here. I do envy thee thine house, sir."

"Barren, barren, barren; beggars all, beggars all," [8] was the reply, to which, after a pause, the squire added, "Marry, good air."

[8] 2 Henry IV, V. iii.

"Ah, 'tis a good air up on these wolds," replied the sportsman. "But I am a stranger here in Gloucestershire; these high wild hills and rough, uneven ways draw out our miles and make them wearisome.[9] How far is it to Stratford?"

[9] King Richard II., II. iii.

"Marry, 'tis nigh on forty mile, I warrant. Thou'll not see Stratford to-night, sir; thy horse is wappered[10] out, and that I plainly see."

[10] Wappered = tired. A Cotswold word.

To him replied the stranger wearily:

Where is the horse that doth untread again
His tedious measures with the unbated fire
That he did pace them first? All things that are,
Are with more spirit chased than enjoyed.[11]

[11] Merchant of Venice, II. vi.

"Hast been with the hounds to-day?" enquired the honest squire.

"Ah, sir, and that I have," was the reply; "and never have I seen such sport before. For seven long hours they made the welkin ring, and ran like swallows o'er the plain." [12]

[12] Titus Andronicus, II. ii.

"Please to step in; we be just a-settin' down to supper--a cold capon and a venison pasty. I'll tell my serving man to take thy nag to yonder yard, and make him comfortable for the night."

"Thanks, sir, I'll take him round myself, and give the honest beast a drench of barley broth,[13] and afterwards, to cheer him up a bit, a handful or two of dried peas." [14]

[13] Henry V., III. v.

[14] Midsummer Night's Dream, IV. i.

Whilst the hunter was seeing to his nag, the squire thus addressed his serving man:

"Some pigeons, Davy, a couple of short-legged hens, a joint of mutton, and any pretty tiny kickshaws, tell William cook." [15]

[15] 2 Henry IV., V. i.

DAVY: "Doth the hunter stay all night, sir?"

SQUIRE: "Yes, Davy. I will use him well; good sportsmen are ever welcome on Cotswold."

The wants of the Irish hobby having been thoroughly attended to, and the game little fellow having recovered in some measure his natural gaiety of spirits, the squire ushered the stranger into a long low hall, hung with pikes and guns and bows, and relics of the chase as well as of the wars. The stone floor was strewed with clean rushes, and lying about on tables were trashes, collars, and whips for hounds, as well as hoods, perches, jesses, and bells for hawks; whilst a variety of odds and ends, such as crossbows and jumping-poles, were scattered about the apartment. An enormous wood fire blazed at one end of the hall, and in the inglenook sat a girl of some twenty summers.

"My daughter, sir," exclaimed the squire; "as good a girl as ever lived to make a cheese, brew good beer, preserve all sorts of wines, and cook a capon with a chaudron! Marry! I forgot to ask thee thy name?"

"Oh, my name is Shakespeare--William Shakespeare, sir. I come from Stratford-on-the-Avon, up to'rds Warwick."

"Shakespy, Shakespy; a' don't know that name. Dost bear arms, sir?"

"I am entitled to them--a spear on a bend sable, and a falcon for my crest; but we have not yet applied to the heralds for the confirmation. And you, sir?"

"He writes himself armigero in any bill, warrant, quittance, or obligation," here put in Davy the serving man.

"Ah, that I do! and have done any time these three hundred years."

"All his successors gone before him hath done it; and all his ancestors that come after him may," added Davy, with pride.

"To be sure, to be sure," said the squire. "Well, welcome to Cotswold, Master Shakespeare; good sportsmen are ever welcome on Cotswold. But tell me, how didst thou get thy downfall?"

"The first was at the mound into the tyning by Master Blackett's house at Iccomb; old Dobbin breasted it, and the stones did rattle round mine ears like a house a-coming down. We made a shard[16] that let the rest of 'em through. It was the only wall that came in the way of the chase to-day. The second downfall was at the brook by Bourton-Windrush, I think they call it. Dobbin being a bit short of wind, and quilting sadly, stuck fast in the mire, and tumbled on to his nose in scrambling out. Marry, sir, but 'twas a famous chase; the like of it I never saw before. 'Twas grand at first to see the hart unharboured--a stag with all his rights, 'brow, bay, and trey.'"

[16] A Cotswold word = breach.

"Thou shouldst know, our hounds at Warwick are a noted pack,

So flew'd, so sanded, and their beads are hung
With ears that sweep away the morning dew;
Crook-knee'd, and dew-lapp'd like Thessalian bulls;
Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth like bells,
Each under each. A cry more tuneable
Was never holla'd to, nor cheer'd with horn.'" [17]

[17] Midsummer Night's Dream, IV. i.

Then he told how, after leaving behind the deep undrained grass country round Moreton-in-the-Marsh, they rose the hills by Stow and came across the moor. How the riders who spurred their horses up the steep uprising ascent were soon left behind. For

"To climb steep hills
Requires slow pace at first; anger is like
A full hot horse, who, being allowed his way,
Self mettle tires him."

He told how, after an hour's steady running over the wolds, a "let" [18] occurred, and "the hot scent-snuffing hounds are driven to doubt";[19] how Mountain, Fury, Tyrant, and Ringwood, who had been leading the rest of the pack, strove in vain for a considerable time to pick out the cold scent, until suddenly the cheery sound of the old huntsman's voice was heard crying:

[18] Two Noble Kinsmen, III. v.

[19] Venus and Adonis, 692.

"Fury! Fury! There, Tyrant, there! Hark! Hark!" [20]

and the whole pack went "yoppeting" off as happy as the hunt was long. He told how Belman fairly surpassed himself, and "twice to-day picked out the dullest scent";[21] and how little Dobbin, the Irish hobby, went cantering on "as true as truest horse, that yet would never tire." [22] He told how, after running from scent to view, they came down into the woodlands of the valley of the Coln, and awoke the echoes with their "gallant chiding."

[20] Tempest, IV, i.

[21] Taming of the Shrew, Introduction.

[22] Midsummer Night's Dream, III. i.

"... besides the groves,
The skies, the fountains, every region near
Seem'd all one mutual cry: I never heard
So musical a discord, such sweet thunder." [23]

[23] Midsummer Night's Dream, IV.

And how the noble animal took soil in the Coln,

"Under an oak whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along this wood:
To the which place our poor sequester'd stag
Did come to languish; and indeed, my lord,
The wretched animal heaved forth such groans
That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat
Almost to bursting, and the big round tears
Coursed one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase.
Left and abandon'd of his velvet friends,
''Tis right,' quoth he: 'thus misery doth part
The flux of company': anon a careless herd,
Full of the pasture, jumps along by him,
And never stays to greet him. 'Ah,' quoth Jaques,
'Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens;
'Tis just the fashion: wherefore do you look
Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there?'" [24]

[24] As You Like It, II. i.

And finally he told how the gallant beast died a soldier's death, fighting to the bitter end.

"Marry, 'twas a right good chase, and bravely must thy steed have borne thee. But thou wast too venturesome, Master Shakespeare," exclaimed the squire, "a-trying to jump that mound into the tyning by Master Blackett's house."

"Tell me, I prithee," answered Shakespeare, anxious to turn the conversation from his own share in the day's proceedings, "whose dog won the silver-studded collar this year in the coursing matches on Cotswold?" [25]

[25] Merry Wives of Windsor.

"Our Bill Peregrine, here, at the farm, carried it off. A prettier bit of coursing I never did see!"

"Ah! that was the country fellow that turned up when we sounded the mort by Col-Dene. He seemed to spring up out of the ground. He is a snapper up of unconsidered trifles, I'll be bound. The fellow claimed the hide: he said the skin was the keeper's fee." [26]

[26] 3 Henry VI, III. i.

"That 'ould be he. I warrant he lent a hand in taking assay and breaking up the deer. Tis just what he enjoys."

"Ah! I marked him disembowelling the poor dead beast in right good will, with hands besmeared with blood." [27]

[27] Henry IV., V. iv.

Then they fell to talking of other things; and the honest old squire began to brag about his London days, and how he was once of Clement's Inn.

"There was I, and little John Doit of Staffordshire, and black George Barnes, and Francis Pickbone, and Will Squele, a Cotswold man; you had not four such swinge-bucklers in all the Inns o' Court again." [28]

[28] Henry IV., III. ii.

But the old man was far too interested in his own doings to ask if his guest had ever been in London. It is the prerogative of age to take for granted that all younger men are of no account, and even as children, "to be seen and not heard."

"To-morrow," said the squire, "at break of day, we be a-going a-birding, to try some young falcons Bill Peregrine has lately trained. Wilt join us, Master Shakespeare?"

"Ah, that I will, sir! I know a hawk from a handsaw, or my name's not William Shakespeare."

By this time the cold capon and the venison pasty, as well as the "little tiny kickshaws," together with a gallon of "good sherris-sack," had been considerably reduced by the united efforts of the squire, the famished hunter, and those below the salt. During the meal such scraps of conversation as this might have been heard:

"Will you please to take a bit of bacon, Master Shakespeare?"

"Not any, I thank you," replied the poet.

"What, no bacon!" put in the serving man from behind, in a voice of surprise bordering on disappointment.

"No bacon for me, I thank you; I never take bacon," repeated Shakespeare, with some emphasis.

Then the master of the house would occasionally address a remark to his serving man about the farm, such as, "How a good yoke of bullocks at Ciren Fair?" or, "How a score of ewes now?" meaning how much are they worth. Once the serving man took the initiative, asking, "Shall we sow the headlands with wheat?" receiving the reply, "With red wheat, Davy." [29]

[29] 2 Henry IV, V. i.

Then there was some discussion concerning the stopping of William's (Peregrine's?) wages, "About the sack he lost the other day at Hinckley Fair."

SHAKESPEARE: "This Davy serves you for good uses; he is your serving man and your husbandman."

SQUIRE: "A good varlet, a good varlet, a very good varlet.... By the mass, I have drunk too much sack at supper! A good varlet." [30]

[30] 2 Henry IV, V. iii.

These were the squire's last words that night. He soon slept peacefully, as was his wont after his evening meal; whereupon the poet, with his accustomed gallantry, commenced making love in right good earnest to the fair daughter of the house.

The Cotswold girls, like the Irish, have always been famous for their beauty. Even amongst the peasants you may nowadays see the most beautiful and graceful women in the world, though their attire is usually of a plain and unbecoming character, and but ill adapted to set off the features and form of the wearer. The squire's daughter, whom we will call Jessica, was no exception to the rule. She was a handsome brunette--indeed, the squire called her a "black ousel." Shakespeare fell in love with her at once, and, forgetting all about the family at Stratford, he plunged into the most desperate flirtation. The girl, with that natural perception of the divine in man common to her sex, could not help feeling a strange admiration for this unexpected, though not unwelcome, guest. There was something about his countenance which exercised a peculiar charm and fascination. The thoughtful brow, the keen hazel eye, and the gentle bearing of the man were what at first attracted attention. But it was his manner and speech, half serious and half mirthful, which made such an impression on her mind; and perhaps she felt that, "to the face whose beauty is the harmony between that which speaks from within and the form through which it speaks, power is added by all that causes the outer man to bear more deeply the impress of the inner."

The surroundings, too, were as romantic as they possibly could be. A pair of rush candles were shedding their dim light through the long low oak-panelled apartment; they were the only lights that were burning, and even these flickered ominously at times, as if threatening to go out and leave the place in total darkness. A full moon, however, was casting her silvery beams through the great lattice casement, and in one of the upper panes of this window were richly emblazoned the arms of which the squire was so proud.

It was a glorious evening. Opening the window, William Shakespeare looked out upon the peaceful garden. The moon was shedding a pale light upon the woods and the stream, "decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass." A hundred yards away the silent Coln was gliding slowly onwards towards the sea. Owls were breathing heavily in the hanging wood, and a pair of otters were hunting in the pool.

As the two sat by the open window, the poet's own life and its prospects formed the principal topic of conversation. After years of toil in London his fortunes were beginning at length to improve. He was manager of a theatre, and was at length earning a moderate competency. He had already saved a little money, and hoped soon to buy a house at Stratford. He looked forward some day to returning to his native place and living a country life. At present he was enjoying a short holiday, the first for over a year.

As they sat and talked over these matters, a minstrel began to play in one of the cottages of the village; the sound of the harp added another charm to the peaceful surroundings, and filled the poet's mind with a strange delight.

"I am never merry when I hear sweet music," said Jessica.

Whereupon her companion replied:

"' ... soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.'" [31]

[31] Merchant of Venice, V. i.

Sweet is the sound of soft melodious music on a moonlight night; sweet the faint sigh of the breeze among the elms, and the light upon the silent stream; but sweeter far is music on a moonlight night, sweeter the faint sigh of the breeze, and the light upon the silent stream, when hope, renewed after years of sorrow and sadness, flatters once again the aims and objects of youth, gilding the landscape of life with wondrous alchemy, shedding rays of happy sunshine on the vague, mysterious yearnings of the soul of man towards the hidden destinies of the boundless future.

It was not long, however, before Shakespeare bade the fair Jessica good-night and retired to his sleeping apartment; for a run of such uncommon excellence as he had enjoyed that day was calculated to produce the tired, though not unpleasant, sensation which even now sends the hunting man sleepy, though happy, to bed.

So, lulled by the strains of the minstrel's harp did William Shakespeare seek his couch and sleep the sleep of the just But even while the body was wrapped in slumber, the highly wrought, powerful mind, though yet unconscious of its awful destiny, was hard at work, "moving about in worlds not realised." Yonder on the turret of that grey Gothic castle, whose pinnacles point ever upwards to the skies, they stand and wait, a glorious throng; and as they stand they wave him onwards. Dante, Homer, Virgil, Chaucer, Plutarch, Montaigne, and many another hero of old is waiting there. See the sharp-pointed features of the Italian bard, and Homer no longer blind! The two are holding animated converse, and ever beckoning him on. And a voice seemed to speak out loud and clear amid the solemn silence of eternity:

"Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,
Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues
Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike
As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch'd
But to fine issues." [32]

[32] Measure for Measure, I. i.

Can he linger? Away with blank misgivings, fears, and doubts! He will climb the rugged, steep ascent, and follow even unto the end.

The following morning a little before sunrise saw a party of five assembled for a hawking expedition on the downs. Besides the squire and William Shakespeare, the parson had turned up, whilst Bill Peregrine (ancestor of all the Peregrines, including, no doubt, the famous Peregrine Pickle) brought one of his brothers from the farm to "help him out" with the hawks. It was somewhat of a peculiar dawn--one of those dull grey mornings which often bodes a fine day. The bard was much interested in the glowing eastern sky, and as the sun began to appear he turned to William Peregrine and enthusiastically exclaimed:

"'.... what envious streaks
Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east:
Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.'" [33]

[33] Romeo and Juliet, III. v.

"To be sure, to be sure, it do look a bit comical, don't it?" answered the yeoman, with a cackle; and then, turning to his brother, he said, "Ain't 'e ever seen the sun rise before?"

"Please, squire, who be the gent from Warwickshire?" says Peregrine, sotto voce; "I cannot tell what the dickens his name is!"

"Oh! 'is name's Shakespy, William Shakespy. A good un at his books, I'll be bound. Get the hawks, Bill; the sun be up. A' must be off to Stratford shortly," answered the squire, glancing at the poet.

Whereupon the yeoman opened the door of a long covered shed commonly called the "mews," and shortly appeared again with four hooded hawks--two falcons, and two males or tiercel-gentles--placed on a wooden frame or cadge. These he handed to a stout yokel to carry, and the whole party sallied forth towards the downs. The squire and the parson were mounted on their palfreys, the rest of the party being on foot.

It was not long before William Peregrine started an interesting conversation with the stranger somewhat after this manner:

"Did you 'ave a pretty good day's spart yesterday, Master Quakespear?"

"Ah, that we had! I never saw such a day's sport in all my life!"

"I thought ye did. I could see the 'art was tired smartish. I qeum along by the bruk, and give un the meeting. When I sees un I says, 'I can see you've 'ad a smartish doing, old boy.' Then the 'ounds qeum yoppeting along as nice as could be. Then I sees you and the 'untsman lolloping along arter the dogs, and soon arter I 'urd the trumpets goin'; and so says I, 'It's a case,' and I qeums up and skins un. 'E did skin beautiful to be sure! I never see a better job in all my life--never!"

"'Twas a fine hart," replied Shakespeare, "and no dull and muddy-mettled rascal!" [34]

[34] Hamlet, II. ii.

"I be fond of a bit of spart like that," continued Peregrine; "but I never could away with books and larning. Muddling work, I calls it, messing over books. Do you care for that kind of stuff, Master Quakespear?"

"I dabble in it when I am away from the country," was the reply.

Then the Warwickshire man began soliloquising again, somewhat after this manner:

"'In his brain
He hath strange places crammed with observation,
The which he vents in mangled forms.'" [35]

[35] As you Like It vii.

"Drat the fellow!" whispered Peregrine, turning to the parson, who happened to be riding alongside "I don't like un, 'e's so unkit."

PARSON: "What makes him talk so, William?"

PEREGRINE (touching his forehead): "It's a case; I'll be bound it's a case. 'E's unkit."

"Would you mind saying that again, sir," said the bard, producing a notebook.

Peregrine goes into a fit of giggling, so Shakespeare writes down from memory; whereupon the yeoman makes up to the squire, and says, "Hist, squire, we must 'ave a care; 'e's takin' notes 'o anything we says. 'Tis my belief 'e's got to do with that 'ere case of Tom Barton's they're makin' such a fuss and do about at Coln. We shall all be 'ung for a set o' sheep-stealing ruffians."

"Thee be quite right, William," put in the parson "I thought a' looked a bit suspicious. If I was you, squire, I'd clap the baggage into Northleach gaol, and exercise the justice of the peace agin un for an idle varmint."

"Yet a milder mannered man I never saw," said the squire.

PARSON: "Mild-mannered fiddlestick!" Then, raising his voice so that the stranger should get the full benefit, he added, "He's as mild a mannered man as ever scuttled ship or cut a throat!"

Shakespeare hurriedly draws out notebook, and smilingly writes down the parson's words; then, in perfect good humour, he says:

"You must excuse me, gentlemen, but I have somewhat of a passion for writing down such sayings as suit my humour, lest I forget what good company I keep."

SQUIRE (excitedly): "Let go the hawk, Tom; there's a great lanky heron risin' at the withybed yonder."

And here it is necessary to say something about the methods and language of falconry as practised by our forefathers.

Shakespeare tells us to choose "a falcon or tercel for flying at the brook, and a hawk for the bush." In other words, we are to select the nobler species, the long-winged peregrine falcon, the male of which was called a tiercel-gentle, for flying at the heron or the mallard; and a short-winged hawk, such as the goshawk or sparrow-hawk, for blackbirds and other hedgerow birds. For as Mr. Madden explains, not only does the true falcon, be she peregrine, gerfalcon, merlin, or hobby, differ in size and structure of wing and beak from the short-winged hawks, but she also differs in her method of hunting and seizing her prey.

The falcons are "hawks of the tower and lure." They tower aloft and swoop down on partridge, rabbit, or heron, finally returning to the lure; and be it noted that the lure is a sham bird, with a "train" of food to entice the falcons back to their master.

The short-winged hawks, on the other hand, are birds of the fist or the bush. Instead of "towering" and "stooping," they lurch after their prey in wandering flight, finally returning to their master's fist.

In Macbeth we find allusion to the "falcon towering in her pride of place"; and indeed there is no prettier sport on a still day than a flight at the partridge or the heron with the noble peregrine falcon or her mate the tiercel-gentle.

At the honest squire's word of command, a male peregrine is forthwith despatched, and, soaring upwards into the air, he is almost lost to sight in the clouds, though the faint tinkling of the bells attached to his feet may yet be heard; then, stooping from the skies, the tiercel-gentle descends from the heavens and strikes his long-beaked adversary. Down, down they come, fighting and struggling in the air, until, exhausted by the unequal combat, the heron gradually falls to the ground, and receives from the falconer his final coup de grâce. Sometimes a pair of hawks are thrown off against a heron.

Now comes a flight at the partridge. First of all the spaniel is despatched to search the fields for a covey of birds. The desired quarry being found, he "points" to them, and this time the female peregrine or true falcon is sent on her way. Away she soars upwards, "waiting on and towering in her pride of place." Then the birds, lying like stones beneath her savage ken, are flushed by the dog, and the cruel peregrine, after selecting her bird, with her characteristic "swoop" brings it to the ground. If she is unsuccessful in her first attempt, she will tower again, and renew the attack. The riders have to gallop as fast as their nags can go, if they would keep in with the sport, for as often as not a mile or more of ground has to be covered in a long flight, ere the falcon "souses" [36] her prey. After the flight, a well-trained falcon will invariably return to the lure with its "train" of food.

[36] King John. V. ii.

As Mr. Madden has proved, the whole of Shakespeare's works teem with allusions to the art of falconry.

"HENRY: But what a point, my lord, your falcon made,
And what a pitch she flew above the rest!
To see how God in all His creatures works!
Yea, man and birds are fain of climbing high.
SUFFOLK: No marvel, an it like your majesty,
My lord protector's hawks do tower so well;
They know their master loves to be aloft
And bears his thoughts above his falcon's pitch.
GLOUCESTER: My lord, 'tis but a base ignoble mind
That mounts no higher than a bird can soar." [37]

[37] 2 Henry VI., II. i.

But it was not the death of the poor partridge that appealed to the poet's mind so much as the pride and cunning of the mighty peregrine, and the beauty and stillness of the autumnal morning. He loved to hear the faint tinkling of the falcon's bells, the homely cry of the plover, and the sweet carol of the lark; but more than all he felt the mystery of the downs, wondering by what power and when those old seas were converted into a sea of grass.

But whilst the hawking party was moving slowly across the wolds to try fresh ground an event occurred which had the effect of bringing the morning's sport, as far as hawks were concerned, to an abrupt conclusion. This was nothing more nor less than the sight of a great Cotswold fox of the greyhound breed making his way towards a copse on the squire's demesne. The quick eye of the Peregrine family was the first to view him, and forthwith both Bill and his brother screamed in unison: "What's that sneaking across Smoke Acre yonder? 'Tis a fox--a great, lanky, thieving, villainous fox, darned if it ain't!"

"Where?" said parson and squire excitedly.

"There," said Peregrine, "over agin Smoke Acre."

"By jabbers, so it be!" said the parson. "Now look thee here, Joe Peregrine, go thee to the sexton and tell 'un to ring the church bells for the folks to come for a fox; and be sure and tell the churchwardens."

"Ah!" said the poet, almost as excited as the rest of the party,

"'And do not stand on quillets how to slay him:
Be it by gins, by snares, by subtlety,
Sleeping or waking, 'tis no matter how,
So he be dead.'" [38]

[38] 2 Henry VI., III. i.

Thus abruptly ended this hawking expedition on the Cotswolds; for the whole party made off to the manor house to fetch guns, spades, pickaxes, and dogs, as was the custom in those days, when a "lanky, villainous fox" was viewed.

As for Shakespeare, after bidding adieu to the old squire, and thanking him for his hospitality, he mounted his game little Irish hobby and steered his course due northward for Stow-on-the-Wold. His track lay along the old Fossway, a road infested in those days by murderous highwaymen; yet, unarmed and unattended, unknown and unappreciated, did that mighty man of genius set cheerfully out on his long and solitary way.

---

CHAPTER XIII.

CIRENCESTER.

The ancient town of Cirencester--the Caerceri of the early Britons, the Corinium of the Romans, and the Saxon Cyrencerne--has been a place of importance on the Cotswolds from time immemorial. The abbreviations Cisetre and Cysseter were in use as long ago as the fifteenth century, though some of the natives are now in the habit of calling it Ciren. The correct modern abbreviation is Ciceter.

The place is so rich in Roman antiquities that we must perforce devote a few lines to their consideration. A whole book would not be sufficient to do full justice to them.

No less than four important Roman roads meet within a short distance of Cirencester; and very fine and broad ones they are, generally running as straight as the proverbial arrow.

1. The Irmin Way, between Cricklade and Gloucester, viâ Cirencester.

2. Acman Street connects Cirencester with Bath.

3. Icknield Street, running to Oxford.

4. The Fossway, extending far into the north of England. This magnificent road may be said to connect Exeter in the south with Lincoln in the north. It is raised several feet above the natural level of the country, and in many places there still remain traces of the ancient ditch which was dug on either side of its course.

In the year 1849 two very fine tessellated pavements were unearthed in Dyer Street, and removed to a museum which Lord Bathurst built purposely for their reception and preservation. Another fine specimen of this kind of work may be seen in its original position at a house called the "Barton" in the park. It is a representation of Orpheus and his lute; and the various animals which he is said to have charmed are wonderfully worked in the coloured pavements. Even as far back as three hundred years ago these beautiful relics were being discovered in this town; for Leland in his "Itinerary," mentions the finding of some tesserae; unfortunately but few have been preserved.

There are two inscribed stones in this collection which deserve special mention, as they are marvellously well preserved, considering the fact that they are probably eighteen hundred years old. They are about six feet in height and about half that breadth; on each is carved the figure of a mounted soldier, spear in hand. On the ground lies his prostrate foe, pierced by his adversary's spear. Underneath one of these carvings are inscribed the following words:--

DANNICVS. EQES. AIAE.
INDIAN. TVR. ALBANI.
STIP. XVI. CIVES. RAVR.
CVR. FVLVIVS. NATALIS. IT.
FVLIVS. BITVCVS. EX. TESTAME.
H S E.

The meaning of the above words is as follows:--

"Dannicus, a horseman of Indus's Cavalry, of the squadron of Albanus. He had seen sixteen years' service. A citizen of Rauricum. Fulvius Natalis and Fulvius Bitucus have caused this monument to be made in accordance with his will. He is buried here."

The other stone has a somewhat similar inscription.

The Romans, who did not use wallpapers, were in the habit of colouring their plaster with various pigments. Some very interesting specimens of wall-painting are preserved at Cirencester, and may be seen in the museum. The most remarkable example of the kind is a piece of coloured plaster, with the following square scratched on its surface:--

ROTAS
OPERA
TENET
AREPO
SATOR

It will be noticed that these five words, the meaning of which is, "Arepo, the sower, guides the wheels at work," form a kind of puzzle; they may be read in eight different directions.

A large variety of sepulchral urns have been found at Cirencester. When dug up they usually contain little besides the ashes of the dead, though a few coins are sometimes included. There is a very perfect specimen of a glass urn--a large green bottle, square, wide-mouthed, and absolutely intact--in this collection. It was found, wrapped in lead and enclosed in a hollow stone, somewhere near the town about the year 1758.

A fine specimen of a stone coffin is likewise to be seen. When discovered at Latton it was found to contain an iron axe, a dish of black ware of the kind frequently discovered at Upchurch in Kent, a juglike-handled vase of a light red colour, and some human bones.

The various kinds of pottery in the Corinium Museum are interesting on account of the potters' marks found on them. There must be considerably over a hundred different marks in this collection, chiefly of the following kind:--

Putri M. (Manû Putri), by the hand of Putrus.

Mara. F. (Formâ Marci), from the mould of Marcus.

Olini Off. (Officinâ Olini), from the workshop of Olinus.

The museum contains many good specimens of iron and bronze implements, as well as coins and stonework, and is well worthy of the attention bestowed on it, not only by antiquaries, but by the public at large.

At a place called the Querns, a short distance from the town, is a very interesting old amphitheatre called the Bull-ring. This is an ellipse of about sixty yards long by forty-five wide; it is surrounded by mounds twenty feet high. Originally the scene of the combats of Roman gladiators, in mediaeval times it was probably used for the pastime of bull-baiting, a barbarous amusement which has happily long since died out.

Amphitheatres of the same type are to be seen at Dorchester, Old Sarum, Silchester, and other Roman stations.

Mr. Wilfred Cripps, C.B., the head of a family that has been seated at Cirencester for many hundreds of years, has an interesting private collection of Roman antiquities which have been found in the neighbourhood from time to time. He has quite recently discovered the remnants of the Basilica or Roman law-courts.

Turning to the place as it now stands, one is struck on entering the town by the breadth and clean appearance of the main street, known as the market-place. The shops are almost as good as those to be found in the principal thoroughfares of London.

I have spoken before of the magnificent old church. There is, perhaps, no sacred building, except St. Mary Redcliffe at Bristol and Beverley Minster, that we know of in England which for perfect proportion and symmetry can vie with the imposing grandeur of this pile, as seen from the Cricklade-street end of Cirencester market-place.

The south porch is a very beautiful and ornamental piece of architecture. The work is of fifteenth-century design, the interior of the porch consisting of delicately wrought fan-tracery groining. The carving outside is most picturesque, there being many handsome niches and six fine oriel windows. The whole of the façade is crowned with very large pierced battlements and crocketed pinnacles. Over this porch is one of those grand old sixteenth-century halls such as were built in former times in front of the churches. It is called the "Parvise," a word derived from the same source as Paradise, which in the language of architecture means a cloistered court adjoining a church. Many of these beautiful old apartments existed at one time in England, but were pulled down by religious enthusiasts because they were considered to be out of place when attached to the church and used for secular purposes. This is now known as the town hall, and contrasts very favourably with the hideous erections built in modern times in some of our English towns for this purpose.

The church of Cirencester contains a large amount of beautiful Perpendicular work.

In the grand old tower are twelve bells of excellent tone. The Early English stonework in the chancel and chapels is very curious, a fine arch opening from the nave to the tower. There is, in fact, a great deal to be seen on all sides which would delight the lover of architecture.

Some ancient brasses of great interest and beautiful design in various parts of this church claim attention; the earliest of them is as old as 1360; a pulpit cloth of blue velvet, made from the cape of one Ralph Parsons in 1478 and presented by him, is still preserved.

Cirencester House stands but a stone's throw from the railway station, but is hidden from sight by a high wall and a gigantic yew hedge. Behind it and on all sides, save one, the park--one of the largest in England--stretches away for miles. So beautiful and rural are the surroundings that the visitor to the house can hardly realise that the place is not far removed from the busy haunts of men.

The Cirencester estate was purchased by Sir Benjamin Bathurst rather more than two hundred years ago. This family has done good service to their king and country for many centuries. We read the other day that no less than six of Sir Benjamin's brothers died fighting for the king in the Civil Wars. Nor have they been less conspicuous in serving their country in times of peace.

The park, which was designed to a great extent by the first earl, with the assistance of Pope, has been entirely thrown open to the people of Cirencester; and "the future and as yet visionary beauties of the noble scenes, openings, and avenues" which that great poet used to delight in dwelling upon have become accomplished facts. The "ten rides"--lengthy avenues of fine trees radiating in all directions from a central point in the middle of the park--are a picturesque feature of the landscape.

The lover of horses and riding finds here a paradise of grassy glades, where he can gallop for miles on end, and tire the most obstinate of "pullers."

Picnic parties, horse shows, cricket matches, and the chase of the fox all find a place in this romantic demesne in their proper seasons. The enthusiast for woodland hunting, or the man who hates the sight of a fence of any description, may hunt the fox here day after day and never leave the recesses of the park.

The antiquary will find much to delight him. Here is the ancient high cross, erected in the fourteenth century, which once stood in front of the old Ram Inn. The pedestal is hewn from a single block of stone, and beautifully wrought with Gothic arcades and panelled quatrefoils; this and the shaft are the sole relics of the old cross. We may go into raptures over the ivy-covered ruin known as Alfred's Hall, fitted up as it is with black oak and rusty armour and all the pompous simplicity of the old baronial halls of England. Antiquaries of a certain order are easily deceived; and this delightful old ruin, though but two hundred years old, has been so skilfully put together as to represent an ancient British castle. That celebrated, though indelicate divine, Dean Swift, was, like Alexander Pope, deeply interested in the designing of this park.

As long ago as 1733 Alfred's Hall was a snare and delusion to antiquaries. In that year Swift received a letter stating that "My Lord Bathurst has greatly improved the Wood-House, which you may remember was a cottage, not a bit better than an Irish cabin. It is now a venerable castle, and has been taken by an antiquary for one of King Arthur's."

The kennels of the V.W.H. hounds are in the park. Here the lover of hounds can spend hours discussing the merits of "Songster" and "Rosebud," or the latest and most promising additions to the families of "Brocklesby Acrobat" or "Cotteswold Flier."

In this house are some very interesting portraits. Full-length pictures of the members of the Cabal Ministry adorn the dining-room--all fine examples of Lely's brush; then there is a very large representation of the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo mounted on his favourite charger "Copenhagen" by Lawrence; two "Romneys," one "Sir Joshua," and several "Knellers."

Turning to the Abbey, the seat for the last three hundred and thirty years of the Master family, we find another instance of a large country house standing practically in a town. The house is situated immediately behind the church and within a stone's throw of the market-place. But on the side away from the town the view from this house extends over a large extent of rural scenery. The site of the mitred Abbey of Saint Mary is somewhere hereabouts, but in the time of the suppression of the monasteries every stone of the old abbey was pulled down and carried away; so that the twelfth-century gateway and some remnants of pillars are the sole traces that remain. This gateway, which is a very fine one, is still used as a lodge entrance. Queen Elizabeth granted this estate to Richard Master in 1564. When King Charles was at Cirencester in the time of the Rebellion he twice stayed at this house. In 1642 the townspeople of Cirencester rose in a body, and tried to prevent the lord lieutenant of the county, Lord Chandos, from carrying out the King's Commission of Array. For a time they gained their ends, but in the following year there was a sharp encounter between Prince Rupert's force and the people of Cirencester, resulting in the total defeat of the latter. Three hundred of them were killed, and over a thousand taken prisoners. They were confined in the church, and eventually taken to Oxford, where, upon their submitting humbly to the king, he pardoned them, and they were released. This is one account. It is only fair to state that another account is less complimentary to Charles.

When Charles II. escaped from Worcester he put up at an old hostelry in Cirencester called the Sun. King James and, still later, Queen Anne paid visits to this town.

Altogether the town of Cirencester is a very fascinating old place. The lot of its inhabitants is indeed cast in pleasant places. The grand bracing air of the Cotswold Hills is a tonic which drives dull care away from these Gloucestershire people; and when it is remembered that they enjoy the freedom of Lord Bathurst's beautiful park, that the neighbourhood is, in spite of agricultural depression, well off in this world's goods, it is not surprising that the pallid cheeks and drooping figures to be met with in most of our towns are conspicuous by their absence here. The Cotswold farmers may be making no profit in these days of low prices and competition, but against this must be set the fact that their fathers and grandfathers made considerable fortunes in farming three decades ago, and for this we must be thankful.

The merry capital of the Cotswolds abounds in good cheer and good fellowship all the year round; and one has only to pay a visit to the market-place on a Monday to meet the best of fellows and the most genial sportsmen anywhere to be found amongst the farming community of England.

One of the old institutions which still remain in the Cotswolds is the annual "mop," or hiring fair. At Cirencester these take place twice in October. Every labouring man in the district hurries into the town, where all sorts of entertainments are held in the market-place, including "whirly-go-rounds," discordant music, and the usual "shows" which go to make up a country fair. "Hiring" used to be the great feature of these fairs. In the days before local newspapers were invented every sort of servant, from a farm bailiff to a maid-of-all-work, was hired for the year at the annual mop. The word "mop" is derived from an old custom which ordained that the maid-servants who came to find situations should bring their badge of office with them to the fair. They came with their brooms and mops, just as a carter would tie a piece of whipcord to his coat, and a shepherd's hat would be decorated with a tuft of wool. Time was when the labouring man was never happy unless he changed his abode from year to year. He would get tired of one master and one village, and be off to Cirencester mop, where he was pretty sure to get a fresh job. But nowadays the Cotswold men are beginning to realise that "Two removes are as bad as a fire." The best of them stay for years in the same village. This is very much more satisfactory for all concerned. Deeply rooted though the love of change appears to be in the hearts of nine-tenths of the human race, the restless spirit seldom enjoys real peace and quiet; and the discontent and poverty of the labouring class in times gone by may safely be attributed to their never-ceasing changes and removal of their belongings to other parts of the country.

Now that these old fairs no longer answer the purpose for which they existed for hundreds of years, they will doubtless gradually die out. And they have their drawbacks. An occasion of this kind is always associated with a good deal of drunkenness; the old market-place of Cirencester for a few days in each autumn becomes a regular pandemonium. It is marvellous how quickly all traces of the great show are swept away and the place once more settles down to the normal condition of an old-fashioned though well-to-do country town.

There are many old houses in Cirencester of more than average interest, but there is nothing as far as we know that needs special description. The Fleece Hotel is one of the largest and most beautiful of the mediaeval buildings. It should be noted that some of the new buildings in this town, such as that which contains the post office, have been erected in the best possible taste. With the exception of some of the work which Mr. Bodley has done at Oxford in recent years, notably the new buildings at Magdalen College, we have never seen modern architecture of greater excellence than these Cirencester houses. They are as picturesque as houses containing shops possibly can be.

HUNTING FROM CICETER.

But it is as a hunting centre that Ciceter is best known to the world at large, and in this respect it is almost unique. The "Melton of the west," it contains a large number of hunting residents who are not mere "birds of passage," but men who live the best part of the year in or near the town. The country round about, from a hunting point of view, is good enough for most people. Five days a week can be enjoyed, over a variety of hill and vale, all of which is "rideable"; nor can there be any question but that the sport obtainable compares favourably with that enjoyed in the more grassy Midlands. Not that there is much plough round about Cirencester nowadays; agricultural depression has diminished the amount of arable in recent years. The best grass country round about, however, with the exception of the Crudwell and Oaksey district, rides decidedly deep. The enclosures are small and the fences rough and straggling.

A clever, bold horse, with plenty of jumping power in his quarters and hocks, is essential. It may safely be said that a man who can command hounds in the Braydon and Swindon district will find the "shires" comparatively plain sailing. The wall country of the Cotswold tableland is exactly the reverse of the vale. The pace there is often tremendous, but the obstacles are not formidable enough to those accustomed to walls to keep the eager field from pressing the pack, save on those rare occasions when, on a burning scent, the hounds manage to get a start of horses; and then they will never be caught. Well-bred horses are almost invariably ridden in this wall country; if in hard condition, and there are no steep hills to be crossed, they can go as fast and stay almost as long as hounds, for the going is good, and they are always galloping on the top of the ground.

At the time of writing, there are over two hundred hunters stabled in the little town of Cirencester, to say nothing of those kept at the numerous hunting boxes around. More than this need not be said to show the undoubted popularity of the place as a hunting centre. And a very sporting lot the people are. Brought up to the sport from the cradle, the Gloucestershire natives, squires, farmers, all sorts and conditions of men, ride as straight as a die.

From what has been said it will be readily gathered that the attraction of the place as a hunting centre lies in the variety of country it commands. Not only is a different stamp of country to be met with each day of the week, but on one and the same day you may be riding over banks, small flying fences, and sound grass, or deep ploughs and pasture divided by hairy bullfinches, or, again, over light plough and stone walls; and to this fact may be attributed the exceptional number of good performers over a country that this district turns out. Both men and horses have always appeared to us to reach a very high standard of cleverness.

To Leicestershire, Northants, Warwick, and the Vale of Aylesbury belongs by undisputed right the credit of the finest grass country in hunting England. But for Ireland and the rougher shires I claim the honour of showing not only the straightest foxes, but also the best sportsmen and the boldest riders. The reason seems to me to be this: in Leicestershire you find the field composed largely of smart London men; and after a certain age a man "goes to hounds" in inverse ratio to the pace at which he travels as a man about town. The latter (with a few brilliant exceptions to prove the rule) is not so quick and determined when he sees a nasty piece of timber or an awkward hairy fence as his reputation at the clubs would lead you to expect; whilst the rougher countryman, be he yeoman or squire, farmer or peer, endowed with nerves of iron, is able to cross a country with a confidence and a dash that are denied to the average dandy, with his big stud, immaculate "leathers," and expensive cigars. In Gloucestershire many an honest yeoman goes out twice a week and endeavours to drown for a while all thoughts of hard times and low prices, content for the day if the fates have left him a sound horse and the consolation of a gallop over the grass. Let it here be said that there are no grooms in the world who better understand conditioning hunters than those of Leicestershire. Nowhere can you see horses better bred or fitter to go; and he who rides a-hunting on fat horses must himself be fat.

The V.W.H. hounds, on Mr. Hoare's retirement in 1886, were divided into two packs. Mr. T. Butt Miller hunts three days a week on the eastern side, with Cricklade as his centre; whilst Lord Bathurst has sufficient ground for two days on the west, where the country flanks with the Duke of Beaufort's domain on the south and the Cotswold hounds on the north. Mr. Miller retains the original pack, and a very fine one it is. Lord Bathurst likewise, by dint of sparing no pains, and by bringing in the best blood obtainable from Belvoir, Brocklesby, and other kennels, has gradually brought his pack to a high state of excellence.

Turning to the week's programme for a man hunting five or six days a week from Cirencester, Monday is the day for the duke's hounds. Here you may be riding over some of the best of the grass, where light flying fences grow on the top of low banks, or else it will be a stone-wall country of mixed grass and light plough. In either case the country is very rideable, and sport usually excellent. The Badminton hounds and Lord Worcester's skill as a huntsman are too well known to require any description here.

On Tuesday Lord Bathurst's hounds are always within seven miles of the town, and the country is a very open one, but one that requires plenty of wet to carry scent. Though on certain days there is but little scent, in favourable seasons during recent years wonderful sport has been shown in this country. In the season of 1895-6 especially, a fine gallop came off regularly every Tuesday from October to the end of February. In '97, on the other hand, little was done. There is far more grass than there used to be, owing to so much of the land having gone out of cultivation. The plough rides lighter than grass does in nine counties out of ten, the coverts are small, and the pace often tremendous. Every country has its drawback, and in this case it lies partly in bad scent and partly in the fences being too easy. Men who know the walls with which the Cotswold tableland is almost entirely enclosed, ride far too close to hounds: thus, the pack and the huntsman not being allowed a chance, sport is often spoiled. Occasionally, when a real scent is forthcoming, the hounds can run right away from the field; but as a rule they are shamefully over-ridden. The fact is that in the hunting field, as elsewhere, John Wolcot's epigram, written a hundred years ago, exactly hits the nail on the head:

"What rage for fame attends both great and small!
Better be d--d than mentioned not at all."

We all want to ride in the front rank, and are, or ought to be, d--d accordingly by the long-suffering M.F.H.

On Wednesdays the Cotswold hounds are always within easy reach of Cirencester. There are few better packs than the Cotswold. Started forty years ago with part of the V.W.H. pack which Lord Gifford was giving up, the Cotswold hounds have received strains of the best blood of the Brocklesby, Badminton, Belvoir, and Berkeley kennels. They have therefore both speed and stamina as well as good noses. Their huntsman, Charles Travess, has no superior as far as we know; the result is that for dash and drive these hounds are unequalled. Notwithstanding the severe pace at which they are able to run, owing to the absence of high hedges and other impediments--for most of the country is enclosed with stone walls--they hunt marvellously well together and do not tail; they are wonderfully musical, too,--more so than any other pack.

Here it is worth our while to analyse briefly the qualities which combine to make this huntsman so deservedly popular with all who follow the Cotswold hounds. We venture to say that he pleases all and sundry, "thrusters," hound-men, and liver-men alike, because he invariably has a double object in view--he hunts his fox and he humours his field. And firstly he hunts his fox in the best possible method, having regard to the scenting capabilities of the Cotswold Hills.

He is quick as lightning, yet he is never in a hurry--that is to say, in a "bad hurry." When the hounds "throw up" or "check," like all other good huntsmen he gives them plenty of time. He stands still and he makes his field stand still; then may be seen that magnificent proof of canine brain-power, the fan-shaped forward movement of a well-drafted, old-established pack of foxhounds, making good by two distinct casts--right-and left-handed--the ground that lies in front of them and on each side. Should they fail to hit off the line, the advantage of a brilliant huntsman immediately asserts itself. Partly by certain set rules and partly by a knowledge of the country and the run of foxes, but more than all by that daring genius which was the making of Shakespeare and the great men of all time, he takes his hounds admirably in hand, aided by two quiet, unassuming whippers-in, and in four cases out of five brings them either at the first or second cast to the very hedgerow where five minutes before Reynard took his sneaking, solitary way. It may be "forward," or it may be down wind, right or left-handed, but it is at all events the right way; thus, owing to this happy knack of making the proper cast at a large percentage of checks this man establishes his reputation as a first-class huntsman.

Should the day be propitious, a run is now assured, unless some unforeseen occurrence, such as the fox going to ground, necessitates a draw for a fresh one; but in any case, owing to this marvellous knack of hitting off the line at the first check, our huntsman generally contrives to show a run some time during the day.

So much for the methods by which this William Shakespeare of the hunting field is wont to pursue his fox. But we have not done with him yet. What does he do on those bad scenting days which on the dry and stony Cotswold Hills are the rule rather than the exception? On such days, as well as hunting his fox, he humours his field. In the first place, unless he has distinct proof to the contrary, he invariably gives his fox credit for being a straight-necked one. He keeps moving on at a steady pace in the direction in which his instinct and knowledge lead him, even though there may be no scent, either on the ground or in the air, to guide the hounds. Every piece of good scenting ground--and he knows the capabilities of every field in this respect--is made the most of; "carrying" or dusty ploughs are scrupulously avoided. If he "lifts," it is done so quietly and cunningly that the majority of the riders are unaware of the fact; and the hounds never become wild and untractable. It is this free and generous method of hunting the fox that pleases his followers. Travess's casts are not made in cramped and stingy fashion, but a wide extent of country is covered even on a bad day; there is no rat-hunting. After a time all save a dozen sportsmen are left several fields behind. "They won't run to-day," is the general cry; "there is no hurry." But meantime some large grass fields are met with, or the huntsman brings the pack on to better terms with the fox, or maybe a fresh one jumps up, and away go the hounds for seven or eight minutes as hard as they can pelt. Only a dozen men know exactly what has happened. Most of the thrusters and all the liver-men have to gallop in earnest for half an hour to come up with the hunt; indeed, on many days they never see either huntsman or hounds again, and go tearing about the country cursing their luck in missing so fine a run! It is the old story of the hare and the tortoise. But herein lies the "humour" of it: the hare is pleased and the tortoise is pleased. The former, as represented by the field, has enjoyed a fine scamper, and lots of air (bother the currant jelly!) and exercise; the tortoise, on the other hand, has had a fine hunting run, and possibly by creeping slowly on for some hours it has killed its fox; whilst several good sportsmen have enjoyed an old-fashioned hunt in a wild country with a kill in the open.

Verbum sap: If you want to humour your field, you must leave them behind. It must not be done intentionally, however; the riders must be allowed, so to speak, to work out their own salvation in this respect.

Major de Freville's country as a whole is more suited to the "houndman" than for him who hunts to ride. The hills, save in one district, are so severe that hounds often beat horses; the result is, many are tempted to station themselves on the top of a hill, whence a wide view is obtainable, and trust to the hounds coming back after running a ring. Given the right sort of horse, however--short-backed, thoroughbred if possible, and with good enough manners to descend a steep place without boring and tearing his rider's arms almost out of their sockets--many a fine run may be seen in this wild district. Much of the arable land has gone back to grass, so that it is quite a fair scenting country; and the foxes are stronger and more straight-necked than in more civilised parts. One of the best days the writer ever had in his life was with these hounds. Meeting at Puesdown, they ran for an hour in the morning at a great pace, with an eight-mile point; whilst in the afternoon came a run of one-and-a-half hours, with a point of somewhere about ten miles.

With the exception of a small vale between Cheltenham and Tewkesbury, which is very good indeed, the Puesdown country is about the best, the undulations being less severe than in other parts.

On Thursdays Cirencester commands Mr. Miller's Braydon country. This country is a very great contrast to that which is ridden over on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and requires a very stout horse. It rides tremendously deep at times; and the fences, which come very frequently in a run, owing to the small size of the enclosures, are both big and blind. It is practically all grass. But there are several large woodlands, with deep clay rides, in which one is not unlikely to spend a part of Thursday; and these woods, owing in part to the shooting being let to Londoners, are none too plentifully provided with foxes. Wire, too, has sprung up in some parts of Mr. Miller's Braydon country. Few people have large enough studs to stand the wear and tear of this fine, wild country; consequently the fields are generally small. Sport, though not so good as it used to be, is still very fair, and to run down to Great Wood in the duke's country is sufficient to tax the powers of the finest weight-carrying hunter, whilst only the man with a quick eye to a country can live with hounds. It is often stated that blood horses are the best for galloping through deep ground. This is true in one way, though not on the whole. Thoroughbred horses are practically useless in this sort of country; their feet are often so small that they stick in the deep clay. A horse with small feet is no good at all in Braydon. A short-legged Irish hunter, about three parts bred, with tremendous strength in hocks and quarters, and biggish feet, is the sort the writer would choose. If up to quite two stone more than his rider's weight, and a safe and temperate fencer, he will carry you well up with hounds over any country. A fast horse is not required; for a racer that can do the mile on the flat at Newmarket in something under two minutes is reduced in really deep ground to an eight-mile-an-hour canter, and your short-legged horse from the Emerald Isle will leave him standing still in the Braydon Vale.

Some countries never ride really deep. The shires, for instance, though often said to be deep, will seldom let a horse in to any great extent--the ridge and furrow drains the field so well; and in that sort of deep ground which is met with in Leicestershire a thoroughbred one will gallop and "stay" all day. But a ride in Braydon or in the Bicester "Claydons" will convince us that a stouter stamp of horse is necessary to combat a deep, undrained clay country.

We must now leave the sporting Thursday country of the V.W.H. and turn to Friday.

Eastcourt, Crudwell, Oaksey, Brinkworth, Lea Schools--such are some of Lord Bathurst's Friday meets; and the pen can hardly write fast enough in singing the praises of this country. Strong, well-preserved coverts, sound grass fields, flying fences, sometimes set on a low bank, sometimes without a bank, varied by an occasional brook, with now and then a fence big enough to choke off all but the "customers"--such is the bill of fare for Fridays. To run from Stonehill Wood, viâ Charlton and Garsdon, to Redborn in the duke's country, as the hounds did on the first day of 1897, is, as "Brooksby" would say, "a line fit for a king, be that king but well minded and well mounted."

Stand on Garsdon Hill, and look down on the grassy vale mapped out below, and tell me, if you dare, that you ever saw a pleasanter stretch of country. How dear to the hunting man are green fields and sweet-scenting pastures, where the fences are fair and clean and the ditches broad and deep, where there is room to gallop and room to jump, and where, as he sails along on a well-bred horse or reclines perchance in a muddy ditch (Professor Raleigh! what a watery bathos!), he may often say to himself, "It is good for me to be here!" For when the hounds cross this country there are always "wigs on the green" in abundance; and in spite of barbed wire we may still sing with Horace,

"Nec fortuitum spernere caespitem
Leges sinebant,"

which, at the risk of offending all classical scholars, I must here translate: "Nor do the laws allow us to despise a chance tumble on the turf."

Round Oaksey, too, is a rare galloping ground. Should you be lucky enough to get a start from "Flistridge" and come down to the brook at a jumpable place, in less than ten minutes you will be, if not in Paradise, at all events as near as you are ever likely to be on this earth. This is literally true, for half way between "Flistridge" and Kemble Wood, and in the midst of Elysian grass fields, is a narrow strip of covert happily christened "Paradise."

Would that there was a larger extent of this sort of country, for it is not every Friday that hounds cross it! The duke's hounds have a happy knack of crossing it occasionally on a Monday, however, and on Thursdays Mr. Miller's hounds may drive a fox that way.

This district is not so easy for a stranger to ride his own line over as the Midlands; it is not half so stiff, but it is often cramped and trappy. But then you must "look before you leap" in most countries nowadays. In this Friday country wire is comparatively scarce. The fields run very large on this day,--quite two hundred horsemen are to be seen at favourite fixtures. About half this number would belong to the country, and the other half come from the duke's country and elsewhere. These Friday fields are as well mounted and well appointed as any in England. And to see a run one must have a good horse,--not necessarily an expensive one, for "good" and "expensive" are by no means synonymous terms with regard to horseflesh. It is with regret that we must add that foxes were decidedly scarce here last season (1897-8).

On Saturdays the Cirencester brigade will hunt with Mr. Miller. Fairford, Lechlade, Kempsford, and Water-Eaton are some of the meets. Here we have a totally different country from any yet considered. It is a wonderfully sporting one; and last season these hounds never had a bad Saturday, and often a 'clinker' resulted. Here again one can never anticipate what sort of ground will be traversed; but the best of it consists of a fine open country of grass and plough intermingled, the fields being intersected by small flying fences and exceptionally wide and deep ditches. "Snowstorm"--a small gorse half way between Fairford and Lechlade stations on the Great Western Railway--is a favourite draw. If a fox goes away you see men sitting down in their saddles and cramming at the fences as hard as their horses can gallop. There appears to be nothing to jump until you are close up to the fence; but nevertheless pace is required to clear them, for there is hardly a ditch anywhere round "Snowstorm" that is not ten feet wide and eight feet or more deep, and if you are unlucky your horse may have to clear fourteen feet. On the other hand, there is absolutely nothing that a horse going fast cannot clear almost without an effort if he jumps at all. So you may ride in confidence at every fence, and take it where you please. The depth of the ditch is what frightens a timid horse and, I may add, a timid rider; and if your horse stops dead, and then tries to jump it standing, you are very apt to tumble in.

A rare sporting country is this district; and as the horses and their riders know it, there are comparatively few falls. Round Kempsford and Lechlade the Thames and the canal are apt to get in the way, but once clear of these impediments a very open country is entered, either of grass and flying fences or light plough and stone walls. Another style of country is that round Hannington and Crouch. In old days, before wire was known, this used to be the best grass country in the V.W.H., but nowadays you must "look before you leap." With a good fox, however, hounds may take you into the best of the old Berkshire vale, and perhaps right up to the Swindon Hills. Round Water-Eaton is a fine grass country, good enough for anybody; but the increase of wire is becoming more and more difficult to combat in this as in other grazing districts of England.

The very varied bill of fare we have briefly sketched for a man hunting from Cirencester may include an occasional Wednesday with the Heythrop at "Bradwell Grove." It is not possible to reach the choicest part of this pleasant country by road from Cirencester, but some of the best of the stone-wall country of the Cotswold tableland is included in the Heythrop domain. Everybody who has been brought up to hunting has heard of "Jem Hills and Bradwell Grove": rare gallops this celebrated huntsman used to show over the wolds in days gone by; and on a good scenting day it requires a quick horse to live with these hounds. A fast and well-bred pack, established more than sixty years ago, they have been admirably presided over by Mr. Albert Brassey for close on a quarter of a century. Several pleasant vales intersect this country, notably the Bourton and the Gawcombe Vale; and there is excellent grass round Moreton-in-the-Marsh. As, however, the grass country of the Heythrop is too far from Cirencester to be reached by road, it hardly comes within our scope.

If hunting is doomed to extinction in the Midlands, owing to the growth of barbed wire, it is exceedingly unlikely ever to die out in the neighbourhood of Cirencester; for there is so much poor, unprofitable land on the Cotswold tableland and in the Braydon district that barbed wire and other evils of civilisation are not likely to interfere to deprive us of our national sport; Hunting men have but to be true to themselves, and avoid doing unnecessary damage, to see the sport carried on in the twentieth century as it has been in the past. If we conform to the unwritten laws of the chase, and pay for the damage we do, there will be no fear of fox-hunting dying out. England will be "Merrie England" still, even in the twentieth century; the glorious pastime, sole relic of the days of chivalry, will continue among us, cheering the life in our quiet country villages through the gloomy winter months;--if only we be true to ourselves, and do our uttermost to further the interests of the grandest sport on earth.

As I have given an account of a run over the walls, and as the Ciceter people set most store on a gallop over the stiff fences and grass enclosures of their vale, here follows a brief description in verse of the glories of fifty minutes on the grass. I have called it "The Thruster's Song," because on the whole I thoroughly agree with Shakespeare that

"Valour is the chietest virtue, and
Most dignifies the haver."

Hard riding and all sports which involve an element of danger are the best antidotes to that luxury and effeminacy which long periods of peace are apt to foster. What would become of the young men of the present day--those, I mean, who are in the habit of following the hounds--if hard riding were to become unfashionable? I cannot conceive anything more ridiculous than the sight of a couple of hundred well-mounted men riding day after day in a slow procession through gates, "craning" at the smallest obstacles, or dismounting and "leading over." No; hard riding is the best antidote in the world for the luxurious tendency of these days. A hundred years ago, when the sport of fox-hunting was in its infancy and modern conditions of pace were unknown, there was less need for this kind of recreation, "the image of war without its guilt, and only twenty-five per cent of its danger." For there was real fighting enough to be done in olden times; and amongst hunting folk, though there was much drinking, there was little luxury. Therefore our fox-hunting ancestors were content to enjoy slow hunting runs, and small blame to them! But those who are fond of lamenting the modern spirit of the age, which prefers the forty minutes' burst over a severe country to a three hours' hunting run, are apt to lose sight of the fact that in these piping times of peace, without the risks of sport mankind is liable to degenerate towards effeminacy. For this reason in the following poem I have purposely taken up the cudgels for that somewhat unpopular class of sportsmen, the "thrusters" of the hunting field. They are unpopular with masters of hounds because they ride too close to the pack; but as a general rule they are the only people who ever see a really fast run. In Shakespeare's time hounds that went too fast for the rest of the pack were "trashed for over-topping," that is to say, they were handicapped by a strap attached to their necks. In the same way in every hunt nowadays there are half a dozen individuals who have reduced riding to hounds to such an art that no pack can get away from them in a moderately easy country. These "bruisers" of the hunting field ought to be made to carry three stone dead weight; they should be "trashed for overtopping." However, as Brooksby has tersely put it, "Some men hunt to ride and some ride to hunt; others, thank Heaven! double their fun by doing both." There are many, many fine riders in England who will not be denied in crossing a stiff country, and who at the same time are interested in the hounds and in the poetry of sport: men to whom the mysteries of scent and of woodcraft, as well as the breeding and management of hounds, are something more than a mere name: men who in after days recall with pleasure "how in glancing over the pack they have been gratified by the shining coat, the sparkling eye--sure symptoms of fitness for the fight;--how when thrown in to covert every hound has been hidden; how every sprig of gorse has bristled with motion; how when viewed away by the sharp-eyed whipper-in, the fox stole under the hedge; how the huntsman clapped round, and with a few toots of his horn brought them out in a body; how, without tying on the line, they 'flew to head'; how, when they got hold of it, they drove it, and with their heads up felt the scent on both sides of the fence; how with hardly a whimper they turned with him, till at the end of fifty minutes they threw up; how the patient huntsman stood still; how they made their own cast: and how when they came back on his line, their tongues doubled and they marked him for their own." To such good men and true I dedicate the following lines:--

A DAY IN THE VALE; OR, THE THRUSTER'S SONG.

You who've known the sweet enjoyment of a gallop in the vale, Comrades of the chase, I know you will not deem my subject stale. Stand with me once more beside the blackthorn or the golden gorse,-- Don't forget to thank your stars you're mounted on a favourite horse; For the hounds dashed into covert with a zest that bodes a scent, And the glass is high and rising, clouded is the firmament. When the ground is soaked with moisture, when the wind is in the east Scent lies best,--the south wind doesn't suit the "thruster" in the least. Some there are who love to watch them with their noses on the ground; We prefer to see them flitting o'er the grass without a sound. We prefer the keen north-easter; ten to one the scent's "breast high"; With a south wind hounds can sometimes hunt a fox, but seldom fly. Hark! the whip has viewed him yonder; he's away, upon my word! If you want to steal a start, then fly the bullfinch like a bird; Gallop now your very hardest; turn him sharp, and jump the stile, Trot him at it--never mind the bough,--it's only smashed your tile! Now we're with them. See, they're tailing, from the fierceness of the pace, Up the hedgerow, o'er the meadow, 'cross the stubble see them race: Governor--by Belvoir Gambler,--he's the hound to "run to head," Tracing back to Rallywood, that fifty years ago was bred; Close behind comes Arrogant, by Acrobat; and Artful too; Rosy, bred by Pytchley Rockwood; Crusty, likewise staunch and true. Down a muddy lane, in mad excitement, but, alas! too late, Thunders half the field towards the portals of a friendly gate; Sees a dozen red-coats bobbing in the vale a mile ahead; Hears the huntsman's horn, and longs to catch those distant bits of red;-- But in vain, for blind the fences, here a fall and there a "peck." Some one cries, "An awful place, sir; don't go there, you'll break your neck."
Not the stiff, unbroken fences, but the treacherous gaps we fear; "Though in front the post of honour, that of danger's in the rear." Forrard on, then forrard onwards, o'er the pasture, o'er the lea, Tossed about by ridge and furrow, rolling like a ship at sea; Stake and binder, timber, oxers, all are taken in our stride,-- Better fifty minutes' racing than a dawdling five hours' ride. I am not ashamed to own, with him who loves a steeplechase, That to me the charm in hunting is the ecstasy of pace,-- This is what best schools the soldier, teaches us that we are men Born to bear the rough and tumble, wield the sword and not the pen. Some there are who dub hard riders worthless and a draghunt crew-- Tailors who do all the damage, mounted on a spavined screw. Well, I grant you, hunting men are sometimes narrow-minded fools; Ignorant of all worth knowing, save what's learnt in riding-schools; Careless of the rights of others, scampering over growing crops, Smashing gates and making gaps and scattering wide the turnip tops;-- But I hold that out of all the hunting fields throughout the land I could choose for active service a large-hearted, gallant band; I could choose six hundred red-coats, trained by riding in the van, Fit to go to Balaclava under brave Lord Cardigan. 'Tis the finest school, the chase, to teach contempt of cannon balls, If a man ride bravely onward, spite of endless rattling falls. And to be a first-rate sportsman, not a man who merely "rides," Is to be a perfect gentleman, and something more besides; Fearing neither man nor devil, kind, unselfish he must be, Born to lead when danger threatens--type of ancient chivalry. When you hear a "houndman" jeering at the "customers" in front, Saying they come out to ride a steeplechase and not to hunt, You may bet the "grapes are sour," the fellow's smoked his nerve away; Once he went as well as they do: "every dog will have his day." Though to ride about the roads in state may do your liver good, You see precious little "houndwork" either there or in the wood. He who loves to mark the work of hounds must ride beside the pack, Choosing his own line, or following others, if he's lost the knack. Lookers-on, I grant you, often see the best part of the game,-- Still, to ride the roads and live with hounds are things not quite the same.
Now a word to all those gallant chaps who love a hunting day: In bad times you know that farming is a trade that doesn't pay, Barbed wire's the cheapest kind of fence; the farmer can't afford Tempting post-and-rails and timber--for he's getting rather bored. Therefore, if we want to ride with our old devilry and dash, We must put our hands in pockets deep and shovel out the cash. When you want to hire a shooting you will gladly pay a "pony," Yet when asked to give it to the hounds you're apt to say you're "stony." Pay the piper, and the sport you love so well will flourish yet, Flourish in the dim hereafter; and its sun will never set. Help the noble cause of freedom; rich and poor together blend Hands and hearts for ever working for a great and glorious end.

---

CHAPTER XIV.

SPRING IN THE COTSWOLDS.

Whilst walking by the river one day in May I noticed a brood of wild ducks about a week old. The old ones are wonderfully tame at this time of year. The mother evidently disliked my intrusion, for she started off up stream, followed by her offspring, making towards a withybed a hundred yards or so higher up, where a secluded spring gives capital shelter for duck and other shy birds. What was my surprise a couple of hours later to see the same lot emerge from some rushes three-quarters of a mile up stream! They had circumvented a small waterfall, and the current is very strong in places. Part of the journey must have been done on dry land.

At the same moment that I startled this brood out of the rushes a moorhen swam slowly out, accompanied by her mate. It was evident, from her cries and her anxious behaviour, that she too had some young ones in the rushes; and soon two tiny little black balls of fur crawled out from the bank and made for the opposite shore. Either from blindness or fright they did not join their parents in mid stream, but hurried across to the opposite bank and scrambled on to the mud, followed by the old couple remonstrating with them on their foolishness. The mother then succeeded in persuading one of them to follow her to a place of safety underneath some overhanging boughs, but the other was left clinging to the bank, crying piteously. I went round by a bridge in the hope of being able to place the helpless little thing on the water; but, alas! by the time I got to the spot it was dead. The exertion of crossing the stream had been too much for it, for it was probably not twelve hours old.

When there are young ones about, moorhens will not dive to get out of your sight unless their children dive too. It is pretty to see them swimming on the down-stream side of their progeny, buoying them up in case the current should prove too strong and carry them down. If there are eggs still unhatched, the father, when disturbed, takes the little ones away to a safer spot, whilst the mother sticks to the nest. But they are rather stupid, for even the day after the eggs are hatched, on being disturbed by a casual passer-by, the old cock swims out into mid stream. He then calls to his tiny progeny to follow him, though they are utterly incapable of doing so, and generally come to hopeless grief in the attempt. Then the old ones are not very clever at finding children that have been frightened away from the nest. I marked one down on the opposite bank, and could see it crawling beneath some sticks; but the old bird kept swimming past the spot, and appeared to neither hear nor see the little ball of fur. Perhaps he was playing cunning; he may have imagined that the bird was invisible to me, and was trying to divert my attention from the spot.

Moorhens are always interesting to watch. With a pair of field-glasses an amusing and instructive half hour may often be spent by the stream in the breeding season.

I was much amused, while feeding some swans and a couple of wild ducks the other day, to notice that the mallard would attack the swans if they took any food that he fancied. One would have thought that such powerful birds as swans--one stroke of whose wings is supposed to be capable of breaking a man's leg--would not have stood any nonsense from an unusually diminutive mallard. But not a bit of it: the mallard ruled the roost; all the other birds, even the great swans, ran away from him when he attacked them from behind with his beak. This state of things continued for some days. But after a time the male swan got tired of the game; his patience was exhausted. Watching his opportunity he seized the pugnacious little mallard by the neck and gave him a thundering good shaking! It was most laughable to watch them. It is characteristic of swans that they are unable to look you in the face; and beautiful beyond all description as they appear to be in their proper element, meet them on dry land and they become hideous and uninteresting, scowling at you with an evil eye.

Sometimes as you are walking under the trees on the banks of the Coln you come across a little heap of chipped wood lying on the ground. Then you hear "tap, tap," in the branches above. It is the little nuthatch hard at work scooping out his home in the bark. He sways his body with every stroke of his beak, and is so busy he takes no notice of you. The nuthatch is very fond of filberts, as his name implies. You may see him in the autumn with a nut firmly fixed in a crevice in the bark of a hazel branch, and he taps away until he pierces the shell and gets at the kernel. Nuthatches, which are very plentiful hereabouts, are sometimes to be found in the forsaken homes of woodpeckers, which they plaster round with mud. The entrance to the hole in the tree is thus made small enough to suit them. Sometimes when I have disturbed a nuthatch at work at a hole in a tree, the little fellow would pop into the hole and peep out at me, never moving until I had departed.

Woodpeckers are somewhat uncommon here: I have not heard one in our garden by the river for a very long time, though a foolish farmer told me the other day that he had recently shot one. A mile or so away, at Barnsley Park, where the oaks thrive on a vein of clay soil, green woodpeckers may often be seen and heard. What more beautiful bird is there, even in the tropics, than the merry yaffel, with his emerald back and the red tuft on his head? The other two varieties of woodpeckers, the greater and lesser spotted, are occasionally met with on the Cotswolds. I do not know why we have so few green woodpeckers by the river, as there are plenty of old trees there; but these birds, which feed chiefly on the ground among the anthills, have a marked preference for such woods in the neighbourhood as contain an abundance of oak trees. The local name for these birds is "hic-wall," which Tom Peregrine pronounces "heckle." There is no more pleasing sound than the long, chattering note of the green woodpecker; it breaks so suddenly on the general silence of the woods, contrasting as it does in its loud, bell-like tones with the soft cooing of the doves and the songs of the other birds.

In various places along its course the river has long poles set across it; on these poles Tom Peregrine has placed traps for stoats, weasels, and other vermin. Recently, when we were fishing, he pointed out a great stoat caught in one of these traps with a water-rat in its mouth--a very strange occurrence, for the trap was only a small one, of the usual rabbit size, and the rat was almost as big as the stoat. There is so little room for the bodies of a stoat and a rat in one of these small iron traps that the betting must be at least a thousand to one against such an event happening. Unless we had seen it with our eyes we could not have believed it possible. The stoat, in chasing the rat along the pole, must have seized his prey at the very instant that the jaws of the trap snapped upon them both. They were quite dead when we found them.

Every one acquainted with gamekeepers' duties is well aware that the iron traps armed with teeth which are in general use throughout the country are a disgrace to nineteenth-century civilisation. It is a terrible experience to take a rabbit or any other animal out of one of these relics of barbarism. Sir Herbert Maxwell recently called the attention of game preservers and keepers to a patent trap which Colonel Coulson, of Newburgh, has just invented. Instead of teeth, the jaws of the new trap have pads of corrugated rubber, which grip as tightly and effectively as the old contrivance without breaking the bones or piercing the skin. I trust these traps will shortly supersede the old ones, so that a portion of the inevitable suffering of the furred denizens of our woods may be dispensed with.

In a hunting country where foxes occasionally find their way into vermin traps, Colonel Coulson's invention should be invaluable. Instead of having to be destroyed, or being killed by the hounds in covert, owing to a broken leg, it is ten to one that Master Reynard would be released very little the worse for his temporary confinement. Moreover, as Sir Herbert Maxwell points out, dog owners will be grateful to the inventor when their favourites accidentally find their way into one of these traps and are released without smashed bones and bleeding feet. Any kind of trap is but a diabolical contrivance at best, but these "humane patents" are a vast improvement, and do the work better than the old, as I can testify, having used them from the time Sir Herbert Maxwell first called attention to them, and being quite satisfied with them.

Badgers are almost as mysterious in their ways and habits as the otter. Nobody believes there are badgers about except those who look for their characteristic tracks about the fox-earths. Every now and then, however, a badger is dug out or discovered in some way in places where they were unheard of before. We have one here now.

A few years ago I saw a pack of foxhounds find a badger in Chearsley Spinneys in Oxfordshire. They hunted him round and round for about ten minutes. I saw him just in front of the hounds; a great, fine specimen he was too. As far as I remember, the hounds killed him in covert, and then went away on the line of a fox.

A year or two ago three fine young badgers were captured near Bourton-on-the-Water, on the Cotswolds. When I was shown them I was told they would not feed in confinement. Finding a large lobworm, I picked it up and gave it to one of them. He ate it with the utmost relish. His brown and grey little body shook with emotion when I spoke to him kindly--just as a dog trembles when you pet him. I am not certain, however, whether the badger trembled out of gratitude for the lobworm or out of rage and disgust at being confined in a cage.

Badgers would make delightful pets if they had a little less scent: nature, as everybody knows, has endowed them with this quality to a remarkable degree; they have the power of emitting or retaining it at their own discretion.

Badger-baiting with terriers is not an amusement which commends itself to humane sportsmen. It is hard luck on the terriers, even more than on the badger. The dogs have a very bad time if they go anywhere near him.

Talking of terriers, how endless are the instances of superhuman sagacity in dogs of all kinds! I once drove twenty-five miles from a place near Guildford in Surrey to Windsor. In the cart I took with me a little liver-coloured spaniel. When I had completed about half the journey I put the spaniel down for a run of a few miles: this was all she saw of the country. In Windsor, through some cause or other, I lost her; but when I arrived home a day or two afterwards, she had arrived there before me. It should be mentioned that the journey was not along a high-road, but by cross-country lanes. How on earth she got home first, unless she came back on my scent, then, finding herself near home, took a short cut across country, so as to be there before me, it is impossible to imagine.

How curious it is that all animals seem to know when Sunday comes round!

Fish and fowl are certainly much tamer on the seventh day of the week than on any other. We had a terrier that would never attempt to follow you when you were going to church so long as you had your Sunday clothes on; whilst even when he was following you on a week day, if you turned round and said "Church" in a decisive tone, he would trot straight back to the house. As far as we know he had no special training in this respect. This terrier, who was a rare one to tackle a fox, has on several occasions spent the best part of a week down a rabbit burrow. When dug out he seemed very little the worse for his escapade, though decidedly emaciated in appearance. Poor little fellow! he died a painless death not long ago from sheer old age. I was with him at the time, and did not even know he was ill until five minutes before he expired. The most obedient and faithful, as well as the bravest, little dog in the world, he could do anything but speak. How much we can learn from these little emblems of simplicity, gladness, and love. Implicit obedience and boundless faith in those set over us, to forgive and forget unto seventy times seven, to give gold for silver, nay, to sacrifice all and receive back nothing in return,--these are some of the lessons we may learn from creatures we call dumb. Perhaps they will have their reward. There is room in eternity for the souls of animals as well as of men; there is room for the London cab-horse after his life of hardship and cruel sacrifice; there is room for the innocent lamb that goes to the slaughter; there is room in those realms of infinity for every bird of the air and every beast of the field that either the necessity (that tyrant's plea) or the ignorance of man has condemned to torture, injustice, or neglect!

The most delightful of all dogs are those rough-haired Scotch deerhounds the author of "Waverley" loved so well. How timid and subdued are these trusty hounds on ordinary occasions! yet how fierce and relentless to pursue and slay their natural quarry, the antlered monarch of the glen! Once, in Savernake Forest, where the yaffels laugh all day amid the great oak trees, and the beech avenues, with their Gothic foliations and lichened trunks, are the finest in the world, a young, untried deerhound of ours slipped away unobserved and killed a hind "off his own bat." Though he had probably never seen a deer before, hereditary instinct was too strong, and he succumbed to temptation. Yet he would not harm a fox, for on another occasion, when I was out walking, accompanied by this hound and a fox-terrier, the latter bolted a large dog fox out of a drain. When the fox appeared the deerhound made after him, and, in his attempt to dodge, reynard was bowled over on to his back. But directly he was called, the deerhound came back to our heels, apparently not considering the vulpine race fair game. I will not vouch for the accuracy of the story, but our coachman asserts that he saw this deerhound at play with a fox in our kitchen garden,--not a tame fox, but a wild one. I believe, myself, that this actually did happen, as the man who witnessed the occurrence is thoroughly reliable.

There is no dog more knowing and sagacious in his own particular way than a well-trained retriever. What an immense addition to the pleasure of a day's partridge-shooting in September is the working of one of these delightful dogs! Only the other day, when I was sitting on the lawn, a retriever puppy came running up with something in his mouth, with which he seemed very pleased. He laid it at my feet with great care and tenderness, and I saw that it was a young pheasant about a fortnight old. It ran into the house, and was rescued unharmed a few hours afterwards by the keeper, who restored it to the hencoop from whence it came. One could not be angry with a dog that was unable to resist the temptation to retrieve, but yet would not harm the bird in the smallest degree.

One does not often see teams of oxen ploughing in the fields nowadays. Within a radius of a hundred miles of London town this is becoming a rare spectacle. They are still used sometimes in the Cotswolds, however, though the practice of using them must soon die out. Great, slow, lumbering animals they are, but very handsome and delightful beasts to look upon. A team of brown oxen adds a pleasing feature to the landscape.

As we come down the steep ascent which leads to our little hamlet, we often wonder why some of the cottage front doors are painted bright red and some a lovely deep blue. These different colours add a great deal of picturesqueness to the cottages; but is it possible that the owners have painted their doors red and blue for the sake of the charming distant effect it gives? These people have wonderfully good taste as a rule. The other day we noticed that some of the dreadful iron sheeting which is creeping into use in country places had been painted by a farmer a beautiful rich brown. It gave quite a pretty effect to the barn it adjoined. Every bit of colour is an improvement in the rather cold-looking upland scenery of the Cotswolds.

Cray-fishing is a very popular amusement among the villagers. These fresh-water lobsters abound in the gravelly reaches of the Coln. They are caught at night in small round nets, which are baited and let down to the bottom of the pools. The crayfish crawl into the nets to feed, and are hauled up by the dozen. Two men can take a couple of bucketfuls of them on any evening in September. Though much esteemed in Paris, where they fetch a high price as écrevisse, we must confess they are rather disappointing when served up. The village people, however, are very fond of them; and Tom Peregrine, the keeper, in his quaint way describes them as "very good pickings for dessert." As they eat a large number of very small trout, as well as ova, on the gravel spawning-beds, crayfish should not be allowed to become too numerous in a trout stream.

It is difficult to understand in what the great attraction of rook-shooting consists. Up to yesterday I had never shot a rook in my life. The accuracy with which some people can kill rooks with a rifle is very remarkable. I have seen my brother knock down five or six dozen without missing more than one or two birds the whole time. One would be thankful to die such an instantaneous death as these young rooks. They seem to drop to the shot without a flutter; down they come, as straight as a big stone dropped from a high wall. Like a lump of lead they fall into the nettles. They hardly ever move again. It is difficult work finding them in the thick undergrowth.

About eleven o'clock the evening after shooting the young rooks I was returning home from a neighbouring farmhouse when I heard the most lamentable sounds coming from the rookery. There seemed to be a funeral service going on in the big ash trees. Muffled cawings and piteous cries told me that the poor old rooks were mourning for their children. I cannot remember ever hearing rooks cawing at that time of night before. Saving the lark, "that scorner of the ground," which rises and sings in the skies an hour before sunrise, the rooks are the first birds to strike up at early dawn. One often notices this fact on sleepless nights. About 2.30 o'clock on a May morning a rook begins the grand concert with a solo in G flat; then a cock pheasant crows, or an owl hoots; moorhens begin to stir, and gradually the woodland orchestra works up to a tremendous burst of song, such as is never heard at any hour but that of sunrise.

"Now the rich stream of music winds along,
Deep, majestic, smooth, and strong,
Through verdant vales."

How often one has heard this grand thanksgiving chorus of the birds at early dawn!

I wonder if the poor rooks caw all night long after the "slaughter of the innocents?" They were still at it when I went to bed at 12.30, and this was within two hours of their time of getting up.

"Some say that e'en against that season cornea
In which our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long."

Thus wrote Shakespeare of bold chanticleer; and perhaps the rooks when they are grieving for their lost ones, hold solemn requiem until the morning light and the cheering rays of the sun make them forget their woes.

It is difficult to understand what pleasure the farmers find in shooting young rooks with twelve-bore guns. Ours are always allowed a grand battue in the garden every year. They ask their friends out from Cirencester to assist. For an hour or so the shots have been rattling all round the house and on the sheds in the stable-yard. The horses are frightened out of their wits. Grown-up men ought to know better than to keep firing continually towards a house not two hundred yards away. A stray pellet might easily blind a man or a horse.

Farmers are sometimes very careless with their guns. Out partridge-shooting one is in mortal terror of the man on one's right, who invariably carries his gun at such a level that if it went off it would "rake" the whole line. If you tell one of these gentry that he is holding his gun in a dangerous way, he will only laugh, remarking possibly that you are getting very nervous. The best plan is not to ask these well-meaning, but highly dangerous fellows to shoot with you. Unfortunately it is probably the eldest son of the principal tenant on the manor who is the culprit. The best plan in such cases is to speak to the old man firmly, but courteously, asking him to try to dissuade his son from his dangerous practices.

It is amusing to watch the jackdaws when they come from the ivy-mantled fir trees to steal the food we throw every morning on to the lawn in front of the house for the pheasants, the pigeons, and other birds. They are the funniest rascals and the biggest thieves in Christendom. Alighting suddenly behind a cock pheasant, they snatch the food from him just as he imagines he has got it safely; and terribly astonished he always looks. Then these greedy daws will chase the smaller birds as they fly away with any dainty morsel, and compel them to give it up. A curiously mixed group assembles on the lawn each morning at eight o'clock in the winter. First of all there are the pheasants crowing loudly for their breakfast, then come the stately swans, several pinioned wild ducks, tame pigeons and wild and timid stock doves, four or five moorhens, any number of daws, as well as thrushes, blackbirds, starlings, house-sparrows, and finches. One day, having forgotten to feed them, I was astonished at hearing loud quacks proceeding from the dining-room, and was horrified to find that the ducks had come into the house to look for me and demand their grub.

Foxes give one a good deal of anxiety in May and June, when the cubs are about half grown. On arriving home to-day the first news I hear is that two dead cubs have been picked up: "one looks as if his head had been battered in, and the other appears to have been worried by a dog." This is the only information I can get from the keeper. It is really a serious blow; for if two have been found dead, how many others may not have died in their earth or in the woods?

Two seasons ago six dead cubs were picked up here; they had died from eating rooks which had been poisoned by some farmers. It took us a long time to get to the bottom of this affair, for no information is to be got out of Gloucestershire folk; you must ferret such matters out yourself.

There are still live cubs in the breeding-earth, for I heard them there this afternoon; so there is yet hope. But twenty acres of covert will not stand this sort of thing, considering that the hounds are "through" them once in three weeks, on an average, throughout the winter. Only one vixen survived at the end of last season, though another one has turned up since. We have two litters, fortunately. Where you have coverts handy to a stream of any kind, there will foxes congregate. They love water-rats and moorhens more than any other food.

A strange prejudice exists among hunting men against cleaning out artificial earths. There was never a greater fallacy. Fox-earths want looking to from time to time, say every ten years, for rabbits will render them practically useless by burrowing out in different places. A block is often formed in the drain by this burrowing, and the earth will have to be opened and the channel freed.

The best possible preventive measure against mange is to clear out your artificial earths every ten years. As for driving the foxes away by this practice, we cannot believe it. You cannot keep foxes from using a good artificial drain so long as it lies dry and secluded and the entrance is not too large. They prefer a small entrance, as they imagine dogs cannot follow them into a small hole.

A farmer made an earth in a hedgerow last year right away from any coverts, and, one would have thought, out of the beaten track of reynard's nightly prowls; yet the foxes took to this earth at the beginning of the hunting season, and they were soon quite established there.

There is no mystery about building a fox-drain. Reynard will take to any dry underground place that lies in a secluded spot. If it faces south--that is to say, if your earth runs in a half circle, with both entrances facing towards the south or south-west--so much the better. The entrance should not be more than about six inches square. Such a hole looks uncommonly small, no doubt, but a fox prefers it to a larger one. About half way through the passage a little chamber should be made, to tempt a vixen to lay up her cubs there. When there are lots of foxes and not too many earths, they will very soon begin to work a new drain, so long as it lies in a secluded spot and within easy distance of Master Reynard's skirmishing grounds.

We have lately made such an earth in a small covert, because the original earth is the wrong side of the River Coln. All the good country is on the opposite side of the river to that on which the old earth is situated. Foxes will seldom cross the stream when they are first found. It is hoped, therefore, that when they take to the new earth they will lie in the wood on the right side of the stream. We shall then close the old earth, and thus endeavour to get the foxes to run the good country. Much may be done to show sport by using a little strategy of this kind. Many a good stretch of grass country is lost to the hunt because the earths are badly distributed. It must be remembered that a fox when first found will usually go straight to his earth; finding that closed, he will make for the next earths he is in the habit of using.

The other day, while ferreting in the coverts previous to rabbit-shooting, the keeper bolted a huge fox out of one burrow and a cat out of the other. He also tells me that he once found a hare and a fox lying in their forms, within three yards of one another, in a small disused quarry. There is no doubt that, like jack among fish, the fox is friendly enough on some days, when his belly is full. He then "makes up to" rabbits and other animals, with the intent of "turning on them" when they least expect it. Without this treacherous sort of cunning, reynard would often have to go supperless to bed.

In those drains and earths where foxes are known to lie you will often see traces of rabbits. These little conies are wonderfully confiding in the way they use a fox-earth. It is difficult to believe that they live in the drain with the foxes, but they are exceedingly fond of making burrows with an entrance to an earth. They are a great nuisance in spoiling earths by this practice. Rabbits invariably establish themselves in fox-drains which have been temporarily deserted.

Foxes become very "cute" towards the end of the hunting season. They can hear hounds running at a distance of four or five miles on windy days. Knowing that the earths are stopped, they leave the bigger woods and hide themselves in out-of-the-way fields and hedgerows. Last season a fox was seen to leave our coverts, trot along the high-road, and ensconce himself among some laurels near the manor house. He was so easily seen where he lay in the shrubbery that a crowd of villagers stood watching him from the road. He knew the hounds would not draw this place, as it is quite small and bare, so here he stayed until dusk; then, having assured himself that the hounds had gone home, he jumped up and trotted back to the woods again.

A flock of sheep are not always frightened at a fox. The other day an old dog fox, the hero of many a good run in recent years from these coverts (an "old customer," in fact), was observed by the keeper and two other men trying to cross the river by means of a footbridge. A flock of sheep, doubtless taking him for a dog, were frustrating his endeavours to get across; directly he set foot on dry land they would bowl him over on to his back in the most unceremonious way. This game of romps went on for about ten minutes. Finally the fox, getting tired of trying to pass the sheep, trotted back over the footbridge. Fifty yards up stream a narrow fir pole is set across the water. The cunning old rascal made for this, and attempted to get to the other side; but the fates were against him. There was a strong wind blowing at the time, so that when he was half way across the pool, he was actually blown off sideways into the water. And a rare ducking he got! He gave the job up after this, and trotted back into the wood. This is a very curious occurrence, because the fox was perfectly healthy and strong. He is well known throughout the country, not only for his tremendous cheek, but also for the wonderful runs he has given from time to time. He will climb over a six-foot wire fence to gain entrance to a fowl-run belonging to an excellent sportsman, who, though not a hunting man, would never allow a fox to be killed. He is reported to have had fifty, fowls out of this place during the last few months. When caught in the act in broad daylight, the fox had to be hunted round and round the enclosure before he would leave, finally climbing up the wire fencing like a cat, instead of departing by the open door.

It is very rare that a mischievous fox, given to the destruction of poultry, is also a straight-necked one. Too often these gentry know no extent of country; they take refuge in the nearest farmyard when pressed by the hounds. At the end of a run we have seen them on the roof of houses and outbuildings time after time. On one occasion last season a hunted fox was discovered among the rafters in the roof of a very high barn. The "whipper-in" was sent up by means of a long ladder, eventually pulling him out of his hiding-place by his brush. Poor brute! perhaps he might have been spared after showing such marvellous strategy.

It speaks wonders for the good-nature and unselfishness of the farmer who owns the fowl-run above alluded to that he never would send in the vestige of a claim to the hunt secretary for the poultry he has lost from time to time. But he is one of the old-fashioned yeomen of Gloucestershire--a gentleman, if ever there was one--a type of the best sort of Englishman. Alas! that hard times have thinned the ranks of the old yeoman farmers of the Cotswolds! They are the very backbone of the country; we can ill afford to lose them, with their cheery, bluff manners and good-hearted natures.

Some of the people round about are not so scrupulous in the way of poultry claims. We have had to investigate a large number in, recent years. It is a difficult matter to distinguish bonâ-fide from "bogus" claims; they vary in amount from one to twenty pounds. Once only have we been foolish enough to rear a litter of cubs by hand, having obtained them from the big woods at Cirencester. Before the hunting season had commenced we had received claims of nineteen and fourteen pounds from neighbouring farmers for poultry and turkeys destroyed. One bailiff declared that the foxes were so bold they had fetched a young heifer that had died from the "bowssen" into the fox-covert. Whether the bailiff put it there or the foxes "fetched" it I know not, but the white, bleached skull may be seen hard by the earth to this day.

One of the claimants above named farms three hundred acres on strictly economical principles. He has allowed the land to go back to grass, and the only labour he employs on it is a one-legged boy, whom he pays "in kind." This boy arrived the other day with another poultry claim, when the following dialogue occurred:--

"I see you have got down sixteen young ducklings on the list?"

"Yaas, the jackdars fetched they."

"How do you know the jackdaws took them?" "'Cos maister said so."

"Do you shut up your fowls at night?"

"Yaas, we shuts the daar, but the farxes gets in. It be all weared out. There be great holes in the bowssen where they gets through and fetches them."

How can one pay poultry claims of this kind? It being absolutely impossible to verify these accounts properly, the only way is to take the general character of the claimant, paying according as you think him straightforward or the reverse. It is an insult to an honest man to offer him anything less than the amount he asks for; therefore claims which have every appearance of being bonâ fide should be settled in full. But the hunt can't afford it, one is told. In that case people ought to subscribe more. If men paid ten pounds for every hunter they owned, the income of most establishments would be more than doubled.

The farmers are wonderfully long-suffering on the whole, but they cannot be expected to welcome a whole multitude of strangers; nor can they allow large fields to ride over their land in these bad times without compensation of some sort. Slowly, but surely, a change is coming over our ideas of hunting rights and hunting courtesy; and the sooner we realise that we ought to pay for our hunting on the same scale as we do for shooting and fishing, the better will it be for all concerned.

Talking of hunting and foxes reminds me that a short time ago I went to investigate an earth to see if a vixen was laid down there. Finding no signs of any cubs, I was just going away when I saw a feather sticking out of the ground a few yards from the fox-earth. I pulled four young thrushes, a tiny rabbit, and two young water-rats out of this hole, and re-buried them. The cubs, it afterwards appeared, were laid up in a rabbit burrow some distance away. But the old vixen kept her larder near her old quarters, instead of burying her supplies for a rainy day close to the hole where she had her cubs. Perhaps she was meditating moving the litter to this earth on some future occasion.

I shall never forget discovering this litter. When looking down a rabbit-hole I heard a scuffle. A young cub came up to the mouth of the hole, saw me, and dashed back again into the earth. This was the smallest place I ever saw cubs laid up in. The vixen happened to be a very little one.

It is amusing to watch the cubs playing in the corn on a summer's evening. If you go up wind you can approach within ten yards of them. Round and round they gambol, tumbling each other over for all the world like young puppies. They take little notice of you at first; but after a time they suddenly stop playing, stare hard at you for half a minute, then bolt off helter-skelter into the forest of waving green wheat.

One word more about the scent of foxes. Not long ago a man wrote to the Field saying that he had proved by experiment that on the saturation or relative humidity of the air the hunter's hopes depend: in fact, he announced that he had solved the riddle of scent. It so happened that for some years the present writer had also been amusing himself with experiments of the same nature, and at one time entertained the hope that by means of the hygrometer he would arrive at a solution of the mystery. But alas! it was not to be. On several occasions when the air was well-nigh saturated, scent proved abominable. That the relative humidity of the air is not the all-important factor was often proved by the bad scent experienced just before rain and storms, when the hygrometer showed a saturation of considerably over ninety per cent. But there are undoubtedly other complications besides the evaporations from the soil and the relative humidity of the air to be considered in making an enquiry into the causes of good and bad scent. The amount of moisture in the ground, the state of the soil in reference to the all-important question of whether it carries or not, the temperature of the air, and last, but not by any means least, the condition of the quarry, be it fox, stag, or hare, are all questions of vital importance, complicating matters and preventing a solution of the mysteries of scent.

As the atmosphere is variable, so also must scent be variable. The two things are inseparably bound up with one another. For this reason, if after a period of rainy weather we have an anti-cyclone in the winter without severe frost, and an absence of bright sunny days, we can usually depend on a scent. Instead of the air rising, there is during an anti-cyclone, as we all know, a tendency towards a gentle down-flow of air or at all events a steady pressure, and this causes smoke, whether from a railway engine or a tobacco pipe, to hang in the air and scent to lie breast high.

Unfortunately the normal state of the atmospheric fluid is a rushing in of cold air and a rushing out or upwards of warmer air, causing unsettled variable equilibrium and unsettled variable scent. The barometer would be an absolutely reliable guide for the hunting man were it not for the complications already named above, complications which prevent either barometer or hygrometer from offering infallible indications of good or bad scenting days. However, scent often improves at night when the dew begins to form; and it may also suddenly improve at any time of day should the dew point be reached, owing to the temperature cooling to the point of saturation. This is always liable to occur at some time, on days on which the hygrometer shows us that there is over ninety per cent of moisture in the air. But here again radiation comes in to complicate matters; for clouds may check the formation of dew. It may safely be said, however, that other conditions being favourable, a fast run is likely to occur at any time of day should the dew point be reached. Thus the hygrometer is worthy to be studied on a hunting morning.

In May there is a good deal of weed-cutting to be done on a trout stream. Our plan is to have a couple of big field days about May 12th. The weeds on over two miles of water are all cut during that time. As they are not allowed to be sent down the stream, we get them out in several different places; they are then piled in heaps, and left to rot. The operation is repeated at the end of the fishing season. About a dozen scythes tied together are used. Two men hold the ends and walk up the stream, one on each side of the river, mowing as they go.

There is a certain amount of management required in weed-cutting. If much weed is left uncut, the millers grumble; if you cut them bare, there are no homes left for the fish. The last is the worse evil of the two. The millers are usually kind-hearted men, whilst poachers can commit fearful depredations in a small stream that has been cut too bare.

The way these limestone streams are netted is as follows: About two in the morning, when there is enough light to commence operations, a net is laid across the stream and pegged down at each end; the water is then beaten with long sticks both above and below the net. Nor is it difficult to drive the trout into the trap; they rush down helter-skelter, and, failing to see any net, they soon become hopelessly entangled in its meshes. The bobbing corks intimate to the poachers that there are some good trout in the net; one end is then unpegged, and the haul is made.

About ten trout would be a good catch. The operation is repeated four or five times, until some fifty fish have been bagged. The poachers then depart, taking care to remove all signs of their night's work, such as scales of fish, stray weeds, and bits of stick.

In weed-cutting by hand, instead of with the long knives, it is wonderful how many trout get cut by the scythes. There used to be several good fish killed this way at each annual cutting, when the men used to walk up the stream mowing as they went. One would have thought trout would have been able to avoid the scythes, being such quick, slippery animals.

Until the present season otters have seldom visited our parts of the Coln. Unfortunately, however, they have turned up, and are committing sad havoc among the fish. It is such a terribly easy stream for them to work. The water is very shallow, and the current is a slow one.

We are not well up in otter-hunting in these parts, there being no hounds within fifty miles. I have never seen an otter on the Coln. But one day, at a spot near which we have noticed the billet of an otter and some fishes' heads, I heard a noise in the water, and a huge wave seemed to indicate that something bigger than a Coln trout was proceeding up stream close to the bank all the way. On running up, of course I saw nothing. But half an hour afterwards I saw another big wave of the same kind. It was so close to me that if it had been a fish or a rat I must have seen him. I had a terrier with me, but of course he was unable to find an otter. A dog unbroken to the scent is worse than useless.

On another occasion I saw a water-vole running away from some larger animal under the opposite bank of the river. Some bushes prevented my seeing very well, but I am almost certain it was an otter. "A Son of the Marshes" mentions in one of his charming books that otters do kill water-rats. I was not aware of this fact until I read it in the book called "From Spring to Fall."

The broad shallow reach of the Coln in front of the manor house seems to be a favourite hunting-ground of the otter during his nocturnal rambles; for sometimes one is awakened at night by a tremendous tumult among the wild duck and moorhens that haunt the pool. They rush up and down, screaming and flapping their wings as if they were "daft."

A few weeks after writing the above we caught a beautiful female otter in a trap, weighing some seventeen pounds. I have regretted its capture ever since. Great as the number of trout they eat undoubtedly is, I do not intend to allow another otter to be trapped, unless they become too numerous. Such lovely, mysterious creatures are becoming far too scarce nowadays, and ought to be rigidly preserved. Last October we were shooting a withybed of two acres on the river bank, when the beaters suddenly began shouting, "An otter! An otter!" And sure enough a large dog otter ran straight down the line. This small withybed also contained three fine foxes and a good sprinkling of pheasants.

The number of water-voles in the banks of this stream seems to increase year by year. The damage they do is not great; but the millers and the farmers do not like them, because with their numerous holes they undermine the banks of the millpound, and the water finds its way through them on to the meadows. Country folk are very fond of an occasional rat hunt: they do lay themselves out to be hunted so tremendously. A rat will bolt out of his hole, dive half way across the stream, then, taking advantage of the tiniest bit of weed, he will come up to the surface, poke his nose out of the water and watch you intently. An inexperienced eye would never detect him. But if a stone is thrown at him, finding his subterfuge detected, he is apt to lose his head--either coming back towards you, and being obliged to come up for air before he reaches his hole, or else swimming boldly across to the opposite bank. In the latter case he is safe.

Tom Peregrine is a great hand at catching water-voles in a landing-net. He holds the net over the hole which leads to the water, and pokes his stick into the bank above. The rat bolts out into the net and is immediately landed. House-rats--great black brutes--live in the banks of the stream as well as water-voles. They are very much larger and less fascinating than the voles. To see one of the latter species crossing the stream with a long piece of grass in his mouth is a very pretty sight They are rodents, and somewhat resemble squirrels.

---

CHAPTER XV.

THE PROMISE OF MAY.

"Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus
Tam cari capitis?"
HORACE.

About the middle of May the lovely, sweet-scenting lilac comes into bloom. It brightens up the old, time-worn barns, and relieves the monotony of grey stone walls and mossy roofs in the Cotswold village.

The prevailing colour of the Cotswold landscape may be said to be that of gold. The richest gold is that of the flaming marsh-marigolds in the water meadows during May; goldilocks and buttercups of all kinds are golden too, but of a slightly different and paler hue. Yellow charlock, beautiful to look upon, but hated by the farmers, takes possession of the wheat "grounds" in May, and holds the fields against all comers throughout the summer. In some parts it clothes the whole landscape like a sheet of saffron. Primroses and cowslips are of course paler still. The ubiquitous dandelion is likewise golden; then we have birdsfoot trefoil, ragwort, agrimony, silver-weed, celandine, tormentil, yellow iris, St. John's wort, and a host of other flowers of the same hue. In autumn comes the golden corn; and later on in mid winter we have pale jessamine and lichen thriving on the cottage walls. So throughout the year the Cotswolds are never without this colour of saffron or gold. Only the pockets of the natives lack it, I regret to say.

Every cottager takes a pride in his garden, for the flower shows which are held every year result in keen competition. A prize is always given for the prettiest garden among all the cottagers. This is an excellent plan; it brightens and beautifies the village street for eight months in the year. In May the rich brown and gold of the gillyflower is seen on every side, and their fragrance is wafted far and wide by every breeze that blows.

Then there is a very pretty plant that covers some of the cottage walls at this time of year. It is the wistaria; in the distance you might take it for lilac, for the colours are almost identical.

Then come the roses--the beautiful June roses--the nimium breves flores of Horace. But the roses of the Cotswolds are not so short lived for all that Horace has sung: you may see them in the cottage gardens from the end of May until Christmas.

How cool an old house is in summer! The thick walls and the stone floors give them an almost icy feeling in the early morning. Even as I write my thermometer stands at 58° within, whilst the one out of doors registers 65° in the shade. This is the ideal temperature, neither too hot nor too cold. But it is not summer yet, only the fickle month of May.

Tom Peregrine is getting very anxious. He meets me every evening with the same story of trout rising all the way up the stream and nobody trying to catch them. I can see by his manner that he disapproves of my "muddling" over books and papers instead of trying to catch trout. He cannot understand it all. Meanwhile one sometimes asks oneself the question which Peregrine would also like to propound, only he dare not, Why and wherefore do we tread the perilous paths of literature instead of those pleasant paths by the river and through the wood? The only answer is this: The daemon prompts us to do these things, even as it prompted the men of old time.

"There is a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough hew them how we will."

If there is such a thing as a "call" to any profession, there is a call to that of letters. So with an enthusiasm born of inexperience and delusive hope we embark as in a leaky and untrustworthy sailing ship, built, for ought we know, "in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark," and at the mercy of every chance breeze are wafted by the winds of heaven through chaos and darkness into the boundless ocean of words and of books. When the waves run high they resemble nothing so much as lions with arched crests and flowing manes going to and fro seeking whom they may devour, or savage dogs rushing hither and thither foaming at the mouth; and when old Father Neptune lets loose his hungry sea-dogs of criticism, then look out for squalls!

But again the daemon, that still small voice echoing from the far-off shores of the ocean of time, whispers in our ear, "In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand; for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good."

So we sow in weakness and in fear and trembling, "line upon line, line upon line; here a little and there a little," sometimes in mirth and laughter, sometimes in tears. Let us not ask to be raised in power. Let us resign all glory and honour and power to the Ancient of Days, prime source of the strength of wavering, weak mankind. Rather let us be thankful that by turning aside from "the clamour of the passing day" to tread the narrow paths of literature, however humble, however obscure our lot may have been, we gained an insight into the nobler destinies of the human soul, and learnt a lesson which might otherwise have been postponed until we were hovering on the threshold of Eternity.

In spite of complaints of east winds and night frosts, May is the nicest month in the year take it all in all. In London this is the case even more than in the country. The trees in the parks have then the real vivid green foliage of the country. There is a freshness about everything in London which only lasts through May. By June the smoke and dirt are beginning to spoil the tender, fresh greenery of the young leaves. In the early morning of May 12th, 1897, more than an inch of snow fell in the Cotswolds, but it was all gone by eight o'clock. In spite of the weather, May is "the brightest, merriest month of all the glad New Year." Everything is at its best. Man cannot be morose and ill-tempered in May. The "happy hills and pleasing shade" must needs "a momentary bliss bestow" on the saddest of us all. Look at yonder thoroughbred colt grazing peacefully in the paddock: if you had turned him out a month ago he would have galloped and fretted himself to death; but now that the grass is sweet and health-giving, he is content to nibble the young shoots all day long. What a lovely, satin-like coat he has, now that his winter garments are put off! There is a picture of health and symmetry! He has just reached the interesting age of four years, is dark chestnut in colour, and sixteen hands two and a half inches in height; grazing out there, he does not look anything like that size. Well-bred horses always look so much smaller than they really are, especially if they are of good shape and well proportioned. Alas! how few of them, even thoroughbreds, have the real make and shape necessary to carry weight across country, or to win races! You do not see many horses in a lifetime in whose shape the critical eye cannot detect a fault. We know the good points as well as the bad of this colt, for we have had him two years. Deep, sloping shoulders are his speciality; and they cover a multitude of sins. Legs of iron, with large, broad knees; plenty of flat bone below the knee, and pasterns neither too long nor too upright. Well ribbed up, he is at the same time rather "ragged-hipped," indicative of strength and weight-carrying power. How broad are his gaskins! how "well let down" he is! What great hocks he has! But, alas I as you view him from behind, you cannot help noticing that his hindlegs incline a little outwards, even as a cow's do--they are not absolutely straight, as they should be. Then as to his golden, un-docked tail: he carries it well--a fact which adds twenty pounds to his value; but, strange to say, it is not "well set on," as a thoroughbred's ought to be. He does not show the quality he ought in his hindquarters. Still his head, neck and crest are good, though his eye is not a large one. How much is he worth--twenty, fifty, a hundred, or two hundred pounds? Who can tell? Will he be a charger, a fourteen-stone hunter, or a London carriage horse? All depends how he takes to jumping. His height is against him,--sixteen hands two and a half inches is at least two inches too big for a hunter. Nevertheless, there are always the brilliant exceptions. Let us hope he will be the trump card in the pack.

Talking of horses, how admirable was that answer of Dr. Johnson's, when a lady asked him how on earth he allowed himself to describe the word pastern in his dictionary as the knee of a horse. "Ignorance, madam, pure ignorance," was his laconic reply. So great a man could well afford to confess utter ignorance of matters outside his own sphere. But how few of mankind are ever willing to own themselves mistaken about any subject under the sun, unless it be bimetallism or some equally unfashionable and abstruse (though not unimportant) problem of the day!

What beautiful shades of colour are noticeable in the trees in the early part of May! The ash, being so much later than the other trees, remains a pale light green, and shows up against the dark green chestnuts and the still darker firs. But what shall I say of the great spreading walnut whose branches hang right across the stream in our garden in the Cotswold Valley?

About the middle of May the walnut leaves resemble nothing so much as a mass of Virginia creeper when it is at its best in September. Beautiful, transparent leaves of gold, intermingled with red, glisten in the warm May sunshine,--the russet beauties of autumn combined with the fresh, bright loveliness of early spring!

Not till the very end of May will this walnut tree be in full leaf. He is the latest of all the trees. The young, tender leaves scent almost as sweetly as the verbena in the greenhouse. It is curious that ash trees, when they are close to a river, hang their branches down towards the water like the "weeping willows." Is this connected, I wonder, with the strange attraction water has for certain kinds of wood, by which the water-finder, armed with a hazel wand, is able to divine the presence of aqua pura hundreds of feet below the surface of the earth? What this strange art of rhabdomancy is I know not, but the "weeping" ash in our garden by the Coln is one of the most beautiful and shapely trees I ever saw. It will be an evil day when some cruel hurricane hurls it to the ground. We have lost many a fine tree in recent years, some through gales, but others, alas I by the hand of man.

A few years ago I discovered a spot about a quarter of a mile from my home which reminded me of the beautiful Eton playing-fields,

"Where once my careless childhood stray'd,
A stranger yet to pain."

It consisted of a few grass fields shut off by high hedges, and completely encircled by a number of fine elm trees of great age and lovely foliage. At one end a broad and shallow reach of the Coln completed the scene.

Having obtained a long lease of the place, I grubbed up the hedges, turned three small fields into one, and made a cricket ground in the midst. My object was to imitate as far as possible the "Upper Club" of the Eton playing-fields.

I had barely accomplished the work, the cricket ground had just been levelled, when the landlord's agent--or more probably his "mortgagee"--arrived on the scene, accompanied by a hard-headed, blustering timber merchant from Cheltenham. To my horror and dismay I was informed that, money being very scarce, they contemplated making a clean sweep of these grand old elms. On my expostulating, they merely suggested that cutting down the trees would be a great improvement, as the place would be opened up thereby and made healthier.

In the hope of warding off the evil day we offered to pay the price of some of the finest trees, although they could only legally be bought for the present proprietor's lifetime.

The contractor, however, rather than leave his work of destruction incomplete, put a ridiculous price on them. He refused to accept a larger sum than he could ever have cleared by cutting them down. This is what Cowper would have stigmatised as

"disclaiming all regard
For mercy and the common rights of man,"

and "conducting trade at the sword's point."

We then resolved to buy the farm. But the stars in their courses fought against us; we were unsuccessful in our attempt to purchase the freehold.

And so the contractor's men came with axes and saws and horses and carts. For days and weeks I was haunted by that hideous nightmare, the crash of groaning trees as they fell all around, soon to be stripped of all their glorious beauty. The cruel, blasphemous shouts of the men, as they made their long-suffering horses drag the huge, dismembered trunks across the beautifully levelled greensward of the cricket ground, were positively heart-rending. Ninety great elms did they strike down. A few were left, but of these the two finest came down in the great gale of March 1896.

"Sic transit gloria mundi."

Trees are like old familiar friends, we cannot bear to lose them; every one that falls reminds us of "the days that are no more." Struck down in all the pride and beauty of their days, they remind us that

"Those who once gave promise
Of fruit for manhood's prime
Have passed from us for ever,
Gone home before their time."

They remind me that four of my greatest friends at school, ten short years ago, are long since dead. Like the trees felled by the woodman's axe, they were struck down by the sickle of the silent Reaper, even as the golden sheaves that are gathered into the beautiful barns. Other trees will spring up and shade the naked earth in the woods with their mantle of green: so, also,

"Others will fill our places
Dressed in the old light blue."

And just as in the woods fresh young saplings are daily springing up, so also the merry voices of happy, generous boys are ringing, as I write, in the old, old courts and cloisters by the silvery Thames; their merry laughter is echoed by the bare grey walls, whereon the names of those who have long been dust are chiselled in rude handwriting on the mouldering stone.

Hundreds we knew have gone down. The fatal bullet, the ravaging fever, the roaring torrent, and the sad sea waves; the slow, sure grip of consumption, the fall at polo, and the iron hoofs of the favourite hunter;--all claimed their victims.

Perhaps this is why we love to linger in the woods watching the rays of golden light reflected upon the warm, red earth, listening to the heavenly voices of the birds and the hopeful babbling of the brook. Those purple hills and distant bars of gold in the western sky at the soft twilight hour are rendered ever so much more beautiful when we dimly view them through a mist of tears.

And now your thoughts are taken back five short years; you are once more staying with your old Eton friend and Oxford comrade in his beautiful home in far-off Wales. All is joy and happiness in that lovely, romantic home, for in six weeks' time the young squire, the best and most popular fellow in the world, is to be married to the fair daughter of a neighbouring house. Is it possible that aught can happen in that short time to mar the heavenly happiness of those two twin souls? Alas for the gallant, chivalrous nature I Well might he have cried with his knightly ancestor of the "Round Table," "Me forethinketh this shall betide, but God may well foredoe destiny." He had gone down to the lake in the most beautiful and romantic part of his lovely home, taking with him, as was his wont, his fishing-rod and his gun. One shot was heard, and one only, on that ill-fated afternoon, and then all, save for the songs of the birds and the rippling of the deep waters of the lake, was wrapped in silence. Then followed the report--whispered through the party assembled to do honour to the future bride and bridegroom--that "Bill" was missing. Then came the agonising suspense and the eight hours' search throughout the long summer evening.

Late that night the father found the fair young form of his boy in a thick and tangled copse,--there it lay under the silent stars, the face upturned in its last appeal to heaven; and close by lay the deadly twelve-bore which had been the cause of all the misery and grief that followed.

"Solemn before us
Veiled the dark portal--
Goal of all mortal.
Stars silent rest o'er us;
Graves under us silent."

He had evidently pursued game or vermin of some sort into the dense undergrowth of the wood, and in his haste had slipped and fallen over his gun, for the shot had just grazed his heart

Who that knew him will ever forget Bill Llewelyn, prince of good fellows, "truest of men in everything"? In all relations of life, as in the hunting field, he went as straight as a die.

The accidental discharge of a gun shortly after he came of age, and within a few weeks of his wedding day, has made the England of to-day the poorer by one of her most promising sons. Infinite charity! Infinite courage! Infinite truth! Infinite humility! Who could do justice in prose to those rare and godlike qualities? No: miserable, weak, and ineffectual though my gift of poesy may be, yet I will not let those qualities pass away from the minds of all, save the few that knew him well, without following in the footsteps (though at an immeasurable distance) of the divine author of "Lycidas," by endeavouring to render to his cherished memory "the meed of some melodious tear." For as time goes on, and the future unfolds to our view things we would have given worlds to have known long before, when the events that influenced our past actions and shaped our future destinies are seen through the dim vista of the shadowy, half-forgotten past, we must all learn the hard lesson which experience alone can teach, exclaiming with the "Preacher" the old, old words, "I returned, and saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong.... but time and chance happeneth to them all"

LINES IN MEMORY OF
WILLIAM DILLWYN LLEWELYN.
It may be chance,--I hold it truth,--
That of the friends I loved on earth
The ones who died in early youth
Were those of best and truest worth.
The swift, alas! the race must lose;
The battle goes against the strong,--
God wills it 'Tis for us to choose,
Whilst life is given, 'twixt right and wrong
'Tis not for us to count the cost
Of losing those we most do love;
He grudgeth not life's battle lost
Who wins a golden crown above.
And oft beneath the shades of night,
When tempests howl around these walls,
A vision steals upon my sight,
A footstep on the threshold falls.
I see once more that graceful form,
Once more that honest hand grasps mine.
Once more I hear above the storm
The voice I know so well is thine.
I see again an Eton boy,
A gentle boy, divinely taught,
And call to mind bow full of joy
In friendly rivalry we sought
The "playing-fields." Then, as I yield
To fancy's dreams, I see once more
The hero of the cricket field,
The oft-tried, trusty friend of yore.
What tender yearnings, fond regret,
These thoughts of early friendship bring!
None but the heartless can forget
'Mid summer days the friends of spring.
Now thoughts of Oxford fill my mind:
My Eton friend is with me still,
But changed--from boy to man; yet kind
And large of heart, and strong of will,
And blythe and gay. I recognise
The athletic form, the comely face,
The mild expression of the eyes,
The high-bred courtesy and grace.
Once more with patient skill we lure
The mighty salmon from the deep;
Once more we tread the boundless moor,
And wander up the mountain steep.
With gun in hand we scour the plain,
Together climb the rocky ways;
Regardless he of wind and rain
Who loved to "live laborious days."

---

I see again fair Penllergare,
Those woods and lakes you loved so well;
It seems but yesterday that there
I parted from you! Who can tell
The reason thou art gone before?
It is not given to us to know,
But doubtless thou wert needed more
Than we who mourn thee here below.
Life's noblest lesson day by day
Thy fair example nobly taught--
Self-sacrifice--to point the way
By which the hearts of men are brought
Nearer to God. This was thy task,
Humbly, unknowingly fulfilled;
And it were vain for us to ask
Why now thy voice is hushed and stilled.
O gallant spirit, generous heart!
If thou had'st lived in days gone by,
Thou would'st have loved to bear thy part
In glorious deeds of chivalry.

I make no apology for this digression, nor for unearthing from the bottom of my drawer lines that, written years ago, were never penned with any idea of publication. For was not the subject of those verses himself half a Cotswold man?

But now to return once more to the trees, the loss of which caused me to digress some pages back; there are compensations in all things. Not every one who becomes a sojourner among the Cotswold Hills is fated to undergo such a trial as the loss of these ninety elms. And, notwithstanding this severe lesson, I am still glad that I alighted on the spot from which I am now writing.

I have learnt to find pleasure in other directions now that my "Eton playing-fields" have passed away for ever. I have become infected by the spirit of the downs. I love the pure, bracing air and the boundless sense of space in the open hills as much as I ever loved the more concentrated charms of the valley. And even in the valley I have possessions of which no living man is able to deprive me. From my window I can see the silvery trout stream, which, after thousands of years of restless activity, is still slowly gliding down towards the sea; I can listen on summer nights to the murmuring waterfall at the bottom of the garden, the hooting of the owls, and the other sounds which break the awful silence of the night.

Nor can the hand of man disturb the glorious timber round the house; for it is "ornamental," and therefore safe from the hands of the despoiler. Storms are gradually levelling the ancient beech and ash trees in the woods, but it will be many a long day before the hand of nature has marred the beauty of what has always seemed to me to be one of the fairest spots on earth.

---

CHAPTER XVI.

SUMMER DAYS ON THE COTSWOLDS

"What more felicitie can fall to creature
Than to enjoy delight with libertie,
And to be lord of all the workes of Nature?"
E. SPENSER.

The finest days, when the trees are greenest, the sky bluest, and the clouds most snowy white are the days that come in the midst of bad weather. And just as there is no rest without toil, no peace without war, no true joy in life without grief, no enjoyment for the blasé, so there can be no lovely summer days without previous storms and rain, no sunshine till the tearful mists have passed away.

There had been a week's incessant rain; every wild flower and every blade of green grass was soaked with moisture, until it could no longer bear its load, and drooped to earth in sheer dismay. But last night there came a change: the sun went down beyond the purple hills like a ball of fire; eastwards the woods were painted with a reddish glow, and life and colour returned to everything that grows on the face of this beautiful earth.

"It seems a day
(I speak of one from many singled out),
One of those heavenly days which cannot die."
WORDSWORTH.

So it is pleasant to-day to wander over the fields; across the crisp stubbles, where the thistledown is crowding in the "stooks" of black oats; past stretches of uncut corn looking red and ripe under a burning sun. White oxeye daisies in masses and groups, lilac-tinted thistles, and bright scarlet poppies grow in profusion among the tall wheat stalks. A covey of partridges, about three parts grown, rise almost at our feet; for it is early August, and the deadly twelve-bore has not yet wrought havoc among the birds. On the right is a field of green turnips, well grown after the recent rains, and promising plenty of "cover" for sportsmen in September. In the hedgerow the lovely harebells have recovered from the soaking they endured, and their bell-shaped flowers of perfect blue peep out everywhere. The sweetest flower that grows up the hedgeside is the blue geranium, or meadow crane's-bill. The humble yarrow, purple knapweed, field scabious, thistles with bright purple heads, and St. John's wort with its clean-cut stars of burnished gold and its pellucid veins, form a natural border along the hedge, where wild clematis or traveller's joy entwines its rough leaf stalks round the young hazel branches and among the pink roses of the bramble.

By the roadside, where the dust blew before the rain and covered every green leaf with a coating of rich lime, there grow small shrubs of mallow with large flowers of pale purple or mauve; here, too, yellow bedstraw and bird's-foot lotus add their tinge of gold to the lush green grass, and the smaller bindweed, the lovely convolvulus, springs up on the barrenest spots, even creeping over the stone heaps that were left over from last winter's road mending.

Many another species of wild flower which, "born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air," grows in the quiet Cotswold lanes might here be named; but even though at times one may feel, with Wordsworth,

"To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."

I will leave the humble wayside plants and descend into the vale. For it is along the back brook that the tallest and stateliest wild flowers may best be seen. The scythes mowed them all down in May, and again in July, in the broad "millpound," so that they do not grow so tall by the main stream; but the back brook, the natural course of the river before the mills were made, was left unmolested by the mowers, and is a mass of life and colour.

Here grows the graceful meadow-sweet, fair and tall, and white and fragrant; here the willow-herb, glorious with pink blossoms, rears its head high above your shoulders among the sword-flags and the green rushes and "segs"; the whole bank is a medley of white meadow-sweet, scorpion-grasses, forget-me-nots, pink willow-herbs, and lilac heads of mint all jumbled up together. Never was such a delightful confusion of colour! Great dock leaves two feet wide clothe the path by the water-side with all the splendour of malachite.

The breeze blows up stream, and the trout are rising incessantly, taking something small. They will not look at any artificial fly, even in the rippling breeze; there is nothing small enough in any fly-book to catch them this afternoon. But when the sun gets low, and the great brown moths come out and flutter over the water, the red palmer will catch a dish of fish. Willow trees--"withies" they call them hereabouts--grow along the brook-side. So white are the backs of their oval leaves that when the breeze turns them back, the woods by the river look bright and silvery. To-morrow, when the breeze has almost died away, only the tops of the willows will be silvered; the next day, if all be calm and still, all will be green as emerald. Such infinite variety is there in the woods! Not only do the tints change month by month, but day by day the colour varies; so that there is always something new, some fresh effect of light and shade to delight the eye of man in the quiet English country. Dotted about in the midst of the stream are little islands of forget-me-nots. The lovely light blue is reflected everywhere in the water. Very beautiful are the scorpion-grasses both on the banks among the rushes and scattered about in mid stream.

The meadows are full of life. There are sounds sweet to the ear and sights pleasing to the eye. In the new-mown water-meadow grasshoppers--such hosts of them that they could never be numbered for multitude--are chirping and dancing merrily. "They make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst the great cattle chew the cud and are silent. How like the great and little of mankind!" as Edmund Burke said years ago. By catching one of these "meagre, hopping insects of the hour," you will see that their backs are green as emerald and their bellies gold: some have a touch of purple over the eyes; their thighs, which are enormously developed for jumping purposes, have likewise a delicate tinge of purple.

Contrary to the saying of Izaak Walton, the trout do not seem to care much for grasshoppers nowadays, although perhaps they may relish them in streams where food is less plentiful. Our trout even prefer the tiny yellow frogs that are to be found in scores by the brook-side in early August. We have often offered them both in the deep "pill" below the garden; and though they would come with a dart and take the little frog, they merely looked at the grasshopper in astonishment, and seldom took one.

As we stand on the rustic bridge above the "pill" gazing down into the smooth flowing water, dark trout glide out of sight into their homes in the stonework under the hatch. These are the fish that rise not to the fly, but prey on their grandchildren, growing darker and lankier and bigger-headed every year. Wherever you find a deep hole and an ancient hatchway there you will also find these great black trout, always lying in a spot more or less inaccessible to the angler, and living for years until they die a natural death.

Was ever a place so full of fish as this "pill"? Looking down into the deeper water, where the great iron hooks are set to catch the poachers' nets, I could see dozens of trout of all sizes, but mostly small. At the tail of the pool are lots of small ones, rising with a gentle dimple. As the days became hotter and the stream ran down lower and lower, the trout left the long shallow reaches, and assembled here, where there is plenty of water and plenty of food.

Standing on the bridge by the ancient spiked gate bristling with sharp barbs of iron, like rusty spear and arrow-heads (our ancestors loved to protect their privacy with these terrible barriers), I listened to the waterfall three hundred yards higher up, with its ceaseless music; the afternoon sun was sparkling on the dimpling water, which runs swiftly here over a shallow reach of gravel--the favourite spawning-ground of the trout. There is no peep of river scenery I like so much as this. Thirty yards up stream a shapely ash tree hangs its branches, clothed with narrow sprays, right across the brook, the fantastic foliage almost touching the water. A little higher up some willows and an elm overhang from the other side.

There is something unspeakably striking about a country lane or a shallow, rippling brook overarched with a tracery of fretted foliage like the roof of an old Gothic building.

Who that has ever visited the village of Stoke Poges in Buckinghamshire will forget the lane by which he approached the home and last resting-place of the poet Gray? Perhaps you came from Eton, and after passing along a lane that is completely overhung with an avenue of splendid trees, where the thrushes sing among the branches as they sing nowhere else in that neighbourhood, you turned in at a little rustic gate. Straight in front of your eyes were very legibly written on grey stone three of the finest verses of the "Elegy." The monument itself is plain, not to say hideous, but the simple words inscribed thereon are unspeakably grand when read amongst the surroundings of "wood" and "rugged elm" and "yew-tree's shade," unchanged as they are after the lapse of a century and a half. The place, and more especially the lane, is a fitting abode for the spirit of the poet. One could almost hear the song of him who, "being dead, yet speaketh":

"And the birds in the sunshine above
Mingled their notes therewith, like voices of spirits departed."
LONGFELLOW.

Gray is a poet for whom, in common with most Englishmen, the present writer has a sincere respect. It has been said, however, of the "Elegy" by one critic that the subject of the poem gives it an unmerited popularity, and by another--and that quite recently--that it is the "high-water mark of mediocrity." Although Gray's own modest dictum was the foundation of the first of these harsh criticisms, we are unable to allow the truth of the one and must strongly protest against the other. It has been reported that Wolfe, the celebrated general, after reciting the "Elegy" on the eve of the assault on Quebec, declared that he would sooner have written such a poem than win a victory over the French. This was nearly a century and a half ago. Yet after so long a lapse of time the verses still retain their hold on the minds of all classes. In spite of the fact that Matthew Arnold and other admirers have declared that the "Elegy" was not Gray's masterpiece, yet it was this poem that brought a man who accomplished but a small amount of work into such lasting fame. From beginning to end, as Professor Raleigh says of Milton's work, the "Elegy" "is crowded with examples of felicitous and exquisite meaning given to the infallible word." Was ever a poem more frequently quoted or so universally plagiarised? In writing or speaking about the country and its inhabitants, if we would express ourselves as concisely as we possibly can, we are bound to quote the "Elegy"; it is invariably the shortest road to a terse expression of our meaning. Who can improve on "Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife," or "The short and simple annals of the poor"? If Gray's "Elegy" is but "a mosaic of the felicities" of those who went before, let it be remembered that had he not laboriously pieced together that mosaic, these "felicities" would have been a sealed book to the majority of Englishmen. Not one man in a hundred now reads some of the authors from which they were culled. And as Landor said of Shakespeare, "He is more original than his originals." Even that strange individual, Samuel Johnson, who was accustomed whenever Gray's poetry was mentioned either to "crab" it directly or "damn it with faint praise," towards the end of his career admitted in his "Lives of the Poets" that "the churchyard abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo." But the chief value of the work seems really to lie in this: it has dignified the rural scenes and the honest rustics of England. It has invested every hoary-headed swain, every busy housewife, and every little churchyard in the country with a special dignity and a lasting charm. The traveller cannot look upon these scenes and faces without unconsciously connecting them with the lines he knows so well. Gray's "Elegy" will never be forgotten; for it has struck its roots deep in the national language and far down into the national heart.

Very similar to the quiet and leafy lane at Stoke Poges is the brook below the waterfall at A---- in the Cotswolds. On your left as you look up stream from the bridge of the "pill," a moss-grown gravel path runs alongside the water under a hanging wood of leafy elms and smooth-trunked beech trees, where the ringdoves coo all day. A tangled hedge filled with tall timber trees runs up the right-hand bank. Here the great convolvulus, queen of wild flowers, twists her bines among the hedge; the bell-shaped flowers are conspicuous everywhere, large and lily-white as the arum, so luxuriant is the growth of wild flowers by the brook-side.

A silver stream is the Coln hereabouts, the abode of fairies and fawns, and nymphs and dryads. But when the afternoon sun shines upon it, it becomes a stream of diamonds set in banks of emeralds, with an arched and groined roof of jasper, carved with foliations of graceful ash and willow, and over all a sky of sapphire sprinkled with clouds of pearl and opal. Later on towards evening there will be floods of golden light on the grass and on the beech trees up the eastern slope of the valley and on the bare red earth under the trees, red with fifty years' beech nuts. And later still, when the distant hills are dyed as if with archil, the sapphire sky will be striped with bars of gold and dotted with coals of fire; rubies and garnets, sardonyx and chrysolite will all be there, and the bluish green of beryl, the western sky as varied as felspar and changing colour as quickly as the chameleon. And as the day declines the last beams of the setting sun will find their way through the tracery of foliage that overhangs the brook, and the waters will be tinged with a rosy glow, even as in some ancestral hall or Gothic cathedral the sun at eventide pours through the blazoned windows and floods the interior with rays of soft, mysterious, coloured light.

I have been trying to describe one of the loveliest bits of miniature scenery on earth; yet how commonplace it all reads! Not a thousandth part of the beauty of this spot at sunset is here set down, yet little more can be said. How bitter to think that the true beauty of the trees, the path by the brook, and the sunlight on the water cannot be passed on for others to enjoy, cannot be stamped on paper, but must be seen to be realised! Truly, as Richard Jefferies says somewhere, there is a layer of thought in the human brain for which there are no words in any language. We cannot express a thousandth part of the beauty of the woods and the stream; we can but dimly feel it when we see it with our eyes.

Below the "pill"--for we have been gazing up stream--some sheep are lying under a gnarled willow on the left bank; some are nibbling at the lichen and moss on the trunk, others are standing about in pretty groups of three and four. One of them has just had a ducking. Trying to get a drink of water, he overbalanced himself and fell in. He walks about shaking himself, and doubtless feels very uncomfortable. Sheep do not care much for bathing in cold water. You have only to see the sheep-washing in the spring to realise how they dislike it. There is a place higher up the stream called the Washpool, where every day in May you can watch the men bundling the poor old sheep into the water, one after the other, and dipping them well, to free the wool from insects of all kinds. And how the trout enjoy the ticks that come from their thickly matted coats! One poor sheep is hopping about on the cricket field dead lame. Perhaps that leg he drags behind is broken! Why does not the farmer kill the poor brute? There is much misery of this kind caused in country places by the thoughtlessness of farmers. How much has yet to be learnt by the very men who love to describe the labourers as "them 'ere ignorant lower classes"! Alas! that these things can happen among the green fields and spreading elms and the heavenly sunshine of summer days! We should have more moral courage, and do as Carlyle bids us in his old solemn way: "But above all, where thou findest Ignorance, Stupidity, Brute-mindedness, attack it, I say; smite it, wisely, unwearily, and rest not while thou livest and it lives; but smite, smite in the name of God. The Highest God, as I understand it, does audibly so command thee, still audibly if thou hast ears to hear."

On the cricket pitch, a bare hundred yards away from the river bank, is a plentiful crop of dandelions, crow's-foot, clover, and, worst of all, enormous plantains. A gravel soil is very favourable to plantains, for stones work up and the grass dies. The dreadful plantain seems to thrive anywhere and everywhere, and on bare spots where grass cannot live he immediately appears. Rabbits have been making holes all over the pitch, and red spikes of sorrel, wonderfully rich and varied in colour, rise everywhere at the lower end of the field towards the river. The cricket ground has been somewhat neglected of late.

There is a great elm tree down close to the ground--the only tree that the winter gales had left to shade us on hot summer days. It came down suddenly, without the slightest warning; and underneath it that most careless of all keepers, Tom Peregrine, had left the large mowing-machine and the roller. So careless are some of these Gloucestershire folk that sooner than do as I had ordered and put the mowing-machine in the barn hard by, they must leave it in the open air and under this ill-fated tree. Down came my last beloved elm, smashing the mowing-machine and putting an end to all thoughts of cricket here this summer. It will be ages before the village carpenter will come with his timber cart and draw the tree away. A Gloucestershire man cannot do a job like this in under two years; they are always so busy, you see, in Gloucestershire--never a moment to spare to get anything done!

There was a time when the chief delight of summer lay in playing cricket. What ecstasy it was to be well set and scoring fast on the hard-baked ground (the harder the better), cutting to the boundary when the ball pitched short on the off, and driving her hard along the ground when they pitched one up! What could surpass the joy of scoring a century in those long summer days? Now we would as soon spend the holidays in the woods and by the busy trout stream, reading and taking note of the trees and the birds and the rippling of the waters as they flow onwards, ever onwards, towards the sea. There comes a time to all men, sooner or later, when we say to ourselves, Cui bono? In a few short years I shall no longer be able to hit the ball so hard, and in the "field" I am already becoming a trifle slow. Then do we take to ourselves pursuits that we can follow until the limbs are stiffened with age and the hair is white as snow.

Having spent the best years of life in the pursuit of pleasures that, however engrossing, nevertheless bore no real and lasting fruit, we finally fall back on interests that will last a lifetime, perhaps an eternity--for who knows how much of knowledge we shall take with us to another world? Aristotle was not far wrong when he described earthly happiness as a life of contemplation, with a moderate equipment of external good fortune and prosperity. There is no book so well worthy to be studied as the book of nature, no melodies like those of the field and fallow, wood and wold, and the still small voice of the busy streams labouring patiently onwards day by day.

In the fields beyond the river haymakers are busy with the second crop. Down to the ford comes a great yellow hay-cart, drawn by two strong horses, tandem fashion. One small boy alone is leading the big horses. Arriving at the ford, he jumps on to the leader's back and rides him through. The horses strain and "scaut," and the cart bumps over the deep ruts, nearly upsetting. Luckily there is no accident. So much is entrusted to these little farm lads of scarce fifteen years of age it is a wonder they do the work so well. From the tops of the firs comes the sound of pigeons winging their way from the "grove" to the "conygers" (the latter word means the "place of rabbits"; there are lots of woods so called in Gloucestershire). It is a curious piping sound that wood-pigeons make, and, not seeing the birds, you might think it came from the throat instead of the wings. One day two of us were looking at a wood-pigeon flying over, when we observed something drop from the skies and fall into the stream. On going up we saw that it was an egg she had dropped. There it lay at the bottom of the brook, apparently unbroken by the fall. Floating on the soft south wind, a heron flies over so quietly that unless he had given one of his characteristic croaks it was a hundred to one you did not see him pass. Many a heron and wild duck must pass over us unobserved on windy days. It is so difficult to observe when you are thinking. A man absorbed in reverie cannot see half the things that many country folk with less active brains never fail to observe. When we find people who live in the country unversed in the ways of birds, the knowledge of flowers and trees, and the habits of the simple country folk, we need not necessarily conclude that they are dull and empty-headed; the reverse is often the case. A man absorbed in business or serious affairs may love the country and yet know little of its real life. A good deal of time must be spent in acquiring this kind of knowledge, and it is not everybody who has the time or the opportunity to do it. If we come across a man with plenty of leisure, yet knowing nothing of what is going on around him, we may then perhaps have cause to complain of his dulness.

Mr. Aubrey De Vere relates an amusing story about Sir William Rowan Hamilton which exactly illustrates my meaning: "When he had soared into a high region of speculative thought he took no note of objects close by. A few days after our first meeting we walked together on a road, a part of which was overflowed by a river at its side. Our theme was the transcendental philosophy, of which he was a great admirer. I felt sure that he would not observe the flood, and made no remark on it. We walked straight on till the water was half way up to our knees. At last he exclaimed, 'What's this? We seem to be walking through a river. Had we not better return to the dry land?'"

There is a spot in the woods by the River Coln that is almost untrodden by man. It is the favourite resort of foxes. Nobody but myself and the earth-stopper has been there for years and years, save that when the hounds come the huntsman rides through and cheers the pack. It is in the conyger wood. No path leads through its quiet recesses, where ash and elm and larch and spruce, mostly self-sown, are mingled together, with a thick growth of elder spread beneath them. It was here, in an ancient, disused quarry, that the keeper pointed out not long since the secret dwelling-house of the kingfishers. A small crevice in the limestone rock, from which a disagreeable smell of dried fish bones issued forth, formed the outer entrance to the nest. One could not see the delicate structure itself, for it appeared to be several feet within the rock. A mass of powdered fish bones and the pungent odour from within were all the outward signs of the inner nest. By standing on a jutting ledge of the soft cretaceous rock, and holding on by another ledge, which appeared not unlikely to come down and crush you, one could peep into the hole and comfort oneself with the thought that one was nearer a kingfisher's nest than is usually vouchsafed to mortal man. It would be easy to get ladder and pickaxe and break open the rock until the nest was reached, but why disturb these lovely birds? They have built here year by year for centuries; even now some of this year's brood may be seen among the willows by the back brook.

From this quarry was dug in the year 1590 the stone to build the old manor house yonder. A few miles away toward Burford is the quarry from which men say Christopher Wren brought some of the stone to raise St. Paul's Cathedral. Yet the local people do not care a bit for this beautiful freestone of the Cotswold Hills. They want to bring granite from afar for their village crosses, and ugly blue slates for the roofs of the houses. At a parish council meeting the other day it was seriously proposed to erect a "Jubilee Hall" of red brick in our village. Anything for a change, you see; these people would not be mortal if they did not love a change. The pure grey limestone is commonplace hereabouts; I have actually heard it said that it will not last. Yet in every village stand the old Norman churches, built entirely of local stone, walls and roof; and many an old manor house as well lies in our midst, as good as it was three hundred years ago. To me, this limestone of the hills is one of the most beautiful features of the Cotswold country. I love to stand in a limestone quarry and mark the layers and ponderous blocks of clean white virgin rock--a tiny cleft in "the great stone floor which stretches over the face of the earth and under the limitless expanse of the sea." That solid cretaceous mass is but the remnants of the countless inhabitants of the old seas,--life changed into solid, hard rock; and even now, as the green grass and the sweet sainfoin spring up on the surface, feeding the flocks and herds that will soon in their turn feed mankind, earth is turning back again into life. Thus onwards in an endless cycle, even as the earth goes round, and the waters return to the place from whence they came, does nature's work go on; and when we consider these things, eternity and infinity lose part of their strangeness. Does it seem strange when we look upon this glorious country?--in May a sea of golden buttercups, in summer a sea of waving grass, and in the autumn a sea of golden corn; once it was a sea of salt water. And these great rounded banks, these hills and valleys, these billowy wolds,--could they but speak to us might tell strange things of the passing of the waters and of the inhabitants of the old ocean ages and ages ago; the mystery of the sea would be sung in every vale and echoed back by every rolling down.

A very wonderful matter it certainly is that the stone in which the whole history of the country-side is writ, not only in rolling downs and limestone streams, but even in church, tithe-barn, farm, and cottage, as well as in the walls and the roads and the very dust that blows upon them, should be nothing more nor less than a mass of dead animals that lived generation after generation, thousands of years ago, at the bottom of the sea.

There is silence in the woods--the drowsy silence of summer. Most of the birds have gone to the cornfields. An ash copse is never so full of birds as the denser woodlands, where the oaks grow stronger on a stiff clay soil. Here are no laughing yaffels, no cruel, murderous shrikes, and very few song-birds. Still, there are always the pigeons and the cushats, the wicked magpies and the screaming "jaypies," as the local people call the jays. Then, too, there are the birds down among the watercress and the brooklime in the clear pool below the spring, moorhens occasionally awakening the echoes by running down a weird chromatic scale or calling with their loud and mellow note to their friends and relations over at the brook; here, too, the softer croak of the mallard and the wild duck is also heard. A hawk, chasing some smaller bird, is darting and hovering over the tops of the firs, but, catching a glimpse of me, disappears from sight. Presently a little bird, with an eye keener even than the cruel hawk's, comes out from the hazels and perches on a post some ten yards away. It is a fly-catcher. As he sits he turns his eyes in every direction, on the look-out for dainty insects. He seems to have eyes at the back of his head, for instantly he sees a fly in the air right behind him, makes a dash, catches it, and flies on to the next post. He repeats the performance there, then once more changes his ground. When he has made another successful raid, he returns to his first post, always hunting in a chosen circuit, and always catching flies. He was here yesterday, and will be here again to-morrow. When you try to approach him, however, he flies away and hides himself in the firs.

If there are not many birds in the woods just now, still, there is always the beauty of the trees. How marvellous is the symmetry of form and colouring in the trunk and branches of a big ash tree! If you put mercury into a solution of nitrate of silver, and leave them for a few days to combine, the result will be a precipitation of silver in a lovely arborescent form, the arbor Dianae, beautiful beyond description. Such are my favourite ash trees when the summer sunshine sparkles on them. It is their bare, silvered trunks that give the special charm to these hanging woods. They stand out from dark recesses filled with alder and beech and ivy-mantled firs, rising in bold but graceful outline; columns of silver, touched here and there with the sad gold and green shades of lichen and moss. The moss that mingles with golden lichens is of a soft, velvety hue, like a mantle of half drapery on a beautiful white statue. And, oddly enough, though ferns do not grow on the limestone soil of the Cotswolds, yet on the first story so to speak of every big ash tree by the river, as well as on the pollard willows, there is a beautiful little fernery springing up out of the moss and lichen, which seems to thrive most when the lichen thrives--in the winter rather than in the summer. Then, too, the foliage of all kinds of trees and shrubs is not only different in form, but the minutest serrations vary; so that the leaves of two kinds of trees are no more alike than any two human faces are alike. The elm leaves are rough to the touch, like sandpaper, and their edges are clearly serrated; those of the beeches are smooth as parchment, and though the edges appear at first sight to be almost clean cut, they have very slight serrations, as if nature had rounded them with a blunt knife. The lobed ivy leaves are likewise highly polished, and they have sharp, pointed tips. The leaves of the common stinging-nettle ("'ettles" the labourers call them) have deep indents all round them. A great dock leaf, in which the chives have a strange resemblance to the arteries in the human frame, has small shallow indents all round it. Hazels are rough and almost round in form, save for a pointed tip at the end; they have ragged edges and ill-defined serrations. Everybody knows the sycamore from its five lobed leaves; and the chestnuts and oaks are, again, as different as possible. These are only a few instances; one might go on for a long time showing the endless variations of form in foliage.

Then there is the remarkable difference in colour and shade; not only are there a dozen different greens in one wood, but in one and the same beech you may see a marked contrast in the tone of its leaves. For about midsummer some trees put forth a second growth of foliage, so that there is the vivid yellow tint of the fresh shoots and the dark olive of the older leaves on one and the same branch. Of the rich autumnal shades I am not speaking; they would require a chapter to themselves.

There are other things to be noted in the woods besides the trees and the birds: lots of rabbits and squirrels, not to mention an occasional hedgehog. Squirrels are the most delightful of all the furred denizens of the woods. Running up the trees, with their long brushes straight out behind, they are not unlike miniature foxes. The slenderness of the twigs on which they manage to find support is one of the greatest wonders of the woods. The harmless hedgehog, as everybody is aware, rolls himself up into a lifeless ball of bristles on being disturbed. By staying quietly by him and addressing him in an encouraging tone, I lately induced a very large hedgehog to unroll himself and creep slowly along close to my feet.

It is very extraordinary how all wild animals, especially when young, can be won by kindness. I once came across a young hedgehog about three-parts grown; he was running about on the grass in front of the house in broad daylight, and kept poking his little nose into the earth searching for emmets and grubs. I made friends with him, dug him up some worms, and in less than half an hour he became as tame as possible. Tom Peregrine, the keeper, stood by and roared with laughter at his antics, saying he had never seen such a "comical job" in all his life. And it really was a curious sight. The hedgehog, with the merriest twinkle in his eyes, would take the worms out of my hand; and when I dangled them five or six inches off the ground, he would rear up on his hindlegs and snatch and grab until he secured them. Then he would sit up and scratch himself like a dog. He would allow me to take him up in my hands and stroke him, and yet not retire into his bristly shell. He ate a dozen worms and a bumble-bee straight off the reel, and then with all the gluttony of the pig tribe he went searching about for more food. I noticed that he ate the grass, in the same way as dogs do, for medicinal purposes. We put him into a large box with some hay in it, and as he still seemed hungry that evening, we gave him a couple of cockchafers from the kitchen, which he appeared to relish mightily. The little fellow was as happy as a king, crying and squeaking whenever we went to look at him, and hunting round the box for food. But, alas! we had overfed him. To our intense regret he died the next day from acute indigestion.

There are but few snakes or vipers in the district of which I am writing. But quite recently a man found a large trout about eighteen inches in length lying dead in the Coln, and protruding from the mouth of the fish was a large snake, also dead. The snake must have been swimming in the water (as they are known to do occasionally), and the trout being in a backwater, where food was scarce, must have seized the snake and choked himself in his efforts to bolt it This was a remarkable occurrence, because a Coln trout is most particular as to his bill of fare, and snakes are certainly not usually included in the list. There is such a plentiful supply of larvae, caddis, "stone-loach," fresh-water shrimps, crayfish, and other crustaceans, to say nothing of flies, minnows, and small fry, that a trout would very seldom attack a snake. A large lobworm, however, as every one knows, is a very attractive bait for any kind of fresh-water fish except pike.

Stoats with reddish-brown backs and yellow bellies may often be seen hunting the rabbits, and the little weasels may sometimes be drawn out of their holes in the walls if one makes a squeaking noise with the lips. Stoats usually hunt singly, weasels in packs and pairs.

But we must leave the woods, for the evening shadows are lengthening and the "golden evening brightens in the west." It is time to go up to the cornfields on the hill and see the sun set. I have said that there is no path through this wood; it is sacred to foxes. They are not here now, however; they will not be back till all the corn is cut. The wheatfields are their summer quarters.

It is no easy matter to get out of a tangled wood in August. The stinging-nettles are seven feet high in places; we must hold our hands high above our heads and plough our way through them. When we finally emerge we are covered from head to foot with large prickly burrs from the seeding burdocks, as well as with the small round burrs of the goose-grass. Then

"On and up where nature's heart
Beats strong amid the hills."

As we pass onwards over the cornfields towards a piece of high ground from which it is our wont to watch the sun set, a silvery half-moon peeps out between the clouds. In the north-west the range of limestone hills is already tinged with purple. In the highest heaven are bars of distant cloud, so motionless that they appear to be sailing slowly against the wind. Lower down, dusky, smoke-like clouds, tinged here and there with a rosy hue, are flying rapidly onwards, ever onwards, in the sky. Later on the higher clouds will turn deep red, whilst brighter and brighter will glow the moon.

Yonder, twenty-five miles away, the old White Horse is just visible upon the distant chalk downs. Overhead the sky has the deep blue of mazarine, but westwards and south-west the colour is light olive green, gradually changing to an intensely bright yellow. Heavy banks of clouds are slowly rising in the south-west; the bleating of sheep at the ancient homestead half a mile away is the only sound to be heard. As the sun goes down to-night it resembles a great ship on fire amidst the breakers on a rockbound coast; for the western sky is dashed with fleecy clouds, like the spray that beats against the chalk cliffs on the shore of the mighty Atlantic; and amid the last plunges of the doomed vessel the spray is tinged redder and redder, ere with her human cargo she disappears amid the surf. But no sooner has she sunk into the abyss than the foam and the fierce breakers die away, and a wondrous calm broods over all things. In twenty minutes' time nothing is left in the western sky but a tiny bar of golden cloud that cannot yet quite die away, reminding me, as I still thought about the burning ship and her ill-fated crew, of

"the golden key
Which opes the palace of Eternity."

But eastwards, above the old legendary White Horse, the "Empress of the Night," serene and proudly pale, is driving her car across the darkening skies.

---

CHAPTER XVII.

AUTUMN.

I.

It is in the autumn that life in an old manor house on the Cotswolds has its greatest charm; for one of the chief characteristics of a house in the depths of the country surrounded by a broad manor is the game. The whole atmosphere of such a place savours of rabbits and hares and partridges. There may be no pheasant-rearing and comparatively little game of any kind, yet the place is, nevertheless, associated with sport with the gun. Ten to one there are guns, old and new, hanging up in the hall or the smoking-room, and perhaps fishing-rods too. There is a bond between the house and the fields around, and the connecting link is the game. Time was when the squire in these English villages lived on the produce of the estate: game, fish, and fowl, and the stock at the farm supplied his simple wants throughout the year. Huge game larders are yet to be seen in the lower regions of the manor house; you must pass through them to reach the still more ample wine cellars. Nearer London there is not much connection nowadays between the house and the land--you must walk on the roads; but away in the country it is over the broad fields that you roam. Even on a small manor of two thousand acres you may walk a dozen miles in an afternoon and not pass the boundary fence.

It is very surprising that there is not more demand for country houses in England when one considers that an extensive demesne may be rented at a price which is paid for a small flat in unfashionable Kensington. The local term in Gloucestershire for renting a manor is "holding the liberty"--the old Saxon word. The term is singularly expressive of the freedom possessed by the man who exchanges the life of the town or the villa for a manor in one of the remote counties. He who enjoys the sporting rights, with license (as the leases run) to hunt, fish, course, hawk, or sport without the labour and loss of farming the land, possesses all the pleasures of the squire's existence with few of its drawbacks and responsibilities. Yet many a fine old house in the country remains unlet because the life is considered a dull one by those who have not been brought up to it. With nature's book spread so amply before our eyes, the country is never dull. At no time of life is it too late to commence the study of this book of nature. The faculty of observation is one that is easily acquired. It is not a case of nascitur non fit. With tolerably good eyesight and a determination to learn, a man soon

"Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything."

And the habit of observing once acquired, we can never lose it till we die.

Of course those who rent a place in preference to purchasing it miss one of the greatest and most useful privileges the country can confer--that of following in the footsteps of him who

"Strove for sixty widow'd years to help his homelier brother
man,
Served the poor and built the cottage, rais'd the school
and drained the fen."

These are the true delights of a country existence; and it is, I think, incumbent on the really rich men of England, if they have the welfare of the nation at heart, to hold a stake, however small, in the land, even at a sacrifice of income. I refer to men with incomes ranging from ten to a hundred thousand pounds per annum, who would not feel the loss of interest that would possibly accrue on an exchange of investment from "the elegant simplicity of the three per cents." to an agricultural estate in the country. They may be giving gold for silver in the transaction, but will be amply repaid in a thousand different ways. How infinitely preferable the existence of the poor countryman, even though times be hard, to that of the misguided being of whom it may be said:

"Through life's dark road his sordid way he wends--
An incarnation of fat dividends "!
C. SPRAGUE.

It is probable that the bicycle will cause a larger demand for remote country houses. To the writer, who, previous to this summer, had never experienced the poetry of motion which a bicycle coasting downhill, with a smooth road and a favourable wind, undoubtedly constitutes, the invention seems of the greatest utility. It brings places sixty miles apart within our immediate neighbourhood. Let the south wind blow, and we can be at quaint old Tewkesbury, thirty miles away, in less than three hours. A northerly gale will land us at the "Blowing-stone" and the old White House of Berkshire with less labour than it takes to walk a mile. Yet in the old days these twenty miles were a great gulf fixed between the Gloucestershire natives and the "chaw-bacons" over the boundary. Their very language is as different as possible. To this day the villagers who went to the last "scouring of the horse" and saw the old-fashioned backsword play, talk of the expedition with as much pride as if they had made a pilgrimage to the Antipodes.

As September draws nigh and the days rapidly shorten, the merry hum of the thrashing machine is heard all day long. The sound comes from the homestead across the road, and buzzes in my ears as I sit and write by the open window. How wonderful the evolution of the thrashing machine! How rough-and-ready the primitive methods of our forefathers! First of all there was the Eastern method of spreading the sheaves on a floor of clay, and allowing horses and oxen to trample on the wheat and tread out the corn. Not less ancient was the use of the old-fashioned flail--an instrument only discarded within the memory of living man. Yet what a wonderful difference there is between the work accomplished in a day with the flails and the daily output of the modern thrashing machine!

In the porch of the manor house, amid an accumulation of old traps and other curious odds and ends there hangs an ancient and much-worn flail. Two stout sticks, the handstaff and the swingle, attached to each other by a strong band of gut, constitute its simple mechanism. The wheat having been strewn on the barn floor, the labourer held the handstaff in both hands, swung it over his head, and brought the swingle down horizontally on to the heads of ripe corn. Contrast this fearfully laborious process with the bustling, hurrying machine of to-day. And yet with all this improvement the corn can scarcely be thrashed out at a profit. So out of joint are the times and seasons that the foreigner is allowed to cut out the home producer. Half the life of the country-side has gone, and no man dare whisper "Protection."

Even in these bad times the man with a head on his shoulders above the average of his neighbours comes forth to show what can be done with energy and pluck. Twenty years ago a labouring man, who "by crook or by hook" had saved a hundred pounds, bought a thrashing machine (probably second-hand) He took it round to the various farms, and did the thrashing at so much per day. By and by he had saved enough money to take a farm. A few years later he had two thrashing machines travelling the country, and in this poor district is now esteemed a wealthy man. I always found him an excellent game-preserver and a most straightforward fellow. Another farming neighbour of mine, however, was always talking about his ignorance and lack of caste. All classes, from the peer to the peasant, seem to resent a man's pushing his way from what they are pleased to consider a lower station into their own.

In the autumn gipsies are to be seen travelling the roads, or sitting round the camp fire, on their way to the various "feasts" or harvest festivals. "Have you got the old gipsy blood in your veins?" I asked the other day of a gang I met on their way to Quenington feast "Always gipsies, ever since we can remember," was the reply. Fathers, grandfathers were just the same,--always living in the open air, winter and summer, and always moving about with the vans. In the winter hawking is their occupation. "Oh no! they never felt the cold in winter; they could light the fire in the van if they wanted it."

Although many of the farmers here have given up treating their men to a spread after the harvest is gathered in, there is still a certain amount of rejoicing. The villagers have a little money over from extra pay during the harvest, so that the gipsies do not do badly by going the round of the villages at this time. The village churches are decorated in a very delightful manner for these feasts: such huge apples, carrots, and turnips in the windows and strewn about in odd places; lots of golden barley all round the pulpit and the font; and perhaps there will be bunches of grapes, such as grow wild on the cottage walls, hung round the pulpit. Then what could look prettier against the white carved stone than the russet and gold leaves of the Virginia creeper? and these they freely use in the decorations. If one wants to see good taste displayed in these days, one must go to simple country places to find it. At Christmas the old Gothic fane is hung with festoons of ivy and of yew in the old fashion of our forefathers.

I paid a visit to my old friend John Brown the other day, as I thought he would be able to tell me something about the harvest feasts of bygone days. He is a dear old man of some seventy-eight summers, though somewhat of the laudator temporis acti school; but what good-nature and sense of humour there is in the good, honest face!

"Fifty year ago 'twere all mirth and jollity," he replied to our enquiry as to the old times. "There was four feasts in the year for us folk. First of all there was the sower's feast,--that would be about the end of April; then came the sheep-shearer's feast,--there'd be about fifteen of us as would sit down after sheep-shearing, and we'd be singing best part of the night, and plenty to eat and drink; next came the feast for the reapers, when the corn was cut about August; and, last of all, the harvest home in September. Ah! those were good times fifty years ago. My father and I have rented this cottage eighty-six years come Michaelmas; and my father's grandfather lived in that 'ere housen, up that 'tuer' there, nigh on a hundred years afore that. I planted them ash trees in the grove, and I mind when those firs was put in, near seventy years ago. Ah! there was some foxes about in those days; trout, too, in the 'bruk'--it were full of them. You'll have very few 'lets' for hunting this season; 'twill be a mild time again. Last night were Hollandtide eve, and where the wind is at Hollandtide there it will stick best part of the winter. I've minded it every year, and never was wrong yet The wind is south-west to-day, and you'll have no 'lets' for hunting this time."

"Lets" appear to be hindrances to hunting in the shape of frosts. It is an Anglo-Saxon word, seldom used nowadays, though it is found in the dictionary; and our English Prayer Book has the words "we are sore let and hindered in running the race," etc. Shakespeare too employs it to signify a "check" with the hounds.

As I left, and thanked John Brown for his information, he handed me a little bit of paper, whereon was written: "to John Brown 1 day minding the edge at the picked cloos 2s three days doto," etc. I found that this was his little account for mending the hedge at the "picket close."

A fine stamp of humanity is the Cotswold labourer; and may his shadow never grow less.

"Princes and lords may flourish or may fade,
A breath can make them, as a breath has made;
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed can never be supplied."

Fresh and health-giving is the breeze on the wolds in autumn, like the driest and oldest iced champagne. In the rough grass fields tough, wiry bents, thistles with purple flowers, and the remnants of oxeye daisies on brittle stalks rise almost to the height of your knees. Lovely blue bell-flowers grow in patches; golden ragwort, two sorts of field scabious, yellow toad-flax, and occasionally some white campion remain almost into winter. Where the grass is shorter masses of shrivelled wild thyme may be seen. The charlock brightens the landscape with its mass of colour among the turnips until the end of November, if the season be fairly mild. But the hedges and trees are the glory of "the happy autumn fields." The traveller's joy gleams in the September sunlight as the feathery awns lengthen on its seed vessels. What could be more beautiful! Later on it becomes the "old man's beard," and the hedges will be white with the snowy down right up to Christmas, until the winter frosts have once more scattered the seeds along the hedgerow. Of a rich russet tint are the maple leaves in every copse and fence. On the blackthorn hang the purple sloeberries, like small damsons, luscious and covered with bloom. Tart are they to the taste, like the crab-apples which abound in the hedges. These fruits are picked by the poor people and made into wine. Crab-apples may be seen on the trees as late as January. Blackberries are found in extraordinary numbers on this limestone soil, and the hedges are full of elder-berries, as well as the little black fruit of the privet. Add to these the red berries of the hawthorn or the may, the hips and haws, the brown nuts and the succulent berries of the yew, and we have an extraordinary variety of fruits and bird food. Woodbine or wild honeysuckle may often be picked during October as well as in the spring. By the river the trout grow darker and more lanky day by day as the nights lengthen. The water is very, very clear. "You might as well throw your 'at in as try to catch them," says Tom Peregrine. The willows are gold as well as silver now, for some of the leaves have turned; while others still show white downy backs when the breeze ruffles them. In the garden by the brook-side the tall willow-herbs are seeding; the pods are bursting, and the gossamer-like, grey down--the "silver mist" of Tennyson--is conspicuous all along the brook. The water-mint and scorpion-grasses remain far into November, and the former scents more sweetly as the season wanes. But

"Heavily hangs the broad sunflower,
Over its grave in the earth so chilly;
Heavily hangs the hollyhock;
Heavily hangs the tiger lily."

An old wild duck that left the garden last spring to rear her progeny in a more secluded spot half a mile up stream has returned to us. Every morning her ten young ones pitch down into the water in front of the house, and remain until they are disturbed; then, with loud quacks and tumultuous flappings, they rise in a long string and fly right away for several miles, often returning at nightfall. Such wild birds are far more interesting as occasional visitors to your garden than the fancy fowl of strange shape and colouring often to be seen on ornamental water. A teal came during the autumn of 1897 to the sanctuary in front of the house, attracted by the decoys; she stayed six weeks with us, taking daily exercise in the skies at an immense height, and circling round and round. Unfortunately, when the weeds were cut, she left us, never to return.

By the end of October almost all our summer birds have left us. First of all, in August, went the cuckoo, seeking a winter resort in the north of Africa. The swifts were the next to go. After a brief stay of scarce three months they disappeared as suddenly in August as they came in May. The long-tailed swallows and the white-throated martins were with us for six months, but about the middle of October they were no more seen. All have gone southwards towards the Afric shore, seeking warmth and days of endless sunshine. Gone, too, the blackcap, the redstart, and the little fly-catcher; vanishing in the dark night, they gathered in legions and sped across the seas. One night towards the end of September, whilst walking in the road, I heard such a loud, rushing sound in front, beyond a turning of the lane, that I imagined a thrashing machine was coming round the corner among the big elm trees. But on approaching the spot, I found the noise was nothing more nor less than the chattering and clattering of an immense concourse of starlings. The roar of their wings when they were disturbed in the trees could be heard half a mile away. Although a few starlings remain round the eaves of the houses throughout the winter, vast flocks of them assemble at this time in the fields, and some doubtless travel southwards and westwards in search of warmer quarters. The other evening a large flock of lapwings, or common plover, gave a very fine display--a sort of serpentine dance to the tune of the setting sun, all for my edification. They could not quite make up their minds to settle on a brown ploughed field. No sooner had they touched the ground than they would rise again with shrill cries, flash here and flash there, faster and faster, but all in perfect time and all in perfect order--now flying in long drawn out lines, now in battalions; bowing here, bowing there; now they would "right about turn" and curtsey to the sun. A thousand trained ballet dancer; could not have been in better time. It was as if all joined hands, dressed in green and white; for at every turn a thousand white breasts gleamed in the purple sunset. The restless call of the birds added a peculiar charm to the scene in the darkening twilight.

Of our winter visitants that come to take the place of the summer migrants the fieldfare is the commonest and most familiar. Ere the leaf is off the ash and the beeches are tinged with russet and gold, flocks of these handsome birds leave their homes in the ice-bound north, and fly southwards to England and the sunny shores of France. Such a rara avis as the grey phalarope--a wading bird like the sandpiper--occasionally finds its way to the Cotswolds. Wild geese, curlews, and wimbrels with sharp, snipe-like beaks, are shot occasionally by the farmers. A few woodcocks, snipe, and wildfowl also visit us. In the winter the short-eared owls come; they are rarer than their long-eared relatives, who stay with us all the year. The common barn owl, of a white, creamy colour, is the screech owl that we hear on summer nights. Brown owls are the ones that hoot; they do not screech.

Curiously enough I missed the corncrake's well-known call in the meadows by the river in the springtime of 1897; and not one was bagged in September by the partridge-shooters. This is the first year they have been absent. I always looked for their pleasing croak in May by the trout stream, and invariably shot several while partridge-shooting in former years.

The earthquake of 1895 was very severely felt in the Cotswolds. Next to an earthquake a bad thunderstorm is the most awe inspiring of all things to mortals. During last autumn the Cotswold district was visited by a thunderstorm of short duration, but great severity. A gale was blowing from the south; thunder and lightning came up from the same direction, and, travelling at an immense speed, passed rapidly over our house about ten p.m. The shocks became louder and louder; and whilst five or six of us were watching the lightning from a large window in the hall, there was a deafening report as of a dozen canons exploding simultaneously at close quarters. At the same time a flame of blue fire of intense brilliancy seemed to fall like a meteor a few yards in front of our eyes. At first we were sure the house had been struck, so that the first impulse was to rush out of doors; but the succeeding report being much less severe, confidence was restored. The general conclusion was that a thunderbolt had fallen, and, missing the house by a few yards, had disappeared in the earth. A search next morning on the lawn did not throw any light on the matter. Probably, if there was a thunderbolt, it fell into the river; for it is well known that water is a great conductor of the electric fluid, and thunderstorms often seem to follow the course of a stream. The summer lightning, which kept the sky in a blaze of light for two hours after the storm had passed away, was the finest I remember.

It is a pity mankind is so little addicted to being out of doors after sunset. Some of the most beautiful drives and walks I have ever enjoyed have been those taken at night. Driving out one evening from Cirencester, the road on either side was illuminated with the fairy lights of countless glow-worms. It is the female insect that is usually responsible for this wonderful green signal taper; the males seldom use it. Whereas the former is merely an apterous creeping grub, the latter is an insect provided with wings. Flying about at night, he is guided to his mate by the light she puts forth; and it is a peculiar characteristic of the male glow-worm, that his eyes are so placed that he is unable to view any object that is not immediately beneath him.

It is early in summer that these wonderful lights are to be seen; June is the best month for observing them. During July and August glow-worms seem to migrate to warmer quarters in sheltered banks and holes, nor is their light visible to the eye after June is out, save on very warm evenings, and then only in a lesser degree.

The glow-worms on this particular night were so numerous as to remind one of the fireflies in the tropics. At no place are these lovely insects more numerous and resplendent than at Kandy in Ceylon. Myriads of them flit about in the cool evening atmosphere, giving the appearance of countless meteors darting in different directions across the sky.

In the clear Cotswold atmosphere very brilliant meteors are observable at certain seasons of the year. Never shall I forget the strange variety of phenomena witnessed whilst driving homewards one evening in autumn from the railway station seven miles away. There had been a time of stormy, unsettled weather for some weeks previously, and the meteorological conditions were in a very disturbed state. But as I started homewards the stars were shining brightly, whilst far away in the western sky, beyond the rolling downs and bleak plains of the Cotswold Hills, shone forth the strange, mysterious, zodiacal light, towering upwards into a point among the stars, and shaped in the form of a cone. It was the first occasion this curious, unexplained phenomenon had ever come under my notice, and it was awe inspiring enough in itself. But before I had gone more than two miles of my solitary journey, great black clouds came up behind me from the south, and I knew I was racing with the storm. Then, as "the great organ of eternity began to play" and the ominous murmurs of distant thunder broke the silence of the night, a stiff breeze from the south seemed to come from behind and pass me, as if travelling quicker than my fast-trotting nag. Like a whisper from the grave it rustled in the brown, lifeless leaves that still lingered on the trees, making me wish I was nearer the old house that I knew was ready to welcome me five miles on in the little valley, nestling under the sheltering hill. And soon more clouds seemed to spring up suddenly, north, south, east, and west, where ten minutes before the sky had been clear and starry. And the sheet lightning began to play over them with a continuous flow of silvery radiance, north answering south, and east giving back to west the reflected glory of the mighty electric fluid. But the centre of the heavens was still clear and free from cloud, so that there yet remained a large open space in front of me, wherein the stars shone brighter than ever. And as I gazed forward and upward, and urged the willing horse into a twelve-mile-an-hour trot, the open space in the heavens revealed the glories of the finest display of fireworks I have ever seen. First of all two or three smaller stars shot across the hemisphere and disappeared into eternal space. But suddenly a brilliant light, like an enormous rocket, appeared in the western sky, far above the clouds. First it moved in a steady flight, hovering like a kestrel above us; then, with a flash which startled me out of my wits and brought my horse to a standstill, it rushed apparently towards us, and finally disappeared behind the clouds. It was some time before either horse or driver regained the nerve which had for a time forsaken them; and even then I was inclined to attribute this wonderful meteoric shower to a display of fireworks in a neighbouring village, so close to us had this last rocket-like shooting star appeared to be. A meteor which is sufficiently brilliant to frighten a horse and make him stop dead is of rare occurrence. I was thankful when I reached home in safety that I had not only won my race against the storm, but that I had seen no more atmospheric phenomena of so startling a nature.

In addition to the wonders of the heaven there are many other interesting features connected with a drive or walk by the light of the stars or the moon. A Cotswold village seen by moonlight is even more picturesque than it is by day. The old, gabled manor houses are a delightful picture on a cold, frosty night in winter; if most of the rooms are lit up, they give one the idea of endless hospitality and cheerfulness when viewed from without. To walk by a stream such as the Coln on such a night is for the time like being in fairyland. Every eddy and ripple is transformed into a crystal stream, sparkling with a thousand diamonds. The sound of the waters as they gurgle and bubble over the stones on the shallows seems for all the world like children's voices plaintively repeating over and over again the old strain:

"I chatter, chatter as I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever."

Now is the time to discover the haunts of wild duck and other shy birds like the teal and the heron. In frosty weather many of these visitors come and go without our being any the wiser, unless we are out at night. Before sunrise they will be far, far away, and will probably never return any more. Time after time we have been startled by a flight of duck rising abruptly from the stream, in places where by day one would never dream of looking for them. Foxes, too, may be seen within a stone's throw of the house on a moonlight evening. They love to prowl around on the chance of a dainty morsel, such as a fat duck or a semi-domestic moorhen. Nor will they take any notice of you at such a time.

I made a midnight expedition once last hunting season to see that the "earths" were properly stopped in some small coverts situated on a bleak and lonely spot on the Cotswold Hills. On the way I had to pass close to a large barrow. Weird indeed looked the old time-worn stone that has stood for thousands of years at the end of this old burial mound. A small wood close by rejoices in the name of "Deadman's Acre." The moon was casting a ghastly light over the great moss-grown stone and the deserted wolds. The words of Ossian rose to my lips as I wondered what manner of men lay buried here. "We shall pass away like a dream. Our tombs will be lost on the heath. The hunter shall not know the place of our rest. Give us the song of other years. Let the night pass away on the sound, and morning return with joy." Then, as the rustling wind spoke in the lifeless leaves of the beeches, the plain seemed to be peopled with strange phantasies--the ghosts of the heroes of old. And a voice came back to me on the whispering breeze:

"Thou, too, must share our fate; for human life is short.
Soon will thy tomb be hid, and the grass grow rank on thy grave."
MACPHERSON'S Ossian.

And sometimes when I have been up on the hills by night, and, looking away over the broad vale stretched out below, have seen in the distance the gliding lights of some Great Western express--a trusty weight-carrier bearing through the darkness its precious burden of humanity--I thought of the time when the old seas ran here. And then there seemed to come from the direction of the old White Horse and Wayland Smith's cave the faint murmuring sound of the "Blowing-stone" ("King Alfred's bugle-horn")--that summoner of men to arms a thousand years ago, like the beacons of later days that "shone on Beachy Head"; and I felt like a man standing at the prow of a mighty liner, "homeward bound," on some fine though dark and starless evening, when no sound breaks upon his ear but the monotonous beating of the screw and the ceaseless flow of unfathomed waters, save that ever and anon in the far distance the moaning foghorn sounds its note of warning; whilst as he stands "forward" and inhales the pure health-giving salt distilled from balmy vapours that rise everlastingly from the surface of the deep, nothing is visible to the eye--straining westward for a glimpse of white chalk cliffs, or eastward, perhaps, for the first peep of dawn--save the intermittent flash from the lighthouse tower, and the signals glowing weird and fiery that reveal in the misty darkness those softly gliding phantasies, the ships that pass in the night.

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