THE WOUNDED CUPID.

Cupid, as he lay among
Roses, by a bee was stung;
Whereupon in anger flying

To his mother, said, thus crying,
'Help! O help! your boy's a-dying,'
And why, my pretty lad?' said she,
Then blubbering, replied he,

'A winged snake has bitten me,
Which country people call a bee.'

At which she smiled, then with her hairs
And kisses drying up his tears,
'Alas!' said she, my wag, if this
Such a pernicious torment is,

Come, tell me then, how great's the smart
Of those thou woundest with thy dart?'

morne,

Upon her wings presents the God unshorne.
See how Aurora throws her faire
Fresh-quilted colours thro' the aire;
Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see
The dew bespangling herbe and tree.
Each flower has wept, and bow'd toward the
east,

Above an hour since, yet you are not drest,
Nay, not so much as out of bed,

When all the birds have mattens said, And sung their thankful hymnes; 'tis sin,

Nay, profanation to keep in, VOL. LXXVII.-NO. CCCCLVIII.

When as a thousand virgins on this day
Spring, sooner than the lark, to fetch in May.

Come, let us goe, while we are in our prime,
And take the harmless follies of the time.
We shall grow old apace and die
Before we know our liberty;
Our life is short, and our days run
As fast away as do's the sun;
And as a vapour, or a drop of rain
Once lost, can ne'er be filled again;
So when or you or I are made
A fable, song, or fleeting shade,
All love, all liking, all delight,
Lies drown'd with us in endless night.
Then while time serves, and we are but
decaying,

Come my Corinna, come, let's goe a Maying.

The easy musical flow of the verse combined with the graceful touches of Horatian cheerfulness and Horatian sadness appeal to one of the deepest feelings in our nature -the relation between man and nature-man's perishable enjoyment of her perennial and adorable beauty -man soon to be made a fable, song, or fleeting shade.'

I wonder sometimes that in these days of selections from everybody and nobody, a selection from Herrick's poems is not attempted. There is a good deal in his verse that hardly bears to be repeated now-a-days. To the sensitiveness which would turn away from a strong phrase or an over-bold comparison, he would himself have said

But yet love's fire will wast Such bashfulness at last,but there are many of the poems which are justly open to criticism, and he himself owned as much when he said, in lines which were once an apology and a confession

at

Q

competent critic would only take the trouble to select the worthiest and put them together, the world would be his debtor.

And now the days are drawing in. There is a coating of ice on the shallow pools in the morning. The winter birds begin to gather. For days past long strings of geese have been flying to the southward. Yesterday we learned that three hoopers the shy magnificent wild swan--had been seen upon the Loch of Luncarty. About the mouth of the river the northern harold and the eider duck are fishing all day long. X shot a woodcock and ever so many couple of snipe last week in the Black Moss. The snipe have been there in wonderful numbers for months; we have had them at breakfast every morning since we came,-and a snipe is a

delicious tit-bit at breakfast,-but the woodcock have only just begun to cross the water. This fellow, when flushed, seemed weary with his flight of a thousand miles, and he was as thin when cooked as poor Captain Speke was when he got back from the African niggers. So the winter being upon us, X, Y and Z start to-morrow for the south. But I have elected to remain. Romantic visions of wild winter days among the snow, and grand white moonlight nights among the wild-fowl, tempt me to stay, and my landlady assures me that she and Hebe will make my well-being their peculiar charge. Should I be able to snatch a moment from my great work on the Philosophy of the Undeniable, I may tell you, by and by, how I have spent the winter.

A

MEET of foxhounds in the New Forest on a fine open winter morning is a pretty enough sight, even to one who is no sportsman. On some lawn or rising ground, encircled by far-spreading russet or leafless woods, you see the mounted groups of red-coated gentlemen, with a sprinkling of ladies, graceful in flowing dark skirts, lively boys on their ponies, and pretty little longhaired girls; black or brown coated riders too, lawyer or doctor, tradesman or farmer; whosoever, in short, chooses to come on the outside of a horse to share in this peculiar aristo-democratic amusement. The little old whipperin (we have no huntsman), with ruddy face and lively eyes, sitting his big horse as though he lived there, and in fact the most and best of his life is in the saddle, calls now and again or cracks his whip at the hounds if restless; but usually they are standing about, or stretched on the sward, or nosing and questing quietly round within a small area. The master bides somewhat aloof, the cares of sovereignty visible on his brow; now and again doffing his hat to a fair equestrian, or exchanging a grave word with some personage of importance. Carriages drive up on the road, and gentlemen go over to them to greet their friends. Other spectators there are, but not many; by no means like the enthusiastic crowd of miscellaneous pedestrians that come out to see the hounds in Ireland, and often follow them, too, for the best part of the day: here are only a few foresters and boys, smock-frocked, apathetic, and perhaps half a dozen young women and children from the nearest cottages. Now we move to the

6

cover, in go the hounds, 'feathering' (waving their feathery tails) among the gorse and rusty bracken. Ho, Rallywood!-ho, Trojan!'-a hound gives tongue'challenges.'-'There goes Diamond!-hark to Diamond!' Forty canine voices make the wood resound: reynard darts across one of the forest rides- Tally-ho-o!'-he bursts into the open, the whole pack at his heels, and away we go. But 'tis not mine to attempt the description of 'a run;' it has been done a thousand times, and done well. The New Forest is a good place for 'seeing the hounds work,' as they stream together over the open moorlands, or come to a check in some gorsebrake or plantation. The riding is the easiest possible, no jumping of any sort, unless you like; much of the ground being open moor (you have very seldom to go over crop), and through the woods run numerous grassy avenues, called 'rides,' where you may gallop as on a lawn. Two things a stranger has to guard against getting into a swamp and losing his way: let him turn and twist about a little, and then find himself, all alone among the trees and underwood,

at some point where three or more forest ways diverge, and it may prove no easy matter to choose right. As to the swamps, if you are so ambitious as to keep well forward without knowing the ground, you may be galloping along comfortably this moment, and the next floundering in a treacherous muddy abyss, firm to the inexperienced eye. You plunge from your saddle; alas for the shining white breeches! but all is a trifle if you can safely land your struggling and frightened horse, without recourse to spades and ropes. These

swamps, clogging and chilling the legs of the hounds with wet mud, are the cause, as some think, of that lameness to which the Forest hounds are peculiarly liable. Others attribute it to the prickles of the abundant dwarf furze (Ulex nanus). The winter in this region is commonly so mild and open, that the sport often goes on here when frozen-up elsewhere. It is naturally a favourite habitat of hunting men. A French lady detested war because it spoiled conversation'- people could talk of nothing else. If you are fond of hunting-talk after dinner, you can enjoy plenty of it in society here; and there might easily be worse-it smacks of open air and living nature; but to a stranger, who is not an enthusiastic sportsman, a little of it suffices. He knows nothing of such a gentleman's bay mare, or of Captain So-and-so's 'brother to Rattler;' the copses, gorses, farms, roads, spinneys, hills, bottoms, brooks, enclosures, &c., are mere names, not in his mind's geography. Still, what should men talk of but of what interests them? For my own part, I can relish a little sporting talk as well as most conversation one is likely to meet with around the mahogany tree; but, like all other talk, it is too apt to sink into mere personal gossip.

can a

Is the lively game of modern hunting worth all the care and cost expended on it? In what way,' asks a writer on the subject, 16 man spend his money with more satisfaction to himself and his friends' -than as master of a pack of foxhounds? but he warns his wealthy friend, you must give up your whole time to it.' Few have the ambition to be master, but the time and cost given to his sport by merely a regular foxhunter amounts to no trifle. Of a great many things in

the world a little is good, more than a little bad, and certainly there ought to be some proportion between earnestness and its object. On the other hand, there will always be men to devote themselves thoroughly to each separate interest that is fit to engage in any degree the human attention. Some will be drawn, by instinct and circumstances co-operating, to horses and dogs, as others to farming, to ships, to travelling, to music, to whatsoever art or pursuit. One boy is mad for going to sea; another cannot be kept out of the stable yard; there are tastes that seem to be in the bloodsportsmen by nature, as musicians and poets. Such men are the life of certain classes of enterprise in each generation; their enthusiasm -whether they follow the thing as trade or amusement, or both in combination-is contagious, and works miracles on the will and pocket of the less determined. In our own time and country abound, beyond all precedent, people who have more pounds and hours than they know what to do with, who are puzzled and wearied with a choice of amusements; and there is certainly something to be said, among the rest, for modern hunting, artificial as it is, and perhaps over elaborate in its machinery. It retains a smack of the old virtue. Alle such dysport as voydeth ydilnesse,

It fytteth every gentilman to knowe, For mirthe annexed is to gentilnesse;

Wherefore among alle other, as I trowe, To know the craft of hunting, and to blowe,

As this booke shall witnesse, is of the best, For it is holesum, pleasaunt, and honest! 2

As to that old hunting-British, Saxon, Norman-of wolf, boar, roebuck, hart, fox, hare, badger, otter,

we leave it with the antiquaries, and quaint recorders of woodcraft's authentic traditions.' The

Conqueror and his sons were mighty hunters; but the oft-told tale of the destruction of many villages, churches, and houses in making this New Forest, is like so much other History.' The poor chalkgravel soil of the district (Middle Eocene of the geologists), could never have supported many inhabitants. Ytene (Furzy ''the Furze-land'?) was clearly a wild, moory, woody district in William's day, with a small scattered population. He made it a Royal Forest, and increased the severity of the old forest laws of the Danish and Saxon kings. The inhabitants naturally disliked the afforestment, and stories of the new king's inhumanity were told and retold, gaining in bulk and definition as the facts retired into the past, till the First William became in monkish chronicles (subsequent, not contemporary: there is nothing of it in the Saxon chronicle) a royal Dragon of Wantley-houses and churches were to him geese and turkeys. He destroyed twenty-two-thirtysix'-'fifty-two parish churches,' and when his two sons in succession lost their lives in this wicked New Forest, it was clearly by vengeance of heaven.

Of the buildings named in the Norman Great Roll, which the Saxons called 'Doom-Book' (Judgment-Book), and sometimes, to express their fears, 'Doomsday Book,' two kinds are commonly found to this day (whether the same walls or not) in the places indicated— churches and mills. Here at Brockenhurst (is it Badger-wood,' or Brook-wood,' or 'Broken-wood' ?) is one of the Doom-Book churches. Looking southward from the railway platform you may see its weathercock just clearing the tree-tops of a wooded hill, and five minutes' walk will bring you to the circular grave

yard surrounded by shady roads, with its elephantine oak-bole,

A cave

Of touchwood, with a single flourishing

spray,

and the stately pillared yew tree, iron-red, whose dark boughs almost brush the spire. Both these trees, very likely, were here when the Norman commissioners wrote in their list, 'Aluric tenet in Broceste unam hidam . . . Ibi ecclesia. Silva de 20 porcis. Tempore Regis Edwardi valebat 40 solidos, et post et modo 4 libras.' Their spelling of the names of places, by the bye, give little guidance; they knew the views of Rex Willelmus to be practical, not antiquarian. The southern portal, with some other parts of the church, also its font, appear to be of the original Saxon building, some 800 years old or more. Build not, good squire, worthy parishioners, a new church, high or low! repair the old with loving care and reverent anxiety: there is a charm, there is a value inexpressibly precious in ancientness and continuity of remembrance. The world is poorer and smaller by the loss of any old thing visibly connecting us, poor fleeting mortals, with the sacred bygone years; leaving a door open (as it were) into the Land of the Past. Build us not in, beseech you, on that side, enjail not our imagination (which is no foolish or trivial part of us) with new Lymington bricks, or even from the fresh cut quarries of Portland or Caen. Is every town and village in England to be made like a Melbourne, a Farragutville, a Cubittopolis? It is deeper than a question of taste, this of blotting out traces of the great Past from our visible world, blotting them out for ever, with all their softened beauty, and mystery, and tender sadness. 'The old building is not