flowers, the blue-bells, and the wild thyme, and look upon the sea of trees spreading out beneath us; the sluggish water just peeping from amid the alders, giving brightly back the bright blue sky; and, farther down, herds of rough ponies, and of small stunted cows, the wealth of the poor, coming up from the forest. I have sometimes seen two hundred of these cows together, each belonging to a different person, and distinguishing and obeying the call of its milker. All the boundaries of this heath are beautiful. On one side is the hanging coppice, where the lily of the valley grows so plentifully amongst broken ridges and foxearths, and the roots of pollard-trees. On another are the immense fir plantations of Mr. B., whose balmy odour hangs heavily in the air, or comes sailing on the breeze like smoke across the landscape. Farther on, beyond the pretty parsonage-house, with its short avenue, its fish-ponds, and the magnificent poplars which form a landmark for many miles round, rise the rock-like walls of the old city of S, one of the most perfect Roman remains now existing in England. The wall can be traced all round, rising sometimes to a height of twenty feet, over a deep narrow slip of meadow land, once the ditch, and still full of aquatic flowers. The ground within rises level with the top of the wall, which is of grey stone, crowned with the finest forest trees, whose roots seem interlaced with the old masonry, and covered with wreaths of ivy, brambles, and a hundred other trailing plants. Close by one of the openings, which mark the site of the gates, is a graduated terrace, called by antiquaries the Amphitheatre, which commands a rich and extensive view, and is backed by the village church and an old farm-house, the sole buildings in that once populous city, whose streets are now traced only by the blighted and withered appearance of the ripening corn. Roman coins and urns are often ploughed up there, and it is a favourite haunt of the lovers of "hoar antiquity." But the beauty of the place is independent of its noble associations. The very heart expands in the deep verdure and perfect loneliness of that narrow winding valley, fenced on one side by steep coppices or its own tall irregular hedge, on the other by the venerable crag-like wall, whose proud coronet of trees, its jutting ivy, its huge twisted thorns, its briery festoons, and the deep caves where the rabbits burrow, make the old bulwark seem no work of man, but a majestic piece of nature. As a picture it is exquisite. Nothing can be finer than the mixture of those varied greens so crisp and life-like, with the crumbling grey stone; nothing more perfectly in harmony with the solemn beauty of the place, than the deep cooings of the woodpigeons, who abound in the walls. I know no pleasure so intense, so soothing, so apt to bring sweet tears into the eyes, or to awaken thoughts that "lie too deep for tears," as a walk round the old city on a fine summer evening. A ride to S was always delightful to me, even before it became the residence of Lucy; it is now my prime festival. WALKS IN THE COUNTRY. THE FIRST PRIMROSE. MARCH 6th.-Fine March weather: boisterous, blustering, much wind and squalls of rain; and yet the sky, where the clouds are swept away, deliciously blue, with snatches of sunshine, bright, and clear, and healthful, and the roads, in spite of the slight glittering showers, crisply dry. Altogether, the day is tempting, very tempting. It will not do for the dear common, that windmill of a walk; but the close sheltered lines at the bottom of the hill, which keep out just enough of the stormy air, and let in all the sun, will be delightful. Past our old house, and round by the winding lanes, and the work-house, and across the lea, and so into the turnpike-road again, that is our route for to-day. Forth we set, May-flower and I, rejoicing in the sunshine, and still more in the wind, which gives such an intense feeling of existence, and cooperating with brisk motion sets our blood and our spirits in a glow. For mere physical pleasure there is nothing perhaps equal to the enjoyment of being drawn, in a light carriage, against such a wind as this, by a blood horse at his height of speed. Walking comes next to it; but walking is not quite so luxurious or so spiritual, not quite so much what one fancies of flying, or being carried above the clouds in a balloon. Nevertheless, a walk is a good thing; especially under this southern hedgerow, where nature is just beginning to live again: the perriwinkles, with their starry blue flowers, and their shining myrtle-like leaves, garlanding the bushes; woodbines and elder trees, pushing out their small swelling buds; and grasses and mosses springing forth in every variety of brown and green. Here we are at the corner where four lanes meet, or rather where a passable road of stones and gravel crosses an impassable one of beautiful but treacherous turf, and where the small white farm-house, scarcely larger than a cottage, and the well-stocked rick-yard behind, tell of comfort and order, but leave all unguessed the great riches of the master. How he became so rich is almost a puzzle; for though the farm be his own, it is not large; and, though prudent and frugal on ordinary occasions, farmer Barnard is no miser. His horses, dogs, and pigs, are the best kept in the parish,- May herself, although her beauty be injured by her fatness, half envies the plight of his bitch Fiy; his wife's gowns and shawls cost as much again as any shawls or gowns in the village: his dinner parties (to be sure they are not frequent) display twice the ordinary quantity of good things-two couples of ducks, two dishes of green peas, two turkey poults, two gammons of bacon, two plum-puddings; moreover, he keeps a single-hose chaise, and has built and endowed a Methodist chapel. Yet is he the richest man in these parts. Every thing prospers with him. Money drifts about him like snow. He looks like a rich man. There is a sturdy squareness of face and figure; a good-humoured obstinacy; a civil importance. He never boasts of his wealth, or gives himself undue airs; but nobody can meet him at market or vestry without finding out immediately that he is the richest man there. They have no child to all this money; but there is an adopted nephew, a fine spirited lad, who may, perhaps, some day or other, play the part of a fountain to the reservoir. Now turn up the wide road till we come to the open common, with its park-like trees, its beautiful stream, wandering and twisting along, and its rural bridge. Here we turn again, past that other white farm-house, half hidden by the magnificent elms which stand before it. Ah! riches dwell not there; but there is found the next best thing-an industrious and light-hearted poverty. Twenty years ago Rachel Hilton was the prettiest and merriest lass in the country. Her father, an old game-keeper, had retired to a village alehouse, where his good beer, his social humour, and his black-eyed daughter, brought much custom. She had lovers by the score; but Joseph White, the dashing and lively son of an opulent farmer, carried off the fair Rachel. They married and settled here, and here they live still, as merrily as ever, with fourteen children of all ages and sizes, from nineteen years to nineteen months, working harder than any people in the parish, and enjoying themselves more. I would match them for labour and laughter against any family in England. She is a blithe, jolly dame, whose beauty has amplified into comeliness: he is tall, and thin, and bony, with sinews like whipcord, a strong lively voice, a sharp, weather-beaten face, and eyes and lips that smile and brighten when he speaks into a most contagious hilarity. They are very poor, and I often wish them richer; but I don't know-perhaps it might put them out. Quite close to farmer White's is a little ruinous cottage, white-washed once, and now in a sad state of betweenity, where dangling stockings and shirts swelled by the wind, drying in a neglected garden, give signal of a washerwoman. There dwells, at present in a state of single blessedness, Betty Adams, the wife of our sometimes gardener. I never saw any one who so much reminded me in person of that lady whom every body knows, Mistress Meg Merrilies;-as tall, as grizzled, as stately, as dark, as gipsy-looking, bonneted and gowned like her prototype, and almost as oracular. Here the resemblance ceases. Mrs. Adams is a perfectly honest, industrious, pains-taking person, who earns a good deal of money by washing and charing, and spends it in other luxuries than tidiness,-in green tea, and gin, and snuff. Her husband lives in a great family ten miles off. He is a capital gardeneror rather he would be so, if he were not too ambitious. He undertakes all things, and finishes none. But a smooth tongue, a knowing look, and a great capacity of labour, carry him through. Let him but like his ale and his master, and he will do work enough for four. Give him his own way, and his full quantum, and nothing comes amiss to him. Ah, May is bounding forward! Her silly heart leaps at the sight of the old place-and so, in good truth, does mine. What a pretty place it was, or rather, how pretty I thought it! I suppose I should have thought any place so where I had spent eighteen happy years. But it was really pretty. A large, heavy, white house, in the simplest style, surrounded by fine oaks and elms, and tall massy plantations shaded down into a beautiful lawn, by wild overgrown shrubs, bowery acacias, ragged sweet-briars, promontories of dogwood, and Portugal laurel, and bays overhung by laburnum and bird-cherry; a long piece of water letting light into the picture, and looking just like a natural stream, the banks as rude and wild as the shrubbery, interspersed with broom, and furze, and bramble, and pollard oaks covered with ivy and honeysuckle; the whole enclosed by an old mossy park paling, and terminating in a series of rich meadows, richly planted. This is an exact description of the home which, three years ago, it nearly broke my heart to leave. What a tearing up by the roots it was! I have pitied cabbage plants and celery, and all transplantable things, ever since; though, in common with them and with other vegetables, the first agony of the transportation being over, I have taken such firm and tenacious hold of my new soil, that I would not for the world be pulled up again, even to be restored to the old beloved ground; not even if its beauty were undiminished, which is by no means the case; for in those three years it has thrice changed masters, and every successive possessor has brought the curse of improvement upon the place: so that between filling up the water to cure dampness, cutting down trees to let in prospects, planting to keep them out, shutting up windows to darken the inside of the house, (by which means one end looks precisely as an eight of spades would do that should have the misfortune to lose one of his corner pips,) and building colonnades to lighten the out, added to a gen eral clearance of pollards, and brambles, and | into general view many old sports and cusivy, and honeysuckles, and park palings, and toms, some of which, indeed, still linger about irregular shrubs, the poor place is so trans- the remote counties, familiar as local peculimogrified, that if it had its old looking-glass, arities to their inhabitants, whilst the greater the water, back again, it would not know its part lie buried in books of the Elizabethan own face. And yet I love to haunt round age, known only to the curious in English about it so does May. Her particular at- literature. One rural custom which would traction is a certain broken bank full of rabbit have enchanted him, and which prevails in burrows, into which she insinuates her long the north of ampshire, he has not noticed, pliant head and neck, and tears her pretty feet and probably does not know. Did any of my by vain scratchings: mine is a warm sunny readers ever hear of a Maying? Let not any hedgerow, in the same remote field, famous notions of chimney-sweeps soil the imaginafor early flowers. Never was a spot more tion of the gay Londoner! A country Maying variously flowery: primroses yellow, lilac is altogether a different affair from the street white, violets of either hue, cowslips, oxlips, exhibitions which mix so much pity with our arums, orchises, wild hyacinths, ground ivy, mirth, and do the heart good, perhaps, but not pansies, strawberries, heart's-ease, formed a by gladdening it. A country Maying is a small part of the Flora of that wild hedge- meeting of the lads and lasses of two or three row. How profusely they covered the sunny parishes, who assemble in certain erections open slope under the weeping birch, "the of green boughs, called May-houses, to dance lady of the woods,”—and how often have I and—but I am going to tell all about it in due started to see the carly innocent brown snake, order, and must not forestall my description. who loved the spot as well as I did, winding along the young blossoms, or rustling among the fallen leaves! There are primrose leaves already, and short green buds, but no flowers; not even in that furze cradle so full of roots, where they used to blow as in a basket. No, my May, no rabbits! no primroses! We may as well get over the gate into the woody winding lane, which will bring us home again. Here we are, making the best of our way between the old elms that arch so solemnly over head, dark and sheltered even now. They say that a spirit haunts this deep pool a white lady without a head. I cannot say that I have seen her, often as I have paced this lane at deep midnight, to hear the nightingales, and look at the glow-worms;-but there, better and rarer than a thousand ghosts, dearer even than nightingales and glow-worms, there is a primrose, the first of the year; a tuft of primroses, springing in yonder sheltered nook, from the mossy roots of an old willow, and living again in the clear bright pool. Oh, how beautiful they are- three fully blown, and two bursting buds! how glad I am I came this way! They are not to be reached. Even Jack Rapley's love of the difficult and the unattainable would fail him here: May herself could not stand on that steep bank. So much the better. Who would wish to disturb them? There they live in their inno cent and their fragrant beauty, sheltered from the storms, and rejoicing in the sunshine, and looking as if they could feel their happiness. Who would disturb them? Oh, how glad am I came this way home! BRAMLEY MAYING. I MR. GEOFFREY CRAYON has, in his delightful but somewhat fanciful writings, brought Last year we went to Bramley Maying. There had been two or three such merrymakings before in that inaccessible neighbourhood, where the distance of large towns, the absence of great houses, and the consequent want of all decent roads, together with a country of peculiar wildness and beauty, combine to produce a sort of modern Arcadia. We had intended to assist at a Maying in the forest of Pamber, thinking that the deep glades of that fine woodland scenery would be more congenial to the spirit of old English merriment, as it breathed more of Robin Hood and Maid Marian than a mere village green—to say nothing of its being of the two more accessible by four-footed and two-wheeled conveyances. But the Pamber day had been suffered to pass, and Brambley was the last Maying of the season. So to Bramley we went. As we had a considerable distance to go, we set out about noon, intending to return to dinner at six. Never was a day more congenial to a happy purpose! It was a day made for country weddings and dances on the green -a day of dazzling light, of ardent sunshine falling on hedge-rows and meadows fresh with spring showers. You might almost see the grass grow and the leaves expand under the influence of that vivifying warmth; and we passed through the well-known and beautiful scenery of W. Park, and the pretty village of M., with a feeling of new admiration, as if we had never before felt their charms; so gloriously did the trees in their young leaves, the grass springing beneath them, the patches of golden broom and deeper forze, the cottages covered with roses, the blooming orchards, and the light snowy sprays of the cherry-trees tossing their fair blossoms across the deep-blue sky, pour upon the eye the full magic of colour. On we passed gaily and happily as far as we knew our way—perhaps a little farther, for the place of our destination | kind informant, had retraced our steps a little, was new to both of us, when we had the luck, had turned up another lane, and found ourgood or bad, to meet with a director in the selves at the foot of that commanding spot person of the butcher of M. My companion which antiquaries call the Amphitheatre, close is known to most people within a circuit of under the walls of the Roman city, and in full ten miles; so we had ready attention and view of an old acquaintance, the schoolmaster most civil guidance from the man of beef and of Silchester, who happened to be there in his mutton-a prodigious person, almost as big full glory, playing the part of Cicerone to a as a prize ox, as rosy and jovial-looking as party of ladies, and explaining far more than Falstaff himself,-who was standing in the he knows, or than any one knows, of streets, road with a slender shrewd-looking boy, apt and gates, and sites of temples, which, by the and ready enough to have passed for the page. by, the worthy pedagogue usually calls parish He soon gave us the proper, customary, and churches. I never was so glad to see him in unintelligible directions as to lanes and turn- my life,-never thought he could have spoken ings-first to the right, then to the left, then with so much sense and eloquence as were round farmer Jennings' close, then across the comprised in the two words, "straight forHoly Brook, then to the right again-till at ward," by which he answered our inquiry as last, seeing us completely bewildered, he of- to the road to Bramley. fered to send the boy, who was going our way for half a mile to carry out a shoulder of veal, to attend us to that distance as a guide; an offer gratefully accepted by all parties, especially the lad, whom we relieved of his burthen and took up behind, where he swang in an odd but apparently satisfactory posture, between running and riding. While the ruin, and young trees, principally ash, he continued with us, we fell into no mistakes; but at last he and the shoulder of veal reached their place of destination; and after listening to a repetition, or perhaps a variation, of the turns right and left which were to conduct us to Bramley-green, we and our little guide parted. On we went, twisting and turning through a labyrinth of lanes, getting deeper and deeper every moment, till at last, after many doubtings, we became fairly convinced that we had lost our way. Not a soul was in the fields; not a passenger in the road; not a cottage by the road-side: so on we went-I am afraid to say how far, (for when people have lost their way, they are not the most accurate measurers of distance) till we came suddenly on a small farm-house, and saw at once that the road we had trodden led to that farm, and thither only. The solitary farm-house had one solitary inmate, a smiling middle-aged woman, who came to us and offered her services with the most alert civility:-"All her boys and girls were gone to the Maying," she said, "and she remained to keep house."The Maying! We are near Bramley, then?" "Only two miles the nearest way across the fields-were we going?. she would see to the horse - we would soon be there, only over that style and then across that field, and then turn to the right, and then take the next turning-no! the next but one to the left."Right and left again for two miles over those deserted fields!— Right and left! we shuddered at the words. "Is there no carriageroad; where are we?""At Silchester, close to the walls, only half a mile from the church."-"At Silchester!" and in ten minutes we had said a thankful farewell to our And forward we went by a way beautiful beyond description: a road bounded on one side by every variety of meadow, and cornfield, and rich woodland; on the other, by the rock-like walls of the old city, crowning an abrupt magnificent bank of turf, broken by fragments, crags as it were, detached from with silver stems standing out in picturesque relief from the green slope, and itself crowned with every sort of vegetation, from the rich festoons of briar and ivy, which garlanded its side, to the venerable oaks and beeches which nodded on its summit. I never saw any thing so fine in my life. To be sure, we nearly broke our necks. Even I, who, having been overset astonishingly often, without any harm happening, have acquired, from frequency of escape, the confidence of escaping, and the habit of not caring for that particular danger, which is, I suppose, what in a man, and in battle, would be called courage, even I was glad enough to get out, and do all I could towards wriggling the gig round the rock-like stones, or sometimes helping to lift the wheel over the smaller impediments. We escaped that danger, and left the venerable walls behind us. But I am losing my way here, too; I must loiter on the road no longer. Our other delays, of a broken bridge-a bog-another wrong turning-and a meeting with a loaded wagon, in a lane too narrow to pass all this must remain untold. At last we reached a large farm-house at Bramley; another mile remained to the Green, but that was impassable. Nobody thinks of riding at Bramley. The late lady of the manor, when at rare and uncertain intervals she resided for a few weeks at her house of B. R., used, in visiting her only neighbour, to drive her coach and four through her farmer's ploughed fields. We must walk: but the appearance of gay crowds of rustics, all passing along one path, gave assurance that this time we should not lose our way. Oh, what a pretty path it was! along one sunny sloping field, up and down, dotted with trees like a It park; then across a deep shady lane, with chestnut the Mayhouses commence. They are cows loitering and cropping grass from the covered alleys built of green boughs, decoratbanks; then up a long narrow meadow, in the ed with garlands and great bunches of flowers, very pride and vigour of its greenness, richly the gayest that blow-lilacs, Guelder-roses, bordered by hedgerow timber, and terminating pionies, tulips, stocks-hanging down like in the church-yard, and a little country church. chandeliers among the dancers; for of dancers, Bramley church is well worth seeing. It gay dark-eyed young girls in straw bonnets contains that rare thing, a monument fine in and white gowns, and their lovers in their itself, and finer in its situation. We had Sunday attire, the May-houses were full. The heard of it, and in spite of the many delays girls had mostly the look of extreme youth, we had experienced, could not resist the and danced well and quietly like ladies-too temptation of sending one of the loiterers, much so; I should have been glad to see less who seemed to stand in the church-yard as a elegance and more enjoyment: and their partsort of out-guard to the Maying, to the vicar's ners, though not altogether so graceful, were house for the key. Prepared as we had been as decorous and as indifferent as real gentleto see something unusual, we were very much men. It was quite like a ball-room, as pretty struck. The church is small, simple, decay- and almost as dull. Outside was the fun. ing, almost ruinous; but, as you turn from is the outside, the upper gallery of the world, the entrance into the centre aisle, and advance that has that good thing. There were children up to the altar, your eye falls on a lofty re- laughing, eating, trying to cheat, and being cess, branching out like a chapel on one side, cheated, round an ancient and practised vender and seen through a Gothic arch. It is almost of oranges and gingerbread; and on the other paved with monumental brasses of the proud side of the tree lay a merry group of old men, family of B., who have possessed the sur- in coats almost as old as themselves, and rounding property from the time of the Con- young ones in no coats at all, excluded from queror; and in the centre of the large open the dance by the disgrace of a smock-frock. space stands a large monument, surrounded Who would have thought of etiquette finding by steps, on which reclines a figure of a dying its way into the Mayhouses! That group man, with a beautiful woman leaning over would have suited Teniers; it smoked and him, full of a lovely look of anxiety and ten- drank a little, but it laughed a great deal derness. The figures are very fine; but that more. There were a few decent matronly which makes the grace and glory of this looking women, too, sitting in a cluster; and remarkable piece of sculpture, is its being young mothers strolling about with infants in backed by an immense Gothic window, nearly their arms; and ragged boys peeping through the whole size of the recess, entirely com- the boughs at the dancers; and the bright sun posed of old stained glass. I do not know shining gloriously on all this innocent happithe story which the artist, in the series of pic-ness. Oh what a pretty sight it was!-worth tures, intended to represent; but there they losing our way for-worth losing our dinner are, the gorgeous, glorious colours-red, and both which happened; whilst a party of purples, and greens, glowing like an anemone friends, who were to have joined us, were far bed in the sunshine, or like one of the win- more unlucky; for they not only lost their dows made of amethysts and rubies in the way and their dinner, but rambled all day Arabian Tales, and throwing out the monu- about the country, and never reached Bramley mental figures with an effect almost magical. Maying. The parish clerk was at the Maying, and we had only an unlettered rustic to conduct us, so that I do not even know the name of the sculptor- he must have a strange mingled feeling if ever he saw his work in its present home-delight that it looks so well, and regret that there is no one to look at it. That monument alone was worth losing our way for. But cross two fields more, and up a quiet lane, and we are at the Maying, announced afar off by the merry sound of music, and the merrier clatter of childish voices. Here we are at the green; a little turfy spot, where three roads meet, close shut in by hedgerows, with a pretty white cottage, and its long slip of a garden at one angle. I had no expectation of scenery so compact, so like a glade in a forest; it is quite a cabinet picture, with green trees for the frame. In the midst grows a superb horse-chesnut, in the full glory of its flowery pyramids, and from the trunk of the COUSIN MARY. ABOUT four years ago, passing a few days with the highly educated daughters of some friends in this neighbourhood, I found domesticated in the family a young lady, whom I shall call as they called her, Cousin Mary. She was about eighteen, not beautiful perhaps, but lovely certainly to the fullest extent of that loveliest word-as fresh as a rose; as fair as a lily; with lips like winter berries; dimpled, smiling lips; and eyes of which nobody could tell the colour, they danced so incessantly in their own gay light. Her figure was tall, round, and slender; exquisitely well proportioned it must have been, for in all attitudes, (and in her innocent gaiety, she was scarcely ever two minutes in the same) she |