her.

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Why don't you marry Mr. Incledon, and have done with it?" said Agatha. "I would if I were you. What a good thing it would be for you! and I suppose he would be kind to the rest of us too. Why, you would have your carriage, two or three carriages, and a horse to ride, and you might go abroad if you liked, or do anything you liked. How I should like to have quantities of money, and a beautiful house, and everything in the world I wanted! I should not shillyshally like you."

deal in his favour. Everything, however, and Rose quite unused to walking or inwent against Rose. The ladies on the deed doing anything else alone, found a Green made gentle criticisms upon her, certain pleasure in the loneliness and siand called her a sly little puss. Some lence. How tranquillizing it was to be hoped she would not forget her humble alone; to have no one near who would friends when she came into her kingdom; say anything to disturb her; nobody some asked her what she meant by drag- with reproachful eyes; nothing around ging her captive so long at her chariot or about but the soft sky, the trees growwheels; and the captive himself, though ing green, the grass which waved its thin a miracle of goodness, would cast pa- blades in the soft air! It seemed to thetic looks at her, and make little Rose that she was out for a long time,' speeches full of meaning. Rose began and that the silence refreshed her, and to feel herself like a creature at bay; made her strong for her fate whatever it wherever she turned she could see no might be. Before she returned home way of escape; even sharp-eyed Agatha, she went in at the old familiar gate of the in the wisdom of fifteen, turned against Rectory, and skirted the lawn by a bypath she knew well, and stole down the slope to the little platform under the old May-tree. By this time it had begun to get dark; and as Rose looked across the soft undulations of the half visible country, every line of which was dear and well known to her, her eyes fell suddenly upon a gleam of light from among the trees. What friendly sprite had lighted the lights so early in the parlour of the cottage at Ankermead I cannot tell, but they glimmered out from the brown clump of trees and took Rose so by surprise that her eyes filled with sudden moisture, and her heart beat with a muffled throbbing in her ears. So well she recollected the warm summer evening long ago (and yet it was not a year ago), and every word that was said. "Imagination will play me many a prank before I forget this night!" Did he mean that? had he forgotten it? or was he perhaps leaning over the ship's side somewhere while the big vessel rustled through the soft broad sea, thinking of home, as he had said, seeing the lights upon the coast, and dreaming of his mother's lighted windows, and of that dim, dreamy, hazy landscape, so soft and far inland, with the cottage lamp shining out from that brown clump of trees? The tears fell softly from Rose's eyes through the evening dimness which hid them almost from herself; she was very sad, heartbroken- and yet not so miserable as she thought. She did not know how long she sat there, looking at the cottage lights through her tears. The new Rector and his wife sat down to dinner all unaware of the forlorn young visitor who had stolen into the domain which was now theirs, and Rose's mother began to get sadly uneasy about her absence, with a chill dread lest she should have pressed her too far and driven her to some scheme of desperation. Mr. Incledon came out to look for her, and

"No one has everything in the world they want," said Rose, solemnly, thinking also if Mr. Incledon had been "some one else" how much easier her decision would have been.

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"You seem to think they do," said Agatha, or you would not make such a fuss about Mr. Incledon. Why, what do you object to? I suppose it's because he is not young enough. I think he is a very nice man, and very good-looking. I only wish he had asked me."

"Agatha, you are too young to talk of such things," said Rose, with the dignity of her seniority.

"Then I wish my eldest sister was too young to put them into my head," said Agatha.

This conversation drove Rose from her last place of safety, the schoolroom, where hitherto she had been left in quiet. A kind of despair seized her. She dared not encounter her mother in the drawingroom, where probably Mr. Incledon also would appear towards the twilight. She put on her hat and wandered out, her heart fuil of a subdued anguish, poignant yet not unsweet, for the sense of intense suffering is in its way a kind of excitement and painful enjoyment to the very young. It was a spring afternoon, soft and sweet, full of promise of the summer,

met her just outside the Rectory gate, | postponement of marriages which it and was very kind to her, making her never believes in thoroughly till they take his arm and leading her gently home without asking a question.

"She has been calling at the Rectory, and I fear it was too much for her," he said; an explanation which made the quick tears start to Mrs. Damerel's own eyes, who kissed her daughter and sent her upstairs without further question. I almost think Mr. Incledon was clever enough to guess the true state of affairs; but he told this fib with an admirable air of believing it, and made Rose grateful to the very bottom of her heart.

have taken place. They thought it ridiculous in a woman of Mrs. Damerel's sense, and one, too, who ought to know how many slips there are between the cup and the lip; but Mr. Incledon did not seem to object, and of course, everybody said, no one else had a right to interfere.

All this took place in April, when the Damerels had been but three months in their new house. Even that little time had proved bitterly to them many of the evils of their impoverished condition, for already Mr. Hunsdon had begun to write Gratitude is a fine sentiment to culti- of the long time Bertie had been at vate in such circumstances. It is a bet- school, and the necessity there was that ter and safer beginning than that pity he should exert himself; and even which is said to be akin to love. Rose Reginald's godfather, who had always struggled no more after this. She sur- been so good, showed signs of a disposirendered quietly, made no further re- tion to launch his charge, too, on the sistance, and finally yielded a submis- world, suggesting that perhaps it might sive assent to what was asked of her. be better, as he had now no prospect of She became "engaged " to Mr. Incledon, and the engagement was formally announced, and all the Green joined in with congratulations, except, indeed, Mrs. Wodehouse, who called in a marked manner just after the ladies had been seen to go out, and left a huge card, which was all her contribution to the felicitations of the neighbourhood. There was scarcely a lady in the parish except this one who did not take the trouble to walk or drive to the White House and kiss Rose and congratulate her mother. "Such a very excellent match - everything that a mother could desire!" they said. "But you must get a little more colour in your cheeks, my dear," said_old_Lady Denvil. "This is not like the dear Rector's Rose in June. It is more like a pale China rose in November."

What could Rose do but cry at this allusion? It was kind of the old lady (who was always kind) to give her this excellent reason and excuse for the tears in her eyes.

And then there came, with a strange, hollow, far-off sound, proposals of dates and days to be fixed, and talk about the wedding dresses and the wedding tour. She listened to it all with an inward shiver; but, fortunately for Rose, Mrs. Damerel would hear of no wedding until after the anniversary of her husband's death, which had taken place in July. The Green discussed the subject largely, and most people blamed her for standing on this punctilio; for society in general, with a wise sense of the uncertainty of all human affairs, has a prejudice against the

anything but working for himself, that he should leave Eton. Mrs. Damerel kept these humiliations to herself, but it was only natural that they should give fire to her words in her arguments with Rose; and it could not be denied that the family had spent more than their income permitted in the first three months. There had been the mourning, and the removal, and so many other expenses, to begin with. It is hard enough to struggle with bills as Mrs. Damerel had done in her husband's lifetime, when by means of the wisest art and never-failing attention it was always possible to pay them as they became urgent; but when there is no money at all, either present or in prospect, what is a poor woman to do? They made her sick many a time when she opened a drawer in her desk and looked at them. Even with all she could accept from Mr. Incledon (and that was limited by pride and delicacy in many ways), and with one less to provide for, Mrs. Damerel would still have care sufficient to make her cup run over. Rose's good fortune did not take her burden away.

Thus things went on through the early summer. The thought of Rose's trousseau nearly broke her mother's heart. It must be to some degree in consonance with her future position, and it must not come from Mr. Incledon; and where was it to come from? Mrs. Damerel had begun to write a letter to her brother, appealing, which it was a bitter thing to do, for his help, one evening early in May. She had written after all her children had

From Fraser's Magazine. ORNITHOLOGICAL REMINISCENCES.

BY SHIRLEY.

would hardly believe, if you had come I AM writing in Scotland, but you

few meadows lie between us and a great city with its two hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants. Such utter seclusion a mighty multitude is impossible in any as we enjoy within ear-shot of the roar of other country. But Scotland has deep

left her, when she was alone in the oldfashioned house, where all the old walls and the old stairs uttered strange creaks and jars in the midnight stillness, and the branches of the creepers tapped ghostly taps against the window. Her here under cloud of night, that only a nerves were overstrained, and her heart was sore, notwithstanding her success in the one matter which she had struggled for so earnestly; and after writing half her letter Mrs. Damerel had given it up, with a strange feeling that something opposed the writing of it, some influence ravines and wooded hollows and ivied which she could not define, which seemed to stop her words, and made her incapa-out of the way at any moment, and listen to nooks where you may hide yourself quietly ble of framing a sentence. She gave it the murmur of the burns and the spring up with almost a superstitious thrill of chorus of the woodland. It is no wonfeeling, and a nervous tremor which der that such a land should abound in she tried in vain to master; and, leaving botanists and bird-fanciers, that it should it half written in her blotting-book, stole turn out poets and poachers, and that upstairs to bed in the silence, as glad to "game" should form a standard dish at get out of the echoing, creaking room as if it had been haunted. Rose heard her every general election. Mr. Gray's elabcome upstairs, and thought with a little orate volume on The Birds of the West bitterness as she lay awake, her pillow of Scotland is a very good text to this sermon. Mr. Gray lives in Glasgow, which, of all places in the world, is, at naturalist could select; yet one halffirst sight, the most unpromising that a hour takes him away on the one hand to the muirland, and on the other to the Sea; and in the course of eight-andforty hours he can rifle the nest of the black guillemot which builds on Ailsa Craig, of the stalwart red-grouse which struts on Goatfell, and of the shy ptarmigan which haunts the comb of the Cobler.

wet with the tears which she never shed

in the daylight, of her mother's triumph over her, and how all this revolution was her work. She heard something like a sigh as her mother passed her door, and wondered almost contemptuously what she could have to sigh about, for Rose felt all the other burdens in the world to be as nothing in comparison with her burden; as, indeed, we all do.

Next morning, however, before Rose was awake, Mrs. Damerel came into her room in her dressing-gown, with her hair, which was still so pretty, curling about her shoulders, and her face lit up with a wonderful pale illumination like a northern sky.

"What is it?" cried Rose, springing up from her bed.

"Rose," said Mrs. Damerel, gasping for breath, "we are rich again! No! it is impossible - but it is true; here it is in this letter - my uncle Ernest is dead, and he has left us all his money. We are richer than ever I was in all my life."

Rose got up, and ran and kissed her mother, and cried, with a great cry that rang all over the house," Then I am free!"

of the laws of God as seen in the in

I wish we could manage to teach our boys Natural History, that is the history stinctive ways of beasts, and birds, and fishes as well as Unnatural History, devil, as seen in the destructive ways of that is the history of the laws of the Years ago Mr. Disraeli, with his usual kings, and priests, and men in general. long-sighted temerity, advised us to inschools for the people, and was of course clude music and drawing in our national ridiculed by Liberal journalists for his pains. Couldn't we have a class for Natural History as well? The business

• Since the text was written I rejoice to see that the idea has been taken up, with a somewhat different object indeed, by the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, who have resolved to adopt measures for the purpose of providing such classes in our public schools. In supporting the resolution, that altogether admirable man and divine, Dr. Hanna, is reported to have said: "It has been the growing conviction of the most enlightened friends of education that among the physical sciences natural history, in one or other of its departments, is the one that should be first introduced into the common teaching of the school. Nowhere can materials be found more fitted to interest

Red-ploughed lands

of a true legislator is to give the work- the country all their lives, they get up ing-classes interests; and it is not an a distant bowing acquaintance with Naexaggeration to say that at the present ture, and that is all. time the average laboring man, apart from his trade and the public-house, is O'er which a crow flies heavy in the rain — incapable of rationally occupying, or even irrationally amusing himself for a single leafless trees, muddy footpaths, a leaden. day. If Mr. Gray, instead of this stately sky, a drooping barometer - what can be volume, would prepare a cheap treatise more cheerless and uninviting? This is on what a Glasgow working-man with eyes the vague, general, outside aspect of in his head may see within half-an-hour's things: but if you will only take the ride of Glasgow-wild birds, and eggs, trouble to look a little closer, you will be and insects, and flowers, and forest trees absolutely astonished by the multiplicity - he would earn a debt of gratitude from of interests. No wonder that old-fash a community which is beginning to find ioned naturalists like ourselves should that no amount of Reform Bills, Ballot find the winter day too short! I live, as Boxes, and similar painful contrivances, I have said, within hail of the city, and can teach it the secret of content, far less am only one-half a rustic: but even of happiness. It is wonderful what a amid my suburban trees and flowers I deal of unsuspected wild life still lurks can realize the passion of the chase, and about this densely populated country of understand the absorption of the purours, known only to gamekeepers, gipsy suit. The little family of beggars who tramps, and the like." The corn fields assemble each morning at the breakfastand hedge rows, which during the day room window-chaffinches, blue and appear silent and deserted, are populous black tits, robins, sparrows, blackbirds, at night with strange shy creatures, whose thrushes, wrens are a study in themsharp ears and bright eyes are ever on selves. To say nothing of the sparrows the watch, and who disappear with the and the blackbirds- both voracious, but morning mists, their places being taken voracity assuming in each a distinctive at dawn by others, scarcely less strange, character; in the one perky and impuand scarcely less shy, who in turn make dent, in the other irascible, vehement themselves more or less invisible before and domineering-the blue tits alone we are out of bed. are worth many more crusts than they I once knew a man who told me seri- consume. It is the drollest little creature, ously that he considered the country dull, a mere joke of a bird. There is one parand there are numbers of people who ticular tit I know by headmark - he is frankly admit that it is dull in winter. Ithe very image of the little man who do not believe that these persons are stares solemnly at him through the winpositively untruthful, they are simply ig-dow. Then there is a mystery about norant. Though many of them live in

them that I can never quite solve. The thick woods and mossy banks round youth. How easy to turn such fine materials to the about us are admirably adapted for nests, moral purpose of impressing upon the tender heart of and might coax even a restless nomad of childhood the duty and the benefit and the exceeding happiness of a wise and tender treatment of animals, a cuckoo into building, but the tits leave and birds, and insects! Their varied instincts, their us regularly in spring, and do not show wonderful organic endowments, their singular method of operation, the place they fill in the great economy of face again till the November days are nature, the services they render, and the ties so strong darkening. What puts it into their heads and tender by which so many of them are bound to us, to leave us? and what brings them back? their lords and masters-these teem with what could be turned at once to good account. And there is this They are not migratory birds, observe, — specially to correspond, their being so timed. The there is no general emigration law which great difficulty that every right-hearted teacher feels in impressing moral truths or precepts is, that when de- applies to them; is it immemorial custom livered in a mere abstract form they take but a slight and venerable tradition only that sends hold-make but a slight impression on the spirit of them to the shady coverts where they piece of information, or illustrated by some lively or hide themselves through the summerpathetic story, that they get easiest reliance and sink tide? Of course, the robin is never very deepest into the heart. But where could happier blendings of the informational, the scientific, the moral, far away; and if it were only for the and the emotional be effected than here, where an poet's dainty lines, almost exhaustless fund of fact and incident and anecdote lies close at hand and all around to draw upon! I cannot doubt that out of this limitless store a lessonbook for schools upon the proper treatment of the inferior creation could be drawn that in interest for the scholars, as well as in power over them for good, would outrival every lesson-book that is now in use." 320

childhood. It is when embodied in some attractive

LIVING AGE.

VOL. VII.

Robin, Robin Red-breast, O Robin dear! Robin sings so sweetly in the falling of the year

not to speak of innumerable other rhymes

When you have bagged your fox, and otherwise exhausted the more feverish excitements of rural life, I would advise you to turn to wood-cutting. There is no fire like a wood-fire, and the manufacture of logs may be made vastly entertaining to a man whose tastes have not been entirely corrupted by luxury. We cut our logs in an open glade in the glen, where the rabbits peep out of their holes at us, where the cushat rises with a startled flutter from the wood, and the bushytailed squirrel leaps from branch to branch among the trees overhead. The solemn winter stillness would become almost unbearable if we were not hard at work. Behold how the goodly pile rises under our hand! How many "back-log studies" does that stack contain? What a cheerful glow they will shed as the winter days draw in—what grotesque fancies will grow among the embers, what weird figures will flash upon the wall! The snow-drift may rise round the doors; the frost may harden the ponds into granite and fringe the waterfall with icicles; the wind may howl among the chimneys, and tear away the branches as

and roundelays going far back into the antiquity of childhood, Robin is one of those familiar figures which even a scientific society will not willingly let die. When after breakfast we smoke a meditative pipe among the leafless gooseberry bushes, he accompanies us in our perambulations, looking at us sagely from the corner of his eye, and wagging his head with the gravity of a Burleigh. Then there are a pair of water ousels, who fish in the burn below the window, and walk about on the bottom as if they were crabs, or divers searching for pearls or shipwrecked gold. They built their nest last year in the mouth of the waste-water pipe directly under the waterfall, and in this somewhat moist neighbourhood contrived to hatch an incredible number of eggsnot less than ten or a dozen, if I recollect aright. A long-legged, long-necked heron used to stalk down the burnside in the dim winter twilight: but as he has not been seen very lately in his accustomed haunts, I am afraid he must have fallen a victim to one of our amateur naturalists.* The gaunt watchfulness of the solitary heron, as he stands up to his knees in some unfrequented pool, might be re-a cannon ball tears away the limbs of a garded as an almost maliciously grotesque travestie of certain unlovely human traits -the wary greed and covetousness of the forlorn misers that Rembrandt and Gustave Doré have painted - were it not for a certain dignity and simplicity of carriage which the featherless bipeds do not possess.

The fox, however, is the central figure of our play. He cantered past the house the other morning right under the windows and I must confess that the rascal was in splendid condition, and looked every inch a gentleman. His condition, no doubt, was easily accounted for he had been making free with our poultry for the previous fortnight, and a permanent panic had been established in the hen-house. No weak scruples would have prevented us from executing justice upon the robber; but he was as crafty as a weasel, and as difficult to catch asleep; and he has finally left us, I believe, without leaving even the tip of his brush behind him.f

He has reappeared-January 5, 1874. Since then three water-hens have come to us, a pair and an odd one; and curiously enough the odd one (a very odd one) has abandoned the water, and taken to consorting with the poultry, roosting with them in the hen-house at night; an altogether unprecedented arrangement, I should fancy.

† It is all over with our sleek friend now. A neighbouring farmer sent word to the Master that he would feel obliged if he would give his pack a cast across the hillside, and poor Reynard (who had somehow lost his

man; but the cheery blaze and crackle of our gallant logs will lighten the gloom, and drive away the blue devils which it raises for many a day to come.

Though one is always more or less sorry when winter retires, the interests of the spring are so engrossing that there is little leisure for pensive regrets. No spring day passes without an excitement of its own. That wonderful awakening of the earth touches the imagination of the dullest clown, and drives those of us who are more excitable into strange ecstasies of happiness. After all, the sleep has not been unto death! The first morning that I hear the cuckoo is upon the whole the most memorable day of the year to me. There are some scattered plantations along the base of the Pentlands (above Dreghorn) where this happiness has been more than once vouchsafed to me, and I have come to regard these tangled thickets with a sort of religious reverence as the very temple and sanctuary of the spirit of the spring. Then the spring flowers violets, celandine, cowslips, periwinkle, campion, Wood-sorrel, saxifrage, primrose, hyacinth, woodroof, anemone! - this vestal band, this sweet and fair procession of

head that morning-having been up all night, perhaps) was worried by the hounds in a gorse covert before he had run a dozen yards.