WALKS IN THE COUNTRY. HANNAH BINT. ships Martin, adores Michael Angelo, prefers St. Peter's to the Parthenon, and the Farnese Hercules to the Apollo Belvidere. When she dies, she will desire a pyramid for her mausoleum. The dome of St. Paul's, which served her celebrated namesake, would hardly satisfy THE Shaw, leading to Hannah Bint's habiher ambition.—But why do I talk of tombs tation, is, as I perhaps have said before, a and of namesakes? Am I not just come from very pretty mixture of wood and coppice; that the wedding breakfast? and is not "Little is to say, a tract of thirty or forty acres coMiss Wren Miss Wren no longer? Even vered with fine growing timber-ash, and oak, while I write, bells are ringing, horses prane-spersed here and there with large patches of and elm-very regularly planted; and intering, bridemaids simpering, and wedding-cake underwood, hazel, maple, birch, holly, and travelling nine times through the Baroness hawthorn, woven into almost impenetrable Blankenhausen's fairy ring. thickets by long wreaths of the bramble, the briony, and the briar-rose, or by the pliant and In other parts, the Shaw is quite clear of its twisting garlands of the wild honeysuckle. large beds of feathery fern, or carpets of flowbosky undergrowth, and clothed only with ers, primroses, orchises, cowslips, ground-ivy, forget-me-not, crowded together with a profucrane's-bill, cotton-grass, Solomon's seal, and sion and brilliancy of colour, such as I have rarely seen equalled even in a garden. Here the wild hyacinth really enamels the ground with its fresh and lovely purple; there, "On aged roots, with bright green mosses clad, Dwells the wood sorrel, with its bright thin leaves Heart-shaped and triply folded, and its root Creeping like beaded coral; whilst around Flourish the copse's pride, anemones, With rays like golden studs on ivory laid Most delicate; but touched with purple clouds, Fit crown for April's fair but changeful brow." The variety is much greater than I have enumerated; for the ground is so unequal, now swelling in gentle ascents, now dimpling into dells and hollows, and the soil so different in different parts, that the sylvan Flora is unusually extensive and complete. The bridegroom is a fair well-conditioned Saxon, six feet three inches high, and broad in proportion, with a superb genealogical tree, quarterings innumerable, and an estate by no means suitable to his dimensions: for the rest, remarkable for nothing except his great turn for silence, the number of segars which he puffs away in the course of the day, and two little Marlborough spaniels which he is accustomed to carry about in his coat-pockets. I hope he won't put his wife there. Really the temptation will be strong; but the Baron is a giant of grace, a well-mannered monster; and to judge from the carefulness and delicacy with which he lifted his fair bride over a puddle in the church-yard, to save her white satin shoes (she protesting all the time against such a display of his gallantry, and declaring that she could have stept over the pool had it been twice as wide),-to judge from the coup d'essai in husbandship, I see no cause to doubt that he will treat my friend as tenderly and gingerly, as if he were a little girl of six years old, and the fair Phillippa his first wax doll. prove * Persons of the larger size are often very silent. An ingenious friend of mine holds a theory that the desirable quantity of animal spirits is originally distributed pretty equally amongst men; but that it is lost, absorbed, and diluted in people of unusual bulk, and only shines forth in full vigour in those of a smaller frame as the glass of alcohol, which will powerfully impregnate a pint of water, will be scarcely perceived in a gallon. For instance, (waiving particular examples, of which he brought many,) he holds that a company of light infantry would far more vivacious than a troop of life-guards; and has no hesitation in asserting that the famous tall regiment of Frederick the Great must have been the dullest part of the whole Prussian army. I do not answer for the truth of his assertion, though my friend makes out a very good case, as your clever theorist seldom fails to do, right or wrong. Indeed I brought Falstaff as a case in point against him. He admitted the mere bulk, the "huge rotundity," and the quantity of animal spirits that distinguished the witty knight, "but then," added he, "I am sure he was short." The season is, however, now too late for this floweriness; and except the tufted woodbines, which have continued in bloom during the whole of this lovely autumn, and some lingering garlands of the purple wild-veitch, wreathing round the thickets, and uniting with the ruddy leaves of the bramble, and the pale festoons of the briony, there is little to call one's attention from the grander beauties of the trees-the sycamore, its broad leaves already spotted-the oak, heavy with acornsand the delicate shining rind of the weeping birch, "the lady of the woods," thrown out in strong relief from a back-ground of holly and hawthorn, each studded with coral berries, and backed with old beeches, beginning to assume the rich, tawny hue which makes them perhaps the most picturesque of autumnal trees, as the transparent freshness of their young foliage is undoubtedly the choicest ornament of the forest in spring. A sudden turn round one of these magnificent beeches brings us to the boundary of the Shaw, and leaning upon a rude gate, we look over an open space of about ten acres of ground, still more varied and broken than that | gin; and they who plod slowly along, through wet and weary ways, in frost and in fog, have undoubtedly a stronger temptation to indulge in that cordial and reviving stimulus, than we water-drinkers, sitting in warm and comfortable rooms, can readily imagine. For certain, our drover could never resist the gentle seduction of the gin-bottle, and being of a free, merry, jovial temperament, one of those persons commonly called good fellows, who like to see others happy in the same way with themselves, he was apt to circulate it at his own expense, to the great improvement of his popularity, and the great detriment of his finances. All this did vastly well whilst his earnings continued proportionate to his spendings, and the little family at home were comfortably supported by his industry: but when a rheumatic fever came on, one hard winter, and finally settled in his limbs, reducing the most active and hardy man in the parish to the state of a confirmed cripple, then his reckless improvidence stared him in the face; and poor Jack, a thoughtless, but kind creature, and a most affectionate father, looked at his three The living and moving accessories are all motherless children with the acute misery of in keeping with the cheerfulness and repose a parent, who has brought those whom he of the landscape. Hannah's cow grazing loves best in the world, to abject destitution. quietly beside the keeper's pony: a brace of He found help, where he probably least exfat pointer puppies holding amicable inter-pected it, in the sense and spirit of his young course with a litter of young pigs; ducks, daughter, a girl of twelve years old. geese, cocks, hens, and chickens scattered over the turf; Hannah herself sallying forth from the cottage-door, with her milk-bucket in her hand, and her little brother following with the milking-stool. My friend, Hannah Bint, is by no means an ordinary person. Her father, Jack Bint, (for in all his life he never arrived at the dignity of being called John, indeed in our parts, he was commonly known by the cognomen of London Jack,) was a drover of high repute in his profession. No man, between Salisbury Plain and Smithfield, was thought to conduct a flock of sheep so skilfully through all the difficulties of lanes and commons, streets and high-roads, as Jack Bint, aided by Jack Bint's famous dog, Watch; for Watch's rough, honest face, black, with a little white about the muzzle, and one white ear, was as well known at fairs and markets, as his master's equally honest and weather-beaten visage. Lucky was the dealer that could secure their services; Watch being renowned for keeping a flock together better than any shepherd's dog on the road-Jack, for delivering them more punctually, and in better condition. No man had a more thorough knowledge of the proper night stations, where good feed might be procured for his charge, and good liquor for Watch and himself; Watch, like other sheep dogs, being accustomed to live chiefly on bread and beer. His master, although not averse to a pot of good double X, preferred Hannah was the eldest of the family, and had, ever since her mother's death, which event had occurred two or three years before, been accustomed to take the direction of their domestic concerns, to manage her two brothers, to feed the pigs and the poultry, and to keep house during the almost constant absence of her father. She was a quick, clever lass, of a high spirit, a firm temper, some pride, and a horror of accepting parochial relief, which is every day becoming rarer amongst the peasantry; but which forms the surest safeguard to the sturdy independence of the English character. Our little damsel possessed this quality in perfection; and when her father talked of giving up their comfortable cottage, and removing to the work-house, whilst she and her brothers must go to service, Hannah formed a bold resolution, and without disturbing the sick man by any participation of her hopes and fears, proceeded after settling their trifling affairs to act at once on her own plans and designs. Careless of the future as the poor drover had seemed, he had yet kept clear of debt, and by subscribing constantly to a benefit club, had secured a pittance that might at least assist in supporting him during the long years of sickness and helplessness to which he was doomed to look forward. This his daughter knew. She knew, also, that the employer in whose service his health had suffered so severely, was a rich and liberal cattle dealer in the neighbourhood, who would willingly aid an old and faithful servant, and had, indeed, come forward with offers of money. To assistance from such a quarter Hannah saw no objection. Farmer Oakley and the parish were quite distinct things. Of him, accordingly, she asked, not money, but something much more in his own way-"a cow! any cow! old or lame, or what not, so that it were a cow! she would be bound to keep it well; if she did not, he might take it back again. She even hoped to pay for it by and by, by instalments, but that she would not promise!" and partly amused, partly interested by the child's earnestness, the wealthy yeoman gave her, not as a purchase, but as a present, a very fine young Alderney. She then went to the lord of the manor, and, with equal knowledge of character, begged his permission to keep her cow on the Shaw common. "Farmer Oakley had given her a fine Alderney, and she would be bound to pay the rent, and keep her father off the parish, if he would only let it graze on the waste;" and he, too, half from real good-nature-half, not to be outdone in liberality by his tenant, not only granted the requested permission, but reduced the rent so much, that the produce of the vine seldom fails to satisfy their kind landlord. Now, Hannah showed great judgment in setting up as a dairy-woman. She could not have chosen an occupation more completely unoccupied, or more loudly called for. One of the most provoking of the petty difficulties which beset people with a small establishment, in this neighbourhood, is the trouble, almost the impossibility, of procuring the pastoral luxuries of milk, eggs, and butter, which rank, unfortunately, amongst the indispensable necessaries of housekeeping. To your thoroughbred Londoner, who, whilst grumbling over his own breakfast, is apt to fancy that thick cream, and fresh butter, and new-laid eggs, grow, so to say, in the country-form an actual part of its natural produce-it may be some comfort to learn, that in this great grazing district, however the calves and the farmers may be the better for cows, nobody else is; that farmers' wives have ceased to keep poultry; and that we unlucky villagers sit down often to our first meal in a state of destitution, which may well make him content with his thin milk and his Cambridge butter, when compared to our imputed pastoralities. Hannah's Alderney restored to us one rural privilege. Never was so cleanly a little milkmaid. She changed away some of the cottage finery, which, in his prosperous days, poor Jack had pleased himself with bringing home; the China tea-service, the gilded mugs, and the painted waiters, for the more useful utensils of the dairy, and speedily established a regular and gainful trade in milk, eggs, butter, honey, and poultry-for poultry they had always kept. Her domestic management prospered equally. Her father, who retained the perfect use of his hands, began a manufacture of mats and baskets, which he constructed with great nicety and adroitness; the eldest boy, a sharp and cleyer lad, cut for him his rushes and osiers; erected, under his sister's direction, a shed for the cow, and enlarged and cultivated the garden (always with the good leave of her kind patron the lord of the manor) until it became so ample, that the produce not only kept the pig, and half kept the family, but afforded another branch of merchandise to the indefatigable directress of the establishment. For the younger boy, less quick and active, Hannah contrived to obtain an admission to the charity school, where he made great progress-retaining him at home, however, in the hay-making, and leasing season, or whenever his services could be made available, to the great annoyance of the schoolmaster, whose favourite he is, and who piques himself so much on George's scholarship, (your heavy sluggish boy at country work often turns out quick at his book,) that it is the general opinion that this much-vaunted pupil will, in process of time, be promoted to the post of assistant, and may, possibly, in course of years, rise to the dignity of a parish pedagogue in his own person; so that his sister, although still making him useful at odd times, now considers George as pretty well off her hands, whilst his elder brother Tom, could take an under-gardener's place directly, if he were not too important at home to be spared even for a day. In short, during the five years that she has ruled at the Shaw cottage, the world has gone well with Hannah Bint. Her cow, her calves, her pigs, her bees, her poultry, have each, in their several ways, thriven and prospered. She has even brought Watch to like buttermilk as well as strong beer, and has nearly persuaded her father (to whose wants and wishes she is most anxiously attentive) to accept of milk as a substitute for gin. Not but Hannah hath had her enemies as well as her betters. Why should she not? The old woman at the lodge, who always piqued herself on being spiteful, and crying down new ways, foretold from the first that she would come to no good, and could not forgive her for falsifying her prediction; and Betty Barnes, the slatternly widow of a tippling farmer, who rented a field, and set up a cow herself, and was universally discarded for insufferable dirt, said all that the wit of an envious woman could devise against Hannah and her Alderney; nay, even Ned Miles, the keeper, her next neighbour, who had whilome held entire sway over the Shaw common, as well as its coppices, grumbled as much as so good-natured and genial a person could grumble, when he found a little girl sharing his dominion, a cow grazing beside his pony, and vulgar cocks and hens hovering around the buck-wheat destined to feed his noble pheasants. Nobody that had been accustomed to see that paragon of keepers, so tall and manly, and pleasant-looking, with his merry eye, and his knowing smile, striding gaily along, in his green coat, and his gold-laced hat, with Neptune, his noble Newfoundland dog, (a retriever in the sporting world,) and his beautiful spaniel Flirt at his heels, could conceive how askew he looked, when he first found Hannah and Watch holding equal reign over his old territory, the Shaw common. Yes! Hannah hath had her enemies; but they are passing away. The old woman at the lodge is dead, poor creature; and Betty Barnes, having herself taken to tippling, has lost the few friends she once possessed, and looks, luckless wretch, as if she would soon die too!- and the keeper-why, he is not dead, or like to die; but the change that has taken place there is the most astonishing of all-except, perhaps, the change in Hannah herself. up CHILDREN OF THE VILLAGE. THE ROBINS. "WHAT have you got in your hat, Edward ?" said Arthur Maynard to his cousin Edward Stanhope, as they met one day in our village street, near which they both resided; "what can you have there? a bird's nest?" "Oh I hope not!" exclaimed Julia Maynard, who was walking with her brother and a younger sister, "taking bird's nests is cruel." “Cruel or not, Miss Julia," replied Edward, "a bird's nest it is. Look, Arthur," continued he, displaying a nest full of poor little unfledged creatures, opening four great mouths as wide as they could gape; "look, they are robins." "Robins robin redbreasts! the household bird! the friend of man!" cried Arthur; "take a robin's nest! oh, fie, fie!" "The robin red breast," said little Sophy Maynard, " that when the poor Children in the Wood were starved to death, covered them over with leaves. Did you never hear old nurse Andrews repeat the old ballad? I can almost say it myself: "No burial this pretty pair Of any man receives, Till Robin Redbreast painfully Did cover them with leaves,"shouted Sophy: "you that pretend to be so fond of poetry, to take a robin's nest." "Poetry!" rejoined Edward, contemptuously, "a penny ballad! an old woman's song! call that poetry!" "I like to hear it though," persisted little Sophy; "I had rather hear nurse Andrews repeat the Children in the Wood, than any thing; call it what names you like." “And it was but the other day," said Julia, "that papa made me learn some verses just to the same effect out of Mr. Lamb's Specimens. Did you ever hear them? Few damsels of twelve years old, generally a very pretty age, were less pretty than Hannah Bint. Short and stunted in her figure, thin in face, sharp in feature, with a muddled complexion, wild sunburnt hair, and eyes, whose very brightness had in them something startling, over-informed, super-subtle, too clever for her age, at twelve years old she had quite the air of a little old fairy. Now, at seventeen, matters are mended. Her complexion has cleared: her countenance hath developed itself; her figure has shot into height and lightness, and a sort of rustic grace; her bright, acute eye is softened and sweetened by the womanly wish to please; her hair is trimmed, and curled and brushed, with exquisite neatness; and her whole dress arranged with that nice attention to the becoming, the suitable both in form and texture, which would be called the highest degree of coquetry, if it did not deserve the better name of propriety. Never was such a transmogrification beheld. The lass is really pretty, Call to the robin red breast and the wren, and Ned Miles has discovered that she is so. Since o'er shady groves they hover, There he stands, the rogue, close at her side, And with flowers and leaves do cover The friendless bodies of unburied men. (for he hath joined her whilst we have been telling her little story, and the milking is Now I am quite sure that these lines are poover!) there he stands-holding her milk-etry; and, at all events, every body holds the pail in one hand, and stroking Watch with the other; whilst she is returning the compliment, by patting Neptune's magnificent head. There they stand, as much like lovers as may be; he smiling, and she blushing— | he never looking so handsome, nor she so pretty in all their lives. There they stand, in blessed forgetfulness of all except each other; as happy a couple as ever trod the earth. There they stand, and one would not disturb them for all the milk and butter in Christendom. I should not wonder if they were fixing the wedding-day. robin sacred for his social qualities, he is so tame, so confiding, so familiar; no one would ever think of taking his nest, even if bird'snesting were not the cruellest thing in the world," continued Julia, returning to her first exclamation. Every body cherishes the robin." 66 "So do I," replied her incorrigible cousin; "I am so fond of the robin and his note, that I mean to bring up all four of these young ones, and tame them, and make friends of them." "Put back the nest, and I will teach you a better way," said Arthur; "for we mean to tame some robins ourselves this summer." 66 "Put back the nest indeed!" rejoined Edward; "I must make haste home, and get the butler to give me a cage, and Fanny to help me to feed them. Put back the nest indeed!" and off ran the naughty taker of birds' nests, vainly pursued by little Sophy's chidings, by Julia's persuasions, by Arthur's remonstrances, and by the united predictions of all three that he would never rear the unfortunate younglings. Very true were these predictions. One by one, in spite of all the care of Edward and his sister Fanny, who crammed them twenty times a day with all sorts of food, proper or improper, bread, meat, eggs, herbs, and insects, with every mess, in short, that they had ever heard recommended for any bird; one by one the poor little shivering creatures, shivering although wrapt in lamb's-wool and swan'sdown, pined, and dwindled, and died; and Fanny, a kind-hearted little girl, fretted and cried; and Edward, not less vexed, but too proud to cry, grumbled at his ill-luck, and declared that he would never trouble himself with birds again as long as he lived. "I wonder how Arthur has succeeded with his !" thought he to himself; "I think he and the girls talked of getting some-but of course, they all died. I am sure no people could take more pains than Fanny and I. I'll never trouble myself with birds again." About two months after this soliloquy, the young Stanhopes received an invitation to dine with their cousins, for it was Sophy's birthday, and the children had a half-holiday; and after dinner they were allowed to eat their cherries and strawberries in their own verandah, a place they were all very fond of. And a very pretty place this verandah was. Fancy a deep shaded trellis running along one end of the house, covered with vines, passion-flowers, clematis, and jessamine, looking over gay flower-beds, the children's own flower-beds, to an arbour of honeysuckle, laburnum, and china-roses, which Arthur had made for Julia; clusters of green-house plants, their own pet geraniums, arranged round the pillars of the verandah; and the verandah itself, furnished with their own tables and chairs, and littered with their toys and their small garden tools: as pretty an out-of-door play-room as heart could desire. It was a fine sunny afternoon towards the end of June, and the young folks enjoyed the fruits and the flowers, and the sweet scent of the bean blossoms and the new-mown hay in the neighbouring fields, and were as happy as happy could be. At last, after the girls had pointed out their richest geraniums and largest heartsease, and they had been properly praised and admired, Arthur said, "I think it is time to show Edward our robins." And at the word, little Sophy began strewing bread crums at one end of the verandah as fast as her hands could go. "Bobby! Bobby! pretty Bobby!" cried Sophy; and immediately the prettiest_robin that ever was seen came flying out of the arbour towards her; not in a direct line, but zigzag as it were, stopping first at a rose tree, then swinging on the top of a lily, then perching on the branch of a campanula that bent under him-still coming nearer and nearer, and listening, and turning up his pretty head as Sophy continued to cry," Bobby! Bobby!" and sometimes bowing his body, and jerking his tail in token of pleased acknowledgement, until at last he alighted on the ground, and began picking up the bread crums with which it was strewed. Whilst presently two or three young robins with their speckled breasts (for the red feathers do not appear until they are three or four months old) came fluttering about the verandah, flying in and out quite close to the children, hopping round them, and feeding at their very feet; not shy at all, not even cautious like the old birds, who had seen more of the world, and looked at the strangers with their bright piercing eyes rather mistrustfully, as if they knew, that there were such things as little boys who take birds' nests, and little girls who keep birds in cages. Bobby! pretty Bobby!" continued Sophy, quite enchanted at the good conduct of her pets, and calling upon her cousins for their tribute of admiration. Fanny willingly expressed her delight; and Edward looking somewhat foolish, wondered how they became so tame. 66 66 We used to throw down the crums from breakfast and dinner in this place all the winter," said Julia; "the poor birds are so glad of them in the hard weather! And one particular robin used to come for them every day, and grew quite familiar; he would even wait here for us, and fly to meet us as soon as that quick eye of his spied a white frock turning the corner. So then we began to talk to him, and to feed him regularly.' "I always saved a great bit of my bread for Bobby," interrupted Sophy. "And he grew as tame as you see; and when he had young ones, he brought them here with him," resumed her sister. "You should have seen them the first day," said Sophy; "that was the prettiest sight. The little things did not know how to help themselves, so there they stood about, some on the geraniums and some on the rose trees, chirping, and opening their bills for the old ones to feed them; and the poor old birds flew about from one to the other with bread crums, not taking a morsel themselves. You cannot think how much the young ones ate! There was one great greedy fellow who perched on my rake, who made his poor papa bring him seven mouthfuls before he was satisfied. And now they are saucy! see how saucy they are!" |