THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND 
 MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID 
 
SKETCHES FROM NATURE 
 
 WITH PEN AND VEN01L 
 
SKETCHES 
 FROM NATURE 
 
 With Pen an& Pencil 
 
 BY LADY VERNEY 
 
 AUTHOR OF "STONE EDGE," &c. 
 
 LONDON 
 DALDY, ISBISTER & CO. 
 
 56, LUDGATE HILL 
 1877 
 
LONDON : 
 
 ^HINTED BY VIRTUE AND CO. LIMITED, 
 CITY BOAD. 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 nHHESE stray " Sketches " have been gathered out 
 of different homes. Many of them appeared in 
 " Good Words ; " several are now printed for the 
 first time. The five at the beginning of the second 
 part were published in a periodical destined for 
 younger readers. 
 
 " Sketches from Nature " have always a certain 
 charm for the maker of them, as in some degree 
 recalling the "Nature" which inspired them. If 
 they have something of the same effect on my 
 readers I can wish for nothing more. 
 
 M375913 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 OUR ANCESTORS ......... 
 
 1 
 
 THE HOME OF AX OLD WELSH SAINT 
 
 . 23 
 
 BEES IN THE PAbT AND PRESENT 
 
 . 38 
 
 ANTS . 
 
 61 
 
 TENDRILS AND CLIMBING PLANTS . . . . . 
 
 . 72 
 
 BEHOLD ALL CREATURES FOR OUR SPORT OR US!-: . 
 
 . 86 
 
 THE NAMES OF PLANTS 
 
 . 95 
 
 THE FATE OF PETS 
 
 . 106 
 
 A YOUNG INDIAN PRINCE 
 
 . 119 
 
 THANKSGIVING DAY 
 
 . 149 
 
 PART II. 
 
 
 THE DWARFS' FOREST . . 
 
 . 171 
 
 THE NIGHTINGALE'S NEST . . . . . . 
 
 . 178 
 
 THE LIGHTHOUSE DONKEY ....... 
 
 . 186 
 
 THE SHOVEL-NOSED SHARK 
 
 . 192 
 
 SWALLOWS .... 
 
 9Q1 
 
 A MAN OVERBOARD 
 
 . 212 
 
 COMPARATIVE COOKING 
 
 . 218 
 
 BIRDS OF PASSAGE . 
 
 . 228 
 
 LITTLE MARY CRADOCK 
 
 . 239 
 
 A PAIR OF FRIENDS 
 
 , 256 
 
OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 IT is only in districts so bare, rocky, and inac- 
 cessible as to be left somewhat in the state of 
 nature, that any traces can now be found of the 
 men who have preceded us in Great Britain. As 
 civilisation increases, the salutary superstitious awe 
 which has preserved to us the Cromlechs and the 
 Maenhirs dies away. The "Mne Maidens " in Corn- 
 wall are cut into gate-posts; a midshipman flings 
 down the great Druidical Logan-stone ; improving 
 farmers plough down Celtic camps and cart away 
 old British barrows ; so that the few remains, in situ, 
 which are still left to us become each year more 
 precious. 
 
 There is a bare mountain on Holyhead Island, 
 fronting the stormy Irish Sea, where the steep cliffs, 
 some seven hundred feet high, with strange contor- 
 tions of strata, are pierced and worried by the fierce 
 
 B 
 
'2 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 contending tides into weird caverns, only to be ap- 
 proached by water. In front, a long ragged edge of 
 black reef runs far out among the waves, over which 
 the boiling surf dashes, and the meeting currents 
 form a dangerous "race." The rough mountain side, 
 sloping to the south, is covered in autumn with a beau- 
 tiful diaper of bright pink and purple heather, looking 
 like velvet, golden gorse, and green fern, through 
 which pierce the sharp-edged crags. Here, just below 
 the highest point, backed behind to the north by the 
 inaccessible cliffs, and with a sort of terrace wall of 
 defence in front, looking west to the wide lonely sea 
 and the distant mountain range of Carnarvonshire to 
 the south, and commanding all approach by land, are 
 a number of rude circles of stone and earth, the 
 remains of the huts of some of our earliest ancestors. 
 
 The village, if so it can be called, at Ty Mawr seems 
 to have been a considerable one : above fifty huts can 
 be easily made out, and there are traces of more. 
 Some stand singly, some are in clusters, but arranged 
 without any plan. They are built of unhewn stones, 
 without mortar, the double walls filled in with sods 
 to keep out the wind, which would otherwise have 
 whistled through the dry masonry. These in the 
 memory of man were still breast-high. The circles 
 are about twelve or fifteen feet in diameter, and the 
 
OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 opening is always to the south or south-west. The 
 roofs seem to have been made of poles gathered to a 
 point like a tent, and covered with turf, or " stepped 
 
 BEEHIVE HUT. 
 
 over," each stone projecting beyond its neighbour till 
 all meet at the top. Very perfect specimens of these 
 " beehive huts" are still to be found in the Isle of 
 
4 SKETCHES FEOM NATUKE. 
 
 Arran, and on what is little more than a bare rock, 
 one of the Skelligs, off the coast of Kerry, where 
 they have been long preserved as the holy abodes of 
 anchorites. 
 
 Circular dwellings seem almost universal among 
 savage tribes, and Dr. Livingstone describes how 
 vainly he tried to teach his African natives to build 
 a square hut ; the moment his back was turned they 
 reverted to their old practice. 
 
 In the neighbourhood of Salisbury a curious variety 
 of the same form of construction has been found, 
 belonging to some troglodite tribe ; dome- shaped 
 round caves, wrought out 'of the drift-gravel, rest- 
 ing on chalk, singly, or in groups communicating 
 with each other, from six to fourteen feet in diameter. 
 In the recent survey of Palestine similar troglodite 
 abodes have been discovered, which are still inhabited 
 by men, goats, cows, and sheep, who live promiscuously 
 in circular or oval caves, rarely six feet high. "After 
 a downpour of rain, the filth, the damp, the smells, 
 and the. vermin in these holes make an English pig- 
 stye seem a palace in comparison with them." 
 
 The lake villages, built on platforms raised on piles 
 driven into the mud, remains of which have been 
 discovered in many of the Swiss lakes, were also 
 circular; they were made of a sort of basket-work 
 
 ' 
 
OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 twisted round more solid upright poles, and lined 
 with clay. 
 
 The Irish Cloghauns are of later date, but of the 
 same construction ; they have often a small inner pen, 
 without door or window, opening only into the larger 
 den. This is also found in the Welsh huts, and here 
 the dogs are supposed to have been kept. 
 
 " Our ancestors " must have been extraordinarily 
 hardy ; * there are no signs of any fireplace or exit for 
 smoke in the ordinary huts at Ty Mawr. The general 
 cooking must have been carried on in a large central 
 hut, in which three rude hearths were found, or out- 
 of-doors, as is done among the negroes. 
 
 Heaps of flat stones and round pebbles from the 
 shore, half calcined, lay within and without them, 
 which had evidently been used for the stone boiling 
 process, still to be seen among many savage tribes. 
 In the absence of metal of any kind, and where the 
 pottery is too rude and badly baked to stand the 
 action of fire, stones are heated red-hot and put into 
 
 * " The power of resisting cold among the iron men of Siberia at the pre- 
 sent day is very remarkable," observes "Wrangell. These are probably much 
 in the same stage of civilisation as our ancestors. Frequently, in the severest 
 cold, when their fire had long been extinguished, he has seen them with their 
 light jackets slipping off, and scarcely any clothing, sleeping quietly, com- 
 pletely exposed to the sky, and their bodies covered with a thick coat of rime. 
 Chest complaints and bronchial affections are unknown among them. Cold 
 alone is not so unhealthy as is commonly supposed. 
 
SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 water, in which small fish, grain, &c., can be cooked. 
 Fynes Morison describes such a process going on in 
 Ireland as late as 1600. For the cooking of large 
 animals a hole was made in the ground, lined with 
 
 COOKING HUT. 
 
 stones, and filled with hot embers ; these were then 
 brushed out, the meat put in, and covered over 
 with more hot stones, blazing heather and fern, 
 and lastly sods again. The juices are so well pre- 
 served by this process, that those who have tasted 
 
OUR ANCESTORS. i 
 
 the result in the South Sea Islands, &c., declare all 
 other cookery inferior to it. Another form of the 
 earth-oven is to line the hole with a hide which will 
 hold water ; this " paunch kettle" combines the ad- 
 vantages of boiling and baking. 
 
 We have forgotten the extreme difficulty of obtain- 
 ing fire in early times the laborious contrivances of 
 the rotating stick, the " fire-drill" with or without a 
 thong, still to be found among the Australians and 
 other savages, which must have been used by our 
 ancestors. "When we remember that flint, steel, and 
 tinder continued to be our own only device for the 
 purpose far on into this century, and that lucifer 
 matches date from only some thirty or forty years 
 ago, the progress of our race seems to have been slow 
 indeed. 
 
 The tools and weapons of this early period were of 
 flint, flaked to a point or an edge, an art still 
 practised by the " flint knappers" of Suffolk, who 
 make "strike o' lights" for the East and Brazil, and 
 flint locks for the old-fashioned gun. How these were 
 hafted might have been difficult to ascertain, as the 
 wooden handles have mostly perished ; but here again 
 the modern savage helps us to understand his proto- 
 type. On the next page is a celt made of greenstone, 
 brought from the Sandwich Islands, tied into a handle 
 
SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 of very hard wood by grass string. The Australians 
 use a strong resinous gum instead of the cord. 
 Sometimes the stone is forced into a socket of deer's 
 horn. With such weapons "our ancestors" must 
 have been among the most defenceless and helpless 
 
 STONE WEAPONS. 
 
 of animals, while the beasts with which they had to 
 contend were often larger and stronger than their 
 present representatives the great Irish elk, with 
 horns eleven feet across ; the mammoth, rhinoceros, 
 cave lions, hyenas, and bears, whose bones are found 
 
OUK ANCESTORS. 'J 
 
 associated with flint weapons in Great Britain ; together 
 with the urus, a primeval ox, which still existed in 
 Germany in the time of Csesar, and is described by 
 him as little less in size than an elephant; besides 
 the treacherous wolf, which seems to have inspired 
 the same horror and loathing in the old world as in 
 our own. It must have required an extraordinary 
 amount of courage and craft to attack such animals 
 as these, in the hand-to-hand struggles necessary 
 with missiles so blunt, and which could be thrown so 
 short a distance. "How do you kill?' 7 said a 
 traveller, by signs, to a savage, showing at the same 
 time that the point of his weapon could not penetrate 
 an animal's hide. The man pointed to the eye. 
 
 It was only, however, the heroes and braves who 
 would dare such encounters, and the misery and dread 
 endured by the rest of the tribe must have been great, 
 when searching for wild fruits or snaring small 
 animals in the thick forests, which even at the time 
 of the Eoman invasion still clothed the bleak hills and 
 dreary morasses in Anglesey and Holy head Island, 
 now singularly bare of trees, but with records of long 
 passed away "woods" and "groves" in the local names. 
 
 The large part which the fear of wild beasts bore in 
 our forefathers' lives, even in far higher civilisations 
 than ours, may be seen when Orion, the mighty 
 
10 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 hunter, is promoted to a place among the stars for 
 his great feats in the chase ; and in the " glorious " 
 feats of Theseus and other godlike heroes of the old 
 mythologies, whose great work has ever been the' 
 destruction of huge lions, bears, &c., the dragons and 
 other mythical creatures, growths of the terrified ima- 
 ginations of the helpless savages around them.* Of 
 the twelve labours of Hercules, nine concern the 
 quelling of wild beasts of some kind the Nemsean 
 lion, the Lernsean hydra, the stag with golden feet, 
 the wild boar, the carnivorous birds, a " prodigious 
 wild bull " in Crete, Diomed's mares, which were fed 
 on human flesh, the monster Geryon and his flock, 
 " which eat men," and lastly Cerberus, the three- 
 headed beast of death. These were slain by main 
 force with his club or by stratagem ; his arrows never 
 kill, and of weapons he is hardly supposed by the 
 story to have possessed more than our own savages. 
 
 In natural caverns and rock shelters, in holes 
 scooped out of softer materials, in lake villages and 
 beehive huts, squatted ".our ancestors," flaking their 
 flint knives, chipping at their arrows and spear-heads, 
 
 * The descriptions of the dragon, or "worm," destroyed hy St. George the 
 one which burst open after swallowing St. Margaret! and the "dragon of 
 Wantley," nearer home, bear so curious a resemblance to the strange reptiles 
 of an earlier period, the Plesiosaurus, &c., that one is tempted to ask whether 
 a stray specimen may not have survived in some out-of-the-way jungle till 
 the arrival of man upon the earth. 
 
OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 11 
 
 binding them to their handles with sinews, and 
 rubbing their stone and bone tools to an edge. Time 
 was of no object to them, and, indeed, any amount of 
 it was well spent which produced a really serviceable 
 
 liiil^^ 
 
 FLINT AND STONE WEAPONS. 
 
 weapon. Indeed we must grant them considerable 
 ingenuity, when with these rudest of implements they 
 somehow managed to cut down timber, scoop out 
 caves, dress posts for huts, grub up roots, prepare 
 firewood, dig peat, kill animals, cut them up and 
 
12 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 scrape their flesh from the bones, and even to nse for 
 agricultural purposes. 
 
 The dwellers at Ty Mawr were already in the 
 second stage at least of the race. The earliest men of 
 whom we have any trace seemed to have lived by 
 hunting and fishing alone, to have cultivated no grain, 
 and had no domestic animals, and to have possessed no 
 means of self-defence except such as was afforded by 
 the inaccessible places they resorted to. But some 
 rude agriculture must have been practised near these 
 huts, for a number of stone querns, hand-mills, and 
 mortars were found here. The grain, probably 
 parched, was rubbed into a coarse powder on a saddle- 
 shaped mealing- stone, or bruised with pestles in 
 shallow stone mortars. A quern was the next step. 
 Even now we have only improved the use of the same 
 motive power. Water-mills, wind-mills, steam-mills, 
 are only modifications of the old principle;. Some of 
 the American tribes have not even now reached the 
 level of the quern, and pound their maize to the 
 present day. 
 
 There were several varieties of these grain-rubbers 
 found at Ty Mawr. A slab of stone hollowed towards 
 the middle by use in grinding, with a rounded saddle 
 upon it ; mortars of different shapes ; a circular disk 
 of stone, concave, rotating on a lower convex one, by 
 
OUR ANCESTORS. 13 
 
 means of a wooden handle, which is worked by two 
 persons. These sit with the mill between them, and 
 feed it with grain through a hole in the uppermost 
 slab, the meal falling between them, as may be seen 
 to this day in Africa, where Sir 8. Baker says he 
 must have eaten pecks of dirt from the coarse sand- 
 stone rubbed in with the meal. It was the common 
 mill used in the East : " Two women shall be grind- 
 ing at a mill," is the familiar instance given of 
 persons in the closest possible proximity. 
 
 The daily providing of a sufficient amount of meal 
 prepared in this manner entails hard and incessant 
 labour, and is generally done by the women. It is told 
 of St. Columba, when studying under St. Finian, 
 where the duty of grinding the corn for the religious 
 community was done, as was usual, by the younger 
 students, how he always got through the work when 
 it fell to his lot so quickly, that his companions com- 
 plained, jealously saying " he had surely had the help 
 of an angel in his task." 
 
 The meal, when kneaded, was made into flat cakes, 
 covered over among the hot stones, and heaped with 
 blazing heath, a variety of which rude baking still 
 survives in old Welsh farmhouses. 
 
 As for their other food, remains of shell-fish were 
 found in the huts, and there is a small bay or port 
 
14 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 among the rocks, where probably "our ancestors" put 
 to sea in calm weather to fish, in some variety of the 
 coracles of hide stretched over wicker-work in which 
 frail barks, at a very much later period, St. Columba 
 crossed over from Ireland to lona. 
 
 The difficulty of procuring food must have been 
 tremendous in winter when the sea was rough and 
 the summer stores exhausted ; but once a year at least 
 there must have been plenty to eat at Ty Mawr, when 
 the sea-birds, which visit the coast by thousands, lay 
 their eggs on every corner and narrow chink and ledge 
 of the precipitous rocks to the north. Daring clim- 
 bers, probably helped by a hide rope from above, 
 swinging themselves up and down, as now at St. 
 Kilda's, "hanging on by their eyelids," would soon 
 secure a feast for the whole community. 
 
 Spindle-wiiorls were found in the huts, therefore 
 some primitive spinning was practised there with wool 
 or flax, and some sort of weaving from the fibre, such 
 as is found among the relics preserved in the mud of 
 the lake villages, which are our best storehouses of 
 knowledge as to the implements and food of the Stone 
 and Bronze periods. 
 
 Next to these in interest come the objects found in 
 burial-mounds and places of interment. With the 
 dead men and women were placed the things which 
 
OUR ANCESTORS. 15 
 
 would prove most useful to them in the next world, 
 as they had been in this, together with the most 
 valuable of their possessions of all kinds, their best 
 tools, pottery, and ornaments. 
 
 An elaborate necklace, or rather gorget of jet, was 
 found, with two urns, in a rocky grave on the Holy- 
 head Mountain. The forms of the vases, whatever 
 
 PRIMITIVE VASE FROM A HARROW. 
 
 may have been their object, whether incense cups, food 
 vessels for the dead, &c., taken out of the Welsh 
 tumuli, are often in good taste, so are the borders, 
 running lines, dots, &c. upon them ; they are in 
 general very rudely baked, and sometimes seem to 
 have been fired merely by being filled with hot ashes, 
 and to have been supported by basket-work. There 
 are, however, no designs upon them of any kind, and 
 
16 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 no such proficiency in art as is shown in a spirited 
 relief of a reindeer scratching its ear with its hind foot on 
 a bone implement found in an Auvergne cave, and now 
 in the Salisbury Museum. The drawing of this is full 
 of talent and of the observation of nature, though the 
 owner must have been a degree lower in civilisation than 
 an Esquimaux, as it was clear from the remains found 
 with it that his tribe possessed no domestic animals. 
 
 It is beyond measure difficult for us to realise 
 existence without metal of any kind ; with no nails, 
 needles, pins, or screws ; with nothing but strings 
 to fasten together either the poles of the hut, the 
 ends of a garment, the shaft and head of an arrow, 
 the handle and celt of the axe, or the parts of a 
 canoe. It is almost impossible to strip our minds 
 down to the level of the dwellers in these low-domed 
 earth and stone huts : with no light except from 
 the door, probably closed at night by a skin ; with 
 no warmth but from the stones used in cooking, their 
 own animal heat, and that of the dogs (which, how- 
 ever, is such as to make an Esquimaux hut almost 
 unbearable to Europeans) ; with no air such as we 
 should consider essential to life. In such a den, 
 huddled together like animals, crouched the skin- 
 painted, half-naked savages from whom we all trace 
 our descent. A strange life, fighting with the ele- 
 
OUR ANCESTORS. 17 
 
 merits, must these early men have led in winter on 
 that exposed spot, amongst the wild winds and storms 
 which haunt the bare summit of the cliffs. Driven by 
 the stern, relentless, impalpable, invisible, resistless 
 power of air ? wrapped often for weeks in a fearful 
 curtain of sleet and foam, rain and spray, the sky and 
 sea mingling in one wild cold whirlwind of fury and 
 noise, whether they turned to the water or the land 
 in their efforts to obtain food, it is easy to see how the 
 beliefs in the Prince of the Powers of the Air of old 
 mythologies must have grown up in such places 
 of spirits who walked upon the wings of the wind, 
 such as the Valkyrs, messengers of Odin, who rode 
 through the air over the sea on shadowy horses, from 
 whose manes fell hail on the mountains and dew in 
 the valleys, or who came surrounded by fiery lances in 
 the Aurora Borealis, which was the special servant of 
 the god of battles. Or of the giant who ruled the 
 winter, sitting at the " top of the North," in the 
 shape of an eagle, surrounded by ice and snow, the 
 waving of whose wings produced the bleak north 
 wind. Heimdall, the heavenly watchman, standing 
 on the rainbow Bifrost, the bridge by which the gods 
 visit earth, is a fairer vision. He " could hear the 
 grass grow in spring, and the wool on the sheep's 
 back." The great serpent, or "worm," Jorimin- 
 
 c 
 
18 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 gandur, who was cast out of heaven by Odin, and 
 surrounds the world with its tail in its jowl, sul- 
 lenly waiting revenge at the last day, is commemorated 
 in the name of the promontory almost in sight of the 
 huts the Great Orme's Head.* His turning makes 
 the storms to rise and the sea to roar ; " the worm 
 lies and rocks, 77 and the waters heave. 
 
 Nature-worship takes strange forms in different 
 soils, but the principle in all is the same the ward- 
 ing off of the hostile influences of baleful spirits 
 by sacrifices and rites, generally through the medium 
 of some " intermediate man," priest or sorcerer, who 
 obtains frightful ascendancy over his tribe by his 
 power of propitiating the gods of the storm, the light- 
 ning and sea who can stay disease, can grant success 
 in the chase, and secure the good bearing of the crops 
 of grain and wild fruits. 
 
 A very remarkable museum of prehistoric remains 
 has been recently collected at Salisbury, the neigh- 
 bourhood of which is peculiarly rich in them. On 
 its shelves spoils from all countries are to be found 
 the scanty relics from the dwellings of the living 
 and the dead from Tumuli, Barrows, " Lowes " in 
 Derbyshire and " Carnedds " in Wales ; from Danish 
 K6ckenmoddens,| the mounds of shells and refuse 
 
 * Orm is Danish for worm. f Kitchen dunghills. 
 
OUR ANCESTORS. 19 
 
 left by fish-eating tribes on the shores of the Baltic ; 
 from Lake villages in Switzerland ; from Crannoges, or 
 artificial islands of refuge, in Ireland and the Spree 
 Wald of Prussia; from cave dwellings in Auvergne, 
 Belgium, and Great Britain ; with a rich collection 
 from Mexico and the United States, illustrated by 
 specimens of similar implements, ornaments, and 
 pottery from modern savage tribes. 
 
 The relics of a past Stone Age, says Mr. Tylor, are 
 to be found underlying the civilisation and savagery 
 of every country, the most modern and the most 
 ancient alike. We have but to search, and traces 
 of the London mammoth and the London savage are 
 unearthed under Gray's Inn Lane, in the "drift;" 
 while similar remains are discovered in Etruria and 
 America, in India, Northern Asia, Assyria, Egypt, 
 and Africa. 
 
 It is not possible for us to make these dry bones 
 live, to conceive of the life of the past, without 
 reference to present forms of the same customs still to 
 be found lingering among modern savages. 
 
 On the other hand, the existence of many strange 
 superstitions among ourselves can only be explained 
 by the study of the notions haunting the early 
 twilight of our race, and remaining to our own day 
 in curious forms of what Mr. Tylor calls " Survivals." 
 
20 SKETCHES FEOM NATURE. 
 
 These are sometimes pathetic, as when the war-horse 
 is led at the funeral of a soldier relic of the times 
 when the favourite charger was sacrificed at the 
 grave of a chief, as at the burial of Patroclus. The 
 actual sacrifice of a horse took place at Treves, at the 
 funeral of a general, as late as 1781. Sometimes they 
 are ludicrous, as when the belief in dreams and the 
 influence of the planets causes Zadkiel's Almanack 
 to be sold by thousands ; or in the salutation still 
 preserved in most countries after a sneeze, which the 
 savage believes to intimate the entrance of a spirit ; 
 the drinking of healths, survivals of the libation to 
 gods and men. Sometimes they are pernicious, as 
 in the fear of saving a drowning man, still haunting 
 many sea-coasts, a dismal result of the belief that the 
 water spirit was angry when his victim was snatched 
 from him ; and as in the odious spirit-rapping, every 
 particular of which can be paralleled among the rites 
 of sorcerers and diviners among savages at the present 
 and in past times. 
 
 Strange revelations rise up for us out of the graves 
 where they have been hidden, who can say for how 
 many thousand years ? Mr. Bateman, the great autho- 
 rity on tumuli, barrows, and interments, in Derby- 
 shire and elsewhere, shows that sacrifices of slaves 
 at the death of a chief, -suttee, infanticide, grisly and 
 
OUR ANCESTORS. 21 
 
 cruel rites of all kinds, were carried on among " our 
 ancestors." The life which they led must indeed 
 have been a gloomy, hard, and grovelling one. In 
 perpetual danger, and always on the look-out for 
 evil of all kinds ; harassed by suspicions and anxieties ; 
 suffering from hunger and cold, from the elements, 
 " enemies," and wild beasts; giving way to every 
 passion, as is seen to be the case among their modern 
 representatives ; ill-treating the weak, the women^ 
 and children, on the smallest provocation; gorging 
 themselves when they had food, and suffering 
 sullenly when they had none. With no rest to their 
 souls from the machinations of evil spirits, which 
 " swarm in the dark;" from " witches who ride at 
 night on wolves, with snakes for bridles," in gloomy, 
 inaccessible forests; from the demons of the woods, 
 the winds, and the waters, whose ill-will brought 
 down disease, sorrow, and misfortunes of all kind 
 upon them, and always on the watch to propitiate 
 them and their interpreters, the wizards and medicine 
 men, by dismal sacrifices. 
 
 Such an existence as this must indeed have 
 been but little better materially than that of the 
 beasts, while the faculty of looking forward to evil, 
 and remembering sorrow and pain in the past, give 
 our race powers of suffering such as no animal pos- 
 
22 OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 sesses. Our own civilisation is but skin deep, our 
 Christianity as yet more in word than in truth ; but 
 we may thank God with all our hearts fervently, that 
 at least we have risen out of the state of "our 
 ancestors," inhabiting the hut circles at Ty Mawr, on 
 the bleak Holyhead mountain. 
 
OUR ANCESTORS. SECOND PERIOD. 
 
 THE HOME OF AN OLD WELSH SAINT. 
 
 ITHHE accounts of the lives of the (very numerous) 
 -L Welsh saints which are to be found scattered up 
 and down the "Book of Llandaff," and similar chro- 
 nicles, are as full of puerile miracles and pointless 
 wonders as those contained in the sixty volumes of 
 "Acta Sanctorum" collected already by the Bol- 
 landists. 
 
 There is, however, one name which occurs again 
 and again in the Welsh records, and always in con- 
 nection with some useful work. No miracles are 
 reported of St. Seiriol, but we hear of the college 
 which he founded, the roads which he made, the 
 works which he fostered. 
 
 Dr. Livingstone, pleading for the multifarious im- 
 provements which true missionary enterprise should 
 
24 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 bring about, says that the monks were the first to 
 introduce decent agriculture into England and else- 
 where ; they brought in fruit-trees, such as apples 
 and vines, garden flowers and vegetables, beehives, 
 water-mills for grinding corn, and some sort of rude 
 mining. They first emancipated their serfs, and 
 taught them ; they established in their cloisters dis- 
 pensaries for the cure of the sick, almshouses for the 
 infirm, and nurseries of learning. Seiriol was a 
 missionary of the true type. 
 
 His home, the Cor* Seiriol, is situated on the bare 
 bleak point of Penmon in Anglesey, where the 
 skeleton rock pierces through the thin covering of 
 soil and scanty herbage, running out far into the 
 lonely sea. On the northern side it seems as if one 
 were reaching the end of the world, but towards the 
 straits on the southern slope lies a little bosom or 
 combe sheltered in the low hillside, and raised on a 
 shelf above a small bay. Here nestles a group of 
 ruins, looking older than the hills themselves, of a 
 Priory and the " Capel Seiriol'' (part of the church, 
 however, has been rebuilt at a much later date). 
 The stones are black with age, put in without mortar, 
 and seem to be bound together by the ivy, trunks of 
 which are so large that they almost look like trees. 
 
 * Cor, or Bangorj simply means a college. 
 
THE HOME OF AN OLD WELSH SAINT. 25 
 
 They were, however, built many centuries after the 
 rude constructions of St. Seiriol, which indeed were 
 probably only of " wattle and dab," ozierwork and 
 mud, as the palace of " King Howel the Good" at 
 Tare is described to have been in the sixth century 
 "in common with the Welsh and Breton churches." 
 
 The walls of the Priory and of the older part of the 
 Church are so thick, and the windows so small, that 
 the place seems to have been intended partly as a 
 refuge to be defended against the pirates who might 
 make a descent on that exposed promonotory. A 
 tiny cloister with round arches, ornamented with rude 
 dog-toothed and zigzag mouldings, adjoins the church, 
 and a font, like an Egyptian altar, is just visible in 
 the darkness of an inner sanctuary. The whole stands 
 on a paved terrace which is approached by a long 
 flight of stone steps. 
 
 Below is a large dovecote, a columbarium, square 
 and squat, of the most solid construction, roofed with 
 stones up to a point, with no timber of any kind 
 employed, and finished off with a tiny belfry. This 
 belongs to the twelfth century ; the ruins are supposed 
 to be earlier still, but the date is difficult to ascertain. 
 
 Seiriol belongs to the border-land between legend 
 and history. He is supposed to have lived in the 
 days of " Maelgyn Gwinedd, who was king of North 
 
26 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 Wales when Arthur, son of Uther Pendragon, reigned 
 in Britain. " The bard " Taliessin, l the radiant front,' 
 1 a golden-tongued knight of the Bound Table,' " is 
 called the Welsh "poet laureate ! " Maelgyn, who is 
 described as " sagacious, bold, and rigorous," in the 
 " Black Book " of Basingwerk Abbey, is said to have 
 founded the Priory, dedicated to St. Mary, about 540, 
 and to lie buried in the " Priest's Island," on the other 
 side the point. Seiriol was one of the " seven blessed 
 cousins of the Island of Britain." The Welsh dealt 
 much in the sacred numbers of 7 and 3 in their 
 commemorative sayings and triads. Another of the 
 seven was St. David, Dewi, or " the fat," by no means 
 a heroical designation for the patron saint of Wales. 
 
 The College on Penmon Cor Seiriol "became so 
 famous that the men of Llychlyn (Scandinavia), who 
 were settled in the Isle of Man and Scotland, resorted 
 thither in great numbers for useful and religious 
 knowledge. This and the School of Beuno " (another 
 of the cousins) " being the most celebrated for learning 
 of all in North Wales." 
 
 St. Cubi, " grandson of Geraint, King of Cornwall," 
 also one of " the seven," had founded a similar society 
 on the Holyhead mountain, at the other extremity of 
 the island of Anglesey, where, with the exaggeration 
 found in all the stories, five hundred students were 
 
THE HOME OF AN OLD WELSH SAINT. 27 
 
 said to have collected. The two heads (and cousins) 
 used to meet halfway between their homes, to discuss 
 the affairs of their colleges, " at Llanerchymeth, 
 where are two handsome - wells, ten yards apart, 
 Ffynnon Seiriol and Ffynnon Gubi. Here until late 
 years a great concourse of people used to resort, to 
 wash off their various diseases." " And because 
 Cubi's journey was from west to east, so that he had 
 the sun in his face both coming and going, he was 
 called the yellow-faced, while Seiriol, travelling from 
 east to west, had it always at his back, and was called 
 Seiriol the Fair." 
 
 The old Celtic fountain worship seems to have 
 passed on in Wales into the new religion, and almost 
 every church there has a holy well near it; some- 
 times it is a " cursing well," where a pin thrown in 
 with the proper imprecations will bring down all sorts 
 of evil on man and beast, sometimes a " wishing well," 
 sometimes it is good for the sickness of men, some- 
 times of beasts. " To invoke the grace of God, and of 
 the blessed so and so, on the cattle, with an offering 
 at his well," is a common formula concerning a saint. 
 
 Seiriol' s other well at Penmon was a " wishing 
 well," as was Cubi's on Holyhead " mountain," where 
 the spell is good to the present day. It consists in 
 taking up water from the spring at the bottom of a 
 
28 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 steep track in your two hands, and carrying it to the 
 altar of his now ruined chapel without spilling it. 
 " You then will marry your love." 
 
 The popularity of the saint is shown in an ancient 
 Welsh poem, which tells how the mendicant friars of 
 a later date hawked about images of Seiriol and other 
 saints, and sold them as charms, requiring in exchange 
 cheese, bacon, wool, and corn. 
 
 " One bore by turns the blessed Curig " (the saint 
 of Capel Curig), "under the folds of his mantle. 
 Another youth carried Seiriol and nine cheeses in his 
 bosom." 
 
 The whole island was then still covered with thick 
 forests ; the dark groves mentioned by Tacitus, de- 
 stroyed by Agricola, must have grown again, for 
 Edward I. is said, in the " History of the Princes," to 
 have " cut his way through the woods of Mona," and 
 Sir John Pryse, in the life of Hugh, Earl of Chester, 
 says that the King of Man used to send for timber 
 to Mona. Large trunks of beech and other trees are 
 found in the bogs at this day.* 
 
 Beyond the promontory is a small rocky island, 
 
 * It would be curious to ascertain the reason why the neighbourhood of 
 the open sea was no obstacle to the growth of great woods in the older world. 
 The "immense forests" on the flats of Holland (relics only of which now 
 remain at the Hague and Haarlem) enabled the Batavian tribes long to with- 
 stand the Romans ; but it is now as difficult to make them grow there as in 
 Anglesey, where out of shelter. 
 
THE HOME OF AN OLD WELSH SAINT. 29 
 
 " called the Priests' Island, because many bodies of 
 saints are deposited there, and no woman is suffered 
 to enter it," says Giraldus Cambrensis, in the account 
 of his tour through Wales in 1188. The remains of 
 a small ruined chapel tower are still- to be seen there, 
 with some curious interments made in a circle, with 
 the heads outside. " The small island almost adjoining 
 to Anglesey is inhabited by hermits living by the 
 work of their hands and serving God. It is strange 
 that when any discord of human passions arises among 
 them, all their provisions are devoured and infested 
 by a species of small mice, with which the island 
 abounds, but when the discord ceases they are no 
 longer molested," goes on Giraldus. 
 
 The difficulty of obtaining provisions on this barren 
 rock must have greatly enhanced the privations and, 
 probably, the sanctity of the hermits * they lived 
 chiefly on fish, the wild fowl, which are almost uneat- 
 able, and their eggs. The passage between them and 
 the main island was wide enough to make it impos- 
 sible to reach them when the weather was stormy, in 
 canoes hollowed out of the trunk of a tree, or coracles 
 made of wicker-work covered with skins,* so that their 
 supplies must often have reached starvation point. 
 
 The hermits were succeeded by the puffins. Priest- 
 
 * One of the miracles of St. Cadoc is " putting to sea in a boat without skins." 
 
30 SKETCHES FROM NATUKE. 
 
 holme became Puffins' Island ; and these again, in the 
 struggle for existence, were ousted by the rabbits, 
 who now reign supreme. 
 
 The hermits were evidently an offshoot from the 
 main establishment at Penmon, which "was granted 
 with its appurtenances to the Prior and Black Canons 
 of St. Augustine in the seventeenth year of Edward I." 
 " Capel Seiriol was liberally endowed by Llewelyn 
 the Great." Eichard II. was also a benefactor; he 
 gave the Prior two livings, "which he served with 
 very great favour and credit." 
 
 The hermits were often called " Culdees, signifying 
 separated or espoused to God, and were an order of 
 lay religious monks or presbyters, governed by an 
 abbot or head chosen by themselves. Their churches 
 are in obscure corners and solitary places, having 
 commonly wells of clear water near them." The 
 Culdees are said to have "consulted more their own 
 retiredness of life than the convenience of congrega- 
 tions," which certainly was peculiarly the case with 
 the dwellers on this barren rock. " One Seiriol," 
 says Leland, writing in Henry VIII.'s time, "lived 
 on the island as a hermit in the sixth century ; " but 
 if he was ever there at all, it must have been very 
 seldom he was far too busy with his college to spend 
 much time in such barren work. " He had also a 
 
THE HOME OF AN OLD WELSH SAINT. 31 
 
 hermitage at Penmaenmawr, the place being then an 
 uncouth desert with steep rocks, inaccessible owing to 
 their steepness, and the woods so thick that if a man 
 entered them he could see neither sky nor firmament." 
 [The whole coast is now one long series of watering- 
 places, set with trim villas, lodging-houses, and hotels, 
 while the mountains themselves are entirely bare of 
 trees.] " Across the strait did Seiriol cause a pave- 
 ment to be made, whereupon he might walk from his 
 church at Prestholme to his chapel at Penmaenmawr, 
 which pavement may at this day be discovered when 
 the sea is clear, if a man liste to go in a boate to see 
 it. Sythence thys great and lamentable inundation of 
 Cantrew Gwalodd, the way and passage being stopt in 
 the strait, in regard the sea was come in, and beat 
 upon the rocks of Penmaenmawr, this holy man 
 Seiriol, like a good hermit, did cause a way to be 
 broken and cut through the main rock, which is the 
 only way to pass that strait that the king's post hath 
 to ride, to and from Ireland." 
 
 Camden's account of the place in 1586 is : " To 
 the east lies Inis Legod, that is the Isle of Mice, and 
 under that Priestholme, i.e., the isle of Priests, where 
 I saw nothing but the lower steeple of St. Cyriac's 
 (sic) chapel, visible at a great distance. The neigh- 
 bours report incredible things of the infinite breed of 
 
32 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 sea-fowls here; and what's no less strange, that a 
 causey went from hence through the very sea to the 
 foot of that huge mountain Pen Maen Mawr, for the 
 convenience of such as came in pilgrimage hither." 
 Evidently a tradition of the earlier state of the coast 
 before Anglesey was cut off from the mainland by 
 some great geological convulsion. 
 
 The extreme importance of roads for the civilisation 
 of a country is nearly forgotten in the present day in 
 England, where they have come to be considered as a 
 matter of course, but with the exception of the great 
 Eoman lines of communication they hardly can be 
 said to have existed much more than sixty or seventy 
 years, when Telford designed and carried out some of 
 the most important of our highways. 
 
 At the beginning of this century the road round 
 Penmaenmawr is described as " a mountainous pass, no 
 wall between the narrow path and the precipice over- 
 hanging the sea ; the trembling traveller " (on horse- 
 back, of course, no carriages were possible here) " was 
 under the neccessity of leading his horse over rugged 
 and slippery steps cut in the rock, beetling crags 
 over his head, and foaming waves lashing the gigantic 
 mountain side. It was a tremendous scene when 
 we passed, the sky like a dark ceiling, the wind 
 terrific," &c. 
 
THE HOME OF AN OLD WELSH SAINT. 33 
 
 " During the last twenty years of the last century," 
 according to another account, " the only possible mode 
 of travelling in Wales or of the transmission of goods 
 and parcels was by the pack-horse. When my friend 
 went to school in Shrewsbury, he was given in charge 
 to the carrier and mounted on one of his train of 
 horses. As the journey took four or five days there 
 were places of rest on the road, like an Eastern 
 caravanserai. The sign of the l Packhorse,' at Welsh- 
 pool, was a well-known and established hostelry." 
 
 " A Cambro Briton, versed in pedigree, 
 Upon a cargo of famed Cestrian cheese 
 High overshadowing, rides." 
 
 Seiriol, as " a good saint indeed," seems to have done 
 his best for his country in the matter of roads, as in- 
 other respects. What must have been the state of 
 civilisation and the condition of the people whom he 
 had to deal with is shown in the celebrated personages 
 chosen to be immortalised in the different " Triads : " 
 " the three bloodstained chiefs of the Island of Britain ; " 
 the three discolourers of the Severn, of ditto ; the three 
 Viragoes ; the three arrant drunkards one of whom, 
 " the king of Gwyddno, in a fit of intoxication, let in 
 the sea through the dams which secured Cantrew y 
 Gwaelod (now the bay of Cardigan), whereby the 
 whole country was inundated and sixteen cities 
 
 D 
 
34 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 destroyed ; " this was said to have happened in 520. 
 The massacres in the bloody battles are dwelt upon 
 and exaggerated with evident pleasure: "fifteen 
 thousand men were slain" in such a combat, ten 
 thousand in another; " the ranks fell as the corn in 
 harvest beneath the hand of the reaper," chants one 
 poem. The saints must indeed have been valuable as 
 representing milder manners and a higher ideal of life 
 when oppression, rapine, and murder were thus ram- 
 pant on the earth. At a later time "the Church" 
 took care to profit by the remorse she awakened in the 
 consciences of her penitents, and the amount of the 
 penalties she exacted for the foul crimes of violence 
 which were common may be read in the long recital of 
 " uncias " of land thus acquired which are recorded in 
 the "Book of Llandaff" and elsewhere. Still it must 
 be remembered in her favour, that she exercised nearly 
 the only police which was possible in those times, and 
 constituted the only defence of the poor and weak 
 against the tyranny of the strong and powerful. 
 Anglesey, whether or no from the influence of her 
 enlightened saints, seems to have been particularly 
 well looked after : not a beggar was to be seen there, 
 says Giraldus. 
 
 Our pilgrimage to Penmon was made in the 
 autumn. Beyond the point lay the sharp reefs, the 
 
THE HOME OF AN OLD WELSH SAINT. 35 
 
 stern rocky headlands where shipwrecks are common 
 even at the present day, with the warning beacon of a 
 lighthouse. The avenue of old thorns which led 
 up to the Priory was so hung with red berries that 
 they looked like the great v fuchsias with which the 
 cottage gardens on that sheltered coast are full ; 
 a row of walnuts remaining from the old monk's 
 orchard threw their shadows over the green sward 
 round the ruins, flights of pigeons were tumbling 
 and cooing about the dove-tower, the ducks were 
 diving in the little monastery fish-ponds, and in 
 the little wood behind, whose gnarled trees were 
 protected by the hill from the violent salt sea- 
 winds which swept the point above, SeirioFs 
 " wishing- well " came welling up out of the living 
 rock as pure and abundant as when the old saint 
 had prayed over it ; the extreme retirement and 
 stillness of the place were very striking it was 
 indeed "a home of ancient peace." A pair of old 
 Spanish chestnuts and a group of lofty ash stood on 
 the green slopes to the sea, between whose trunks the 
 great Penmaenmawr, standing up out of the sea 1,500 
 feet nearly sheer, and her sisters, the whole range of 
 Snowdonia on the other side the Straits, the majestic 
 mountains drawn in pale blue and grey tints, were 
 dirnly seen in the bright, delicate autumn mist, laced 
 
36 "SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 as it were with sunshine. Little fishing-vessels with 
 brown and white sails and black hulls sailed by, 
 reflected in the calm sea. It was so still that the 
 poppling sound of the wavelets below falling, " just 
 where a reach of silver sand marks where the water 
 meets the land," could be distinctly heard where we 
 stood, while flights of terns sat on the shallows 
 where the smooth yellow sandbanks were gradually 
 showing their backs like huge sea monsters, ||ind 
 the white gulls hovered over our heads. It was the 
 very perfection of a place of seclusion from the world, 
 and quiet leisure for the sake of contemplation and 
 study. 
 
 Presently came up a puffing, snorting, inharmonious 
 black steam-tug, leaving a long streamer of dirty 
 smoke behind it, as it brought along a couple of 
 much larger vessels, doing its work against both tide 
 and wind, but making itself eminently disagreeable, 
 " explaining its views," " announcing its objects;" 
 while a little cutter just beyond lay behind a head- 
 land nearly becalmed, her white sails all set, trying 
 slowly and leisurely to tack to and fro. It was the 
 difference between the ideal of the past and the 
 present. The "separating one's self to God" of 
 the Culdees, or the fussy, hurrying, bustling, noisy 
 life of action which we all lead. 
 
THE HOME OF AN OLD WELSH SAINT. 37 
 
 Still the objects of good men even in such different 
 periods of the world's history must always be the 
 same, however their means of arriving at them may 
 change; and standing thus on his beautiful "home," 
 it was pleasant to know how much there is still in 
 common between the best work of the present day 
 and that of the old saint, philanthropist, road-maker, 
 well digger, schoolmaster, and physician, Seiriol, and 
 to feel how truly he was indeed a " man of God." 
 
BEES IN THE PAST AND PKESENT, 
 
 " So work the honey bees ; 
 Creatures that by rule in nature teach 
 The art of order to a peopled kingdom. 
 They have a king, and officers of sorts : 
 Where some like magistrates correct at home, 
 Others like merchants venture trade abroad, 
 Others like soldiers, armed in their stings, 
 Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds, 
 Which pillage they, with merry march bring home 
 To the tent royal of their emperor ; 
 Who, busied in his majesty, surveys 
 The singing masons building roofs of gold, 
 
BEES IN THE PAST AND PRESENT. 39 
 
 The civil citizens kneading up the honey, 
 The poor mechanic porters crowding in 
 Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate ; 
 The sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum, 
 Delivering o'er to executors pale 
 The lazy yawning drone. 
 
 Thus doth heaven divide 
 
 The state of man in divers functions." 
 
 Henry V. 
 
 IT was " high. " summer ; the air smelt like a nosegay 
 with the June flowers gorse and broom, the late 
 May and the early honeysuckle as I rode over the 
 wide wild sweeps of the New Forest to a little island 
 of cultivated ground in the middle of the bare heath. 
 It looked as if it might have been enclosed from the 
 waste somewhere about the time of the Eed King 
 boundaries are very ancient in those parts, and changes 
 slow. The family of the man Perkins who picked up 
 the body of Bufus, and carried it in his cart to Win- 
 chester, still inhabit the same little freehold patch, near 
 the spot where the dead tyrant was left lying after 
 Tyrrell' s shot had delivered the land from his oppres- 
 sion. 
 
 Two very large oaks and an ancient yew bore their 
 witness to the age of the little home surrounded by 
 its quickset hedge full of ferns. An orchard of 
 merries (the small black cherry, merise) and old apple- 
 trees grew on one side, a bunch of lilacs and laburnums 
 
40 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 on the other, and an avenue of white narcissus, * ' bloody 
 warriors " (wallflowers), blue larkspur and crimson 
 peonies, backed with a row of hives, led up to the 
 door of the mud cottage. Mud has an evil speech in 
 the world, but it is warm in winter and cool in 
 summer, and if not very " seemly," makes a pleasant 
 home. 
 
 A pyrus and a passion-flower were in bloom upon 
 the walls, but I missed the busy hum of " the yellow 
 bees in the ivy bloom " as I entered the open door. 
 
 I had come to condole. Ursley* had lost her old 
 man since I last saw her. She greeted me affec- 
 tionately, coming out of the great cavernous open 
 fireplace, with the settle on each side, and a smoulder- 
 ing peat fire on the ground. Her short blue gown 
 and brown petticoat were as beautifully neat as usual, 
 and the eternal black silk bonnet was on her head, 
 without which no one ever saw her ; I wondered some- 
 times whether she slept in it. She was above seventy, 
 but her refined face, of a type not uncommon in the 
 South Country race, with its delicate features, fine-cut 
 and intelligent, was in wonderful preservation; her 
 teeth, her hair, her senses were almost as perfect as a 
 girl's. Her manners were those of a perfect lady, 
 courteous, quiet, kind respecting herself and me : 
 
 * A contraction of Ursula, as old as James I. See " Fortunes of Nigel." 
 
BEES IN THE PAST AND PRESENT. 41 
 
 and no duchess could have been more dignified and 
 self-possessed in her reception of me. 
 
 " Ah yes, the old man's gone sin I've a seed you. 
 He were a deal o' trouble, to be sure, hollerin' and 
 squealin' a' night, terrable," said she. Our smooth- 
 tongued disguises of such matters, when they take 
 place, did not enter into her code of "the become." 
 " He were off o 1 his head most times, and kep' callin' 
 out there was fuzzen i' the bed, and hitting out at the 
 boughs like, thinking he were in the woods. But 
 there, we must just bear what God A' mighty puts 
 upon us, we've nobody to look to but just He ! and 
 He does best for we. The Lord He knows the days 
 seems long and lonesome to me, that they do, and I 
 shouldn't care if I were to go too, but then we must 
 just wait for Him to call, you knows." 
 
 When our lamentations and condolences had come 
 to an end, she brought out a bottle of mead from the 
 three-cornered cupboard in the wall. It was her 
 last, as I found afterwards, but her Arab hospitality 
 did not allow her to hesitate at setting her best 
 before a guest, and mead is an honourable drink 
 ever since it was the food of gods and heroes, in the 
 old days, and England was "the honey island" pre- 
 eminently. 
 
 " And the bees ? what is become of them ? " in- 
 
42 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 quired I, as the golden syrup flowed into the broken 
 cup before I could stop her. 
 
 U A' gone a' dead, " answered she, with a sigh. 
 " We were very sore put about when the old man went, 
 and I were bad a bed, so there were no one gie it a 
 thought to go and tell the bees about the death, and 
 there they a ' went and died ! " 
 
 "What, for sorrow? did they take it to heart so 
 much as all that ? " said I ignorantly. 
 
 " Well, I can't say for sure how 'tis, but they allus 
 does like that, you know : if you don't go for to give 
 three raps at each pot, and tell 'um their master's gone, 
 they'll allays serve you that way and goes off stupid." 
 
 "Is it only the master's death you must tell them, 
 Ursley?" 
 
 "Nay, any one as belongs to the house. One 
 wouldn't go for a distant cousin for why, they 
 wouldn't know he, ye see." 
 
 "And do they make any answer when they're 
 told?" I asked. 
 
 " There's a sort of a kind of a rush inside o' the 
 hive, I mind hearing, when I telled 'um once my 
 mother were gone. They've one vaice for when 
 they're pleased and one for when they're angered. 
 They're very cunning is bees,* and knows a many 
 
 * " Let my right hand forget her cunning." 
 
BEES IN THE PAST AND PRESENT. 43 
 
 things they bides at home quiet when the weather's a 
 goin' for to change. I conceits they's got a manner o' 
 government and minds their horficers, as is over them, 
 for to do and to be, quite uncommon ; not rampaging 
 like some o' they fellows one sees nowadays, that can't 
 rule theirselves, and won't have none to rule 'em. 
 There if a swaarm breaks, the half that hasn't got the 
 queen is just lost like, and goes wandering about 
 nohow here and there. I ain't afraid to handle um, I 
 could shake um into the pot, if my maister weren't 
 there, and they hadn't got too high up the trees ; 
 they'll hang to a bough in a bunch as big as a 
 black hat, sticking a' close together to the queen, 
 clinging * on one to t'other, so that you'd have 
 thought they must a' have been stiffled. You puts 
 honey and sugar inside o' the hive to tempt 'um; 
 but there, they has their whims like ! they'll fancy 
 one man, and they won't fancy another, and they'll 
 take to a hive, or they won't, there's no telling. 
 Last summer a swaarm went rampolling all over 
 the country right away. I followed after, tinking 
 with a key on the warming pan they do love the 
 naise o' the brass, it makes them bide, and lures 
 'em back they likes music, the bees does but 
 they wouldn't hearken that time, and never come 
 back no more." 
 
44 SKETCHES EROM NATURE. 
 
 " Tell me, Ursley, didn't you lose a' horse once with 
 them?" 
 
 "Yes, he went too nigh the bee-pots one while, 
 and out they came after he. They ain't aff eared o' 
 nought, they're a' for war once they're angered, 
 and they just set on him till his head were black 
 wi' them, like as if you'd pitched it. We'd much 
 ado to get him off, for he were blind with pain not to 
 see which way the enemy lay. And there he were just 
 stung to death, and he swelled and he swelled wi' the 
 poison, do a' we could, till his legs stuck straight out, 
 like out o' a barrel, and in two hours he were dead. 
 
 "Bees is in the Bible, but you'll know that better 
 nor me. Samson rent the young lion as if he'd been 
 a kid, you mind, and after that he found a swaarm o' 
 bees and honey in the karkass. l Out o' the eater came 
 forth meat and out o' the strong came forth sweet, ' 
 says Samson, playing his riddle like to the Philistines. 
 ' What's sweeter than honey ? What's stronger than a 
 lion ? ' says Philistines mocking, when they'd wormed 
 it out of Delilah, the hussy ! Men's but a poor lot to 
 keep secrets from such as her, once they gets betwixt 
 she's fingers." 
 
 Ursley had been by no means the weaker vessel in 
 the late household, and she knew it ; she had but a 
 low opinion of men in general, " as poor creeturs wi' 
 
BEES IN THE PAST AND PRESENT. 45 
 
 drink, and spending their money foolish and a' such- 
 like ways." 
 
 " 'Dustrious busy little things bees be about a place. 
 I misses 'em, I do, I can tell 'ee. Be ye going ? 
 Well, it has been nice to see yer face agin. Terri- 
 able kind you was when little Tommy died," and 
 she followed me out to gather me a "posy " of her 
 best flowers. " Lad's love" (southernwood) "for the 
 smell," and her one pansy. " I thinks very much o' 
 he (there's plenty o' buds, don't ee mind). I don't 
 know what you names 'um, < Love in idles ' is what 
 I've heard 'um called. See you there ! you likes to 
 hear tell o' they bees," and she pointed to a humble 
 bee flying into the open door : " they say 'tis lucky for 
 a bumbledore to come into the houseplace, though for 
 that matter I haven't much to do wi' luck seemingly ! " 
 and she smiled sadly as we parted at the little wicket. 
 
 There is a curious vitality in popular beliefs in the 
 world's history. Here was the association of bees 
 with the idea of death ; their pleasure in the sounds 
 of brass, of music ; the good omen of their appearance, 
 which are found in some of the most beautiful of the 
 Greek myths ; " the courage and warlike ardour " with 
 which Aristotle credits them, " so that the strongest 
 animals do not affright them ; " the recognition of 
 their sense, of their knowledge of weather; the 
 
46 SKETCHES FKOM NATURE. 
 
 respect for their " cunning," their orderly, indus- 
 trious ways, and the sort of police they entertain ; 
 the feeling that their community is an emblem of 
 civil society and good government. 
 
 It was a lingering relic of the old-world, senti- 
 mental, poetical belief, the transfiguring of material 
 nature, which could only be interpreted in the early 
 childlike ages of the world by supposing each portion, 
 of earth, air, fire, and water to be animated by some 
 god or godling. Their reciprocal action and their 
 influence on man were all accounted for on personal 
 principles. The deification of the year, the sun and 
 moon, of streams, woods, and winds, bees, birds, and 
 beasts alike, was the only expression possible of the 
 laws which rule the universe in that stage of human 
 development. 
 
 Now we exercise a patient observation on nature, 
 analyzing, investigating, calculating, and combining 
 our facts, and say coolly with Professor Haughton, 
 u Bees construct the largest amount of cell with the 
 smallest amount of material ; " or with Quatrefages, 
 " Their instinct is certainly the most developed of all 
 living creatures with the exception of ants." "The 
 hexagons and rhomboids of bee architecture show that 
 proper proportion between the length and breadth of 
 the cell which will save most wax, as is found by the 
 
BEES IN THE PAST AND PRESENT. 47 
 
 closest mathematical investigation," says another 
 great authority. Man is obliged to use all sorts of 
 engines for measurement angles, rules, plumb-lines 
 to produce his buildings, and guide his hand ; the 
 bee executes her work immediately from her mind, 
 without instruments or tools of any kind. " She has 
 successfully solved a problem in higher mathematics, 
 which the discovery of the differential calculus, a 
 century and a half ago, alone enables us to solve at all 
 without the greatest difficulty. " 
 
 " The inclination of the planes of the cells is always 
 just, so that if the surfaces on which she works are 
 unequal, still the axis running through its inequalities 
 is in the true direction, and the junction of the two 
 axes forms the angle of 60 as accurately as if there 
 were none." The manner in which she adapts her 
 work to the requirements of the moment and the 
 place is marvellous. A centre comb burdened with 
 honey was seen by Huber and others to have broken 
 away from its place, and to be leaning against the 
 next so as to prevent the passage of the bees. As it 
 was October, and the bees could get no .fresh material, 
 they immediately gnawed away wax from the older 
 structures, with which they made two horizontal 
 bridges to keep the comb in its place, and then fast- 
 ened it above and at the sides with all sorts of irre- 
 
48 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 gular pillars, joists, and buttresses ; after which they 
 removed so much of the lower cells and honey which 
 blocked the way, as to leave the necessary thorough- 
 fare to the different parts of the hive, showing design, 
 sagacity, and resource. 
 
 Huber mentions how they will find out a mistake 
 in their work, and remedy it. Certain pieces of wood 
 had been fastened by him inside a glass hive, to receive 
 the foundations of combs. These had been placed too 
 close to allow of the customary passages. The bees at 
 first built on, not perceiving the defect, but soon 
 changed their lines, so as to give the proper distance, 
 though they were obliged to curve the combs out of 
 all usual form. Huber then tried the experiment in 
 another way. He glazed the floor as well as the roof 
 of the hive. The bees cannot make their work adhere 
 to glass, and they began to build horizontally from 
 side to side ; he interposed other plates of glass in 
 different directions, and they curved their combs into 
 the strangest shapes, in order to make them reach 
 the wooden supports. He says that this proceeding 
 denoted more than instinct, as glass was not a sub- 
 stance against which bees could be warned by nature, 
 and that they changed the direction of the work before 
 reaching the glass, at the distance precisely suitable 
 for making the necessary turns enlarging the cells 
 
BEES IN THE PAST AND PRESENT. 49 
 
 on the outer side greatly, and on the inner side 
 diminishing them proportionately. As different 
 insects are always at work on the different sides, there 
 must be some means of communicating to each other 
 the -proportion which is to be observed; while the 
 bottom being common to both sets of cells, the diffi- 
 culty of thus regularly varying their dimensions 
 must be great indeed. 
 
 The diameter of the cells also varies according to 
 the grubs to be bred in them. Those for males have 
 the same six sides, with three lozenges at bottom, as 
 those for workers, and the angles are the same ; but 
 the diameter of the first is 3^ lines, that for the 
 workers only 2f. When changing from one size to 
 another, they will make several rows of cells inter- 
 mediate in size, gradually increasing or diminishing, 
 as required. "When there is a great abundance of 
 honey, they will increase both the diameter and the 
 depth of their cells, which are found sometimes as 
 much as an inch or an inch and a half deep. 
 
 The mixture of solitary and joint work amongst 
 them is very difficult to define. Though there are 
 many thousand labourers in a hive, they never begin 
 to build in different places at the same time, as they 
 could not then ensure regularity of distance, or 
 equality of comb size. They wait for the " master- 
 
50 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 mason" to choose his site and lay his foundation, 
 then the others come in and complete his work. At 
 exactly one-third of an inch on each side of the centre 
 comb two more foundations are then laid that is, at a 
 sufficient distance to enable two bees employed on 
 different cells to pass without jostling. Outside these 
 again, other combs are added on each side, at exactly the 
 same distance j and, besides the thoroughfares between 
 the combs, they are pierced in several places by holes 
 as postern gates, to save time in passing to and fro. 
 
 The building of the cells proceeds thus, according 
 to Huber. When the founder bee has established its 
 foundation of wax, placing it vertically to the plane 
 from which, if possible, the comb is to hang down, 
 the other bees then begin to manipulate the material 
 which they bring up with wonderful operations of the 
 tongue. They work one on each side, with such 
 accuracy and nicety, as never to penetrate the thin 
 layer of wax, and so equally, that the plate which 
 they produce is of equal thickness throughout, its 
 surfaces being parallel. The angles of the hexagon, 
 and of the sides which join it, are all equal, and the 
 three rhomboidal plates of the floor have always one 
 particular diameter, the opposite angles, two obtuse, 
 two acute, being always equal, and covering in the top 
 and bottom of the hexagon cell exactly. 
 
BEES IN THE PAST AND PRESENT. 51 
 
 The first cells have but five sides, in order to give 
 the work strength in hanging to the upper surface. 
 Two cells below are then worked out to one behind, 
 for the first beginning. 
 
 The eye of the bee is extremely convex, with 
 hexagonal facets. She must therefore be very short- 
 sighted, probably for the convenience of work carried 
 on at such close quarters, yet she can travel great 
 distances in the most unerring right lines. When a 
 bee hunter desires to find a wild nest in a pathless 
 forest, he " lines a bee " home i.e. imprisons a laden 
 bee in a quill, and marks its course when set free. 
 Straight as an arrow, as if it carried a compass in its 
 little head, it flies through the wood. He then 
 catches a second bee, carries it to some distance on 
 one side or the other, and agains tracks its flight 
 exactly. At the point where the two lines intersect 
 each other the nest will be found. 
 
 That most sagacious observer, Andrew Knight, tells 
 how, when a colony or swarm is ready to move, its 
 delegates are sent forth to investigate and report. He 
 has watched them examining every cranny of a tree, 
 testing the dead knots, and any crank places where 
 water could enter. They will discover an eligible 
 cavity at a great distance from the hive, and in the 
 closest recesses of a wood. Sometimes two swarms 
 
52 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 with their property will coalesce, when they will fly 
 in an almost direct line to their new home, showing 
 that the pioneers had in some way communicated the 
 result of their researches. That bees should accept 
 a hive in the place of a suitable hole in a tree, which 
 must become every century more and more difficult 
 to obtain in a cultivated country, is clearly the 
 result of habit produced by domestication during 
 many generations, rather than anything inherent in 
 their nature. It is a proof of a change in their 
 manners, of acquired ways of life, transmitted from 
 past times, which is extremely curious as evidence 
 of the accumulation of knowledge and experience. 
 " Some families of bees show a greater disposition to 
 migrate than others," adds Mr. Knight. 
 
 "Beasts in general, although they evidently have a 
 language, yet it is one which seems to be capable only 
 of expressing passions love, fear, anger not ideas. 
 They cannot transmit the impressions received from 
 outward objects, as, for instance, they can tell of 
 the approach of an enemy, but cannot explain of 
 what kind. A language of more extensive use has 
 apparently, however, been given to bees; some- 
 thing, at least, very like to the passing of ideas 
 takes place between them," says Mr. Knight, "by 
 means of the antennee. When these are removed 
 
BEES IN THE PAST AND PRESENT. 53 
 
 they are evidently unable to communicate with each 
 other." 
 
 It is strange how often the hunger of the mind for 
 knowledge, a hunger which like that of the body, 
 seems implanted in us in order that we should feed 
 both the one and the other with food convenient to 
 it, is satisfied Vith the mere husk of a word. " It 
 is instinct," we say, and rest content with our ignor- 
 ance. What do we mean by instinct ? How is the 
 conception in the mind of the insect put into exe- 
 cution, at once, without either tools or experience ? 
 In this case the idea is a most elaborate one, six 
 squares of wax put together in a hexagon, roofed in 
 with three rhomboids, set at a very peculiar angle 
 in a pyramidal cone, and surrounded with a number 
 of fragmentary cells adapted to the unequal surfaces 
 with which the insect has to deal. It is certainly no 
 mere mechanical act which produces them, for each 
 change requires a separate thought and a fresh con- 
 trivance. How is the model in the mind of the bee 
 transferred into fact by the mouth and feet of the 
 little worker ? We require long practice, much mea- 
 surement, elaborate calculations and instruments, to 
 make the simplest construction, and can trust neither 
 our eyes nor hands without all these combined. 
 
 With the bee, to will and to do seems to be almost one 
 
54 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 act, which is Dante's definition of the Divinity, "Dove 
 si puote ci6 che si vuole." The range is small indeed, 
 but, as far as it goes, it is so nearly akin to our 
 conception of divine action, that no less a man than 
 Sir Isaac Newton declares (though the passage is 
 somewhat obscure) that he can only explain it by 
 conceiving the Deity to work directly on matter 
 through the animal ; whereas, with man there is an 
 intermediate agent namely, the independent mind of 
 a human being, or, as Pope puts it 
 
 " And reason raise o'er instinct as you can ; 
 In this 'tis God that acts, in that 'tis man." 
 
 The question is now so keenly investigated and so 
 earnestly debated, that we may, perhaps, gain some 
 further insight into the matter. 
 
 The contrast between these modern methods of 
 dealing with the problem and the manner in which the 
 ancients considered it, is indeed curious. The Greeks 
 treated the bee as an object of religious contemplation, 
 as "a royal and sacred animal, the emblem of calm 
 activity, rule, order, and noble efforts," and all sorts 
 of presages were drawn from its different qualities. 
 Virgil, in the fourth Georgic, declares that "she 
 partakes of the divine intelligence " (a sort of converse 
 of Newton's idea). She is the pure, the wise, the holy 
 above all. 
 
BEES IN THE PAST AND PEESENT. 55 
 
 This sacred being produces " an ethereal essence 
 out of flowers, which was the most agreeable offering 
 to the gods, and the most wholesome food for man." 
 Pythagoras was said to have lived on honey alone, 
 and his followers derogated from his example by 
 adding a little bread. Democritus was supposed to 
 have " prolonged his days by breathing its beneficent 
 emanations," adding the smell to the taste. It also 
 restored sight to the blind. " He who eats of it each 
 day cannot fall sick," says another authority. The 
 Essenes, i.e. the priests of Diana at Ephesus, called 
 themselves kings of bees, as of the holiest and purest 
 of creations, " full of sense, industrious in work, friends 
 of order, and, at the same time, warlike." 
 
 The "gods are nourished on nectar and ambrosia" 
 the essence of milk and honey, the purest food of 
 which they could conceive. The infant Zeus (Jupiter) 
 was brought up in a grotto in Crete, by Melissa, the 
 nymph of honey, and fed by the sacred bees. In 
 token of gratitude he had gifted his nurses with their 
 beautiful golden hue, and the power of braving 
 tempests. He was called " Father of the Bees." 
 
 They were sacred to Demeter (Ceres), who, as 
 goddess of the earth, mother and nurse of all being, 
 receives all living things into her breast, and thus 
 rules over the dead. Her priestesses were the nymphs 
 
56 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 of the bees, Melissse. Prosperity, wisdom, innocence, 
 and justice were supposed thus to be symbolized. 
 Proserpine, daughter of the infernal Ceres, who 
 directs souls in their passage through life, and delivers 
 them from the bodies which weigh them down on 
 earth, was the Queen and Virgin of Bees. Thus they 
 became the emblem of death. Honey was the symbol 
 of the last sleep, partly from its soporific qualities, 
 partly from the ancient belief in the sweetness of 
 death, while gall was supposed on the other hand to 
 typify life. " Bitter and sweet is the destiny of man," 
 and the opposition and continual mingling of the two 
 qualities in his fate is the source of a whole series of 
 myths and symbols running one into another. 
 
 There was another curious antithesis of which the 
 Greeks seem to have been very fond, the work of 
 destruction in the world producing life. The bee, 
 "type of the soul, is generated spontaneously in the 
 decomposed carcass of the bull," said they. This last 
 was the incarnation of the idea of the fertility of the 
 earth, and therefore the type of matter; while as 
 the bee was held to symbolize the return of the soul 
 to its celestial country "across the path of the sun, 
 and beyond the sphere of the moon," the image became 
 " a consoling sign of the permanence of the principle 
 of life." 
 
BEES IN THE PAST AND PRESENT. 57 
 
 In India, the great bee of a dark blue colour is 
 found sitting on the head of the god Krishna, and 
 overshadowing him with its wings. 
 
 Poets and philosophers alike agreed in praising 
 "the innate love of order of the bees, their chastity, 
 their laborious active lives, the peaceful work of 
 which produced such admirable food for gods and 
 men," and contrasting them with "the noisy and lazy 
 wasps, types of impurity, greediness, and indolence " 
 a very unfair description as far as the laziness is 
 concerned, if the wonderfully elaborate paper nests 
 which they construct are considered. 
 
 " The bee, whose superior instincts led it to love all 
 beautiful things, delighted in measure, rhythm, and 
 harmony, particularly in the sound of brass ; " a metal 
 which the gods of the planets had caused to come out 
 of the earth, and which was sacred to them.* The 
 noise of brazen instruments had therefore the power of 
 bringing back to a hive the dispersed swarms which 
 were going abroad. The sound was as agreeable to 
 
 * " And mix with tinkling brass the cymbals' droning sound." 
 
 Dri/deu's translation of Virgil. 
 
 The fourth Georgic is entirely occupied with an account of the treatment 
 of bees. It is in a curious transitional tone, between the more ancient view 
 of their divine nature to which it alludes in an unbelieving sort of poetical 
 tone the literalism of the Manchester emblem of commerce, a globe sur- 
 rounded with "busy bees," and the strict scientific investigation into their 
 habits, their powers, and intelligence. 
 
58 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 them as it was to the moon, Selene, who bore their 
 name and was scarcely more divine. She was 
 delivered by the clanging of cymbals " from the 
 powers of darkness " in times of eclipse. 
 
 The characteristic of swarming made the bee the 
 emblem of colonisation, the representative of the 
 manner in which the parent country sent forth her 
 superfluous children, " to seek fresh fields and pas- 
 tures new " a process, indeed, which the Greeks 
 carried out in a more systematic fashion than ourselves. 
 The hordes of isolated individuals which now pour 
 forth at haphazard to reach some distant country, are 
 a poor substitute for the old idea of an orderly com- 
 bination of different kinds of citizens sent forth to a 
 new home, to work together in a fresh commonwealth 
 modelled upon the old, " like the bees." 
 
 The Greeks were so much struck by the surprising 
 instincts of the bee that it seems to have become 
 one of their most important symbols, to which many 
 of their highest and holiest ideas were attached. 
 The rules for the initiated in the ancient worship 
 of Demeter, for instance, command "the union 
 of firmness and gentleness, of voluntary privations, 
 and of severe and continual exercises of body and 
 mind, so as to fit a man to repulse all attacks upon 
 order, and to defend the institutions consecrated by 
 
BEES IN THE PAST AND PRESENT. 59 
 
 the faith of his fathers," all of which was considered 
 to be symbolized by the bee. She was called a " happy 
 omen for the warrior, who, like her, watches over the 
 safety of his country," for she too was " always ready 
 to make the sacrifice of her own life for the public 
 good.' 7 
 
 The idea of a noble combat, a generous strife, is 
 one running through the most remarkable of these 
 myths. In them were embodied the holiest and most 
 religious aspirations of the period especially of the 
 spirit engaged in the coils of a mortal body, but 
 struggling to set herself free. " Souls, which have not 
 lost sight of their celestial country, but which, like 
 the bee, aspire to return thither, and seek by works of 
 purity and justice to merit this return, are called 
 Melissse." Even as late as the time of Porphyry, the 
 same idea is insisted on ; he speaks of her as the type 
 " of the soul which has lowered herself by taking on 
 a body ; yet still she dreams of the return upwards, 
 she does not forget the place of her birth, and returns 
 thither." 
 
 It is most difficult, in our hard-headed, practical 
 age, to conceive the wealth of imagery and symbolism, 
 of fanciful allusions, and similes where no likeness 
 exists, of emblematic dreamy poetry involved in these 
 conceptions the transfiguring of the material world, 
 
60 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 the transforming and " supernaturalising " of lower 
 existences, the transferring of conscious thought to 
 what we now consider inert matter, or merely 
 mechanical action. 
 
 The manner in which the myths run into each other, 
 and in which every god has many forms, so as to be 
 not only himself but some other at the same time, in 
 a different view of his attributes, makes the puzzle to 
 our prosaic minds still greater. 
 
 Yet still, the extreme beauty of this side, at least, 
 of nature worship, the lofty conceptions of the objects 
 of the life of man, and of the result of death, which 
 were thus set before the minds of the initiated, and 
 instilled into the young, may make us doubt whether 
 all has been gain in our social aspirations, since the 
 time when the bee was engraved on the reverse of the 
 coins of Athens and Ephesus, as the emblem held up 
 of the ideal life which their citizens were encouraged 
 to lead. 
 
 1873. 
 
ANTS. 
 
 I MET to-day two straggling streams of workers 
 moving along a hillside path, one to, the other 
 fro black-bodied, six-legged, with a most determined 
 aspect, and an almost forbidding look (I forgot to 
 mention that there was a magnifying glass in my hand). 
 Apparently each and all were much pressed for time ; 
 they hurried along singly, none speaking to his neigh- 
 bour, each seemed intent on his own object, though 
 the result was to be common ; each bearing his own 
 burden, not often helpful to others, except in the 
 general cause, self- concentrated, eager, bitter, obsti- 
 nate, self-willed, narrow, conscientious, ambitious. 
 I followed them till I reached a disturbed ant-hillock 
 which had been lately overthrown, and where the 
 possessors were repairing their home with the most 
 vehement industry. 
 
 Who directs them ? Each seemed to be going on 
 
62 SKETCHES PROM NATURE. 
 
 his own hook, minding his own business, hardly 
 conscious of the existence of anything but himself; 
 "frightfully in earnest," as Disraeli once said of 
 Gladstone. Yet the work was all in common ; the 
 community of goods, indeed, seemed absolute ; no one 
 had any personal property whatever; house, stores, 
 eggs, everything belonged to all a most republican 
 form of society ! 
 
 No one interfered with the rest; there was 
 apparently no chief, overlooker, or director; yet the 
 work went on apace, the repairing and building up of 
 the ruined city " with neatness and dispatch." 
 
 Some seized a pellet of earth or a stone, and dragged 
 it backwards up the steep incline, using their hind 
 legs to cling on to rough places, while they hauled 
 away at a weight greater far than that of their own 
 bodies. Some hoisted aloft in their front arms, as it 
 were, a stick or piece of grass twice or even thrice their 
 own length, and moved forward bearing it in the air. 
 Each addition was placed in what each considered the 
 best position; but the general form of the dome grew in 
 a curiously regular diminishing curve, as if every ant 
 bore the architect's elevation in his waistcoat pocket. 
 Some of the workers were making desperate efforts 
 to move heavy (to them) beams of wood, but after 
 superhuman exertions gave up the attempt when clearly 
 
ANTS. 63 
 
 beyond their strength. If a thing, however, was any- 
 ways within the bounds of possibility, it was wondrous 
 with what obstinate pertinacity they would return, e.g. 
 to a pellet which had rolled away from them, even to 
 the bottom of the hillock, again and again, and begin 
 once more to haul it up ; tugging, lifting it over 
 stones and under sticks, tumbling over with their 
 burden on the other side of an obstacle which they 
 had scaled, and lying for a few seconds quite exhausted, 
 yet never leaving hold of their load, and setting 
 off again undauntedly as soon as they recovered 
 breath. Occasionally two or more were helping at 
 a task ; but they generally seemed to prefer working 
 alone. 
 
 The ant-hill was on a steep, rocky, wooded hillside, 
 pink with spikes of heather, feathered with bracken, 
 which hung over the nest, while tall mountain grasses 
 with bright glazed red and amber stalks sprang up 
 through the moving mound of life. The August sun 
 shone on the pleasant spot, and through the white 
 stems of the birch and the gnarled trunks of the old 
 oak I could catch sight of the river running at the 
 bottom of the deep valley, while the sound of the 
 dashing water among the stones far away, came up 
 with a soft murmur to my mountain perch. There 
 was a " susurro " of wind among the trees, the twitter 
 
64 SKETCHES FEOM NATURE. 
 
 of the autumn note of a bird, and the buzz and hum 
 of insect life hovered round, but the ants seemed all 
 silent ; and the sort of low hiss which arose from the 
 collected workers, resembled the noise of a London 
 street more than any form of speech. 
 
 The rest of the world seemed wrapped in a sort of 
 lazy content in the soft sunny weather, but the ants 
 did not seem to be enjoying life any more than the 
 men whom one meets hurrying along the Strand. 
 
 Probably the appreciation of a beautiful view is not 
 facilitated by crawling over grass and sand, with one's 
 head close to the ground ! Besides, the faculty of 
 admiring scenery is not only the distinctive quality of 
 man, but is confined to a very small educated section 
 of them ; and I doubt whether the ants are ever likely 
 to be educated into lovers of the picturesque, they are 
 too hardheaded, businesslike a people. ' One feels sure 
 that they keep their account-books admirably, and have 
 always a balance at their bankers, and that their stores 
 are all labelled, and always to be found at once on the 
 right shelves. 
 
 There is, however, a softer side to their characters. 
 They are warm friends and allies, and assiduous nurses, 
 carrying out the eggs of the community on fine days 
 to warm and comfort the unborn children not their 
 own, but the nation's ; and if you try to take an egg 
 
ANTS. 65 
 
 away, the guardian will be cut to pieces rather than 
 give up his charge to the foe. He is enduring, brave, 
 bold, enterprising ; faithful to his friends, cruel to his 
 enemies. 
 
 His muscular power is astonishing. He is said to 
 be the strongest being of his size alive. And as to his 
 mind, M. Quatrefages, an eminent French naturalist, 
 after saying that instinct is more developed among 
 insects than in any other creatures, adds that ants 
 stand highest in this respect, " possessing qualities 
 which seem to resemble those which education, perhaps, 
 masks among men." The distinction between intel- 
 ligence and instinct as shown amongst them is 
 difficult indeed to define. On one occasion he watched 
 them dragging the outer case of a cockchafer into 
 their nest. The opening was too small, and the workers 
 pulled down part of the walls ; some pushed at it from 
 without, some dragged it from within; still the 
 magnificent beam, which was probably intended to 
 make a whole ceiling, could not be got in. At length 
 they left it, and increased the size of the opening, 
 when the wing was finally swallowed up, though 
 probably half-a-dozen interior partitions must have 
 been thrown down before it reached its proper place ; 
 after this the door was built up again. Among 
 monkeys, the animal " nearest in structure to man, no 
 
66 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 fact has been observed marking deliberation and 
 judgment in common to so high a degree." 
 
 Huber mentions how a vaulted ceiling had once 
 been begun by the ants, intended to meet the wall of 
 an opposite chamber ; but having been started too low, 
 the roof would only have reached half way up. 
 Suddenly, one of the ants visiting the works was 
 evidently struck with the difficulty ; it took down the 
 ceiling, raised the wall on which it rested, and then 
 built a new one with the fragments of the first. 
 
 It is baffling to think how entirely we are outside 
 such intelligent and advanced organisations as these. 
 We cannot guess at their thoughts or feelings ; their 
 external habits even are unintelligible to us ; we seem 
 not to have a point whereat to touch. To-day they 
 were quite unconscious of my existence ; perhaps I 
 was too big to be seen ; they took no more notice of 
 me than of a stone as long as I remained still, and if 
 they stung me when I interrupted their business, it 
 was my finger, not me, which they attacked. A short- 
 sighted man, however, the other day, who approached 
 his face too near to a nest, was spit or shot at (what- 
 ever be the engine used to eject the formic acid) for 
 his pains, and was obliged to draw back his eyes pre- 
 cipitately from the sharp, stinging volley. 
 
 "The eyes of insects," says Sir Benjamin Brodie, 
 
ANTS. 67 
 
 " consist of a large number of hexagonal and trans- 
 parent plates, not in the same plane, but forming a 
 large part of a sphere, each with its own peculiar 
 retina; the range is enormous, but there can be no 
 such distinct picture as in our eyes, and they must 
 have difficulty in distinguishing far things from 
 near." * 
 
 The outside pile of twigs and straws of an ants' 
 nest is merely to throw off the rain ; underneath this 
 they excavate in the earth, horizontally, a number of 
 apartments and galleries, where the larvae and pupse 
 can be received at certain hours of the day, with 
 funnel-shaped passages leading to them. In the 
 centre is a large chamber, loftier than the rest, held up 
 by beams which cross the ceiling, and little columns 
 of earth which the ants temper with rain-water with 
 their teeth. At night they close their dome on all 
 sides with little pellets of earth, kneaded and moulded, 
 and open them in the morning. On rainy days the 
 doors are all shut ; in cloudy weather only a few 
 avenues are open, which they shut when rain begins. 
 
 * There is an extremely strange variety of eye in a South American ant, 
 whose "third order of workers have enormously large hard heads, the front of 
 which is hairy instead of being polished, and in the middle of the forehead is 
 a twin ocellus, or simple eye of quite different structure from the ordinary 
 compound eyes on the sides of the head. It reminded me of the Cyclops." 
 B AXES' s Amazons. 
 
68 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 They pass the night and the colder months under- 
 ground, when they are torpid and require no food. 
 
 They seem to understand each other by means of 
 the antenna. N"o doubt touch, when sufficiently 
 cultivated, is an extraordinary medium of communica- 
 tion even in man, as was seen in Laura Bridgeman, the 
 blind, deaf mute ; but one would like to understand 
 the ant's finger alphabet. 
 
 The hand in man is considered a wonder of useful- 
 ness, but the ant seems able to use his six feet indif- 
 ferently as prehensile organs, to hold, to pull, to lift, to 
 drag, to cling. The keenness of their smell appears to 
 be marvellous, so that not so much as a cockroach can 
 die in the corner of a dark room, but the enterprising 
 portion of the ant race living in India, who eat every- 
 thing and go everywhere, contrive to find it out and 
 carry it away. The wholesale destruction of paper and 
 parchment by ants in the East and South is a very 
 serious bar to the progress of a race. Humboldt 
 declares that in South America there are no docu- 
 ments, written or printed, more than a hundred years 
 old, owing to their ravages; that civilisation is checked 
 by the constant renewal and care required for the 
 preservation of books and papers, and that compara- 
 tively little is there transmitted to posterity in con- 
 sequence. 
 
ANTS. 69 
 
 In India, the precautions taken against their voracity 
 are many and ingenious, but the man is almost always 
 baffled by the insect; wood, paper, cloth, provisions, 
 everything but metal is consumed ; even the legs of 
 tables are hollowed out, and left standing as empty 
 shells, which give way at a touch. In one case, some 
 preserves had been put in a closet, isolated from the 
 wall, with the legs set in basins of water. The ants, 
 however, were not to be so outwitted ; they crawled 
 up to the ceiling and let themselves down, each ant 
 hanging on to the one above him, till the last link 
 touched the goal, when a stream of hungry applicants 
 ran down and made short work of the. coveted treasure. 
 Did those who thus profited give any of the food to 
 the self-sacrificing members of the living chain, I 
 wonder ? And what reward did the patriot receive 
 who held on to the ceiling and bore the whole weight 
 of the rope of ants ? 
 
 Indeed to us the most extraordinary of their qualities 
 is the power of self-sacrifice, the almost moral elevation 
 whereby the good of the individual is given up to that 
 of the community. A line of ants on their travels 
 were once seen trying to pass a little stream, which 
 proved too rapid for them to cross. At last they 
 hooked themselves on, each to each, and thus gradually 
 made a chain, which was carried obliquely to the other 
 
TO SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 shore by the current. Many were drowned and lost 
 in the process, the foremost of the band were often 
 baffled and knocked about in the rushing water, but 
 the floating bridge was at last complete, and the rest 
 of the army marched over in safety upon the bodies of 
 their self-sacrificing fellows. Could any so-called 
 reasoning men have done better, or as well? Our 
 pontoons are not made of living men. 
 
 No wonder that the emmet has been held up as a 
 model of wisdom and industry since men have " made 
 morals " at all ; that Solomon declares the ants to be 
 " a people not strong, but exceeding wise," who 
 " prepare their meat in the summer ; " that Milton 
 talks with respect of " the parsimonious emmet, pro- 
 vident of future 
 
 " In small room large heart enclosed." 
 
 But the highest praise he has received is from Mr. 
 Darwin, who says that " the size of the brain is closely 
 connected with higher mental powers, and the cerebral 
 ganglia of ants is of extraordinary comparative dimen- 
 sions. Still cubic contents are no accurate gauge ; 
 there may be extraordinary mental activity with 
 extremely small absolute mass of nervous matter." It 
 seems as if the fineness of the quality was more im- 
 portant even than its quantity. " The wonderfully 
 
ANTS. 71 
 
 diversified instincts, mental powers, and affections of 
 ants exist with cerebral ganglia not so large as the 
 quarter of a small pin's head." A son of Mr. Darwin 
 succeeded in the anatomy of an ant's brain, and his 
 father observes : "It is one of the most marvellous 
 atoms of matter in the world. More so even than the 
 brain of man." 
 
 Yet such is the prodigal wealth of nature that 
 millions on millions of these " marvellous atoms " come 
 into the world every summer, with apparently no other 
 end than to be eaten and crushed, and to die in a 
 hundred different ways, after their few days of life. 
 Their great use in the world, as far. as we can fathom 
 it, is as scavengers ; but, if we had been born ants, we 
 should probably consider this a wretchedly perfunctory 
 account of the " be all and end all " of our existence. 
 
 The ant may not be able to see very far, but one has 
 a painful perception that our own vision is relatively 
 not much less narrow. 
 
TENDRILS AND CLIMBING PLANTS. 
 
 NOTES FROM MR. DARWIN. 
 
 ASHOET paper upon Tendrils and Climbing Plants 
 was published by Mr. Darwin some years ago in 
 a scientific periodical which comes into the hands of 
 few but scientific men, and is now out of print.* It is 
 a perfect model of accurate and delicate observation, 
 and the help to be derived from it towards the enjoy- 
 ment of what we ought to see around us is so great, 
 that a sketch of its contents is here attempted, in 
 order that a more general public may share the benefit 
 of Mr. Darwin's teaching as to the manner in which 
 nature should be watched and questioned. 
 
 It is a proof of how dull and unobservant we most 
 of us are, that such beautiful contrivances should 
 so long have passed unnoticed. The absence of in- 
 
 * It has since been reprinted. 
 
TENDRILS AND CLIMBING PLANTS. 73 
 
 telligent perception among men in general must 
 indeed be great when these simple observations of 
 objects which are before us all were never made until 
 a German botanist, M. Hugo Mohl, wrote a paper 
 upon the revolving motion in tendril-bearing plants 
 in 1827. This was followed by two memoirs in 1843 
 by a Frenchman, M. Dutrochet ; while the great circle 
 of cosmopolitan science is carried on by the observa- 
 tions of the American, Mr. Asa Gray, and finally by 
 the Englishman who has now methodised and inter- 
 preted the whole subject. 
 
 Plants mount and cling by four different methods : 
 firstly, those which twine their whole bodies round a 
 support, like the Hop, the Honeysuckle, and "Wistaria; 
 next, those which hang on by their leaves, like the 
 Clematis; thirdly, the " real tendril-bearers," as the 
 Passion-flower; and, lastly, the Hook and Root 
 Climbers, as the Eose and Ivy. 
 
 These all have the most determined likes and dis- 
 likes, and will only do exactly as they please, when 
 they please. For instance, one particularly dainty 
 Australian plant refused to cling to the thin or thick 
 sticks, branched twigs, or stretched strings supplied 
 to it by Mr. Darwin, but hung out its long arms help- 
 lessly in the air, until at length, when a pot with a 
 second set of uprights was placed alongside, it found 
 
74 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 what it wanted, i.e. a number of little parallel posts, 
 when it immediately travelled laterally backwards and 
 forwards between them quite happily, with a sort of 
 weaving process, sometimes embracing several supports 
 at once, such as its parents had been accustomed to 
 cling to in the thick scrub at home. 
 
 Some of the Bignonias are wonderfully clever in 
 their ways. One of them ascends an upright smooth 
 stick by spirally twining round it, and " seizing it 
 alternately by two tendrils, like a sailor pulling him- 
 self up by a rope hand over hand." Another of the 
 family is " the most efficient climber" which Mr. 
 Darwin knows, "and could probably ascend a polished 
 stem incessantly tossed by heavy storms." 
 
 The tastes and distastes of the Virginian Creeper 
 are especially strong. It does not approve of sticks 
 or boughs, but when it meets with a flat wall, or even 
 a smooth board, it turns all its tendrils towards it, 
 which bear a number of branches on each stem like 
 fingers, and spreading them widely apart, brings their 
 hooked tips into close contact with the surface. The 
 curved ends then swell, become bright red, and form 
 neat little cushions like those of the feet of a fly- 
 which adhere so tightly that even after the plant is 
 dead they may be found still sticking fast to their 
 places. A strain of two pounds has been borne by 
 
TENDRILS AND CLIMBING PLANTS. 75 
 
 the single branchlet of a dead tendril, estimated to 
 have been nearly ten years exposed to the weather. 
 
 Tendrils have a curious tendency to turn away from 
 the light. In one instance Mr. Darwin placed a plant 
 of Bignonia with six tendrils pointing different ways 
 in a box, with one side open to the light, set 
 obliquely ; in two days all six were turned, with 
 unerring accuracy, to the darkest corner, though to 
 do this each had to bend in a different manner. Their 
 habit of inserting their tips into all the little dark 
 holes and crevices they can find, by which they assist 
 their chief to ascend, is, perhaps, owing to this taste 
 for darkness. In some cases they have been seen to 
 try a small fissure, and when for some reason it does 
 not suit their taste, to withdraw their little noses 
 again, and choose another more convenient, after a 
 manner which in an animal would be called instinct. 
 Indeed it is most difficult to define the limits either of 
 intelligence or motion both of which we are apt to 
 confine to animals when we find that the young 
 shoots of Spiral Twiners, and indeed of many other 
 climbers, have an extraordinary revolving motion in 
 search of a support. Some of these move in a course 
 with the sun, or the hands of a clock, i.e. from left to 
 right ; but a still larger number revolve in the opposite 
 direction. To take very common instances : the Hop 
 
76 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 turns with the sun's course, the garden Pea against it. 
 In the case of one revolving tendril which Mr. Darwin 
 watched attentively, he says, "It travelled so rapidly 
 that it could be distinctly seen moving, like the hands 
 of a gigantic clock." The tip of the shoot, thirty- one 
 inches long, upon another plant growing in a pot on 
 the study table of this indefatigable observer, revolved 
 in a course opposed to the sun, making a circle of 
 above five feet in diameter and sixteen in circum- 
 ference, in a time varying from five hours and a 
 quarter to six hours and three-quarters, so that it 
 travelled at the rate of thirty-two to thirty-three 
 inches in the hour. " It was an interesting spectacle 
 to watch this long shoot, sweeping night and day this 
 grand circle in search of some object round which to 
 twine." 
 
 If the tendrils can catch nothing they contract into 
 a close spire, or sometimes turn round and hook 
 themselves on to the stem behind, serving thus to 
 strengthen it. A tendril begins by being long and 
 straight, with an extremely sensitive end, which has 
 a natural tendency to curl round a support, like the 
 tail of a monkey. As soon as it has secured its hold 
 it begins to contract spirally, and the consequence of 
 being tied at both ends (as may be seen by twisting a 
 string thus fastened) is that the spires turn in contrary 
 
TENDRILS AND CLIMBING PLANTS. 
 
 77 
 
 directions, with a short straight portion between. 
 
 The two sets are 
 the same in num- 
 ber, whether con- 
 sisting of over 
 thirty or only 
 four turns, though 
 often distributed 
 differently. Here, 
 for Instance (Fig. 
 1), in the caught 
 tendril of a 
 Passion-flower, 
 are five in one 
 direction, then 
 seven on the op- 
 posite tack, and 
 the addition made 
 even by the re- 
 maining two re- 
 quired to com- 
 plete the sum 
 being added by 
 themselves at the 
 Fig. i. end where it has 
 
 taken hold. There is an odd number only apparently 
 
78 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 while the plant is preparing to add a twist to the 
 lacking account, which is done as soon as it has the 
 means. 
 
 The extreme elasticity of this species of support 
 enables plants of a most delicate structure to brave a 
 violent storm. " I have gone out," says Mr. Darwin, 
 "to watch the Bryony on an exposed edge, as the 
 branches were tossed to and fro by the wind. Unless 
 the tendrils had been excessively elastic they would 
 have been torn off, and the plant thrown prostrate. 
 As it was, the Bryony safely rode out the gale, like 
 a ship with two anchors down, and with a long range 
 of cable ahead to serve as a spring as she surges to 
 the storm." He might even have added that it has 
 the advantage of the new chain over the old hemp 
 cables, the play of the spires answering to the relief 
 given by the links of the chain. 
 
 A very perfect specimen of tendril is that of the 
 CoboBa ; it is much branched, and each tiny point is 
 terminated by a minute hook, hard, transparent, 
 sharp as a needle. "On an eleven-inch tendril I 
 counted ninety -four of these beautifully constructed 
 little hooks." Every part of every branch is highly 
 sensitive, and the tendrils catch hold with peculiar 
 readiness. All its operations, too, are conducted with 
 unusual rapidity, and are therefore particularly well 
 
TENDRILS AND CLIMBING PLANTS. <y 
 
 fitted for observation. A tendril, for instance, 
 revolved only for thirty-six hours after the time 
 when it first became sensitive, but . during that period 
 made at least twenty-seven revolutions. The "per- 
 fect manner in which the branches arrange them- 
 
 From Mr. Darwin's Paper. 
 
 selves when they have caught a support, creeping 
 like rootlets into crevices, is quite a pretty sight," 
 and one which is the more easy to study as the upper 
 surfaces of the branchlets are angular and green, and 
 the lower sides are rounded and purple. The wind 
 will often assist these extremely flexible tendrils to 
 
80 SKETCHES FBOM NATURE. 
 
 seize a distant twig, which it could not have reached 
 alone by its revolving movement. 
 
 The provident Yine puts forth a strong tendril just 
 under its flower (Fig. 2) although this is of course 
 quite light, and stands upright in order to be ready 
 to support the cluster of grapes when it comes, which 
 it knows will hang down, and be too heavy for the 
 stalk to carry without help. This looking forward 
 
 Fig. 3. 
 
 and making provision for the future wants of its 
 children is very curious, and more than many human 
 parents are equal to. 
 
 The Leaf Climber, such as that of the Clematis 
 (Fig. 3), is very pretty and efficient, the leafstalk 
 curling round its support and doing duty as tendril. 
 
 A variety developed from the stalk of a composite 
 leaf like the Lathyrus, or Everlasting Pea (Fig. 4), 
 seems to form a connecting link between the two 
 
TENDRILS AND CLIMBING PLANTS. 
 
 81 
 
 classes of tendrils proper and leaf-climbers. And 
 the Maurandea shows another variation, where the 
 footstalk of the flower has a twining grasping 
 power. 
 
 Lastly come the Hook Climbers, such as the Eose, 
 the least efficient of all, only fit to mount amongst 
 tangled masses of vegetation ; and the next lowest in 
 dignity, the Ivy, which cannot pass from branch to 
 
 Fig. 4. 
 
 branch, and must creep along continuous surfaces, as 
 its rootlets will only adhere by long- continued and 
 close contact with a steady support ; but which has 
 the intelligence to change the form of its leaves 
 and shoots, and omit the rootlets upon them, when 
 it has reached the top of the wall or tree, and 
 there is no longer any use for these in climbing 
 further. 
 
 The whole question of the power of motion in 
 
 G 
 
SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 living things is extremely curious. It cannot be 
 said to belong exclusively to animals, since when it 
 is necessary for the well-being of plants they are 
 capable of acquiring a certain amount of it. As, 
 however, their food is brought to them by the wind 
 and rain, and by the ground to which they are 
 fastened, their wants, in a general way, are limited. 
 The spontaneous revolving motion first described is 
 the most interesting of all, because it is continuous, 
 and seems to depend upon no outward stimulus, but 
 is contingent upon the youth of the part and upon 
 its vigorous health. There are other movements, 
 however, such as that of the pistil and stamens 
 at a particular period of plant life, and the period- 
 ical closing and opening of petals which takes place 
 with the presence and absence of light. There is a 
 change also in the position of the leaflets morning 
 and evening, in the Sensitive plants, the Clover, and 
 Robinia acacia. The manner also in which tendrils 
 can change their direction, when this is found to be for 
 the benefit of the plant to which they belong, is truly 
 wonderful : they turn sometimes upwards to grasp a 
 support above, sometimes downwards to serve as grap- 
 nels, sometimes dividing their forces, and crawling as 
 it were over a surface, to fix their claws into the holes 
 which are most likely to be of use in assisting the 
 
TENDRILS AND CLIMBING PLANTS. 83 
 
 shoots to ascend. "Some of the most perfect tendril- 
 bearers rise high in the scale of organisation." They 
 may be seen putting out their tendrils ready for 
 action, like the tentaculee of a polypus bending to 
 and from the light, or not in the least attending to 
 it, as is most advantageous to the welfare of the plant, 
 their master. During several days the internodes or 
 tendrils, or both, spontaneously revolve with a 
 steady motion till they strike an object, when the 
 tendrils grasp it firmly ; in the course of some hours 
 these contract into a spire, dragging up the stem, 
 and forming an excellent spring. When the work 
 required is done all movement ceases ; the tissues 
 of the tendrils become wonderfully strong and dur- 
 able ; they have finished their task in the most 
 admirable, one might say intelligent, manner. 
 
 Indeed, there is something almost ludicrously human 
 in some of the descriptions. " A tendril which has 
 not become attached to any body shrinks to a fine 
 thread, and drops off," or else hardens into "a use- 
 less self-involved spire." People like these, attached 
 to no '' body " or thing, and withering mentally 
 and morally, or becoming u useless fine self-involved 
 spires," are only too common in everybody's acquaint- 
 ance. Elsewhere it is said " that the gain in 
 strength and durability in a tendril after its attach- 
 
84 SKETCHES FROM NATUEE. 
 
 ment is something wonderful ; " and there can be no 
 doubt that the " increase in strength" and worth of 
 a character which has become strongly " attached" to 
 an " object" is astonishing. 
 
 One great charm of these investigations is that 
 they may be carried out almost anywhere. There 
 is no better specimen of the revolutions both of the 
 internodes of stems and of tendrils than in the com- 
 mon Pea, which was, indeed, studied most accurately 
 by Dutrochet, who drew up an elaborate diagram of 
 its elliptical motions. 
 
 In the most ordinary garden, where a row of Peas 
 or of French Beans is to be found, and where the Ivy 
 and Honeysuckle cover the walls in the most unin- 
 teresting country walk, where, at least, the Bryony, 
 Traveller's Joy, and Wild Eose may be found in the 
 hedges on the window-sill of a dark little town 
 house, from which a Coboaa or Convolvulus may be 
 trained, or in the back yard, where a few pots of 
 Nasturtium, Cucumber, or Hop are kept it will be 
 found possible to observe and enjoy these exquisite 
 contrivances towards an end. But how few of us 
 trouble ourselves to see what is before our eyes, or 
 to understand what is going on under our very 
 noses ! 
 
 To help the many, before whom these and similar 
 
TENDRILS AND CLIMBING PLANTS. 85 
 
 delicate operations of nature are thus going on 
 unnoticed, to look out for an interest so pleasant 
 and so easily attainable to teach us what to observe, 
 and how to look at it these observations of Mr. 
 Darwin's are indeed invaluable. 
 
BEHOLD ALL CBEATUBES FOE OUB SPOBT 
 
 OE USE. 
 
 I SAW to-day, high up in the air, above a large tree 
 in a lonely field, a little cloud of gnats or flies, 
 so far from the ground as to be almost invisible, 
 except when the sun shone upon their gauzy wings. 
 They were gyrating in a regular circular dance, 
 following each other in and out and to and fro, in an 
 intricate measure, cutting and crossing and floating 
 round and round, evidently to their own supreme 
 satisfaction. A little farther on in the heart of the 
 wood we met a line of ants marching from their high- 
 piled nest to some object unseen to us straight on, 
 determined, not to be interfered with or turned aside. 
 Presently we crossed a streamlet, where in a quiet 
 pool, sheltered by stones, a little company of about a 
 dozen very small brilliant metallic-looking beetles 
 were swimming rapidly in a circle, in and out, with 
 
ALL CREATURES FOR OUR SPORT OR USE. 87 
 
 the utmost regularity, never interfering with each 
 other or losing their places a " round dance " of 
 exquisite order, dexterity, and grace. It was very 
 pretty to watch, but was going on without certainly 
 the slightest reference to my pleasure or convenience ; 
 indeed, in the strange severance between our races the 
 beetles were evidently as unconscious of my existence 
 as if we had been in separate planets. 
 
 We have an inveterate and extraordinary belief 
 rooted in us that all nature was created with some 
 reference to ourselves that all plants, birds, and 
 beasts were intended for the pleasure or the use of 
 man ; and as to those tribes which by no manner of 
 means can be coerced into this theory, we proceed 
 very summarily, to the best of our power, to do away 
 with them from off the earth as useless. 
 
 It is the conviction of a people dwelling much in 
 towns or on cultivated land, of an unimaginative race, 
 self-involved, proud, unsympathetic who have so 
 .disciplined their horses and their dogs, their tulips 
 and their currant-bushes, that these have no life 
 independent from their masters who recognise no 
 existences beyond themselves and their belongings. 
 But a man who has lived much in the woods and 
 hillsides, alone, face to face with nature for any time, 
 becomes aware that he is only one of God's creatures ; 
 
SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 and that the sunshine and the shade, the early and 
 the latter rain, are proba,bly intended for the use of 
 other organisations besides his own for their pas- 
 time, subsistence, and comfort, as well as for that of 
 the human race. 
 
 " Each after his kind, and God saw that it was 
 good," is a beautiful expression of the thought that 
 " this great globe and all that it inhabits " is not 
 intended to be confined to the use of man alone. 
 
 Science has been playing of late into the hands 
 of our vanity : the lightning is made to carry our 
 messages, night is turned into day by the gas out of 
 a rock, water in the shape of steam is made to carry 
 us round the earth, the yery refuse and waste 
 left from other products are found to be precious, 
 and are made to yield valuable dyes, oils, and 
 useful drugs for our omnivorous wants and gratifi- 
 cations, till we have begun to fancy that only time 
 is required to " show a use" for us in all remain- 
 ing natural productions. Yet when we turn to the 
 infinitely great and the infinitely small to tele- 
 scopic and microscopic wonders we discover whole 
 worlds utterly independent and unconscious of us 
 and our requirements. 
 
 Even among the races where an individual here 
 and there can be made serviceable to man, such as 
 
ALL CREATURES FOR OUR SPORT OR USE. 89 
 
 "that great leviathan whom Thou hast caused to 
 play," we can hardly fancy that the special object 
 of the whale's life is to give us sperm oil, whale- 
 bone, and blubber. Mr. Wallace is eloquent upon 
 the birds of paradise, confined to two or three most 
 remote islands, in a sea scarcely ever visited, and seen 
 only by a few ignorant savages, which are yet the 
 most exquisite, the most original of creations. He 
 tells of what are called by the Papuan natives 
 Sacaleli, or dancing parties, where the birds col- 
 lect at the tops of the trees in the lonely woods, 
 to hover and play for hours, shaking their wings, 
 and crests, the long trains of exquisite bright golden 
 feathers erected over their heads, and quivering in 
 the sunshine like a cloud of glory, their crimson, 
 blue, or green heads shining with metallic brilliancy, 
 evidently showing off for the pleasure of their more 
 quietly dressed Quaker-looking lady friends a sight 
 which never is or probably will be ever enjoyed by 
 cultivated man. Even our pride cannot conceive the 
 raison d'etre of the seven hundred and fifty new beetles 
 and flieg which Mr. Wallace discovers in three days in 
 the island of Borneo, to be that one out of their myriad 
 numbers may have the honour of being stuck with 
 a pin on a card in the collection of even that distin- 
 guished naturalist. There are " many mansions " of 
 
90 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 life, of use, of beauty, unknown to each, other, living 
 side by side and yet apart in the world, doing each 
 their own work, completely unconscious of that of 
 the rest children of the same God, having as great 
 a right and claim to a happy life as we ourselves. 
 There was much truth in St. Francis of Assisi's 
 fantastic reverence for "his brothers and sisters 5 ' 
 of the animal creation, which we might often do 
 well to remember. Mia sorella la vacca would not 
 suffer as she does on railway trains, mio fratello 
 Pasino and the horse would less frequently -be ill 
 treated, if we realised their rights in life as well as 
 our own. 
 
 No doubt, in one sense, the law is absolute of 
 the " survival of the fittest," and that the lower 
 races will, in time, where coming into collision with 
 the higher and stronger, give way before them. For 
 instance, as the world becomes more peopled, there will 
 be no room for organisations like that of the tiger, 
 which requires a whole province to supply himself 
 and his (not large) family with " butchers' meat;" 
 but this very partially solves the great question of 
 our use and abuse of our position with regard to 
 animals. Indeed, the infringing on the liberty of 
 other lives in our own fancied interests has been 
 proved again and again to be a mistake. Small 
 
ALL CREATURES FOR OUR SPORT OR USE. 91 
 
 birds liave been supposed to be injurious to grain 
 and fruit, and they have been destroyed without 
 mercy in France and Switzerland. The consequence 
 has been that devouring insects have increased to 
 such a fearful extent, and have so damaged the crops 
 of those countries, that solemn decrees have now 
 been issued for the protection of those valuable 
 sparrows, &c., which it is the object of some wise 
 " small bird clubs" in England to destroy. "We 
 have not yet even taken pains to make out which 
 are the races that are and which are not useful to 
 ourselves. 
 
 Again, the population of the great oceans which 
 cover so large a portion of our planet carries on an 
 existence utterly independent of us. Those billions 
 of billions of globigerince which are tranquilly de- 
 positing at the bottom of the ocean their infinitesimal 
 portion of a future chalk bed those innumerable 
 star-fish and corallines, a specimen or two of which 
 clings to the filaments of the rope of a dredge from 
 the Challenger of what " use " are they to man ? 
 Yet who . can doubt that each and all have their 
 object in the vast scheme of the universe. 
 
 With regard to the races beyond the ken of our 
 unassisted senses, it is beyond measure startling to 
 watch the inhabitants of a drop of water in a 
 
92 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 solar microscope swallowing each other, pursuing 
 each other, seeking their prey, their loves, their 
 hates, with the utmost excitement and plenitude 
 of life, fearing us not, seeing, hearing, knowing us 
 not as utterly unconscious of our existence as we 
 a few seconds before were of theirs. Their very 
 shapes are hideous in our eyes, " portentous," when 
 thus brought out by the magnifying lens and the 
 light. One carries an enormous head garnished with 
 prongs or spikes, the next seems all paunch, with no 
 head to speak of at all. Legs come out in the wrong 
 (!) places and in unpleasant numbers. One beast 
 wears his eyes in his stomach, another on his back. 
 The proportions of their bodies, their colour, their 
 complexions and manners, are all utterly repulsive 
 to our ideas of beauty. What are we that we should 
 judge-? They are not for us or by us or indeed 
 in our world at all, but by this accidental glimpse. 
 Yet each atom, invisible to the naked eye, is finished 
 with an exquisite nicety, fitting him to fulfil his 
 position in life with unerring forethought, adaptation, 
 and success. Each little primary cellule (in plants 
 and animals indistinguishably alike), representing the 
 simplest form of life a little bag yet knows how to 
 extract water and gases from the earth and air, which 
 it digests and transforms, by some marvellous chemical 
 
ALL CREATURES FOR OUR SPORT OR USE. 93 
 
 action, into the wondrous varieties we see around us 
 in different plants 
 
 " God is great in the great, but greatest in the small." 
 
 ST. AUGUSTINE. 
 
 Then if we turn to the other extreme of remoteness 
 from our world by distance in one case as by size in 
 the other and look through a telescope at the stars 
 on a bright clear night, shining in every variety of 
 size and distance, through the vast spaces which 
 separate us from even the nearest of those mighty 
 worlds filled with what strange varieties of life who 
 shall discover ? we are chilled with the sense of how 
 utterly indifferent and unconscious are their inhabit- 
 ants of our existence, our hopes, our fears, our objects ; 
 they would not even be aware of the change if the 
 whole of our planet with its contents were swept away 
 to-morrow. 
 
 There is something inexpressibly lonely in the feel- 
 ing of isolation when we attempt thus to realise how 
 far apart are the different portions of God's creation. 
 And the more we become aware of its extent and 
 variety, the more we seem to require the rest given 
 by a principle to be reached through a different set 
 of faculties from those used in the scientific investi- 
 gation of nature the belief that all are bound together 
 into one great whole the dependence upon a Father, 
 
94 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 the Spirit of good, God the binding together, the 
 religio, under the power 
 
 " Which wields the world with never-wearied love, 
 Sustains it from beneath and kindles it above," 
 
 as Shelley has put it certainly a man not likely to 
 exaggerate the necessity of this link between the 
 Great Spirit, by whatsoever name He be called, and 
 the individual sentient atoms, whether conscious or 
 unconscious of His presence. 
 
 The " Essay on Man" is no longer regarded with 
 the respect it used to win. Yet it would be difficult 
 to put the idea of the connection of the universe with 
 the Divinity in truer or more beautiful words than 
 Pope's, which, after all, are a variation on the theme, 
 " In Him we live, and move, and have our being : " 
 
 " All are but parts of one stupendous whole, 
 Whose body nature is, and God the soul. 
 This changed through all, and yet in all the same, 
 Great in the earth as in th' ethereal frame. 
 Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, 
 Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees, 
 Lives through all life, extends through all extent, 
 Spreads undivided, operates unspent, 
 Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part, 
 
 As full, as perfect in a hair as heart. 
 
 ******* 
 
 To Him no high, no low, no great, no small, 
 He fills, He bounds, connects, and equals all. 
 
THE NAMES OF PLANTS. 
 
 THE titles given by our ancestors to distinguish one 
 plant from another, before they were marshalled 
 by Linnaeus into battalions of orders and species, dis- 
 tinguished by the number and construction of their 
 stamens and pistils, or arranged into more natural 
 families by Lindley and the later botanists, are often 
 extremely poetic. There is a wealth of imagery and 
 of fanciful allusions in them, " playing with words 
 and idle similes," which is sometimes very interest- 
 ing to trace out. 
 
 Some plants are named according to the " doctrine 
 of signatures," i.e. the notion that the appearance 
 of a plant indicated the disease which it was intended 
 to cure, like the " Eyebright " " the black purple 
 spot on the corolla proved it to be good for the eyes," 
 said the medical science of the day. 
 
96 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 Next come the similitudes. The " Day's Eye" 
 opens at sunrise and closes at sunset 
 
 "As a daisy, whose leaves spread, 
 Shuts when Titan goes to bed." 
 
 The " Hell's- weed " (the dodder), which strangles 
 the plant to which it attaches itself. 
 
 The Columbine, so called because in reversing the 
 flower the curved nectaries look like the heads of 
 doves (colombes) sitting close together in a nest. 
 
 There is a whole garden-full of plants sacred to the 
 Virgin Mary, to whom all things pure and lovely were 
 dedicated, generally because they flower at some 
 period connected with " Our Lady's" days the Visita- 
 tion, the Assumption, her Birth, Baptism, and Purifica- 
 tion such as the " Lady's Smock," " Lady's Mantle," 
 " Lady's Fingers," " Lady's Slipper," "Lady's Tres- 
 ses," (the prettjr little green Ophrys with a twisted 
 stem). The " Virgin's Bower," also called " Travel- 
 ler's Joy," begins to blossom in July, when the feast of 
 Visitation occurs, and is in fullest flower at the 
 Assumption in August. 
 
 The " Lady's Bedstraw" belongs to no particular 
 month, but has a very particular story for its name. 
 The different plants were summoned to come and 
 form a litter for the Virgin and Child in the stable at 
 
 
THE NAMES OF PLANTS. 97 
 
 Bethlehem. They all began to make excuses one 
 after the other ; some were too busy, some declared 
 themselves too insignificant, some too great, or it was 
 too early or too late for appearing. At last this 
 pretty little white star offered herself humbly for the 
 place, and was afterwards rewarded for her virtue by 
 her flowers being glorified by a halo of golden 
 yellow.* 
 
 St. John's Wort, St. Peter's Wort, flower about the 
 time of their respective Saint's Days. The Star of 
 Bethlehem, Eose of Sharon, Joseph's Walking-stick, 
 Jacob's Ladder (the beautiful Solomon's Seal), are 
 apparently accidental fancies. 
 
 The Holy Ghost flower, the Peony, flowers of 
 course at Whitsuntide. Lent Lilies tell their own 
 tale. 
 
 A series of traditions connects the peculiarity in 
 certain plants with an event in Bible history. The 
 Knot-grass, Polygonum persicum, has a large black 
 spot on its smooth leaves, caused "by a drop of blood 
 falling from our Saviour, at the time of the Cruci- 
 
 * The legends took in birds and beasts, as well as plants. " They say the 
 owl was a baker's daughter," sings poor Ophelia. The story tells that 
 our Saviour went into a baker's shop and asked for some bread ; the mistress 
 put a piece of dough into the oven for him, but her daughter said it was too 
 big, and took away all but a little bit. It immediately swelled to an immense 
 size. The girl began to cry " Heugh, heugh," and was transformed into an 
 owl, to cry thus all her life as a punishment for her hardheartedness. 
 
 H 
 
98 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 fixion, on one of the plants which grew at the foot 
 of the Cross." 
 
 The " Judas-tree" is that on which the wretched 
 traitor hanged himself in his misery rather an unsafe 
 stem to choose, but then it broke under his weight, 
 as we are told. 
 
 The Cross was made of the wood of the Aspen, 
 or trembling Poplar, and its leaves have been smitten 
 by the curse of perpetual quivering restlessness ever 
 since. 
 
 The " Virgin's Pinch" is the black mark on the 
 Persicary. 
 
 " Job's Tears " are so called " for that every graine 
 resembleth the drops that falleth from the eye," says 
 old Gerarde. 
 
 In the Passion-flower, all the five emblems of the 
 Passion are to be found by the faithful the nails, 
 crown of thorns, hammer, cross, and spear. " Christ's 
 Thorn," the Gleditchia, is the plant from which the 
 crown of thorns was supposed to have been made. 
 
 Cruciform plants are all wholesome, "the very sign 
 of the Cross making all good things to dwell in its 
 neighbourhood." 
 
 Evergreens have always been held emblematical of 
 the hope of eternal life. They were carried with a 
 corpse and deposited on the grave by the early Chris- 
 
THE NAMES OF PLANTS. 99 
 
 tians, to show that the soul was ever living. An 
 earlier Pagan use was when the Druids caused "all 
 dwellings to be decked with evergreen boughs in 
 winter, that the wood spirits might take refuge there 
 against the cold, till they could return to their own 
 homes in the forests, when spring came back again." 
 One group of plants has been named in memory of 
 human virtues and graces, quite independent of any 
 qualities of their own. Honesty, Heartsease, Thrift, 
 True Love, Old Man's Friend, Eue, the Herb-o' -grace, 
 can have merely fanciful analogies, unless the little 
 seeds kept so tight in its round purse can be supposed 
 to symbolise " honesty." Some resemblance to bird or 
 beast has given their names to the Mouse-ear, Lark- 
 spur, Crowfoot, Cranesbill, Coltsfoot, Adder' s-tongue, 
 Cat's-tail, Pheasant's-eye-, Mare's-tail, while the small 
 Scabious, whose root seems to have been bitten off, 
 is called the Devil's Bit. 
 
 Others owe their names to their virtues as simples, 
 -All-heal, "Feverfeu" (fugis). "The Sea Spurge 
 is full of milke, goode against cholericke humour." 
 It is called among women " Welcome to our house." 
 The "blessed thistle, Carduus benedictus, is good for 
 giddinesse of the head, it strengtheneth memorie, and 
 is a singular remedie against deafnesse," we are told 
 in old Gerarcle's herbal. " Get you some of the 
 
100 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 Carduus benedictus, and lay it to your heart ; it is the 
 only thing for a qualm," says Margaret, in Much Ado 
 4.bout Nothing, quizzing Beatrice about Benedict. 
 " Benedictus, why Benedictus? You have some 
 moral in this Benedictus," answers Beatrice testily. 
 
 Each month had its own particular flower the 
 " Christmas Rose," the pretty green Hellibore, Snow- 
 drops, the " Fair Maids of February," the " May- 
 flower," the Hawthorn that covers the hedges with ' 
 beauty, and the " June Eose." 
 
 The "Poor Man's Weather-glass," the Pimpernel, 
 closes when there is rain in the air. "At what time 
 in the month of August the husbandmen having 
 occasion to go unto their harvest work will first 
 behold the floures of Pimpernell, whereby they know 
 the weather that shall follow the next day after. If 
 the floures be shut close up it betokeneth raine and 
 foule weather ; contrariwise, if they be spread abroad, 
 faire weather." The yellow Centaury and Sundew 
 only open in bright sunshine. The " Shepherd's 
 Hourglass " tells him accurately the time of the day. 
 The extreme regularity, indeed, with which many 
 flowers open and close at particular hours, having 
 apparently no reference either to light or temperature, 
 is such that Linnaeus made a dial of plants, by which a 
 man might time himself as with a clock by watching 
 
 
THE NAMES OF PLANTS. 101 
 
 their petals unclose. The Goafs-beard, for instance, 
 is stigmatised for its lazy habits by the opprobious 
 epithet, " John, go to bed at noon," but then it opens 
 at four in the morning ; the Convolvulus Major also 
 shuts at twelve o'clock ; the Dandelion opens at seven 
 and closes at five ; the Ear Hawkweed has a very 
 short day, it wakes at eight and goes to sleep at two ; 
 the red Sandflower begins at nine and closes at 
 three ; the Evening Primrose opens only at sundown ; 
 the night-blowing Cereus only after dark, probably all 
 for some reason connected with the fructification. The 
 sleep of plants is a most curious and interesting study 
 of itself, too long, however, even to touch on here. 
 
 The merely pretty allusions are many Yenus's 
 Looking-glass, Love in a Mist, Love lies bleeding, 
 Queen of the Meadows (the beautiful Spirsea), Crown 
 Imperial, Monkshood, Marvel of Peru, Herb Paris, 
 Enchanter's Nightshade, Silver-weed, Goldie-lockes, 
 "a moss found in marish places and shadie dry 
 ditches, where the sun never sheweth his face." 
 
 Why the insignificant Vervain, or " holy-herbe," is 
 " cheerful and placid," and why she was so. much 
 valued in ancient days, seems a mystery. " If the 
 dining-room," says Pliny, " be sprinkled with it, the 
 guests will be the merrier." " Many odde old wives ' 
 fables are written of it, tending to witchcraft and 
 
102 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 sorcerie, which, honest eares abhorre to heare." The 
 Welsh name means " hateful to the devil." 
 
 The Mistletoe, " air tree" in Welsh, probably owed 
 its sacred properties to the " uncanny " mode of its 
 growth, particularly when it was found on the groves 
 of oak which were held to be holy by the Druids. 
 
 Little bits of historical allusions and national loves 
 and hatreds crop up amongst the flowers. The striped 
 Eed and White Eose, " York and Lancaster," symbol- 
 ising the union of the Eoyal Houses, has a pedigree 
 of nearly four hundred years to show. 
 
 The early Willow Catkins are called " Palms," from 
 having been in use as a substitute in Northern coun- 
 tries for the Palm branches, which were carried on 
 Palm Sunday in procession ; the name must, therefore, 
 belong to the earliest times of the Eoman Catholic 
 faith in England, when the practice began. " Wolf's 
 Bane " points to the time when the beast was still 
 alive and dreaded in the English forests. 
 
 "Dane's Blood," the dwarf Elder, has peculiarly 
 red berries, and shows the fear and hatred left behind 
 them by our grim invaders a thousand years or so ago. 
 
 The English are accused by the Scotch of having 
 introduced the Eagwort into Scotland, and they call 
 it there by a very evil name. 
 
 " Good King Henry " is a very inconspicuous or di- 
 
THE NAMES OF PLANTS. 103 
 
 nary wild plant ; but as no King Henry, bad or good, 
 has existed in England since the time of the eighth, 
 the name is certainly very old. Other Christian 
 names have been given, apparently merely from senti- 
 mental reasons, Sweet Cecily, Herb Eobert, Basil, 
 Sweet William, Lettuce, Eobin run i' th' hedge, 
 Sweet Marjoram, Lords and Ladies. 
 
 The fairies have their share in plant nomenclature. 
 "Pixy Pears," the rosy Eose-hips, which form the 
 fairies' dessert, the "fox" gloves, which the "good 
 folk" wear, the "Pixy Stools," or mushrooms, which 
 form "the green sour ringlets, whereof the ewe not 
 bites." Here the grass is made green by the fairies 
 dancing on it, and the stools are set ready for them to 
 sit on when they are tired. 
 
 There remain a number of names, which have acci- 
 dentally been chosen to express particular ideas. 
 " Lad's Love " is given to your flame in the country- 
 side when, as is not seldom the case, the swain's 
 words are scanty 
 
 " Violet is for faithfulness, 
 Which in me doth abide." 
 
 Sonnet, 1584. 
 
 The "Pansy," "that's for thought," or "Hearts- 
 ease," is still called in country places "Love in 
 
104 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 Id less," as in the Shakspearean compliment to Eliza- 
 beth in the Midsummer Nights Dream 
 
 " Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell, 
 It fell upon a little western flower, 
 Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound, 
 And maidens call it Love in Idleness ! " 
 
 " Bosemary," " that's for remembrance." " I pray 
 you, love, remember," says Ophelia in her madness. 
 It was carried at funerals 
 
 " Marygold that goes to bed with the sun, 
 And with him rises weeping ; " 
 
 and the marsh edition of it, " all aflame," as Tenny- 
 son describes it. 
 
 " Speedwell," said the little blue Yeronica in the 
 hedge, to the old folk who went before us. " Forget- 
 me-not," called the turquoise-blue Myosotis from the 
 water as they passed by. "Turkscap Lilies," " Bloody 
 Warriors," the dark Wallflower, filled their gardens, 
 and bright blue " Canterbury Bells," common in the 
 hedges of Kent, cheered the pilgrims on their road to 
 the shrine of St. Thomas. 
 
 We pay for the convenience of our present nomen- 
 clature by the piling up of Greek and Latin words 
 on each other, the barbarous compounds, and almost 
 unpronounceable words, such as "Habrothamnus," 
 " Ortiospermum," "Intybaceum," and the like. 
 
THE NAMES OF PLANTS. 105 
 
 While the utterly irrelevant proper names, such as 
 the " Wellingtonia," for a pine-tree belonging to the 
 far "West American mountains, scarcely ever heard 
 of while "the Duke" was still alive, the roses 
 dedicated to French marshals, most unfloral of men, 
 are symptoms of the present poverty of our faculty 
 of language. 
 
 The hosts of new shrubs and plants now continually 
 introduced require a more systematic kind of name- 
 making than of old ; but we cannot help sometimes 
 regretting the poetry of invention which has passed 
 away from us, the loving transfer of our human 
 thoughts and feelings to the inanimate things around 
 us, the beautiful religious symbols into which our 
 ancestors translated the nature about them, and which 
 so often must have helped them to "rise from Nature 
 up to Nature'* God." 
 
THE FATE OF PETS. 
 
 IS a doleful history, com- 
 prising more misery in a 
 small way than is to be 
 found in any of the other 
 minor accidents of life ; 
 as most -people can tell 
 for themselves, or may 
 see in the " heartbroken 
 utterances " which ap- 
 pear in papers like " The 
 Animal World." Indeed, 
 if we 
 
 Sit upon the ground 
 And tell sad stories of the fate of pets, 
 How some were drowned at sea, some stolen by thieves, 
 Some dead of grief for loss of those they loved, 
 Some poisoned by their foes, some sleeping slain" 
 
 we shall find that though, like poor Eichard II.'s 
 
THE FATE OF PETS. 107 
 
 kings, they were not "all murdered," their fates are 
 hardly less tragic. 
 
 Here are a few of the dolorous ends which have 
 come within my own knowledge, and any one con- 
 versant with beasts could add to the list by scores. 
 
 An Englishman high in office in the East had an 
 infant tiger brought to him after a royal hunt in 
 which the mother had been slain. It was about the 
 size of a large kitten, but more bulky, more solidly 
 and heavily framed, with deep brown stripes on 
 its tawny back, and broad black and white streaked 
 and whiskered muzzle. It was still in the sucking 
 stage of existence, was brought up by hand, and grew 
 extremely playful and amusing. There is something 
 particularly piquant in the innocent infancy of beasts 
 of prey, in the unconscious possessors of such enor- 
 mous powers of mischief in the future in nursing tiger 
 cubs or playing with a baby Czarovitch or an infant 
 Sultan ; and the ambassador loved the beautiful, lithe, 
 graceful, young terrible well. It became in return 
 very fond of him and followed him all about the house, 
 mewing much like a cat, and lying on its back with 
 its four paws in the air to be caressed. 
 
 By-and-by, as the beast grew larger and stronger 
 day by day, the play became fiercer, and the tap with 
 his great paw, even with sheathed claws and amiable 
 
108 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 intentions, was no joke. When he opened his lips at 
 the roots and showed his ranges of beautiful white 
 teeth, the horrible grin struck terror into the attendant 
 dark men. The " Sahib tiger " was treated with great 
 respect, but his temper became uncertain. Once in 
 his wrath he killed a dog, and there was no knowing 
 with whom his majesty might next be angry. His 
 extraordinary muscular strength was developing fast, 
 and one day, lying on his back with his four paws 
 raised, he suddenly sprung up after a dog that 
 had offended him without turning or touching the 
 ground. 
 
 The servants attached to the service entreated that my 
 lord might at least be shut up; this was done, but the 
 beast grew so enraged at his captivity that his master 
 once more let him out, saying, " He was still but a 
 child tiger, and harmless if he was left alone ; it was 
 the fault of those who teased him if he behaved ill." 
 As he himself only came across the patte-de- velours 
 side of the tiger's character, he would not believe 
 the stories told against his pet. His own bedroom 
 opened on to a verandah looking into a court, round 
 which the house was built, after the fashion of the 
 East. At the beginning of the night the tiger lay on 
 a carpet spread for him in the verandah itself. As 
 the night grew cooler he crept quietly in and made 
 
THE FATE OF PETS. 109 
 
 himself comfortable within the room, and when it 
 became almost cold (the time was winter) he mounted 
 upon his master's bed and cuddled close up behind 
 him. Who could resist the charm of such amiable 
 gentle manners from the owner of such fangs and 
 claws ? 
 
 Still, however, he grew more and more fierce to the 
 outside world; fitfully his enormous strength came 
 out in his rough play ; his roar shook the souls of the 
 dark men; the glare of his eyeballs turned them 
 green with fear ; more than once he had knocked 
 down a man, without as yet intending malice. 
 
 At length it came to pass that the great Sahib 
 himself went out for an unusual number of hours or 
 days ; when he returned he found his savage pet 
 writhing in tortures of pain. ~No one would account 
 for what had happened, or give the smallest explana- 
 tion of the creature's state. It was evident, however, 
 that poison had been used. He was near his end ; 
 the groans grew weaker and weaker, and the beast 
 died licking the hands of his master, who stood by 
 helpless to give him any relief. It went ill with the 
 Persian suite that evening. 
 
 This was a better ending, however, to the story than 
 in another case, where the master of a similar pet 
 coming home in the dusk saw his tiger in the " com- 
 
110 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 pound " playing with a great ball, rolling it hither and 
 thither with his paws. Coming near, he saw to his 
 horror that it was a man's head, which the beast had 
 bitten off at the neck in a sudden attack of spite, and, 
 being far too well fed to care to eat it, was using it as 
 a dreadful plaything. 
 
 Number two of the pets of my friends was a 
 squirrel, which had fallen in its infancy out of a nest 
 in a pine- wood. This, too, was brought up by hand. 
 At first it was a little hairless thing, with a bare tail 
 like a rat's, but gradually it put on its furry coat 
 with a white waistcoat and bushy train. A bright- 
 eyed, graceful, quick-tempered, agile little companion 
 it proved. Its favourite haunt in winter was up the 
 wide sleeve of its mistress's gown, where it would 
 lie comfortably perdu in the warmth for hours. One 
 cold day it had not been well; she was going to 
 church, and not liking to disturb it she left it in its 
 nest ; but when once safely within her pew and the 
 service had well begun, it became evident, to her 
 dismay, that the squirrel had taken a particular dislike 
 to the sound of the preacher's voice and the noise of 
 the singing. He kept up a low suppressed hiss when- 
 ever a passage struck him as not to his taste, and 
 scolded sometimes so loud that she was afraid her 
 neighbours would think her possessed; and that she 
 
THE FATE Or PETS. Ill 
 
 would have to walk out in the middle of the 
 service. 
 
 The squirrel never went to church again. 
 
 He always appeared at dessert, and was allowed to 
 run about the table, where he never overthrew or 
 disturbed anything, but deftly careered in and out 
 among the glass and the dishes, or sat up on his little 
 hind legs, and took what was given him, handling a 
 nut in his fore-paws with delicate precision, cracking 
 it with his sharp teeth, his merry little head on one 
 side, and an occasional sweep of his beautiful brush of 
 a tail. 
 
 His great delight was to mount on to the highest 
 cornice or curtain-rod he could find, and sit chattering 
 in triumph, or to run up the shoulders of his friends, 
 and sit upon their heads. 
 
 His mistress was so afraid of his coming in harm's 
 way that she took him out with her on her visits ; and 
 one day in a strange house she put the cage with the 
 squirrel in it on the top of a chest of drawers, and locked 
 the door of her room. When she returned, she found 
 that the dog of the house, who must treacherously have 
 secreted himself under the bed for the fell purpose, 
 had pulled down the cage, broken it open, and was 
 hard at work worrying the poor little inmate, which 
 was at the point of death, when its mistress came in 
 
112 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 only in time to rescue the body, and have the melan- 
 choly satisfaction of burying the remains decently. 
 
 Case number three regards a pair of small ring- 
 tailed monkeys, which were sent as a present from their 
 native home to a lad at college. They were of that 
 charming kind described as " consisting of four legs 
 and a tail, tied in a knot in the middle," the tail 
 forming the most important member of the concern. 
 They were landed in London, and sent to the town 
 house of the family, who happened to be from home. 
 The butler, not much pleased at their sight, shut the 
 new arrivals up in the pantry alone for the night. It 
 was late autumn, there was no fire, no comfort, no 
 care to be had, and the next morning the little monkeys 
 were discovered locked in each other's arms, and quite 
 dead. 
 
 To tell of the parrot whose wings all unused did not 
 save him from dying by a fall out of window ; the lap- 
 dogs which have been overrun by carriages, suffocated, 
 bitten, stung to. death by wasps, drowned ; how the 
 poodle-dog belonging to the wife of a governor-general 
 fell overboard, and was seen by its mistress to be 
 swallowed by a shark would all be too " long to tell 
 and sad to trace ; " and as a relief to my own and my 
 readers' feelings, here is a story of a less harrowing 
 description. 
 
THE FATE OF PETS. 113 
 
 A busy man, who once wanted to finish some 
 literary work, took refuge for the purpose in a quiet, 
 out-of-the-way French town, where he set up his 
 quarters at a comfortable auberge with a pleasant 
 garden. Therein he fraternised with a small pet owl 
 which had lost its leg. It hopped about after him in 
 its own fashion, and was most affable and companion- 
 able, and a great resource in the limited amusements 
 of the place. 
 
 At last, one day, he missed his friend, and hunted 
 up and down vainly for her for some time. He had 
 just finished his work, and having given warning that 
 he should leave the next day, he demanded his bill 
 while he ate his last dinner, where there figured a 
 curious little round morsel of game, "bien accom- 
 mode," with sauce, but which struck him as having no 
 legs. 
 
 " What bird is this?" he said to the servante, but 
 she seemed to be suddenly called away. 
 
 When the landlord brought up his account that 
 night "By-tbe-bye," said the guest, "what is become 
 of that nice little owl I was so fond of ? " 
 
 " Monsieur," said the host, going on with the bill, 
 " has been content of the service ? " 
 
 " Quite satisfied," replied the Englishman, "but I 
 am very sorry about the owl ; what is become of her ? " 
 
 i 
 
114 .SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 " Monsieur has had his potage, his roti, his doux, 
 and his gibier each day he has been here ? " 
 
 " Yes, yes," said the other impatiently ; " but what 
 about the owl ? " A horrible suspicion began to cross 
 his mind. 
 
 " Monsieur, on this the last day, behold, with all my 
 possible efforts, I could get no game, alas, for Mon- 
 sieur's dinner ! " 
 
 " What ! " cried the horrified guest ; " you did not 
 kill the little owl for me ? " 
 
 " Oh, non, monsieur ! il est mort tout seul ! " 
 
 The stealing of pet dogs has become a regular trade, 
 or rather an art, according as it is now pursued : the 
 stalking of the master or mistress, so as to know all 
 their haunts, and time the exact instant most propi- 
 tious for the capture of the well -watched beast. 
 While calculations, made upon the most refined psycho- 
 logical principles, of the precise moment when the 
 agony of the bereaved will bring about the highest 
 amount of reward how not to offer hopes too soon, 
 and not to delay too long all this may be said to 
 have reached the dignity of an exact science. " How 
 do you settle the amount to be asked, is it according 
 to the breed of the dog?" said the fleeced but happy 
 recoverer of a beloved pug to the trader. " Oh no, 
 sir, we charges arter the feelinx of the parties." 
 
THE FATE OF PETS. 115 
 
 Perhaps the only really happy and satisfactory pets 
 are wild animals, which lead their own natural lives, 
 obtaining food by their own exertions, but adding a 
 friendship for man and an occasional luxury at his 
 hands to their usual course of woodland existence. A 
 squirrel in this way has been known to enter the open 
 window every morning where a family was at break- 
 fast, run up the back of the master, and nestle in his 
 coat-collar, when it received a nut. 
 
 Besides these are the creatures kept for use, not 
 for play, who, even though their food be found for 
 them, are quite unspoiled by luxury, and lead a 
 life of independent usefulness as the helpmates and 
 companions of man. A collie dog, on whom the 
 most important part of his shepherd master's work 
 depends, the retriever, who u can do anything but 
 speak," these are friends, hardly to be degraded into 
 pets. 
 
 The faculty of taming wild animals, which some 
 men possess in so remarkable a degree, would be 
 worth studying more accurately. It seems generally 
 to depend on the strength of the instinctive part 
 which we share with the animal creation ; the deaf 
 and dumb often possess it to a great degree ; patience, 
 quiet tenderness, and a determined will are certainly 
 required for any great amount of the power. 
 
116 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 An old man who led a secluded life in an ancient 
 house, in the midst of trees and fields, might be seen 
 with the robins, tomtits, &c. perched on his shoulders 
 and taking crumbs out of his mouth. 
 
 A more extraordinary proof of confidence in birds 
 was to be witnessed one year in the crowded Tuileries 
 gardens. An old man in very shabby dress might be 
 seen any day summoning birds from the trees and 
 houses round ; pigeons, sparrows, thrushes, &c., came 
 flying up, fluttered over his head, alighted on his hat, 
 his shoulders, and arms, and sat there caressing him. 
 He did not feed them, at least ostensibly, and when, 
 after a time, he had apparently had enough of their 
 company, with a wave of his hand he dismissed his 
 winged court, which all flew quietly away at the signal. 
 They wanted apparently nothing but friendliness from 
 him, and on his part it was not done for money, but 
 simply for his own pastime, for when the reception 
 was over he walked away among the crowd, which 
 seemed too well used to the sight to take much heed 
 of it. 
 
 In general, however, we are too stupid in our 
 intercourse with animals to attempt to understand the 
 language they use, or to try to perfect the signs by 
 which they are to interpret our wishes ; although the 
 occasional instances of such communion, often acci 
 
 
THE FATE OF PETS. 117 
 
 dentally obtained, show how much might be done in 
 this way. 
 
 A cat in a Swiss cottage had taken poison, and 
 came in a pitiful state of pain to seek its mistress's 
 help. The fever and heat were so great, that it dipped 
 its own paws into a pan of water, an almost unheard- 
 of proceeding in a water-hating cat. She wrapped it 
 in wet linen, fed it with gruel, nursed it, and doctored 
 it all the day and night after. It recovered, and 
 could not find ways enough to show its gratitude. 
 One evening she had gone up-stairs to bed, when a 
 mew at the window roused her ; she got up and opened 
 it, and found the cat, which had climbed a pear-tree 
 nailed against the house, with a mouse in its mouth. 
 This it laid as an offering at its mistress's feet, and 
 went away. For above a year it continued to bring 
 these tributes to her. Even when it had kittens they 
 were not allowed to touch this reserved share, and if 
 they attempted to eat it the mother gave them a little 
 tap, "that is not for thee." After a while, however, 
 the mistress accepted the gift, thanked the giver with 
 a pleased look, and restored the mouse to her, when 
 the cat permitted her children to take the prey which 
 had served its purpose in her eyes. Here was a refined 
 feeling of gratitude, remembered for months after the 
 benefit conferred, quite disinterested, and placed above 
 
118 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 the natural Instincts always very strong in a cat- 
 to wards her own offspring. 
 
 If the question of the capabilities of animals, their 
 affections and powers of memory both evidently great 
 -their degree of ideality often extremely strong 
 in a dog particularly the amount of their reasoning 
 power, that is of foreseeing the consequences of an 
 action and guarding against it, or accomplishing a new 
 and untried object, were as closely studied as they 
 might well be in the very intimate intercourse existing 
 between pets and their masters, much would be done 
 towards reconciling outsiders to that very exclusive 
 relation, and making pets an interest instead of a 
 nuisance to the public in general, as is now too often 
 their fate. 
 
A YOUNG INDIAN PEINCE. 
 
 IN that strange " fortuitous concourse of atoms" 
 which streams perpetually from the most distant 
 parts of the world into that Alexandria of the West- 
 London the cosmopolitan there came to us in the 
 summer of 1870 a young Indian sovereign prince, the 
 Maharajah of Kolapoor. 
 
 It was the first time that a reigning Hindoo prince 
 had ever ventured to travel so far, and the journey 
 was a great event among his people, .who were much 
 distressed at the idea of his crossing the " black 
 water." The whole undertaking was one, indeed, 
 requiring a degree of resolution which it is difficult 
 for us to realise. He belonged, however, to the Mah- 
 rattas, who are more enterprising than most races of 
 Hindoos, and had had an English tutor and an officer 
 of the Indian Service residing with him, so that he 
 spoke English well, and had thus acquired a certain 
 
120 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 knowledge of modern history and of the politics and 
 statesmen of the day, which enabled him to be interested 
 in the conversation going on around him. 
 
 He was barely twenty, though he looked much older ; 
 a small-made man, with extremely slender hands and 
 feet ; his complexion of that pleasantly brown colour 
 which looks as if it had been just ripened by the sun, 
 not scorched black ; his eyes very large and lustrous, 
 but without much expression, and a contemplative, 
 rather childlike look ; when he spoke, his white teeth 
 shone brilliantly and lighted up the dark face. 
 
 He was a kindly, gentle young prince, not wanting 
 in intelligence, with a sort of easy dignity, as of one 
 used to be obeyed, but apparently quite contented to 
 remain languidly in any place where he happened to 
 be, so that one wondered the more to see him ventur- 
 ing so far from home. 
 
 He was ordinarily dressed in a kind of dark green 
 cloth coat, with a curious turban on his head formed 
 of rolls of red muslin twisted into thin coils, without 
 which he was never seen in public, any more than 
 Louis XIV. without his wig. He would have 
 considered it an act of rudeness on his part to show 
 himself bareheaded, though he pulled off his headgear 
 when with his own people only. He had never been 
 alone in all his life, and used to sit chatting and laugh- 
 
A YOUNG INDIAN PRINCE. 121 
 
 ing with his attendants who were on terms of perfect 
 ease with him, strangely mixed with the oriental depth 
 of respect and reverence with which they treated him. 
 
 He was already married, and a child had been born 
 to him just before his departure from Kolapoor. " Only 
 a girl," however, much to his disappointment, as a 
 daughter could not inherit. The Mahrattas are mono- 
 gamists; but sovereigns and very great chiefs are 
 sometimes, though only for reasons of state policy, 
 allowed by the " sages" to take a second wife. " Their 
 canons are rather elastic, but they would be ready, 1 
 have no doubt, to prove that if Henry VIII". had been 
 furnished with half-a-dozen wives simultaneously, and 
 George IV. and Napoleon with two apiece, there would 
 have been less of a strain on the consciences of 
 "Wolsey, Eldon, and Talleyrand." 
 
 In the Eajah's case, a little extra princess, then 
 about nine years old, and named Tara Baee, married 
 to him in her infancy, was growing up in reserve. 
 She was the daughter of a very ancient and 
 noble family, the Kaik Nimbalkur of Phultum (not 
 far from Poona) ; a house which was said to have 
 already reigned a thousand years at the time of the 
 Mahommedan invasion, and whose clan furnished 
 many brave leaders to the Mahratta cause in the suc- 
 ceeding struggles. 
 
122 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 She was described by a lady who saw her a few 
 years before as a lovely little child about two years and 
 a half old, who came in escorted with a great pomp of 
 attendants. They bore a sort of canopy over her, 
 nominally to protect her from the gaze of mankind as 
 she descended from her gilt coach * but the decorum 
 was only a sham, as she could be perfectly well seen 
 under it. She was dressed in a short armless purple 
 velvet jacket, and the saree, the long graceful drapery 
 worn by all Hindoos, wound about her. Her little 
 arms and ankles were covered with bangles, she wore 
 a large ring in her nose, and several pairs of ear-rings 
 hung round the lobes of her ears. If she had been 
 old enough for " company manners,' 7 she would have 
 inquired the ages of her visitors, and the ages of all 
 their relations and friends, which is the correct style 
 of conversation. As it was, her whole little soul was 
 absorbed in a parasol, which had been brought by 
 one of her guests, an instrument which she had never 
 seen before, and which she kept on opening and shut- 
 ting with great delight all the time of the visit. 
 
 " I shall bring the Eanee to see you in England," 
 Eajaram said to his English friends ; but this was 
 intended to refer to the mother of his child, not to this 
 little lady. 
 
 He had expressed a wish to see ordinary country life 
 
A YOUNG INDIAN PRINCE. 123 
 
 in England, and accordingly came to pay a visit at 
 Clay don. He was attended by three of his thirteen 
 native servants, his English footman, and the English 
 officer who accompanied him everywhere ; bnt the 
 accommodation required for the native suite was by no 
 means inconveniently large. The Eajah himself ac- 
 cepted a bed, but slept on the outside of it, wrapped 
 in a magnificent pelisse of scarlet cloth embroidered 
 with gold. The attendants lay in rugs on the floor in 
 their master's room and the dressing-room adjoining. 
 His religious ablutions every morning were long and 
 most scrupulously performed. Everything about him 
 was kept with great cleanliness and nicety but to be 
 touched by no intrusive housemaid. 
 
 There was at first some difficulty in the arrange- 
 ments concerning his food. Not only must the killing 
 and the cooking be done by the hands of the orthodox, 
 but the passing of the shadow of any but a "twice 
 born " * over a dish, when prepared, would render it 
 unfit to eat. All approach by the servants of the 
 house during these operations was warded off very 
 energetically. 
 
 A small garden house having been cleared out, 
 " Dunderbar," a tall handsome fellow clad in brown 
 
 * A twice born is a Brahmin, or a Chetrya, the two highest castes, or a 
 man who has become so by penunces or good works. 
 
124 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 cloth, with, a red turban like his master's, the "cook," 
 of a rather darker shade, in white garments with a 
 red fez, and a third tall fellow, whom the English 
 servants nicknamed " the kitchen-maid," in blue cotton 
 with a white turban, encamped there with an immense 
 chest which they brought with them. They built their 
 charcoal fire in the corner, and established themselves 
 beside it, squatting with their multitudinous copper 
 vessels big and little, without handles, employed alike 
 to cook with on the fire and to fetch water, as they 
 would use none which they did not themselves draw 
 at the well. 
 
 They brought their own rice, spices, meat, and flour 
 with them, and accepted nothing on the spot but live 
 fowls, eggs, and vegetables; they were very liberal in 
 giving away their food, to which the cloves, curry 
 powder, &c., which they used for everything alike, 
 gave a certain sameness of fiery taste almost into- 
 lerable to Western palates, but which was otherwise 
 very good. They all ate with their fingers, but 
 scrupulously washed their hands afterwards. The 
 rest of the day the attendants sat munching cloves 
 and nuts of various descriptions, smoking from a 
 common pipe, which each passed on after taking a 
 single whiff. One of them was always left on guard, 
 lest the vessels, &c., should be touched, and thus 
 
A YOUNG INDIAN PRINCE. 125 
 
 defiled. They were extremely intelligent, and 
 showed themselves very quick in comprehending 
 everything that was required, though they had little 
 language but that of signs in common with those who 
 had to deal with them. 
 
 A morning room was given up to the Eajah with 
 an entrance on the garden, through which his meals 
 were brought without danger of contamination. The 
 cook, in his white garments, his feet bare on the 
 rough gravel, but his head scrupulously covered for 
 in India respect is shown in exactly the opposite way 
 to that in Europe bore in aloft on one hand, the arm 
 bent back, a little tray covered with a napkin. The 
 Hajah was extremely kind and courteous, making very 
 pleasantly such pretty little speeches as his metier of 
 prince required. " I am enamoured of your garden," 
 he said to the rector's wife, as she showed him her 
 parterres. He had even got up the little bits of society 
 " slang," and declared he had " enjoyed his visit im- 
 mensely ! " He played eagerly at croquet, a great 
 resource in the dearth of points where intercourse was 
 possible, and the wide green English lawn under the 
 shadow of the old oak-trees was an oasis of common 
 interest for the dusky little Eastern prince and the 
 fair-haired, fair- skinned Western girls and children, 
 very curious to watch and consider; while at a 
 
126 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 respectful distance his three attendants stood following 
 the success of their master's strokes with anxious 
 interest. 
 
 He wrote afterwards in his diary : "I was quite 
 1 khush ' (happy) and comfortable at Claydon. They 
 made very good arrangements for my comfort and 
 happiness." 
 
 It was strange to look on the " mild Hindoo " and 
 remember the fierce ancestry he came of. He was a 
 collateral descendant of the great Mahratta chief 
 Sivagee, the founder of the Mahratta empire, in 
 the days between our Eestoration and Ee volution, 
 who bearded the power of the Mogul emperors when 
 at its highest, and rose upon its ruins. "The little 
 mountain rat," as Aurungzebe at first contemptuously 
 called him, won from the Great Moghul a territory on 
 the western coast of India extending one hundred and 
 twenty miles in breadth and four hundred in length, 
 from near Goa to north of Bombay, which Sivagee pos- 
 sessed at the time of his death, aged only fifty-two, 
 in 1680. 
 
 He was " an ardent patriot " and a "man of real 
 genius " in his own way, raising the despised Hindoo 
 race to sovereignty once more, against the dreaded 
 Moghuls. His powers of organization, the manner in 
 which he inspired his followers with his own 
 

 A YOUNG INDIAN PRINCE. 127 
 
 undaunted enthusiasm, were very remarkable, while 
 the excellence of his internal regulations for govern- 
 ing the country he had won was no less great, as we 
 are told by the historian of the Mahrattas, Mr. J. 
 Grant Duff. The wisdom of these arrangements was 
 so great, that his plans for the benefit of his race con- 
 tinued to be carried out after he had himself passed 
 away. On the other hand, his craft, his meanness, 
 the manner in which he seemed to prefer deceit to 
 open force when both were open to him, make him 
 odious in Western eyes. He appears, however, to have 
 sincerely believed himself to be inspired in all his 
 important actions by the goddess of War, Bowannee. 
 The same sort of belief has been held to justify many 
 ferocious deeds in many countries, and under faiths 
 very widely different, but a more treacherous and 
 cruel action is nowhere to be found than the one 
 which contributed most to confirm his powers. Pind- 
 himself unable to cope in the open field with the 
 neighbouring Eajah of Bejapore, who had sent a large 
 army against him, he affected the greatest sorrrow for 
 his rebellion, and promised that he would surrender 
 the whole of his country to the Mahommedan general, 
 Afzool Khan, if he would come to a conference among 
 the fastnesses of the hill country. The Khan, confi- 
 dent in his own strength, was thus lured on to grant a 
 
128 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 friendly interview, which was arranged to take place 
 at the foot of his enemy's own hill fortress. Afzool 
 was attended by fifteen hundred men, while the rest 
 of the troops were stationed not far away. Sivagee 
 had excited his own followers by declarations that he 
 was called on by Bowannee herself to punish the 
 violators of the Hindoo temples and gods ; and having 
 posted his own men so as to cut off the retreat of the 
 Mahommedans, he came down to meet the unsuspect- 
 ing general, apparently unarmed, but wearing chain 
 armour under his cotton gown, and holding hid in the 
 palm of his right hand a horrible arrangement of 
 crooked steel blades called wagnuck, " tigers claws," 
 which fastens on to the fore and little finger. Afzool 
 Khan approached, clad in a muslin garment, and as 
 he raised his arms for the usual embrace, Sivagee 
 struck at him with the wagnuck, and finished him 
 with the sword presented to him by the terrible goddess 
 of war herself. The ^Mahommedan army was com- 
 pletely surprised and nearly cut to pieces, and Sivagee' s 
 power was assured from that moment. The sword 
 has a temple dedicated to it in 'Sattara, where offerings 
 of flowers are still made. It is, in fact, a sort of 
 incarnation of Bowannee. An irreverent Western 
 curiosity, however, having dared to examine the sacred 
 relic, it was discovered to be a nearly straight Italian 
 
A YOUNG INDIAN PRINCE. 
 
 129 
 
 blade, with the maker's marks and " Geneva" still 
 legible in more than one place. It was probably 
 
 procured (whether by the goddess herself, or by some 
 more prosaic means, must remain a mystery) either 
 
130 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 when fighting with the English of the " Factory " at 
 Surat, as our settlement on that side of India was then 
 humbly called, or from the Portuguese at Goa.* 
 
 Since those days the chiefs have mostly degene- 
 rated in vigour as well as in fierceness, and their 
 lives are generally a wretched combination of petty 
 intrigues, gossip, and worse things. The love of jewels 
 among the men gives an idea of the depth of inanity 
 which they sometimes reach. They are often hung over 
 with necklaces, rings, bangles, and head ornaments, 
 as if they were dummies set up for the purpose of 
 exhibition. One Eajah had himself photographed 
 with his ten fingers extended, every joint of each 
 being covered with rings, rendering it impossible for 
 him to use his hands for any purpose whatever. 
 
 A young prince who, instead of following this tradi- 
 tional life of indolence and sensual self-indulgence, 
 undertook a journey entailing so much exertion, 
 difficulty, and danger, was only the more to be 
 respected. 
 
 Rajaram was an heir only by adoption, as the 
 previous sovereign of Kolapoor had no son ; but the 
 British Government in this case acknowledged the 
 
 * Another sword belonging to'Sivagee, inherited by a Rajah of his family, 
 was presented by him to the Prince of Wales during his late tour, and is now 
 at South Kensington. 
 
A YOUNG INDIAN PRINCE. 131 
 
 much-prized right among the Hindoos of trans- 
 mitting their titles and estates to an adopted child 
 
 a privilege which was again exercised after his 
 death by the State and the Eanee at Kolapoor. The 
 East India Company, in very similar circumstances, 
 some years ago, refused the same right to the Eajah of 
 the neighbouring state of Sattara, according to the 
 letter of a treaty, where the word "heir" had been 
 understood by the Hindoos in the sense of their own 
 law and usage, but which was held by the Company 
 to bear only the English meaning u a policy which 
 entailed a festering grievance for many years in the 
 feelings of the people, and has been condemned by 
 some of the highest Indian authorities," said one who 
 has done so much for the welfare of the country which 
 he loved both wisely and well. 
 
 Kolapoor is one of several little-known and little- 
 visited independent states belonging to the Mahrattas 
 
 a race which for every reason it is very impolitic for 
 us to neglect, says Sir Bartle Frere, one of the most 
 competent men on such questions. " They have far 
 higher national capacity in every respect than any 
 Indian race, not excepting the Sikhs and Punjabees, 
 and are likely to play a very prominent part in India 
 hereafter with us, if we are wise, against us, if we 
 drift on. The chiefs have been degraded by the 
 
132 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 confiscation of a large portion of their estates, and by 
 their exclusion from the management of affairs, far 
 more than by any fault of their own." 
 
 Kolapoor is in the Bombay presidency, situated on 
 the western side of India, and consists mainly of a 
 fertile plain lying east of the line of the Ghauts. 
 Cotton, tobacco, and corn flourish in its deep black 
 soil. Eoads till within the last few years there were 
 absolutely none. A nephew of the poet Southey, 
 who crossed the territory some twenty-five years ago 
 during the rains, wrote word that he had tried 
 twenty-four different modes of crossing swollen rivers 
 during his journey of one hundred and forty miles ; 
 among which were 1, swimming with his clothes 
 on ; 2, with his clothes off^ and upon his head ; 3, on 
 horseback ; 4, on the ferryman's back ; 5, on a 
 basket ; 6, on a door ; 7, on a ladder ; 8, on inflated 
 skins; 9, on a netful of hollowed pumpkins; 10, 
 holding a bullock's tail; 11, by a buffalo's tail, 
 which is safer, inasmuch as he swims better than his 
 fellow-beast, but requires a more wary hand upon 
 him, since he is so fond of the water, that when he 
 reaches the shore he is quite ready to turn round 
 and swim back again. The last item in the list was 
 a sugar-boiling pan ; and there was but one bridge 
 among the twenty-four modes of transport, which last 
 
 
A YOUNG INDIAN PRINCE. 133 
 
 was not, after all, in the territory of Kolapoor, but in 
 that of Sattara, 
 
 Even lately, on a progress made in 1866 by the 
 then Governor of Bombay, Sir Bartle Frere, to visit 
 the Rajah who had adopted Rajaram, : the edge of 
 the cotton-fields was found a better line than the 
 ordinary tracks along which to drive and ride. At 
 night the party encamped in the open country, and 
 when they reached the river Kistna they crossed over 
 in circular wicker baskets made of cotton-twigs covered 
 with leather, which whirled round and round in the 
 stream, while a body-guard of natives escorted them 
 to guide the baskets in the proper direction, swimming 
 all round on inflated skins. Having once more resumed 
 their march, the Governor and his daughter were met 
 by the Rajah himself, with a magnificent procession 
 of elephants and horses, in gala dress with splendid 
 housings. The elephants had arabesques painted on 
 their broad foreheads, and silver bangles on their post- 
 like legs. The horses were still more liberally adorned 
 one white horse had stripes of magenta painted 
 over him, face and all. 
 
 Everything was going on with great ceremony and 
 decorum, when suddenly an infant elephant, which had 
 accompanied his mother to increase the number and 
 grandeur of the retinue, took fright, probably not 
 
13'i 
 
 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 having been used to so much company, and ran away. 
 
 He was so small that he passed under the legs of the 
 

 A YOUNG INDIAN PRINCE. 135 
 
 others, one of which had such a bad temper that he 
 was only brought out on great occasions, when every 
 animal possessed by the state was mustered. Offended 
 at the liberty taken with his legs, and regardless 
 of hospitality, he charged down on the English party. 
 It was no laughing matter. The heavy beast rushed 
 on, swaying violently from side to side, as is the habit 
 of elephants when they are angry, till he had thrown 
 off his riders and twisted the howdah on one side. 
 The mahout, however, seated on his head held firm, 
 and did not altogether lose control over him as he 
 plunged into the crowd, where he nearly overturned 
 the Governor and his suite ; and at length, the 
 attendants succeeded in directing him into the\pen 
 country, where he was harmless. 
 
 The whole procession then once more resumed its 
 decorum and its march to the city of Kolapoor. The 
 town consists of a large but not very interesting col- 
 lection of low houses, chiefly built of mud, and of one 
 story only; the palace, a huge square building, is 
 entered by a very handsome gateway, with three 
 deep horseshoe arches lined with beautiful fretwork. 
 It is built round a great courtyard, the walls adorned 
 by gigantic frescoes in brilliant colouring of scenes 
 from the Hindoo mythology, " very startling and effec- 
 tive. " 
 
136 
 
 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 On the evening of the day of his arrival the 
 Governor paid his state visit to the Maharajah. It 
 was growing dusk, and the lines of streets were 
 marked out by little lamps suspended from the ends 
 of bamboos fastened 'to the tops of the houses a most 
 picturesque mode of aerial illumination while flowers 
 
 GATEWAY OF THE P ALACK, KOLAPOOK. 
 
 were scattered about in profusion. These, the great 
 staple of Indian decoration, are always exquisitely 
 arranged, and are cultivated for the purpose every- 
 where. Before the centre arch of the entrance to 
 the palace stood two sentry-boxes, in each of which 
 towered an elephant and his rider, a Brobdignag edition 
 
A YOUNG INDIAN PRINCE. 137 
 
 of the sentinels at the Horse Guards, of a very 
 majestic description. 
 
 The hall of ceremony where the Durbar was held 
 is supported by columns covered with scarlet lac, 
 like sealing-wax, and the walls were ornamented all 
 round with the same, looking extremely brilliant 
 when lighted up. The Eajah sat at the head of a long 
 line of followers up one side of the room, opposite the 
 Governor, who headed a similar line of his own suite 
 on the other side, and as the hall was narrow they 
 were thus within speaking distance of each other 
 without compromising the dignity of either. Both 
 host and guest had garlands of flowers hung round 
 them necklaces of white jessamine, of the beautiful 
 Stephanotus, and sweet-smelling tuberoses strung on 
 threads, five together, and fastened with a rose at 
 intervals. Through a veiled door at the end of the 
 room the ladies of the zenana looked in and giggled. 
 An entertainment then followed in a hall lined through- 
 out with white marble, with white marble columns, and 
 chairs of the same set against the wall, and of course 
 immovable. Sweetmeats mixed with flowers were 
 laid out on the table, an innovation in honour of 
 English customs. Within was another apartment be- 
 longing to the zenana, the decorations of which were 
 all in black marble, with columns of black basalt, 
 
138 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 where the chief princess in this case the Akasahib, 
 a married sister of the Eajah's did the honours to 
 the Governor's daughter, assisted more humbly by the 
 Eanee. In a Hindoo establishment the wife is quite 
 second in position as long as the mother and sister of 
 the chief are alive, and to turn these out of a house 
 would be looked upon as an act of cruelty never even 
 to be thought of. Their family affection is often 
 extremely strong, and the Akasahib, who followed her 
 brother to the grave in a very short time after his 
 death, was supposed to have died of grief at his loss. 
 The great man is expected to shelter all his relations 
 under his roof in patriarchal fashion, and the palace 
 was honeycombed with a number of little courts for 
 the different families, with small rooms opening on 
 them, entirely open on one side, and lighted only in 
 this manner, after the manner of those at Pompeii. 
 
 The Bajah, having no children living, adopted on 
 his deathbed the son of a sister, a lad of sixteen, whom 
 he had brought up as his own child, and the adoption 
 having been recognised by the British Government, 
 the young Prince Eajaram was taken out of the 
 wretched moral influences of a native palace, and 
 placed, together with two of his cousins as companions, 
 under an English tutor and a carefully selected set of 
 native attendants. He succeeded to the principality 
 
A YOUNG INDIAN PKINCE. 139 
 
 about two years afterwards. The little state con- 
 tains about two million inhabitants, including feuda- 
 datories, over whom the sovereign has power of life 
 and death ; and a tolerably large revenue is collected 
 from the inhabitants, thanks to its inexhaustibly 
 fertile soil, where the same crops have come up on the 
 same ground for centuries, without manure, and as yet 
 with no signs of failure. 
 
 About the beginning of 1870 the young prince 
 determined to spend the time before reaching his 
 majority in a pilgrimage to England, which he 
 reached in June. He hired a house in London, and 
 worked hard at seeing the sights required from a 
 conscientious traveller: attended debates in both 
 Houses of Parliament ; was present at a Queen's ball 
 in gorgeous apparel, where, in his cloth-of-gold tissues, 
 necklaces, and strings of jewels, he looked like the 
 prince of a fairy tale. He paid a visit to the Queen 
 at Windsor, who, he said with much pleasure, "was 
 very kind to him ; " attended a meeting of the British 
 Association at Liverpool, where, being asked to speak, 
 he said a few words, much to the satisfaction of his 
 audience, on his intention to do all in his power to 
 encourage the cultivation of cotton on his return to 
 India ; went into Scotland, where he distributed the 
 prizes at a great volunteer festival, and made a second 
 
140 . SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 little speech, greatly to the purpose, about the good 
 feeling growing up between East and West, and on 
 the friendly relations of India to England. He ended 
 by a visit to the Maharajah Duleep Singh, in Suffolk, 
 which he much enjoyed. He had been greatly pleased, 
 altogether, with his treatment during his whole stay, 
 when he turned his steps homeward to India through 
 Belgium, the Tyrol, and Italy, the road by Paris, 
 where he otherwise wished to have gone, having 
 been rendered impossible by the war with Prussia. 
 At Innspriick he was overtaken by the winter. The 
 snow fell, and his followers were extremely anxious 
 to carry back a box of the unknown substance to 
 " show the strange stuff to them at home. " Even the 
 moderate degree of cold in an English October had tried 
 the men very painfully, and probably affected poor 
 Eajaram himself. He was taken ill at Florence with 
 a heart complaint and rheumatism, from which he had 
 already suffered during his journey. He disliked all 
 advice but that of a Mahommedan physician who had 
 accompanied him from India, and the end came at 
 last very suddenly, though the best doctors in Florence 
 were summoned to his aid for the satisfaction of his 
 affectionate and judicious guardian, Captain West. 
 
 Almost as soon as the breath was out of the Eajah's 
 body, his poor attendants began their preparations, 
 
A YOUNG INDIAN PRINCE. 141 
 
 intending at first to burn it on the Lung' Arno, as 
 the ceremony must be performed on the banks of a 
 river. This, as in the very midst of the city, could 
 not be permitted, and with much difficulty Sir 
 Augustus Paget obtained permission from the Italian 
 authorities to allow the funeral to be carried out after 
 midnight, at the end of the Cascine, two miles from 
 the town, according to the proper rites. 
 
 It was a dark night ; a blustering tramontana was 
 blowing, and the cold was biting, says an eye-witness; 
 the pile had been built already breast high, and near 
 it was a fire, round which a group of Hindoos were 
 standing sadly and silently. "The Eajah was the 
 kindest and best of masters, and these poor fellows 
 are as grieved at his loss as if he were their own 
 father," was the affectionate tribute of his English 
 servant. 
 
 Presently came up an omnibus containing the body, 
 which lay upon a plank supported on the knees of 
 his attendants. As it was borne along to the pyre, 
 the light from the feeble paper lanterns fell on the 
 placid features of the young Maharajah. The turban 
 and a richly embroidered robe which wrapped the 
 corpse were of bright scarlet; the bracelets, necklaces, 
 and jewels round his neck and arms were said to be 
 of great value, and to have been consumed in the 
 
142 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 fire. The body was then laid reverentially upon the 
 pile ; one attendant placed betel -leaves in the mouth 
 and hands, a second piled camphor around it, another 
 anointed it with ghee. Strange ceremonies were 
 performed with a white linen cloth, which was folded 
 and unfolded, while prayers were offered up ; dough 
 was kneaded and placed alongside the corpse, 
 which was then carefully fenced in with logs and 
 planks, forming a sort of box, into which were 
 thrown perfumes and essences ; fresh logs were piled 
 up for about a couple of yards more ; camphor, 
 and a mixture of beeswax and turpentine, and a 
 quantity of brushwood and shavings were added, 
 and the mass was then kindled. The flames shot 
 up brilliantly, driven by a strong gust of wind, 
 throwing a lurid glare on the numerous spectators, 
 the muddy Arno, the black clumps of trees, not yet 
 quite bare of leaves, and the groups of Indians of every 
 different shade of colour, from coal black to light 
 brown, with their glistening white teeth, and turbans 
 differing in shape according to the rank of the wearers. 
 Each had his settled station near the funeral fire, and 
 stood gazing intently on it during the long cold hours 
 of the night, with a kind of mournful forlorn resig- 
 nation which was extremely touching many of them 
 were weeping bitterly. At ten the next morning the 
 
A YOUNG INDIAN PRINCE. 143 
 
 was all consumed, the embers were extinguished 
 by water from the river, the ashes were collected and 
 placed in a porcelain jar to be carried home. Every- 
 thing used in the funeral pile was then taken out in 
 a boat and sunk in mid- stream, and the attendants 
 traced the form of a heart with fresh mud on the 
 spot itself, around which were placed small vessels 
 containing rice. Then all the Hindoos knelt and 
 prayed with their faces to the ground. The dismal 
 ceremony was finished, and the forlorn retinue de- 
 parted in silence, bearing with them the vase with 
 the ashes in it, to be thrown into the Ganges when 
 they reached their native land. The next day they 
 had all left Florence. 
 
 And thus, far from his Indian and even his English 
 friends, away from his country, his young wife and 
 child, amongst men of an alien religion and of a 
 foreign and unsympathising race, the poor boy-Eajah 
 passed away. His death was a real misfortune, 
 seriously to be regretted for every reason. He had 
 made a great effort to visit England, had learned 
 much, and was quite disposed to use his experience 
 on his return to Kolapoor, and introduce many 
 reforms, especially with regard to the education of 
 women. 
 
 The English authorities had wisely discouraged any 
 
144 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 important changes being made at Kolapoor during 
 Eajaram's minority, lest they should be supposed to 
 have taken place under pressure ; and great fears were 
 entertained that the reactionary party, which is very 
 strong, and always u improves " such occasions to the 
 utmost, would succeed in setting forth the perils and 
 sin in changes of all kinds, showing how the wickedness 
 of travelling is punished, and enforcing the moral of 
 the danger of going among alien and heretic nations 
 by so distinguished an example. The crisis, however, 
 passed off with less excitement than was expected. 
 There was much trouble about the succession, but a pro- 
 mising boy, about nine years old, of the line of Sivagee, 
 was at last selected with the consent of the British 
 Government. The " sugar of joy " was then distri- 
 buted through the town fr.om the palace in token of 
 delight. The ceremony of adoption next took place 
 by the " senior widow" of the Eajah, the little princess 
 Tara Baee, then ten years old, taking precedence of the 
 other as having been married first when only a baby. 
 She took the boy in her lap, fed him with sugar, and 
 laid her face on his head at the place where the skull 
 joins, which was tantamount to accepting him as her 
 own child. They were then both led before the image 
 of the family god. and the various Hindoo rites duly 
 performed. The little prince next took his seat on the 
 
A YOUNG INDIAN PRINCE. 145 
 
 " gadee," and received the homage and presents of the 
 leading chiefs of the South Mahratta country, after 
 which the British official formally announced his 
 accession in a short speech, earnestly hoping that " he 
 would follow in the steps of the late Maharajah, whose 
 loss was so deeply lamented by all classes." A great 
 feast, where five thousand rupees were distributed in 
 alms, ended the ceremony. 
 
 The Eanee mother on this occasion wrote a letter to 
 the Claydon friends of her son, inclosing the photo- 
 graph of the little heir and several others of the 
 family. The letter was on a grand scale, written on 
 paper nearly three feet long, and inclosed in a bag 
 of crimson and gold " kincob," with a great hanging 
 seal. It was headed by portraits (gilt) of the family 
 god with an elephant head, and the redoubtable 
 Bowannee with a peacock behind her. A beautiful 
 gilt arabesque border passed between each line and 
 surrounded the whole. It began thus : 
 
 " To the dignified and exalted lady who sits behind 
 a curtain and rides upon an elephant." The epithet 
 implying that a great lady must be concealed by a 
 screen is curious, as the word is Persian, for which 
 there is no Hindoo equivalent in common use. It shows 
 that the custom was adopted from the Mahommedans, 
 and that it was a class word denoting high rank. The 
 
 L 
 
146 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 letter proceeded : " When the Eajah, now in Heaven, 
 was in Europe, you showed a great regard for him : 
 this I used to learn from my son's letters. Your now 
 remembering me makes me experience in my own 
 person what he used to write. It is my hope that 
 mutual regard will thus be kept up." She then 
 mentions the accession of the new Rajah, aged nine 
 years ; and a postscript on the reverse side of the 
 sheet, in her own hand, adds very sensibly, having 
 said all she wanted to say, " What more should I 
 write?" 
 
 Much pains have been taken with the education of 
 the boy, and when the Prince of Wales held his great 
 Durbar the young Eajah was present. He was 
 described as "an intelligent bright-looking lad about 
 fourteen, coming up dressed in gorgeous apparel, 
 pink and gold, with a great train of elephants and 
 horsemen." He spoke English well, and the Prince 
 talked a good deal to him, and gave him a riding 
 whip, to his great delight. 
 
 The little state appears to have prospered. Much 
 had been done for education. During Eajaram's life- 
 time thirty-two schools were opened with good teachers, 
 especially a school for girls, under the patronage of the 
 Akasahib ; but much remains to be done for the women. 
 The poor little Eanee, the "senior widow," was not 
 
A YOUNG INDIAN PRINCE. 147 
 
 required to perform suttee, which has been abolished 
 under our rule ; but in a letter from her father to the 
 governor, he wrote pathetically how he had hoped "to 
 see his daughter in the happiest position possible, but, 
 alas ! the Almighty Providence has in his goodness 
 thought otherwise, and has snatched away from this 
 world in the bloom of his youth the deceased Kajararn 
 Maharajah, leaving my daughter, aged ten years, a 
 widow for life." The full meaning of these words is 
 hardly understood in Western ears. The sufferings 
 and deprivations inflicted on a widow even of this 
 age, never a wife, are grievous. Her head is shaved, 
 she is to wear only " mean clothing," and is required 
 " to do menial offices." She is never allowed to marry 
 again. 
 
 The manner in which women were treated in 
 Europe produced a great impression on Eajaram, and 
 he had engaged a lady to go out and teach the ladies 
 of his family. He u wished particularly," he said, 
 " to have the Eahee instructed." 
 
 The husbands of the country seem certainly deter- 
 mined to ensure a considerable amount of grief for 
 their loss, of some kind at least, among their widows ! 
 
 And this is a change which lies at the root of all 
 real improvement in India. "While the zenana 
 remains what it is, the lowering effect of its atmo- 
 
148 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 sphere upon the men of the higher classes, in child- 
 hood and manhood alike, is almost as injurious as to 
 the women themselves." 
 
 "I was born in this courtyard, I have lived and 
 been married in this court," said a poor Hindoo 
 princess, who longed after better things, " and in this 
 court I shall die," she added with a sort of groan. 
 
 The condition of the women is clearly not the con- 
 sequence of any want of capacity among them. 
 " "When a native state is prosperous and well-ordered, 
 it is two to one that it is administered by a female 
 ruler," said a great authority. 
 
 That the members of princely Hindoo houses should 
 obtain an experience and acquire ideas only to be 
 attained by a visit to Europe is so important, and 
 the difficulties thrown into their way, both natural 
 and supernatural, are often so great, that it may be 
 well to record how affectionately Eajaram spoke of 
 the kindness shown to him in England, how much he 
 seemed to enjoy his visit, what true interest was 
 shown in his welfare, and what sorrow for his fate was 
 felt by all classes who came in contact during his 
 stay with the gentle, kindly young Maharajah of 
 Kolapoor. 
 
THANKSGIVING DAY. 
 
 THE sight of great masses of human beings, men, 
 women, and children, all stirred by the same feel- 
 ing, swayed by the same thought, is always of itself 
 very striking ; but when there are . miles of such 
 crowds, and we know that these were only the repre- 
 sentatives of the sentiment of a whole people, there 
 is something like awe in being thus brought face to 
 face with that entity, a nation, which we talk of so 
 glibly, and yet which we so seldom realise whose 
 collective strength when roused to feel thus like 
 one man, is far mightier than that of the units who 
 compose it would ever lead one to imagine. 
 
 It is well sometimes to be reminded practically of 
 our national life, generally moving on- so uncon- 
 sciously, as was shown in the strong feeling evoked 
 against the idea of yielding in the question of the 
 " Indirect Claims," in the excitement on the " Slave 
 
150 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 Circular," and against the conduct of Turkey, and 
 as on " Thanksgiving Day," when we were one in 
 sympathy with the Queen and her children. The 
 degree of interest and loyal affection has, indeed, sur- 
 prised some wise and many foolish men, who thought 
 that the day for such manifestations was past ; while 
 abroad it was a source of curious wonder, malevolent 
 or admiring according to the politics of the papers. 
 Ill-natured, as when the Eepublican correspondent of 
 the Siecle says : "I have had a glance at the streets. 
 The spectacle is really revolting. I ask myself if 
 these are really human beings. You cannot conceive 
 what an ignoble sight is presented by this people in its 
 monarchical loyalty. They are mad this morning : 
 they will be drunk to night." Or admiring, when 
 the Presse says, with a touch of regret for the absence 
 of such a union of feeling in France : " Truly when 
 we witness such a spectacle, we cannot abstain from 
 admiring the British people, its political good sense, 
 and the wonderful organisation which preserves it from 
 violent revolutions.- It is then we recognise England 
 as the classic land of real liberty and parliamentary 
 government soundly administered." Or when the 
 Debats, representing, perhaps, the most thoughtful 
 part of the French people, quoted with much feeling 
 a speech of the French ambassador at the opening 
 
THANKSGIVING DAY. 151 
 
 of a hospital in London : " This public expression of 
 English loyalty by a solemn thanksgiving induces 
 a comparison between the institutions to which Eng- 
 land is indebted for two centuries of prosperity, and 
 the revolutions through which France has been strug- 
 gling for the last eighty years. Since the compact 
 sealed between the nation and the Crown in 1688, 
 England has never once seen its laws violated, either 
 by the caprice of a sovereign or the revolt of a mob." 
 The impersonal character of the rejoicing was 
 exceedingly touching. Whatsoever pageant was to 
 be seen had been contributed by the people them- 
 selves; the procession in itself was nothing a few 
 ordinary carriages and horses, with such an escort 
 of the Life Guards as may be seen in the Park 
 continually; while the joys and sorrows, the sick- 
 ness and health, of those so far removed from the 
 spectators would have seemed to make real sympathy 
 almost impossible. Yet the purely sentimental 
 interest was quite unmistakable the loyal feeling for 
 the Queen, as in some sense the mother of the nation ; 
 the tender rejoicing with her, and for her, upon 
 her son's recovery ; with the wife who had nursed 
 him long and lovingly, and with the children so 
 nearly left fatherless ; and lastly, an amount of 
 simple honest pleasure at the sight of the young 
 
152 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 fellow risen,. as it were, from the very brink of the 
 grave. And that well-crowded carriage, filled to 
 overflowing, in most unstately fashion, had in it 
 something which went to the hearts of the specta- 
 tors ; its inmates had . any amount of carriages at 
 their command, but preferred to take their rejoicing, 
 as they had endured their grief and anxiety- 
 together, as a family. The Queen, the Prince, and 
 her grandson sat in very close proximity ; the three 
 generations which, if England continues in the same 
 mind as on that February Thanksgiving Day, wil] 
 in succession reign over her, not as imposing their 
 will upon the nation, but as the trusted executors 
 of her laws, and the promoters of every good thing 
 within her four seas. These are the engagements 
 which people and sovereign (for the present and the 
 future) freshly ratified together in some homely sort 
 of fashion, as they faced each other for nearly four 
 hours along those lines of crowded streets, and in 
 that solemn church where together they knelt, 
 giving thanks to Almighty God with one heart 
 joyfully. 
 
 Mr. Freeman tells us that England has preserved 
 the unity and identity of her history and institutions 
 in a very remarkable way as contrasted with France 
 and Germany. u From Hengist to Victoria she 
 
THANKSGIVING DAY. 153 
 
 lias always had what we may fairly call a Parliamen- 
 tary Government." France has tried every form 
 and variety of mode of rule, kings and despots of 
 every hue, brilliant states-general, conventions, direc- 
 tories, consulates, empires. The very variations in 
 the maps of Germany are sufficient to show what 
 changes of every kind have there taken place. "The 
 homely Parliaments of England, altogether guiltless 
 of political theories, have had no longings after 
 great and comprehensive measures j but if they saw 
 practical abuses the king could get no money till 
 matters were set right ; if they saw a bad law they 
 demanded its alteration ; if they saw a wicked 
 minister they demanded his dismissal. It is this 
 sort of bit-by-bit reform for six hundred years which 
 has saved us alike from magnificent theories and from 
 massacres in the cause of humanity." 
 
 A constitution is like a great forest tree, it takes 
 3nturies to grow to perfection, and when once 
 destroyed cannot be replaced; and the bran-new 
 attempts which have been made in various countries, 
 when not growing out of the past, have been like 
 the trees of liberty which the Parisians are fond 
 of planting, which wither away because there are no 
 roots in them. The English, it has been truly said, 
 "are not an envious people." We do not dislike 
 
154 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 seeing different " degrees and manners of men." 
 There is none of the desire for equality distinctive of 
 the French. Although the wish to raise themselves is 
 strong in the Anglo-Saxon race, it is not accompanied 
 by any longing to pull down other men ; and on the 
 present occasion it was very clear that the joys and 
 sorrows of the Queen and her children were taken to 
 heart by the nation as a family matter coming home 
 to each one of them. 
 
 The day began somewhat gloomily, there was a 
 symptom of rain, and a fear that the Prince would not 
 be allowed to risk the fatigue of the procession, or at 
 least that he could not appear in an open carriage ; it 
 would not do to run the risk of killing the subject 
 of our rejoicing ; but before twelve o'clock the weather 
 cleared, and the immense masses which crowded all 
 the spaces near Buckingham Palace, when they saw 
 the open carriage containing Queen and Prince drive 
 out of the great gates, set up that rejoicing shout 
 of welcome which, without cessation or even lull, met 
 and followed them through the seven miles of streets 
 leading to and from St. Paul's. There was a moment 
 of anxiety at the starting of the procession to see 
 whether the necessary roadway could be kept clear 
 from the enormous crowds, hard pressed from behind/ 
 and with scanty standing-room ; but the order of the 
 
THANKSGIVING DAY. 155 
 
 people was complete there and everywhere ; there was 
 no rushing at any point ; even when " loosed " by the 
 onward march of the cortege they forebore to attempt 
 to follow it. The Speaker's great glass coach, weigh- 
 ing three tons, and so heavy that it was difficult to 
 find two dray horses strong enough to draw it, led the 
 way. It was escorted by running footmen, and looked 
 as if it had dropped out of a mediaeval pageant, with 
 the Speaker himself in his black and gold robes ; the 
 whole array was much more imposing than that of 
 the Lord Chancellor in his modern carriage and dark 
 liveries. The Queen was in the ninth carriage drawn 
 by six horses, preceded and followed by Life Guards, 
 who constituted the only feature of what could be 
 called " pomp " in the whole arrangement. 
 
 Pall Mall is one of our few stately streets, con- 
 taining as it does the nearest approach to Italian 
 palaces of which London can boast ; and it looked its 
 best the variety of outline told well against the 
 sky, while the colours with which balconies, stands, 
 and walls were dressed gave it the cheerfulness 
 which our sad-coloured houses generally lack. Tra- 
 falgar Square was a sea of heads, and then came 
 the lines of streets from the shop -windows of which 
 the goods had been everywhere removed, and replaced 
 by rows of living heads. Windows, balconies, roofs, 
 
156 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 pavements, and side-streets were all crowded, while 
 every space where a stand could be erected was filled 
 to overflowing. The people, indeed, had 
 
 " Climbed up to walls and battlements, 
 To towers and windows, yea, to chimney-tops, 
 Their infants in their arms, and there had sat 
 The live-long day, in patient expectation." 
 
 Julius Caesar. 
 
 The constant repetition of reds and yellows was a 
 little wearisome in the decorations ; but the lines of 
 streamers, stretching across the streets, redeemed the 
 monotony ; and here and there the householders had 
 massed their flags and their effects, which showed 
 itself in a pretty fragrant shape at one point, where 
 a hundred yards or so had been strewn with violets. 
 
 Ludgate Hill especially distinguished itself. The 
 very derivation of the name is generally as much forgot- 
 ten as the mythical king of London himself. The gate 
 which once existed here used as a prison till the last 
 century had been built up in evergreens and flags, 
 while an unusual entente cordiale between the two sides 
 of the street enabled a very pretty and at that time an 
 original decoration to be carried out. Bed Venetian 
 standards, forty feet high, were planted on either side, 
 with coats-of-arms half-way up, containing the shields 
 and crowns of all the kings of England for a thousand 
 years, from Alfred to Victoria ; while shorter blue 
 
 
THANKSGIVING DAY. 157 
 
 masts bore the names of a hundred of the principal 
 towns in the United Kingdom, India, and the colonies. 
 This was the only portion of the route which the 
 Queen passed over twice, leading up as it does 
 to the grand Cathedral, the heart of the wonderful 
 life of our enormous London, and which forms so noble 
 a centre for the devotions of a great city. Over 
 its front portico was inscribed, " I was glad when 
 they said unto me, Let us go up unto the house of the 
 Lord." 
 
 The crowd in the interior of St. Paul's during their 
 long hours of waiting, as they looked at the grand 
 harmonious lines of the building, the magnificent vault 
 of the dome, and the massive strength of the piers, 
 ought to nave determined to assist in carrying out 
 Sir Christopher Wren's designs, and doing justice to 
 his memory. It is said to have nearly broken his 
 heart one hundred and ninety years ago to leave his 
 work unfinished a mere skeleton, as it were, requiring 
 that warm clothing of colour and ornament which the 
 national feeling was asked to give as a memorial, 
 " completing the Cathedral with the greatest richness 
 of sober decoration " The steep inclines of heads 
 and variety of dress, the crimson cloth covering the 
 scaffolds, helped on this occasion to conceal the 
 nakedness of the cold interior. Broad streams of 
 
158 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 light pouring down from the lofty windows shone 
 upon thirteen thousand of the most distinguished of 
 every class in Britain collected there, and the Queen 
 had not forgotten to ask that seats should be kept 
 among them for a certain number of working men. 
 
 As the clock struck one came the punctual Queen 
 up the long clear space from the western end of the 
 nave, her sombre mourning on this day relieved by a 
 good deal of white " miniver" fur. On her left was ; 
 the Princess, in dark blue, holding a child by the hand, 
 and on her right the Prince, in a field-marshal's 
 uniform, looking somewhat pale and worn, leading 
 another little boy, and followed by a long train of 
 princes and princesses, soldiers and statesmen. As the 
 organ pealed its loudest they passed slowly up to the 
 seats prepared for them just under the dome, and 
 knelt in the midst of their people. 
 
 The service itself was hardly adequate to the 
 occasion. The Archbishop's address was good, and 
 his clear voice was audible afar in the church, which is 
 said to be one of the best adapted for hearing ever 
 built. The music was well performed; but instead of 
 some magnificent and appropriate works by the great 
 masters having been chosen, the organist had been 
 allowed to " compose for the occasion." The only 
 successful part was at the close, when a very common- 
 
THANKSGIVING DAY. 159 
 
 place hymn was sung to a very ordinary psalm tune, 
 which, however, being well known, was joined in 
 by all present. This produced a mighty roll of sound, 
 and gave the feeling of common worship prayer and 
 praise in common particularly required upon such a 
 day. 
 
 M. Taine is so good as to say of us in his last book, 
 " Le fond est toujours religieux en Angleterre ; " and 
 although we may think that in this he does us almost 
 too much honour, yet there could be no doubt of the 
 religious feeling of this manifestation the quiet, 
 almost tender, character , of the rejoicing, and, best 
 of all tributes to the day, the entire absence of 
 drinking or riot after the ceremony was over. Both 
 the " colour " and thought of the inscriptions on the 
 houses were very striking : 
 
 " We asked of Thee life, and Thou gavest it him, so 
 shall we sing Thy glory and power." 
 
 " Given to a nation's prayers." 
 
 Give thanks to the Almighty for the restoration 
 )f our Prince." 
 
 " Thanks be given to Thee, God." 
 
 These, and hundreds more, testified in an unmis- 
 
 kable manner to the feeling among the common 
 dwellers in those myriad houses. On such occasions 
 as these unpopular sentiments are not hung out 
 
160 SKETCHES FBOM NATURE. 
 
 " for daws to peck at;" the bootmaker who put 
 forth, " More is wrought by prayer than the world 
 dreams of," * felt sure that there would be a response 
 among his neighbours and the crowd. Even the less 
 serious mottoes, such as " So, happy be the issue of 
 this good day and happy meeting," from Henry V. ; 
 a The nation's and the mother's heart are one ; " and 
 " England rejoices with her Queen," on the arch 
 in the Circus, had a touch of real feeling in them. 
 
 The good humour of the crowds was unbroken 
 during the day, and during the blocks occasioned by 
 the illuminations at night ; there was no impatience at 
 the necessary inconvenience caused by their numbers, 
 but a willingness to be pleased,, and to make the most of 
 any little diversions which came in their way, which was 
 of itself a sight. In one instance a red mail-cart, with 
 the familiar Y.E. upon it, drove up along the sacred 
 cleared space, and the crowd began to cheer, as if to 
 keep their hands in ; the mail-cart bowed graciously 
 on all sides, then was overcome with emotion, and 
 had recourse to its pocket-handkerchief, and finally 
 disappeared, still bowing, amidst applause and 
 laughter. 
 
 o 
 
 Sailors were everywhere welcomed warmly, as is 
 always the case in England. A stoppage took 
 
 * The passing of Arthur. 
 
THANKSGIVING DAY. 161 
 
 place in Fleet Street to allow a lady to get out; 
 there was a cry to move on ; but when they spied 
 a naval uniform by her side, " It's a sailor ! " cried 
 the mob ; " one cheer for the blue jacket ! " and 
 all was smooth again. The Admiralty had arranged 
 that men of every branch of the service should be 
 sent up to join in the ceremony. The way was kept 
 by them opposite St. Paul's a very popular variation, 
 though the soldiers were well received throughout the 
 route. All the ships' lights which could be collected 
 had been contributed for the illumination of the 
 cathedral, and twelve men from the Fisgard placed, 
 trimmed, and lighted three rows of lamps as soon as 
 it was dark green, white, and red encircling the 
 dome at different heights, while coloured fire of dif- 
 ferent hues lighted up the front of the cathedral. 
 
 The Thanksgiving was not confined to Great. 
 Britain, but at the same moment was being carried out 
 in the colonies and India. The fellow-countrymen of 
 so many different faiths Hindoo, Mahommedan, and 
 Parsees, Jews and Christians of every denomination 
 joined to keep the day. The Guicowar gave a lac 
 of rupees for a public work in honour of the event ; 
 Mr. Sassoon erected a high school as a thanksgiving 
 offering; the Parsees, headed by Sir Jamsetjee Jejeeb- 
 hoy, met at the Fire Temple ; the Jews held a solemn 
 
 M 
 
162 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 service ; about ten thousand Hindoos of all denomina- 
 tions assembled at the Mombadabee Temple, and 
 offered up thanksgivings ; meetings were held by the 
 Mohammedans and every sect of Hindoos ; more than 
 one hundred thousand persons joined in the various 
 services in Bombay alone. 
 
 So ended one of the most successful days ever known 
 in the rejoicings of a nation. Such celebrations have 
 been mostly for the accession to a throne or a marriage 
 pageant; youth and hope, pleasant visions for the 
 future, curiosity and the pride of life, have mingled 
 largely with the feeling of the crowds. Or they have 
 been for victories by sea and land that is, for the 
 suffering and humiliation of other nations, with a 
 dismal background even for the victors of bereaved 
 mothers and wives, ruined families, the happiness and 
 welfare of thousands gone for ever, the sorrows of sick 
 and wounded men, with health and comfort ruined. Or 
 they have been for the funeral of a great general, with 
 memories of past triumphs. But in this case there 
 was no novelty ; the Queen and Prince might often be 
 seen elsewhere; there was no expectation of excitement 
 of any kind ; it was only a family rejoicing. The 
 expression of the thousands of faces was that of quiet 
 pleasure, content, satisfaction, emotion ; which was 
 reflected in those of the guests (as they might well be 
 
THANKSGIVING DAY. 163 
 
 called) of this " people's reception." The Queen, 
 Prince, and Princess were clearly touched beyond 
 measure at the feeling shown ; while the almost entire 
 absence of cases of disorder or drunkenness in the 
 police courts next morning testifies to the self-control 
 and good conduct which had been exercised even by 
 our rudest classes. 
 
 There is an ideal, a " sentimental " side to the 
 roughest and wildest among us, a chivalrous feeling 
 which we might do well to cultivate more : man does 
 not live by bread alone. In England, at least, it is 
 not too late to weld together the bonds which should 
 bind different classes of society, each of which has a 
 duty that cannot be left undone without loss to the 
 rest. There was one redeeming feature in that feudal 
 system which has so nearly passed away, in the strong 
 tie which existed between different orders of men. 
 The chiefs of a clan felt themselves bound as a matter 
 of duty, as well as of self-interest, to provide in 
 sickness and want for their dependants, to protect and 
 issist them in return for their service, in fatherly if 
 somewhat arbitrary fashion, while the degree of self- 
 sacrificing affection which they received in return was 
 often wonderful. Both felt themselves in turn the 
 servers and the served. This relation is to a great 
 extent passing away. That we may reach a brother- 
 
164 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 hood of men better than any past relation between 
 them, may well be hoped ; but in the transition state 
 we seem often to drift into a set of individual repul- 
 sive atoms, each man and each class trying after its 
 own gain and welfare to the neglect of the common 
 weal, that " best for all, which must in the end be 
 the best for each." The getting on system, with " the 
 devil take the hindmost " as its axiom, the selfish spirit 
 of the abominable old rhyme 
 
 " As I walked by myself, I said to myself, 
 
 And the self-same self said to me, 
 1 Look out for thyself, take care of thyself, 
 For nobody cares for thee '" 
 
 can be no improvement for the world in any sense. 
 Instead of that ideal which Macaulay makes the old 
 Eoman fancy in a past golden age, but which we trust 
 to see in a "good time coming" "when none were 
 for a party, but all were for the state," &c., &c. 
 
 No one can have lived much among working people- 
 without feeling that there is much besides political 
 economy, however true its doctrines, to be considered 
 in dealing with them; their grievances are often 
 "sentimental," in the feeling of want of sympathy and 
 want of consideration in those above them, particu- 
 larly among the town populations, where such inter- 
 course is more difficult than in country districts. 
 
THANKSGIVING DAY. 165 
 
 Still, in England there is no real rankling between 
 classes, as in many foreign nations. And there is 
 amongst us a belief in the division of labour. The 
 millions who thronged the streets must feel their 
 power, yet, when once their share in the choice of 
 their rulers has been made for the time, they are 
 content that their government should be done by 
 delegation the symbolical and ideal portion, as it 
 may be called, by the Queen, whose part in the 
 constitution was seen on that day to be very real 
 in the binding together of the whole ; the executive 
 and legislative by the little crowd of gentlemen in 
 plain clothing, Lords and Commons, who slipped in 
 from the river, by a back street, from a penny steam- 
 boat, through a side door, into the national church, to 
 take their unostentatious part in the general thanks- 
 giving. 
 
 In France " every soldier considers himself as 
 good as his officers, " and the refusal to obey these 
 completed the disorganisation which ended in the 
 misfortunes of Sedan; every shopboy and artisan 
 seriously entertains the hope and prospect of changing 
 the institutions of his country, and, perhaps, of ruling 
 over it as its head. It is not good that this should be 
 the ideal of a nation. The chance of the wisest 
 reaching the chief places, which should be the object 
 
 
166 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 of all government, is not increased by the notion that 
 it is every man's business to conduct the affairs of 
 his country. A certain amount of training is needful, 
 from the cobbling of shoes to the management of the 
 affairs of a nation; and in this, the most political country 
 that exists, where most men take a strong interest in 
 what is doing by and for Great Britain, they yet gene- 
 rally seem to feel the moral in the fable of " the belly 
 and the members," that " all cannot be at the head of 
 things," Our contrivances for obtaining the wisest 
 men for our leaders may want much improvement, 
 but certainly neither America nor France appear to be 
 more successful in their methods of search or their 
 choice of statesmen. There is a passage describing 
 an ideal perfect state in Mr. Jowett's " Plato," which 
 declares that the habit of obeying the laws is so 
 invaluable, that changes should be soberly and cau- 
 tiously introduced, as the traditions of order may be 
 lost in the search after theoretic improvement of the 
 machinery of government. It may therefore be hoped 
 that our " bit-by-bit reforms" will continue to bring 
 about the improvement, not the reconstruction, of our 
 institutions. The aesthetic feeling of England objects 
 to the chosen of the nation, a plain man in a plain 
 coat, being set up, as in some countries, to have his 
 arm treated like a pump handle by any number of 
 
 
THANKSGIVING DAY. 167 
 
 men who choose to shake hands with him. The pomp 
 of a military monarchy is as little to our minds. We 
 have struck a middle course as to our rulers, in the 
 rather haphazard fashion which is our wont, but 
 which, on the whole, suits our feelings and our taste. 
 The Queen's short letter thanking the people for 
 their affection, and making no mention of the foolish 
 and wicked attempt upon her life by a mad boy, 
 which had just taken place,. fitly crowned the record 
 of this great national demonstration. 
 

SKETCHES FEOM NATUEE. 
 
 PART II. 
 
THE DWAKFS' FOBEST. 
 
 " Then up there rose a wee grey man 
 Frae 'neath the moss green stane 
 His face was wan like the colly fleur, 
 For he neither had blood nor bane." 
 
 WE have found the place where the wee grey men 
 used to live (if ever they lived at all, which, 
 strange to say, it seems there are people now found 
 to doubt ; but then everybody doubts about every- 
 thing nowadays). There is a great plateau of rugged, 
 rocky, boggy moorland in the middle of Devon 
 called Dartmoor, which stretches high and treeless 
 over many thousand acres, and is singularly wild 
 and barren. A number of round-shouldered valleys 
 run up into it, worn by the action of the bright 
 brown streams, large and small, many of which 
 fall into the Dart. In one of the most secluded of 
 these, far up in the heart of the hills, beyond all 
 
172 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 traces of man or cultivation, where the boulders of 
 blue-grey granite are strewn on the steep bare hill- 
 side, and piled up here and there into fantastic tors, 
 there nestles in among the stones a forest of lilli- 
 putian oak, fully grown, but only from four to ten 
 feet high, with trunks two feet and more in diameter, 
 looking old beyond description. 
 
 The wood ends at a tumbling, wild, dashing stream, 
 rushing down from the central bog of the moor, 
 which is almost impassable ; and the patches of 
 moist treacherous ground about its banks, bright 
 with green and yellow sphagnum, asphodel, and 
 moss, are fringed with long sedge-rushes haunted 
 by adders. 
 
 The moors were rich and brilliant in colour with 
 their autumn tints, and the deep brown of the oaks 
 and fern, the cold grey granite, and the purple heath 
 were all melting into a soft blue distance. As we 
 came up the combe, the trunks of the little trees 
 looked generally about the height of a man, and 
 mostly bigger round than his body ; they were often 
 hollow and decayed away, almost into soil. Strange, 
 wicked-looking little antiquities they seemed, which 
 might have been coeval with those prehistoric folk 
 who used the flint weapons ; and I hope had the nice 
 little elephants, three feet high, " like pigs with 
 
THE DWARFS' FOREST. 173 
 
 trunks," to play with, whose bones have lately been 
 discovered in some rocky caverns of probably a not 
 much earlier date. 
 
 The soil is extremely shallow, and the branches all 
 slope one way, driven by the fierce Atlantic gales, 
 which are felt even in this inland spot, and which 
 blow without a stick to stop them from America to 
 Dartmoor. Shaggy, contorted, and bent, the tangled 
 mats of boughs run out horizontally for ten or twenty 
 feet, covered with tufts of feathery fern ; while long 
 grey beards of moss wave to and fro, and give a most 
 weird look to the whole. One could believe in any 
 amount of cluricaunes and pixies dwelling in such a 
 strange, haunted-looking forest ; instead of which it 
 had been taken possession of that day by much less 
 picturesque people the statisticians, botanists, and 
 geologists who came down upon it from the Exeter 
 meeting of wise men. 
 
 I sat down alone amongst the queer little pigmies 
 on the hillside ; the rest of the party had gone on to 
 the Devil's Tor. The dusk was beginning to fall, 
 and I was very still, watching the young moon, 
 which was rising over the valley, when suddenly 
 it seemed to me as if the wee grey men must have 
 come back again, for there certainly sat one in the 
 shadow, where I was sure he had not been before; 
 
174 
 
 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 he must have come up out of the ground ! He was 
 quite of the right height and colour, and was look- 
 
 , 
 
 ing intently at me, as I could just see in the gather- 
 ing gloom. Presently he slowly put up one short 
 
THE DWARFS' FOREST. 175 
 
 little arm, and then the other, and wiped his nose 
 upon them as is much the habit of fieldfolk in 
 Devon and elsewhere ; perhaps pocket-handkerchiefs 
 were scarce, too, among the little grey hillmen 
 and then he remained motionless, and so did I. But 
 I was meditating a rush in order to seize him by 
 the waist, when, as is well known, if I could only 
 keep my eye upon him he would have been obliged 
 to show me where to dig for the crock of gold, or 
 give up the little purse with the ever-renewed penny 
 in it ; the only difficulty being, that if he can but 
 cajole you into once turning your head the spell 
 is broken and he invariably vanishes. . I was measur- 
 ing my distance, when his great suspicious eyes 
 shone, it seemed to me, even in the dusk, and sud- 
 denly he came down on all fours, and drummed 
 violently with his hind legs upon the ground, as a 
 signal of danger ; for there was a very distant noise 
 of voices, which he heard long before I did. Alas ! 
 
 ie was only a coney, who had made his dwelling 
 
 imong the rocks ; set, however, in a post of much 
 dignity and responsibility, as sentinel to a large 
 
 colony of friends and relations, who ordered their 
 outcomings and ingoings according to the telegraphic 
 thumps which he delivered for their guidance. And 
 
 then the outside car drove back again down the steep 
 
176 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 hillside, and I heard a voice say, " You must make 
 haste, Tomkins, or we shan't be in time for the 
 express from Plymouth." "We were in full nine- 
 teenth century again, and cluricaunes, and pixies, 
 and Pucks all vanished as I reluctantly turned 
 away. 
 
 Still, as we drove slowly along the rough heath 
 track, I looked back regretfully, and saw the 
 rising moonlight, though the sun had not yet quite \ 
 disappeared, lying softly and tenderly upon the grey 
 hillside, the grey stones, and the weird little dwarf 
 forest, over which the night wind, which was begin- 
 ning to rise, sighed with a hollow sort of music 
 among the fern. And it somehow seemed to me as 
 if the instant our backs were turned geologists, 
 botanists, statisticians, and all the little grey men 
 came back again and took possession in spite of our 
 scepticism ; and it is my full conviction that they are 
 all there now. 
 
 Go and see for yourselves. But you will not find 
 them ! Did you never look for a robber or a ghost 
 behind a curtain ? He is not there ; but the moment 
 you have gone once more to your seat he has got 
 in again somehow, behind your back, and you can- 
 not help returning to look again. Still he is never 
 to be found. It is only the haunting sense of the 
 
 
THE DWARFS 7 FOREST. 
 
 177 
 
 unseen. " Nature abhors a vacuum," you know 
 they say. 
 
 That is the way, I feel sure, with the wee grey 
 men in the lonely little Dwarfs' Forest, commonly 
 called Wistman's, that is "Wise man's," or Wizard's 
 Wood, on Dartmoor. 
 
THE NIGHTINGALE'S NEST. 
 
 w: 
 
 MAY-DAY MORNING. 
 
 "E have 
 been pay- 
 ing a series of 
 morning 
 visits. It was 
 a fine, sunny, 
 warm May 
 day, and no- 
 body was at 
 home, so I 
 took advantage of my friends' absence to examine 
 their houses. It seemed a little impertinent, but let 
 us hope they did not find it out. 
 
 First came a nuthatch's home in an old pollard oak. 
 Do you know him? The least of the woodpeckers 
 short, thick, big-headed who takes a nut in his 
 
 
THE NIGHTINGALE'S NEST. 179 
 
 large beak, inserts it cleverly into a cleft in the rough 
 bark, and clinging topsy-turvy to the trunk, sets to 
 work hammering with his head till he splits open the 
 shell with the sharp point of his bill, and enjoys the 
 inside. I found half-a-dozen empty nut-shells in as 
 many slits of the tree. 
 
 The irregular hole he had chosen was not far from 
 the ground, and large enough to admit objectionable 
 persons, so he had nearly closed it with tempered 
 clay, leaving only a neat round mouth, the edges 
 carefully smoothed, so as to admit his wife and him- 
 self without damage, but only just sufficiently big 
 for their own use. It was lined with beech and birch 
 leaves brought from other trees. I suppose those of 
 the oak, nearer at hand, were too large and "'crin- 
 kledy" for the space inside it was so deep, however, 
 that our fingers could not reach the two speckled 
 grey eggs at the bottom. 
 
 A little farther on was a low clipped holly-hedge 
 not four feet high, the sharp pointed leaves so close 
 that I could not get in a finger without being 
 scratched. But in their midst was the pretty little 
 nest of a hedge-sparrow, with five sky-blue eggs, 
 looking extremely comforable set round with spines 
 and spikes. How the birds contrived to build it with- 
 out being torn to pieces one cannot guess. 
 
180 SKETCHES FKOM NATURE. 
 
 In just such, a nest, in the same hedge, a year or 
 so back, a lazy cuckoo had dropped her egg. When 
 the young intruder came out of its shell, as it grew 
 and grew and wanted space, it ejected the rightful 
 occupants one by one first went an egg, then each little 
 bird in succession. When we looked in the whole nest 
 seemed filled with one big mouth, always wide open 
 from ear to ear, and always crying for " more," while 
 the poor little foster-parents flew wildly backwards and 
 forwards, at their wits' end to provide enough for its 
 voracious maw. It was like the story of the Fairy 
 Changeling in the Irish legends, where the ugly 
 uncanny thing has been put by the fairies in the 
 place of the poor baby which, they have carried off, 
 and which eats the wretched people out of house and 
 home. But the hedge-sparrows, puzzled and tor- 
 mented as they must have been by their hideous 
 selfish sham child, never relaxed in their tender care, 
 and they were even seen following and feeding him 
 after he had left the nest, and was awkwardly 
 '" stravaging " across the grassplot, in a hobble-de-hoy 
 schoolboy state, scarcely fit to take care of himself, 
 yet too proud to stay at home and be looked after. 
 
 But I must keep to the visits really paid on that 
 pleasant May morning. We strolled on through an 
 open grove of tall birches, whose feathery boughs 
 
THE NIGHTINGALE'S NEST. 181 
 
 were hung with the bright, early spring foliage, more 
 yellow than green. The large rude nest of an ugly 
 hawfinch, made of twigs and little else, was balancing 
 itself on a long loose elastic branch some twenty feet 
 from the ground ; it moved with the gentle breeze of 
 that quiet day, and must have been a lively cradle for 
 the young finches when the storms blew. 
 
 Next we reached a sunny sandy sloping bank, 
 ending in a dry ditch covered with brambles, in their 
 spring costume, light and elegant, before they were 
 hardened by the world and bad weather. Groups of 
 bluebells and curly-headed ferns pushed their way 
 through the tangle. The " rathe [early] primrose " 
 was nearly over, but small bright white strawberry 
 stars were coming out up and down the banks. This 
 seemed to be a most popular spot with the birds, there 
 was a perfect street of little homes. First a blackcap's 
 nest, made of bents and lined with hair. A few steps off 
 came the lovely domed nest of a willow- wren, a little 
 ball of brown bracken lined with bright green moss ; it 
 belonged to a decidedly more advanced order of archi- 
 tecture, as it was covered in from the rain. It is 
 curious, however, said my companion, that the birds 
 who are most susceptible of culture, the higher minded 
 birds in short, build the rudest nests. For instance, 
 the bullfinch, who can be taught all manner of accom- 
 
182 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 plishments, and whose affections are so strong that a 
 bird has been known to die in a fit of pleasure at see- 
 ing his mistress return after an absence, puts together 
 only a few rude bits of twig ; while the chaffinch, who 
 is but a stupid little bird, ornaments and cockers up 
 his exquisite little cup of moss and hair with bits of 
 white lichen or red worsted, anything, in short, 
 which he can pick up that is bright and pretty, evi- 
 dently put in merely for the love of beauty pleasure 
 to the eye, not use. 
 
 After these works of art I rather despised a thrush's 
 somewhat coarse nest of sticks plastered with mud, 
 in a thorn-bush though it was full of eggs and a 
 blackbird's farther on, in a rhododendron bush, was 
 quite beneath my notice, with five extremely ugly 
 children in it, all mouth and legs, which opened their 
 yellow gullets as if they expected us to drop in worms. 
 
 But then came our pearl of finds. In a low tump 
 of grass and fern and flowers and leaves, not a foot 
 from the ground, arched over with brambles as a 
 defensive outwork it is true, but only just conceal< 
 by them as they bent over the little home whicl 
 I should have passed a dozen times without remarl 
 ing anything particular, so artistically natural 
 the disposal of the whole had a nightingale buill 
 her nest ; it was surrounded by a wreath of 
 
THE NIGHTINGALE'S NEST. 183 
 
 oak-leaves, set quite regularly, overlapping each other, 
 with a curious little waterfall or tail, as it were, 
 apparently of the rejected leaves, but which were 
 nearly as carefully arranged as the wreath itself. 
 It was very deep, like a coffee-cup, and lined 
 with bents ; delicate, graceful, light, and airy it 
 looked, like its builder, and one little olive-green 
 egg just laid was lying at the bottom, slim and 
 dainty. 
 
 " What a charming dwelling," said I, "and so 
 comfortable ! " 
 
 " For the children, perhaps," answered ray com- 
 panion, "but I don't think it is so for the mother. In 
 these deep nests she has to sit with her tail almost 
 upright at one end, and her little head cocked lip at the 
 other, her eye looking over the edge to spy mischief, 
 instead of the comfortable way in which the birds 
 who make flat nests can lie at their ease." 
 
 We went wandering on again; aromatic smells 
 came from the ground-ivy under our feet, little 
 white-tailed rabbits sprang across the path, sweet 
 scents and sweet sounds were in every direction ; it 
 was the first hot day and a paradise for all living 
 things, including ourselves. The nightingales were 
 answering each other through the wood ; from near 
 and far away the long notes came thrilling through 
 
184 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 the air. At this time of the year they seem to sing 
 all day as well as all night long. When do they find 
 time to sleep? One cannot imagine such a life of 
 pure music perpetual, indeed, as theirs seems to be 
 during the month of May. Presently, at a burst of 
 song, we looked up, and there among the almost bare 
 boughs just above my head sat the melodist. The 
 
 motions of his throat were distinctly visible against 
 the sky, as he poured forth a strength of joyous har- 
 mony almost incredible in its delicate power and the 
 length of the prolonged notes, when compared with the 
 tiny brown songster we were watching, from whom 
 the sound proceeded ; while every now and then, at 
 one particular trill, came a jerk of his tail as if to 
 help him to utter it. There was a thrill of joy in 
 
 
THE NIGHTINGALE'S NEST. 185 
 
 the music. How could the nightingale ever be called 
 sad? 
 
 My Mayday visits had been very successful, though 
 I had not gone many hundred yards in the wood. 
 But then I had a guide who knew the manners, 
 the feelings, and the customs of the inhabitants ; 
 while of most of us it is true, that " eyes have 
 we, but we see not ; ears have we, but we hear not," 
 though unfortunately we all still go on " speaking 
 with our mouths " just the same. 
 
THE LIGHTHOUSE DONKEY. 
 
 IHAEDLY know how to tell my story in proper 
 terms, it is so exceedingly immoral, showing as it 
 does the success of envy, malice, and all uncharitable- 
 ness ; how a cruel, premeditated, and unprovoked 
 murder may be committed without any punishment, 
 and the murderer live on respected and apparently 
 contented, though suffering, we must hope, internal 
 agonies in his conscience. 
 
 I must begin, however, at the beginning. 
 
 There is a lighthouse built upon a rocky islet 
 jutting out into the stormy Irish Sea, surrounded 
 with dangerous reefs, where vessels of old were con- 
 tinually wrecked, and' even now often come to grief. 
 It is joined to the mainland by a small suspension- 
 bridge, and can only be reached by a staircase of some 
 three hundred and sixty-five rude steps winding down 
 the face of the cliffs, the rocky ledges in one place little 
 
THE LIGHTHOUSE DONKEY. 187 
 
 better than a ladder, while on either side the precipices 
 rise five hundred feet sheer out of the sea. Upon 
 this island live the lighthouse-keeper, his wife, and 
 donkey, and up and down this path these three pass 
 every week to get their provisions at the nearest little 
 town some three or four miles away. At the top of 
 the rock is a shed where a small cart is kept, to 
 which they harness the donkey, make their expedition, 
 and return again along the craggy, steep mountain 
 road behind the promontory. When the party once 
 more reach the top of the steps, the cart is put away 
 into the shed, the goods are bound on the back of 
 the donkey, who, with much neatness and despatch, 
 proceeds to step with his load carefully down the stairs 
 and across the little bridge, then up again into the 
 island, carrying everything safely into his rocky home. 
 Things had thus gone on very prosperously for 
 some time, though living was a little scanty, 
 as the island produces little but sea-birds, which 
 lay their eggs on the ledges of rock all round. 
 These are so narrow that if a human hand attempts 
 to lift an egg, it. is impossible to replace the round 
 and slippery thing once more, and it rolls into the 
 sea. Yet here, on a margin of two inches or so, the 
 guillemots may be seen sitting each on her single, 
 long, bluish egg, their little white stomachs bolt 
 
188 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 upright, in rows close together, but apparently quite 
 comfortable. The gulls and razor-bills take it easier, 
 and squat less stiffly over the two eggs which they 
 lay. The clamour of the clouds of birds all talking 
 at once is deafening. The colony is most regular in 
 its habits ; it appears on the island always . on the 
 same day in February, having previously sent an 
 embassage of select birds about a fortnight before to 
 see that the rock is still in its right place, that theii 
 seaside lodgings, food, &c., are all in readiness. A1 
 their young ones are fledged, the birds all leave th( 
 cliffs on the same day in August, and their childrei 
 are not allowed to return to the community, it is sai< 
 until they are two years old. 
 
 The birds are preserved with almost religious ven< 
 ration ; in a fog, when the light is invisible, . and the 
 bell, which is supposed to sound a distance of two 
 miles, is unheard in the thick air, the noise of the 
 birds gives warning of the dangerous coast at 
 hand. 
 
 Nothing could exceed the peace and harmony of 
 the island. The gulls and the donkey did not in any 
 way interfere with each other ; he was happy both 
 in the society of the summer and the solitude oi 
 the winter ; when in an evil moment the lighthous 
 keeper took it into his head to add a pony to th< 
 
THE LIGHTHOUSE DONKEY. 189 
 
 establishment, which was brought down the endless 
 steps with a great expenditure of trouble. 
 
 The donkey was hurt as to his feelings as well as 
 in his stomach. Clearly there was neither room nor a 
 living for two on that bare rock ; the blades of grass 
 were already so scanty that he had to eke out his dinner 
 with potato parings, &c. ; indeed, he ate everything 
 that the pigs (if they had existed) would have taken. 
 What had this wretched beast, thought he, to do in his 
 territory, infringing on his rights, taking the bread 
 out of his very mouth ? He was naturally excessively 
 cross, and gave way to his temper, and plagued and tor- 
 mented the miserable pony out of his very life. Still 
 the obdurate lighthouse keeper would not rid him of 
 his enemy, and the donkey began to see that there 
 would be no end to his annoyances unless through his 
 own exertions. 
 
 One day, prompted doubtless by the devil at least he 
 would certainly have laid the blame there he suddenly 
 crept up close to the pony's side, seized him traitorously 
 with his teeth by the scruff of the neck, dragged him 
 to the edge of the rocks, turned round, and kicked 
 him nearer and nearer to the precipice (everywhere 
 but a little way off), and at last fairly pushed him over 
 the edge into the breakers below. It was all too 
 quickly done for a rescue ; the lighthouse man from 
 
190 
 
 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 the top of his tower, helpless to interfere, saw the poor 
 pony, still alive, floating out to sea over the reefs, 
 the gulls hovering above him ready to fall on him and 
 banquet upon his remains ! 
 
 
 An attempt was next made to bring in a she-goat ; 
 but the donkey was so much the strongest and most 
 astute of the two, that she was obliged to be carried 
 away almost immediately, or it was clear she would 
 
THE LIGHTHOUSE DONKEY. 191 
 
 have soon shared the pony's fate ; and the donkey 
 now reigns undisputed lord of the situation ! 
 
 I saw the murderer, standing quietly munching 
 an indescribable something, apparently with much 
 enjoyment, under the shelter of a low wall overlooking 
 the restless foaming waters far beneath. But although 
 he seemed to be ruminating sternly, it did not appear 
 to be on his crimes. I thought he had a very bad 
 expression of face, and that his eye was wicked ; but 
 as I was above a quarter of a mile away, on the top 
 of the cliffs, this may have been the effect of a vivid 
 imagination. "What is certain is that he is very 
 handsome of his kind, large and prosperous looking, 
 and certainly does not pine under the remorse which, 
 according to all codes, human or beastly, a well- 
 regulated donkey ought to feel for this his most 
 abominable and wicked action. 
 
 Here is a picture of the murderer if Madame 
 Tussaud should desire to add him to her collection of 
 such persons. 
 
THE SHOVEL-NOSED SHAEK. 
 
 THIS is a " sketch from nature " of the jaw of a 
 young shark, a tender innocent, indeed, he might 
 be called, for if his life had not been cut short by cruel 
 fate he would have attained to the dignity of nine rows 
 of teeth, instead of the poor five which, as may be seen 
 inside the mouth, this little victim had been obliged to 
 put up with. A shark's age is counted by the number 
 of these rows, and his jaws are the most awful engine 
 
THE SHOVEL-NOSED SHAKE. 1.93 
 
 of destruction which exists in the animal world : they 
 are the best possible means that could be devised to 
 seize, to cut and tear, and finally to hold fast any slip- 
 pery subject, though of no use to chew or masticate. 
 
 Still there seems a superfluity of naughtiness in 
 this array of edges and serrated points, set thus in one 
 range following up another, which he can erect or 
 depress at his pleasure. It is almost dangerous to run 
 one's finger over them, the points are like knives, the 
 jagged edges along the finely modulated curves of 
 
 each three-cornered tooth are so keenly sharp, even in 
 the lowest, almost embryo, row. 
 
 There is a sort of hinge in the middle of both 
 upper and lower jaw, and from this centre the teeth 
 point different ways, gradually diminishing to a mere 
 root ; each is a brightly polished piece of ivory, and 
 each little jag of the graduated saws is exquisitely 
 finished, and varies according to its position. The 
 mouth in question, when open, measures nine inches 
 across, and is about two feet round, but in a full-grown 
 monster the jaws are wide enough to pass over a 
 man's shoulders without touching them. The nose is 
 
 o 
 
194 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 blunt and rounded, with very small eyes almost at 
 the top of his head. 
 
 The shark is the scavenger of the sea, the equiva- 
 lent of the hyena on land, and he swallows whole 
 whatever offal is flung overboard from the ships- 
 bolting it without any action of the teeth, unless when 
 his prey is too large to go conveniently down his 
 throat, and he breaks it up as it passes. 
 
 The coats of the stomach are extremely strong, and 
 some crushing action appears to go on inside it to 
 prepare the food for the gastric juice, as a substitute 
 for the mastication with which other warm-blooded 
 animals reduce it to a pulp in their mouths. 
 
 He is so fearless in his voracity, and follows a ship 
 so pertinaciously, that his habits are better known 
 than most of the sea denizens ; and familiarity cer- 
 tainly does not in this instance breed either respect or 
 affection. 
 
 "With the passengers on board the merchant vessels 
 to and from Australia shark-fishing is a favourite 
 pastime. The capture of one of these twenty feet long 
 was thus told : " Our ship was at anchor, and I was hold- 
 ing a line over the side when the rope began to quiver. 
 I felt that I had hooked some big fish, and pulling it 
 cautiously, a large shark came to the surface. I 
 called out loudly, when all the passengers came to 
 
THE SHOVEL-NOSED SHARK. 195 
 
 my help. He struggled, however, so violently, lash- 
 ing the water with his tail and trying to bite the 
 hook asunder, that we were obliged to keep dipping 
 his head under water, and then haul him up two or 
 three feet, so that the water ran down into his 
 stomach. We went on repeating this till he was 
 nearly drowned ; then sending a running bowline down 
 the rope by which he was caught, and making it taut 
 under his hindermost fin, we clapped the line round 
 the steam-winch and turned the steam on. Some of us 
 then hauled his tail up, while all available hands 
 dragged at the other line which held his head. As 
 soon as we got him on board he sent about three feet 
 of the ship's bulwarks out by a lash of his tremendous 
 tail, which was cut off by the boatswain with a 
 hatchet, while a dozen of us with bowie knives 
 finished him and opened his maw. Inside we found 
 six large snakes, two dozen lobsters, two empty quart 
 bottles, a sheepskin and horns, and the shank-bones 
 of beef which the cook had thrown overboard two 
 days before. The liver filled two large wash-deck 
 tubs, and when the cook melted it down we got 
 ten gallons of oil which sold at Brisbane at 4s. 6^7. 
 a gallon." When his remains were thrown over the 
 side they were, as usual, very soon disposed of by 
 his affectionate friends and relations who were waiting 
 
196 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 near, delighted to profit by the good fortune of his 
 death. The flesh is not bad eating when the fish is 
 young. 
 
 The shark is always attended by a small blue pilot- 
 fish, which swims about five yards in front of him, and 
 evidently guides him and warns him of danger, his 
 unwieldy size and length making it difficult for him 
 to turn. The pilot-fish appears to do his kindly 
 offices from pure friendship, with no filthy lucre of 
 gain ; but he probably benefits in some way by the 
 leavings of his great ally, or the small fry which 
 gather round a dead prey. There is another attendant, 
 more strictly speaking a parasite- the Sucker-fish, 
 about sixteen inches long which attends the shark> 
 fastening itself on by a curious patch at the back of 
 its head, not unlike the sole of an india-rubber shoe. 
 This adheres with such force, that a strong man can 
 hardly drag the fish away when it has attached itself 
 by it to the deck. Sometimes twelve or fifteen of them 
 may be seen hanging on to one shark. Probably they 
 find it convenient to seek their food, travelling thus as 
 it were on their own carriage, free of cost or trouble, 
 and rushing through the water at a rate which their* 
 unassisted exertions would certainly never attain. 
 But, on the other hand, they must endure some 
 very " bad quarters of an hour," when their great 
 
THE SHOVEL-NOSED SHARK. 197 
 
 friend gets into trouble, hanging helplessly on as they 
 do to his fortunes whether good or bad. 
 
 The perils of death at sea are certainly doubled in the 
 regions where these dreadful jaws are to be found. 
 And the certainty of such an end was one of the 
 most touching features of the simple heroism shown 
 by the soldiers on board the Birkenhead. She was a 
 transport vessel, as is well known, employed during 
 the Caffre war to take out detachments to various regi- 
 ments in South Africa, with their wives and children. 
 She struck on some sharp reefs infested with sharks near 
 Simon's Bay, and it was soon found impossible to save 
 her. The men were drawn up on deck by their 
 commanding officer, and not a soldier stirred from his 
 place as the women and children were put into the 
 few boats and sent off in safety to the land, the 
 whole body of men, with their officers, standing as 
 firmly as if on parade. They then all threw them- 
 selves into the sea, securing whatever loose spars, 
 hen-coops, or floating gear of any kind they could 
 lay hold of. One of the few survivors described 
 how if so much as a leg hung down from the miser- 
 able refuges to which they clung it was snapped off 
 by the sharks, while all who attempted to swim were 
 pulled under and devoured immediately. Few indeed 
 were those who reached the shore in safety, but the 
 
198 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 memory of their quiet obedience to duty and chivalry 
 towards the weak, in full view of such a frightful 
 death, will live in the hearts of England as a proof 
 of the noble qualities so often shown by the British 
 army far more difficult to attain than to face a 
 whole array of cannon in even a Balaclava charge 
 amidst the excitement of battle. 
 
 There are many braver things done in quiet un- 
 observed moments and obscure corners of the earth, 
 indeed, than before the enemy. A young officer of 
 engineers was stationed some years since in New Zea- 
 land in a very out-of-the-way district, far from the 
 settled country. He was a gallant fellow^ full of high 
 aims and objects ; besides which he rode well, shot 
 well, could manage a boat and swim admirably, and 
 had attained a twofold influence among the natives 
 by his fearless courage and his noble nature. 
 
 One stormy winter's afternoon, the sea running 
 high and a tremendous surf over the bar, which was 
 notorious for sharks, a ship was seen labouring into the 
 roadstead of the small port near which he lived * she 
 was hoisting signals of distress, and was believed to 
 be an expected emigrant vessel, and therefore with 
 many women and children on board. 
 
 The weather was so bad that there seemed no 
 chance of her outliving the gale, and not a sailor 
 
 
THE SHOVEL-NOSED SHAEK. 199 
 
 on the shore would lend a hand to help, when Captain 
 Symonds proposed to man a boat. Perhaps it may be 
 said they knew the perils to be encountered better 
 than a landsman, however expert. Captain Symonds 
 then called upon the Maories to join him, and they 
 immediately followed him for the sake of sufferers 
 not of their own race or country, and with a risk of 
 life which the Englishmen refused to encounter. 
 
 The boat pushed off; the wind was on the shore, 
 the surf running violently, with a cross-sea which 
 made it more dangerous. Still, however, the little 
 boat held on till within a few cables' lengths of the 
 distressed vessel, which was watching them anxiously, 
 when the tremendous heave of a wave struck her side, 
 and she was capsized. Captain Symonds was seen 
 swimming undauntedly towards the shore, holding on 
 by an oar, but he was swallowed up by the sharks 
 before he had made any way. Two of the gallant 
 black felloAvs escaped. The vessel perished in the 
 gale, with all on board. 
 
 A far higher kind of courage was required to face 
 such a death on that dark stormy winter's evening, in 
 the attempt to rescue unknown passengers on board 
 an unknown ship, than to storm the worst breach 
 ever surmounted in war, surrounded by comrades and 
 with the hope of renown. In what was then so remote 
 
200 
 
 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 a field, far from all help of sympathy, the young soldier 
 was ready to risk his aspirations, his healthy love 
 of life, and longing after distinction, with the brilliant 
 career open before him, for the sake of simply doing 
 God's work at the moment it was required, with no 
 interior bargaining as to the " worth while " of the 
 sacrifice. It was as gallant a deed as can be found 
 even in the long record of brave and obscure self- 
 sacrifices made by our English soldiers and sailors 
 in all parts of the world, the greatest portion of which 
 are scarcely heard of at the time, and are too quickly 
 forgotten afterwards. 
 
 The sharks are certainly not heroic themselves, 
 but they are the cause of a great deal of heroism in 
 others. 
 

 SWALLOWS. 
 
 " Oh, swallow, swallow, swallow, flying south." The Princess. 
 
 IT had been a cold, wet spring east wind and sleet 
 and misery ; the flowers were late, the insects 
 which live on them later ; nobody seemed to have the 
 
202 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 heart to hatch any eggs, or any plant to open a bud. I 
 suppose the swallow newspapers had neglected, how- 
 ever, to mention this, or perhaps their English " own 
 correspondent " had been deceived by an odd fine day 
 or two into fancying that it was spring. Anyhow the 
 swallows appeared from Africa, or wherever it is they 
 spend their winters, before the world here was ready for 
 them. They came in, buffeted by the storms on their 
 passage north, weak and tired, and finding nothing to 
 eat and not much shelter on their arrival. Accord- 
 ingly, a number of their little corpses were found 
 strewn about, looking very dismal, on the gravel 
 path leading up to our door. "We lived just out of 
 the town. 
 
 Next day the children found three birds in the 
 nursery, which had taken refuge through the open 
 window. One lay on the floor apparently dead, another 
 hung by his feet, head downwards, from a towel- 
 horse, the third crouched in the corner of a shelf. 
 
 I had just come in from a long and cold professional 
 drive, and, after running up-stairs to see my wife for 
 a new baby had arrived only the week before was 
 going down again to get some dinner. 
 
 " Poor tinies ! " said Susy, following me with one of 
 the birds in her little hot hand ; " what can I do for 
 it, papa. You are a doctor, you must know." The 
 
SWALLOWS. 203 
 
 children were now all standing round the table to help 
 me to eat the cold mutton. 
 
 " I can't bring the dead to life," said I ; " it's been 
 starved. There's nothing for the swallows to eat, 
 that's all that's the matter with them." I was very 
 tired with my day's work, and scarcely looked up. 
 
 " It isn't quite dead ; the little heart beats. Papa, 
 you must sec to it, and cure it," said Susy, jumping on 
 my knee and jogging my elbow. 
 
 The children had chopped some meat fine and were 
 putting it into the bird's mouth, but it could not 
 swallow ; one little particle which went down seemed 
 nearly to choke it ; crumbs of bread were even worse. 
 
 Fat little hands now took hold of my face and shook 
 my chin. " Papa, you must doctor it ! " was the chorus. 
 
 " You musn't bother papa," said Lizzie, sagely she 
 was older than the rest, and considered herself a sort 
 of deputy mother when the real one was up -stairs 
 and then she forgot herself, and began insinuatingly, 
 u You know you can do anything, papa." 
 
 " Go and ask in the kitchen for a little of mamma's 
 broth in a cup," said I, at last, with a groan, having 
 swallowed my food, and lying half asleep in the arm- 
 chair. " You're worse than the widow; and the un- 
 just judge was very much to be pitied ; there's a great 
 deal more to be said for him than I thought ! " 
 
204 SKETCHES FROM NATURE, 
 
 Except the baby baby no longer now that a new 
 one had taken his place everybody went off together, 
 and everybody returned together, escorting the cup 
 with great pomp and a tremendous noise. 
 
 " I wonder all the little birds didn't awake from any 
 amount of death/' said my wife, smiling, when she 
 inquired afterwards what we had been about. " It's 
 time 1 should be down-stairs again ; you'll let the 
 children worry you to death." 
 
 " Now, papa, what next ? " said the company 
 eagerly, each child with a bird in hand crowding round 
 me. 
 
 "Make haste, papa!" cried Tommy; "mine's 
 almost gone." 
 
 " The broth's too hot," said I, with my eyes shut, 
 out of the depth of the arm-chair. " You must .cool 
 it ; pour a few drops into the saucer." 
 
 I took up my first patient, who seemed indeed at 
 his last gasp, and lay quite still in the doctor's hands. 
 I pressed the sides of his throat gently, just under his 
 chin, with my finger and thumb, to open the mouth and 
 excite the muscles used in swallowing, and into it let 
 fall a drop or two of the broth from the end of a finger. 
 The bird opened its eyes, but closed them directly. I 
 repeated the dose again, and yet again ; he began to 
 shake himself ; a little more, and he had hopped upon 
 
SWALLOWS. 205 
 
 my hand, and in a few minutes had begun to preen 
 his feathers, sitting on the back of a chair. 
 
 " He's quite jolly ; now you must see if you can 
 1 do' for mine," said Tommy, pressing forward, scienti- 
 fically interested, as it were, in the experiment, but not 
 caring much for the individual ; while the little girls 
 were entirely engrossed in the birds themselves, and did 
 not care at all about the abstract question of the cure. 
 
 The third was a difficult case, very long in reviving ; 
 but at last he also " came to," and the birds then all 
 flew merrily out of the open window. 
 
 In a few days our weather improved, the sun came 
 out, and the swallows began to build their nests under 
 the eaves of the gable of an old house which stands at 
 right angles to us. The children declared they could 
 see a certain red thread which Lizzie had tied for pur- 
 poses of recognition round the leg of one of the birds, 
 whom, for some inscrutable reason, they all called 
 " Tommy." 
 
 The skimming and gliding of the indefatigable little 
 parents went on the whole day. They were always on 
 the wing, without pause or rest, sweeping the air high 
 and low in search of insects to satisfy those outrageous 
 little gormandizers, their children. As these grew 
 older, they kept up a most ugly, pertinacious, obstinate 
 twitter whenever there was a pause in the feeding. 
 
206 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 " More, more, I haven't had enough." "It's my 
 turn now : why didn't I have that last fly ? " they 
 went on saying over and over again most distinctly. 
 
 It is said that very self-sacrificing parents sometimes 
 have most selfish children. I am sure it was so here, 
 but then this was probably made up for by their spoil- 
 ing their own children in the next generation quite 
 as much, when they in turn grew up. 
 
 I find it rather difficult to provide food and clothing 
 for my own six ; but what would it have been if they 
 required a mouthful all round every five minutes, and 
 during the whole day through ? So, on the whole, I 
 resigned myself as better off than the swallows. 
 
 The flies and beetles on which they feed are so small 
 that many hundreds must be swallowed for a meal, and 
 on a fine day the throat and pouch of a swallow have 
 been found quite stuffed with them. Its head may be 
 said to be all mouth, so wide and gaping are their 
 short beaks ; they have little more to do, indeed, to 
 catch their prey, than to fly with open mouths and 
 close their beaks when they meet with an insect. " The 
 sharp click may be heard on a calm day," says Bishop 
 Stanley. " The bird is so light that it weighs little 
 more than an ounce, while the spread of its wings 
 when full grown is eighteen inches, so that it can turn, 
 wheel, rise, and fall as quick as thought." 
 
SWALLOWS. 207 
 
 The power of its muscles must be greater in propor- 
 tion to its size, or at least more continuous, than that of 
 almost any living thing. If you watch other small birds, 
 their wings in general have difficulty in keeping them 
 up in the air above a few hundred feet, while the 
 swallow is rarely seen to perch as others do, much less 
 to rest on the ground ; but high in the air, piercing the 
 bright blue sky above our heads, where its little white 
 breast glistens like a star far up, as far as our sights 
 can reach, swooping down to the shady lawn under the 
 big oak-tree, razing but never touching the earth, his 
 dark wings and white body, the beautiful little forked 
 tail and bright black cap on his head, sweep past with 
 the very poetry of motion so graceful, so determined, 
 so easy, so wonderful in its precision of aim, and rapid 
 beyond conception. Ninety miles an hour has been 
 calculated as its speed in quiet weather, says the Bishop, 
 while that of the swift is even more. 
 
 The nestlings were just about to fly, when one 
 morning I heard a frightful outcry from the children 
 in the garden behind the house alongside our next 
 neighbour's fence. The old house had just been taken 
 by a new and " improving tenant," and the gardener, 
 with a long pole in his hand, was going stolidly and 
 sternly round knocking down the nests in the eaves, 
 " to tidy up a bit." The parent birds flew madly 
 
208 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 backwards and forwards, seeming as if they would 
 dash themselves to pieces against the stone wall in 
 the way of the stick. But all in vain : down came 
 the mud and straw, down came the miserable nest- 
 lings, which lay dying in the ruins of the poor little 
 happy home. 
 
 " You are a very wicked man," said Susy, march- 
 ing solemnly up to the offender, " and God will punish 
 you for being so cruel ! " 
 
 She was an exceedingly shy child in general, and I 
 was as much surprised by this act of courage as if I 
 had seen her attack a battery. 
 
 " You mind your own business, little miss, and I'll 
 mind mine/ 7 answered the man angrily. 
 
 " Perhaps they'll build again," said Lizzie, taking a 
 hopeful view of the case. 
 
 " It'll be no use if they do," replied her mother 
 despondingly ; "it's so late in the season that they 
 won't have time to hatch another brood." 
 
 After a day or two, however, of fluttering, lamenting 
 and consulting, the birds began to build in the same 
 place once more, and I obtained for them a bill of in- 
 demnity for the future from the proper authorities. In 
 spite of our dismal prognostications, the swallow pair 
 brought up their second family in very tolerable time, 
 as the autumn, luckily, was long and fine, and then 
 
SWALLOWS. 209 
 
 went abroad as usual with all their sons and 
 daughters. 
 
 Next spring, under the same projecting eave of the 
 same gable, a new nest began to grow like the old 
 one. 
 
 " Look, papa ! I'm sure it's my Tommy ; I can see 
 the thread I tied round the bird's leg, though it isn't 
 red any longer ! " said Lizzie one day, after anxiously 
 watching the building operation. The bird fluttered 
 round the window as she spoke, bowing its tail up and 
 down with the sort of courteous motion which is its 
 wont. " That's because it knows us," said Lizzie, as 
 it flew off again. I saw the thread myself distinctly. 
 
 What marvellous compass within its breast had 
 guided it back with such unerring accuracy from such 
 far-distant regions ? Sierra Leone is one of the ha- 
 bitual winter homes of the bird, three thousand miles 
 off by the most direct way> and swallows have been 
 repeatedly caught at sea on board ship, flying in the 
 straightest line which could be steered by the best 
 sailor from the Land's End to the West Coast of 
 Africa, on a course where any rest is nearly impossible. 
 If, however, it takes the overland route and by the 
 Straits of Gibraltar, it probably roosts by day, as the 
 flights of swallows are never seen, and must therefore 
 pass by night. 
 
 p 
 
210 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 "What instinct, what habit of thought, what love of 
 its old home, had brought that little atom back to the 
 same place, over such thousands of miles of land and 
 sea ? Many eaves as good as ours, many places as fit 
 or fitter, must it have passed over. One house, one 
 field, must look pretty much like another from high up 
 in the air, as it travels aloft at a speed far beyond 
 that of the most rapid of trains. 
 
 It had left nothing but recollections behind it ; yet 
 here, after all its wanderings, constant to the old 
 haunts, it had returned safely once more to the old 
 trees, the old roof, to that indescribable something 
 which we call home, which, meaning as it does asso- 
 ciations and affections, seems to us such a peculiarly 
 human instinct. 
 
 Mr. Wallace puts the swallow among the birds 
 whose nature is progressive, who are able to adapt 
 themselves and their nests to new circumstances. For 
 instance, no early individuals of the race can have had 
 any eaves under which to build. The savage tribes of 
 early men constructed no houses; in North America any 
 sort of roof is not three hundred years old. But it is now 
 peculiarly upon these dwellings of man, seeking out 
 apparently the company of our race, that the swallow 
 delights to make his home ; and this, therefore, gives 
 us a fellow feeling for him which we have with scarcely 
 
SWALLOWS. 
 
 211 
 
 any other bird. His presence brings good luck in 
 the superstitions of all countries ; his destruction 
 is considered as a sort of sacrilege. Even upon 
 a church his nest is looked upon with favour, and 
 now, as in the far-off day when David wrote, " Yea, 
 the swallow hath found her " there a place " where she 
 may lay her young " in peace and security. 
 
 ,--/. 
 
H 
 
 A MAN OYEEBOAKD. 
 
 had been travelling for many months in 
 
 South America, when on his way to England 
 from Valparaiso he was received as a guest on board 
 H.M.S. - , a corvette of the old type : it was before 
 the days of steam, at least in the royal navy. 
 
 It was February, and therefore autumn in the 
 Southern Hemisphere, when we passed round Cape 
 Horn, where it may be said to be always winter. 
 There had been icebergs in sight, but we gave them a 
 wide berth, for they are dangerous neighbours. As we 
 sighted the bleak, barren, snowy heights of Terra del 
 Fuego, the wind was west, and we were running right 
 before it with a high following sea. 
 
 There was a sailor on board who had been in a 
 cavalry regiment, the Scots Greys. My heart always 
 warmed to a soldier, past or present, and he was a 
 sort of friend of mine. His name was Morrison. 
 
A MAN OVERBOARD. 213 
 
 I was walking up and down at the stern, passing 
 and repassing behind the two quartermasters at the 
 wheel (when it is rough the strength of one man is not 
 enough to control it, there are often eight in a large 
 ship). I was watching the enormous waves over 
 which, and through which, we were cutting our way. 
 It is a magnificent spectacle, and the waves in the 
 Pacific are said to exceed in length those of any other 
 ocean. They ranged now, I was told, from twelve to 
 fourteen feet below, and as much above the level in 
 height, so that when we were in the trough of the sea 
 the summit of the wave was from twenty -four to 
 twenty-eight feet above us Admiral Scoresby calls 
 a the storm wave thirty feet high." In very heavy 
 weather it is not uncommon to see a large vessel 
 disappear, masts and all, in a neighbouring trough 
 of the sea. 
 
 Suddenly there was a cry from the fore part of the 
 deck, " Man overboard ! " and a strange shock seemed 
 to run through the whole ship at the sound. A heavy 
 lurch threw me off my legs ; but I jumped up on the 
 signal locker, and looked over the taffrail down 
 below, where I could see Morrison swimming breast 
 high out of the water, nearly upright, and looking up 
 at the ship. As we swept past him he did not seem 
 in the least frightened, and I thought I had never seen 
 
214 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 a man swim better. " Never mind, Morrison, we shall 
 soon be after you," I shouted; but the noise was pro- 
 bably too great for him to hear me. Captain S 
 had rushed up to let go the lifebuoy ; this should fall 
 instantly on the mere pulling of a trigger ; but, alas ! 
 some ropes had fouled it, and it was not free for perhaps 
 a minute, while meantime we were sweeping on at the 
 rate of twelve or fourteen miles an hour. As the buoy 
 fell the fuze ignited, and it struck a light; but we had 
 now left the man a hundred yards or more to windward. 
 By this time every one was on deck ; six men had 
 jumped into the jolly-boat hanging at the quarter, 
 which was lowered as rapidly as possible a very 
 dangerous operation in such a sea. She was nearly 
 capsized and swamped by the water rushing over her, 
 but got away safely. She was no sooner clear from 
 the ship, however, than the captain ordered a larger 
 boat to be lowered, to provide if necessary for the 
 safety of the men in the first boat. 
 
 In the meantime two men had been sent up the 
 mizen-mast with orders not to lose sight of the buoy. 
 Evening was coming on, and the poor fellow could not 
 now be seen, but his whereabouts was plain. A 
 couple of albatrosses had been following us for many 
 days, circling in their rapid flight round and round 
 the ship, even when she was thus rushing before the 
 
A MAN OVERBOARD. 215 
 
 wind, to pick up anything which was thrown over- 
 board. They were now hovering over the man's head, 
 poised upon their enormous white wings (which mea- 
 sure sometimes seventeen feet from tip to tip), and 
 occasionally swooping down to the level of the waves. 
 
 We could see the first boat pulling towards the 
 place as hard as the men could row, and the order 
 was given to bring the ship to the wind a perilous 
 manoeuvre with the sea running so high, but the only 
 chance of keeping near the man and the boats, the 
 lessening light making the look-out every moment 
 more difficult. The whole ship's company were now 
 assembled on deck, and I saw in their anxious faces 
 the small chance there was of saving poor Morrison. 
 The suspense had become intense. 
 
 At length when it was nearly dark the boats re- 
 turned, and we thought at first that the search had been 
 unsuccessful. Presently, however, we could see that 
 some one was being supported by the men's knees, and 
 Morrison was with difficulty hoisted on board. He 
 had been found floating on his face, while on the body 
 were the marks of the talons of the albatrosses, whose 
 grip had probably prevented it from sinking ; and the 
 last sight which he could have been conscious of must 
 have been that of these huge birds flapping their 
 wings over his head. In all probability, however, be 
 
216 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 fore he was struck by them he had been drowned by 
 the force of the waves beating over his head and face. 
 
 When brought up he was carried to the half- deck 
 and stripped, while everything that was possible to re- 
 store animation was done by the surgeon, who employed 
 the men of his mess in rubbing the body from head 
 to foot for a couple of hours ; but it was all in vain. 
 I went down again and again, and found his com- 
 rades standing and sitting silently and sorrowfully 
 round him as he lay on Ms mattress, with the calm- 
 ness of death on his face. He was a remarkably fine 
 strong fellow, the largest man in the ship. When it 
 was clear that all was over he was given up to his own 
 mates to watch during the night. But now a change 
 came over the sailors ; they were alarmed and distressed 
 at having a dead body on board, and were anxious to 
 get rid of it as soon as possible a strange supersti- 
 tion among men who carry their lives in their hands, 
 and are in danger of some kind at almost every 
 moment of the day. Two or three times in the night 
 I went in and found some of them watching the 
 corpse with perturbed, half-frightened faces, in the 
 dim light of the ship's lantern swinging over them. 
 
 In the morning the poor fellow was sewn in his ham- 
 mock, and a couple of shots fastened to his feet ; the 
 corpse was then placed on a grating opposite the gang- 
 
A MAN OVERBOARD. 217 
 
 way and covered with the union jack, while the captain 
 read the beautiful burial service over him. A funeral 
 at sea is always a very solemn and impressive scene. 
 The rough fearless countenances of the men, all in the 
 prime of life, standing round, their grief for their 
 comrade and the sense pervading the whole congrega- 
 tion of the like danger impending on each and all, 
 with the thought of the homes they all hope to 
 revisit, make a common feeling among them which 
 strikes deep, at least for the moment. The sea was 
 still running so high that it was with great diffi- 
 culty, even holding on by ropes, that I could keep 
 my feet. "When at the words altered as it is from 
 the burial service which is used on. land " we now 
 commit his body to the deep, to be turned into cor- 
 ruption, looking for the resurrection when the sea 
 shall give up her dead," the eyes of all followed the 
 corpse as it shot down into the " yeast of waves," and 
 disappeared like a flash of lightning, and each man 
 turned to the work of life again. " Eeady, aye 
 ready," for the lot which is sent us, however sudden 
 the call the lesson had never come home to me so 
 deeply before." 
 
COMPAEATIVE COOKING. 
 
 THE difference between man and other animals is 
 said to be that the human beast alone " cooks his 
 food." The Englishman, however, seems to require 
 the least amount of cooking of any of the species in a 
 civilised state. He does not, indeed, eat his meat 
 raw like the lion and the wolf; "but why," says 
 Mr. Thackeray, apostrophising Britannia, "oh why, 
 those bleeding legs of mutton ? " His vegetables are 
 not left quite in the state best esteemed by the cow 
 and the rabbit, but, compared with the seventy- eight 
 ways of cooking potatoes said to be practised by the 
 French and Germans, our fashion of paring, boiling, 
 and spoiling the root, as we generally contrive to do, 
 is the very rudest approach to the culinary art. 
 
 Charles Lamb's well-known description of the dis- 
 covery of roast pig how a Chinaman's house having 
 been burnt down, an infant pigling perished in the 
 
COMPARATIVE COOKING. 219 
 
 flames ; how, his delicious little carcase having once 
 been found and eaten, houses and huts without number 
 came afterwards to be burnt, only to attain the coveted 
 morsel ends with saying that at last it was found out 
 that roast pig could be obtained at a less sacrifice. Our 
 kitchen grates seem to be only the first step in the pro- 
 cess of " evolution" from this wholesale conflagration 
 to the tiny handful of fire, over which, with a far less 
 amount of good material, the foreign peasant contrives 
 to produce a savoury meal in the pot au feu, instead 
 of the miserable heavy suet dumpling, cold fat bacon, 
 ill-cooked cabbage, new bread, and cheese of our 
 English country working class, or the half-burnt beef- 
 steak and underdone mutton of the artisans. The 
 savoury stew which is the staple of foreign cookery 
 can only be produced by a long process, lasting six 
 or seven hours, over a very slow fire, which brings 
 out the hidden juices of the materials : odds and ends 
 of all kinds, vegetables of every sort, remains of 
 crusts of bread, bones, pieces of fat, lumps of 
 meat, things which too often in an English house are 
 thrown to the pigs, flavoured with sorrel and other 
 herbs which we rarely think of using, produce a 
 compound which the best cook need not disdain. 
 Above all, a considerable amount of variety is secured. 
 Mr. Smiles, in his account of the settling of the 
 
220 SKETCHES FROM NATURE, 
 
 Huguenots in England, mentions particularly the 
 excellent cooking which they brought with them, and 
 their habit of utilising scraps. Till that time the 
 tails of oxen were thrown away as useless ; they first 
 introduced ox-tail soup, now considered one of our 
 dainty dishes. 
 
 The difference between French and English cookery 
 was brought very vividly before us in a curious 
 manner a summer or two back ; and though it seems 
 beginning a good way off from the subject of cooking, 
 I must give the whole story as the evidence of an 
 eye-witness. 
 
 " I had been looking at some repairs in a cottage, 
 and lamenting over the usual ill-cooked dumpling 
 which I saw put on the table, with baker's bread, 
 tea, and cheese, an expensive and immtritious meal, 
 when riding on down a green lane overshadowed with 
 old oaks and ash, I saw, far away over the hills, 
 a mysterious object sailing majestically along, which, 
 as it came nearer, resolved itself into an enormous 
 balloon. I turned my horse and rode back with it, 
 keeping up with some diificulty, as the wind was high 
 and it went fast. The long ropes hanging from it 
 passed so near the roofs of the houses in a small 
 village that there was considerable danger of the 
 chimneys being carried away. It swept over the flat 
 
 
COMPARATIVE COOKING. 221 
 
 fields, the car dashing through the hedges, and 
 carrying bushes and small trees before it; it rose, 
 and then fell again with a sort of majestic curtsey, till 
 at last the car became entangled in the branches of 
 some high elms on a lonely field belonging to a farm 
 of my own, on a low hill in a very secluded part of 
 the country. There was a lull in the wind, and we 
 hastily fastened what ropes we could reach to the 
 trunks of the largest trees near the enormous inflated 
 circle of the balloon now caught in the branches. We 
 sent a boy up a tree where he could look into the car, 
 but there was no one in it, dead or alive, or any sign 
 whence it came. Soon after it came down and lay on 
 its side upon the ground. 
 
 "By this time, from all the outlying cottages and 
 farms, from all the neighbouring villages, people were 
 flocking to look at the wonderful sight ; we could see 
 them coming in all directions over the fields and up 
 the hill. The great fun was to get through a rent 
 into the inside, and walk all round what looked like 
 an immense circular hall fifty or sixty feet across ; 
 the gas had risen to the top, and still kept the whole 
 distended. The balloon was made of very thick silk, 
 and covered with a beautiful network outside, every 
 knot finished so as to be quite a work of art. Up this 
 some fifteen or twenty young fellows had climbed, 
 
222 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 though with one strong puff of wind she might have 
 been off again. A couple of policemen now came up 
 and cleared the place only just in time, for the wind 
 suddenly increased a little, the immense mass rose 
 upright, and lifted from the ground ; at least sixty or 
 seventy people had hold of the ropes, which hung in 
 different directions, but in a moment these were 
 pulled from their hands, and if there had been many 
 times the number the impetus would have been 
 irresistible. As it rose with a slow majestic move- 
 ment and a feeling of power, as if unconscious of 
 any check, the crowd, now numbering nearly a 
 thousand, hailed it with a loud cheer, heedless of 
 the danger of the men clinging to the netting. 
 Most of them let themselves drop, some from a 
 considerable height, but one man, a tailor, had some- 
 how entangled his foot and could not get it loose. A 
 young soldier, lately returned home, rushed up, and as 
 the balloon lowered again a little he contrived to climb 
 up and free the tailor, who threw himself down and 
 was caught by the bystanders ; but again it stood 
 upright, as if about to ascend with a sort of careless 
 indifference to our efforts, and the tailor's liberator 
 lost his head, fell from a great height, and came to 
 the ground with a terrible shock, which laid him up 
 for months with bruises and a broken limb. 
 
COMPARATIVE COOKING. 223 
 
 " After this last feat the balloon seemed to think it 
 had done enough, and came again wearily to the 
 earth. We found and opened the valve with great 
 difficulty, and the gas made its escape, though with 
 extreme slowness. The crowd melted away, and we 
 set the two policemen to watch over the waif and stray 
 during the short summer night. There was nothing, 
 however, to indicate whence it had come from, and we 
 had no clue to the owners. No one came to inquire 
 about it during the whole of the next day, and it was 
 not till late on the following morning that a Frenchman 
 appeared to claim it. We now learnt that it was the 
 captive balloon, which had made its escape from 
 Cremorne Gardens, where it was fastened by a very 
 thick rope, attached through the bottom of the car, to 
 a wheel worked by machinery, which allowed it to 
 ascend to a certain perpendicular height for the 
 benefit of sucking aeronauts, when it was drawn 
 down again, like a bird with a string to its foot. 
 The rope had broken suddenly, and the balloon- 
 fortunately empty at the moment escaped alone on 
 its travels. 
 
 " About twenty Frenchmen arrived that evening to 
 take the whole thing to pieces ; and they were two 
 days busy in packing the remains into three large 
 waggons. There was but little damage done to it, 
 
224 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 only one or two slits in the silk, the loss of a good 
 deal of rope, and the escape of the gas, which was, 
 however, sufficiently serious, as the cost of refilling it, 
 when required, amounted to 500. 
 
 " And now to come down from the clouds to the 
 cooking-pots. With the men came the wife of one of 
 them, a very good-looking, respectable young French- 
 woman, whose business it was to cook for the party. 
 One of the men who spoke English got her some bricks, 
 and built her a rude cooking-place under the great elm 
 at the village cross-roads. Vegetables were obtained 
 out of the cottage gardens, and a little meat; she 
 walked about the fields plucking herbs from the hedges, 
 sorrel, dandelion, chevril ; the pot au feu was filled 
 from St. Botolph's well, and was soon simmering over 
 her improvised kitchen range. The women of the 
 village came round to stare ; and there was a good 
 deal of scorn expressed at the < rubbish ' she used, 
 and the l messes ' she was getting up. But the proof 
 of the soup was in the eating; and they could not 
 deny the talent required to get excellent meals for 
 twenty hungry men out of such materials for two 
 whole days. 
 
 "The cooking powers of the two nations was 
 curiously contrasted in the camps of Aldershot and 
 Chalons, which I happened to see on two following 
 
COMPARATIVE COOKING. 225 
 
 years the palatable, wholesome food produced by 
 the French soldier in his little tent, and the wretched 
 result of the Englishman's work with a far greater 
 amount of conveniences in his hut." 
 
 Indeed, every nation may be said to do better than 
 ourselves. The Hindoo, with a few sticks, a handful 
 of charcoal, and half-a-dozen pots, will produce an 
 exquisite dinner, and, on a march, the curry will be 
 made with a fresh flavour continually. The Arab, 
 with a number of little holes in the ground, will get 
 as good a result as is produced by the " half a ton of 
 coals in a month," which is expended in some of our 
 enormous kitchen ranges. A bag of charcoal, price 
 3s. 6d., will last a week in a French four de campagne. 
 
 At the National Training School of Cookery, 
 lately established at South Kensington, not only 
 is any one who wishes it instr acted how to cook 
 really well, but women can be taught gratis how 
 to turn every scrap to the best account to make 
 the most palatable food out of the least amount of 
 material with the stipulation that they are to hold 
 themselves ready to go out as instructors to any 
 towns and villages as ask for such help, to instruct 
 the wives of the artisans and labourers now wasting 
 good food from sheer ignorance. 
 
 The whole of England may wish the plan success. 
 
 Q 
 
226 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 The middle class are not much further advanced 
 in the science than the artisans ; and only those 
 who can afford a professed cook (and, indeed, not 
 even these by any means always) have much chance of 
 obtaining that real necessity for health and comfort, 
 properly cooked food. Boiling, roasting, stewing, do 
 not come by nature ; a mutton-chop and a potato 
 should be served up with as great pains as the 
 smartest dish. There is nothing so extravagant as 
 bad cooking ; and it is a national misfortune to go on, 
 as we do in England, spoiling and wasting better 
 materials than are to be found in any other country. 
 The sodden vegetables, the meat grilled or roasted to 
 a cinder, the best part of it feeding the fire, the 
 comfortless meals for a tired man coming home at 
 night, and which often drive him to the refuge of a 
 public-house these are questions which concern the 
 poorest household. Good cooking, as intended to be 
 taught at South Kensington, is no luxury,' as is often 
 supposed, for the rich; it is a necessity first, for 
 good health, which requires food to be properly 
 prepared if it is to be properly digested; next for 
 economy, which requires the best result to be 
 obtained with the smallest cost; and lastly for 
 comfort in the household both for husband and 
 * children. It should therefore be as much part of a 
 
COMPARATIVE COOKING- 227 
 
 " working " woman's education as learning to read 
 and write. 
 
 [Some interesting details have been lately given of penny Cookery classes 
 at Birmingham, and it is hoped that such a class may soon be established in 
 a poor part of London. The School Board for London announce that they 
 intend to urge that payments should be made by the Education Department 
 to classes on Practical Cookery in day and evening schools, as is done for 
 other subjects. Lectures on the preparation of food in relation to health have 
 been given with much success as a branch of " sanitary work."] 
 
BIEDS OF PASSAGE. 
 
 WE were sitting in the still wintry evening by 
 a solitary pool in the heart of a great tract 
 of beautiful wild woodland country full of old 
 oaks, holly, and heather. The dark firs which sur- 
 rounded " Blackwater," and gave it its name, were 
 reflected in the quiet water, with the white stems of 
 the slim young birches, the tall grasses, the reeds and 
 flags ; a pale red and yellow light shone behind the 
 black trunks of the trees j when a flight of wild ducks, 
 in wedge-shaped squadron, passed over us, their eager 
 heads outstretched before their bodies rapid, deter- 
 mined, unswerving, straight er than an arrow, They 
 were headed by some king, or dux, who was clearly 
 quite as certain of his way through the " pathless fields 
 of air "as if it were a turnpike road lined out with 
 hedges on either side. They were probably coming 
 from Norway, or even Lapland, apparently to some 
 
BIRDS OF PASSAGE. 229 
 
 prearranged station amongst us, some wild moorland 
 tarn, some pool in the midst of a wide wooded district 
 like our own Blackwater. Is their chief a travelled 
 duck, and has he been here before? Is he chosen 
 for his knowledge by the community in council ? 
 Does he, as is supposed, sometimes fall back into the 
 ranks when weary, and by what right does the vice- 
 president succeed ? Supposing Nestor to be slain by 
 some undiscriminating gun, who then is trusted to 
 lead forth the fresh flights of the community ? 
 
 There is nothing more wonderful in nature than 
 the passion of desire for " foreign parts/ 7 that seizes 
 certain birds at certain seasons of the year the mys- 
 terious reaching forth after some generally unknown 
 summer land, as in the ardent longing of Goethe's 
 Mignon song, set to music by Beethoven 
 
 " Wo bist du, wo bist du, mein geliebtest land ? " 
 
 far away over the cold dark sea or the bare snowy 
 lands, not to be reached except by hundreds of miles 
 of flight through the dark chill wintry air. How do 
 those who have been there before communicate such 
 an abstract impression to their untravelled comrades of 
 what must be to them so distant and mysterious a 
 country in every sense. 
 
 In the fields below we had been watching a cloud 
 
230 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 of fieldfares practising their manoeuvres for their 
 flight abroad, and almost invisible when their wings 
 and bodies were seen edgewise in the course of their 
 gyrations. Their " intelligence department" was per- 
 fect, the very vigilant sentinel on watch warning the 
 main body of our dangerous proximity with a peculiar 
 jarring cry, as they were comfortably busy picking up 
 their food after, I suppose, they had finished their 
 field-day. 
 
 The movements of the starlings are even more 
 wonderful. They probably migrate only to different 
 parts of England, or across the Channel to Ireland ; 
 but their preparations are elaborate, their evolutions 
 are performed with the most wonderful precision. 
 As we came along through the forest we had seen 
 them above our heads wheeling, charging, " forward" 
 went the right, " at the double " advanced the left 
 wing, ending with a noisy simultaneous plunge into 
 the thickest part of the wood, and a sudden halt, or 
 " stand at ease," in the deadest silence, of the whole 
 battalion among the branches. They evidently follow 
 some very distinct word of command, their discipline 
 is admirable, and they obey implicitly, though the 
 general in this case cannot be distinguished from his 
 men. The manner in which each bird is in his place 
 and keeps his place, in the exceedingly complicated 
 
BIEDS OF PASSAGE. 
 
 231 
 
 performances of the crowded melee, is most remark- 
 able. There is never the slightest jostling, though 
 at the mouth of the Humber (for instance) the nights 
 are so large as almost to obscure the air. Who 
 settles on the pivot bird in one of those whirls, when 
 
 the whole body seems to turn on itself as one, in the 
 smallest possible space and time ? and how does each 
 member of the community measure his distance so as 
 never to touch his neighbour in the closest and most 
 rapid flight each bird having to perform his part 
 of a graduated scale of velocity in the concentric 
 
232 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 circles, when the slightest mistake in distance would 
 crush the inside performers. 
 
 The "Blackwater " Pool was a favourite haunt of the 
 heron, who had a settlement on some lofty trees not 
 three miles off, and other wild fowl ; it communi- 
 cated with a small river just below, whose running 
 waters were open to them for food, even when the 
 ponds were frozen. It is only in very long- continued 
 bitter weather that the wild swans and solan geese 
 ever come to us ; but in a still higher water, lying in a 
 hollow of the low heathery hills, which is called by the 
 appropriate name of " Wind- whistle," and round which 
 the sundew and asphodel, the cotton-grass and bog 
 myrtle, grow luxuriantly in the treacherous boggy 
 soil, a flock of swans, during one very severe winter, 
 passed apparently just within range, but the shot 
 glanced off from the breast of the one which was hit 
 as from an armour of proof, and only a couple of pure 
 white feathers came down to earth. In general the 
 flight of the wild geese is so high that only their very 
 peculiar cry, something like a dog's bark, reveals their 
 whereabouts, invisible in the clear air. " Gabriel's 
 hounds were passing," said the old folk lore : " the 
 dogs of Anwyn," i.e. Hades, the lower regions, is the 
 Welsh version: or the "Wild huntsman," of the 
 Hartz Mountains, the " Wilde Yagd" is known in 
 
BIEDS OF PASSAGE. 233 
 
 most northern lands, and always with some weird 
 legend attached to it, by the awestruck hearers of the 
 "eerie" sound without sight, high in mid-heayen above 
 their heads. The story varies. "A wicked sportsman 
 who hunted on Sundays " is the Puritanical English 
 version, or "a lord who wronged the poor." The 
 German version has a deeper dye of wickedness and 
 horror in the tale of abominable cruelty to man and 
 beast ; but in all countries the sinner is condemned 
 to hunt on, in frost and snow, wind and tempest, till 
 Doomsday. 
 
 The east coast of England is the landing-place of 
 the chief part of our visitors. The distance from the 
 last headlands in Norway from which they would 
 start is about three hundred and fifty or four 
 hundred miles to the point of Kinnaird in Scot- 
 land; and the nearest shore of England, which 
 would land them somewhere in Northumberland, is 
 scarcely farther off. If the flight of ducks is calcu- 
 lated at from sixty to a hundred miles an hour, 
 five or six hours would bring them across the sea. 
 The wind has much to do with their arrival ; they 
 usually come with a northerly or easterly gale. The 
 flight of the woodcock is still more rapid; it has 
 been reckoned at from a hundred to a hundred and 
 twenty miles an hour. They might thus reach 
 
234 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 Ireland, whose bogs they seem much to affect, 
 without difficulty in a direct night, or, perhaps, 
 pausing at the Shetland Isles for a halt. On the 
 Holy head " mountain " the gamekeeper hoists a flag 
 to announce their arrival, or the sportsmen would 
 not be in time for such passing visitors ; they are 
 often off again the next day, across the Irish Channel. 
 In the Scilly Isles they light in great numbers, 
 apparently on their way to Brittany. 
 
 The birds obtain information in some strange 
 manner of a congenial state of flood, and during the 
 past winter forty or fifty snipe were suddenly seen in a 
 flooded meadow, which was very rarely under water. 
 When disturbed, they fly in a long, loose, zig-zag, 
 twisted line, called a " wisp." Our ancestors were 
 much more particular than we are in their varieties 
 of descriptive names. Dame Juliana Berners, Prioress 
 of Sopwell Nunnery, in Hertfordshire, in her treatise 
 on Hawking and Hunting (a curious subject for 
 a nun !), in one of the earliest books printed, by 
 Wynkyn de Worde, 1486, gives two whole pages of 
 the proper terms to be used for the " company s of 
 bestys and foules," most of which are now for- 
 gotten ; " a herde of swannys, and of wrennys, 
 a muster of pecockys, a bevy of ladyes, and of 
 quayles, a cherme of goldfynches, a watche of nightin- 
 
BIRDS OF PASSAGE. 235 
 
 gales, an oost of sparowes, a chatterynge of ster- 
 lynges," and so on.* 
 
 There is much greater elaboration in the definition 
 of natural objects to be found in the earlier stages of 
 language and civilisation. Savages have fewer objects 
 of observation and of thought, and therefore spend 
 their strength in dwelling on the details of each. 
 An Arab is said to have seventeen names for different 
 modifications of the idea " lion." Instead of our awk- 
 ward paraphrases, "a tawny lion," a " black-maned 
 lion," a " lion of a year old," he has a separate word for 
 each. Dame Juliana even gives three different names for 
 the flights of different kinds of wild ducks : "a sorde of 
 malardes," " a springe of telys," " a covert of coote^." 
 
 The migrations of the great armies of ducks is 
 always at night, and in the fens the whistling sound 
 of thousands of wings whirring along, the shrill calls, 
 the wild cries of the flights of birds, are exceedingly 
 striking; their intelligence in obeying the word of com- 
 mand is wonderful indeed, for each individual of the 
 mass must be guided by the voice of the leader alone in 
 the dark nights when scarcely anything can be seen. 
 The ordinary notes of birds seem to us rather pointless 
 and monotonous one phrase which they continually 
 
 * The hawking Prioress was a cheerful lady, and not afraid of a joke ; she 
 includes in her list, "A superfluyte of nonnys," and " A bominable sygte of 
 monks." 
 
236 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 repeat ; but the signal calls of birds of passage are 
 marked, warning, full of anxious meaning. Their organs 
 of sound are very much developed; the windpipes of the 
 duck tribe are straight and horny tubes, with a peculiar 
 cavity at the lower end, " involving the whole principle 
 of the clarionet," and enabling them to utter a long 
 clear loud note, or cry, which can be heard at a great 
 distance. "A lion's voice would be lost out of a balloon, 
 but a lark is heard even when the bird is out of sight," 
 
 Birds have means of obtaining knowledge evidently 
 greater than ours by the eye, which, Sir Benjamin 
 Brodie says, is a more complicated and perfect organ 
 with them than it is in man. The eye of the eagle 
 is nearly as large as that of the elephant, he has a 
 wider range of vision, and can distinguish objects 
 at a distance when they would be to us altogether 
 imperceptible, while other birds have a like power in 
 a lesser degree. 
 
 Their porous bones are full of air, which is warmed 
 by the heat of a circulation greater than that of any 
 other creature. Their " unique powers of respira- 
 tion " enable them to render themselves light or heavy 
 by inflating their elastic and powerful lungs with air, 
 whose warmth enables them to rise and float, or, by 
 expelling the air, to contract their bodies and sink 
 again. The muscles of birds of passage possess 
 
BIRDS OF PASSAGE. 237 
 
 extraordinary "staying power" and activity, and 
 enable them to dart up through a breeze, blowing 
 contrary to the way they wish to go, into a current 
 of air higher up in the right direction, the existence 
 of which must become known to them by some strange 
 mysterious sense. 
 
 Their light weights are carried with the wind at a 
 tremendous pace, which may, perhaps, be the explana- 
 tion of the safe arrival of such dainty little morsels as 
 the golden- crested wrens, with their short wings and 
 apparently fine-lady, delicate habits, who yet are not 
 afraid to cross the sea. They often land near the 
 lighthouse on the point north of the Humber quite 
 tired out, where, among the rough low rushes near 
 the sea, they can be knocked down like butterflies 
 with a cap, if seen before they have recovered their 
 little senses and spirits after their exertions. 
 
 In their night flights birds are naturally attracted 
 by the bright lights in the lighthouses, which must be 
 very inviting when seen as they pass high up in the air, 
 and they often dash themselves to death against the 
 thick glass of the lanterns in their eager pursuit. 
 
 The return of birds of passage to England is gene- 
 rally exceedingly regular. Punctually to their time, 
 the gulls return to the South Stack, near Holyhead, on 
 the 10th of February, and a list has been published of 
 
238 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 the days when the different travellers may be expected 
 in England; but the reasons for emigration have 
 still to be discovered, the search after a supply of 
 food is not enough to account for their movements. 
 The swallows leave warm pleasant climates to go to 
 such inhospitable places as Port Famine (lugubrious 
 name), near Cape Horn, in the south, and Iceland and 
 Hudson's Bay in the north, where often the summer 
 is so late that the cold kills the insects and the young 
 birds die of hunger. "Why should the woodcock 
 leave England in early spring for Norway, when 
 there are good breeding-places here and the supply of 
 insects is sufficient ? "Why should the swallows remain 
 here when gnats and flies are more abundant further 
 north ? and the redwing and fieldfare leave us when 
 their food here is plentiful ? 
 
 These questions have all yet to be answered, and 
 every person, young and old, who brings careful 
 study and minute observation to bear upon this, as 
 upon all other questions of natural history, is doing 
 good service to the general cause ; their little facts, 
 accurately noted, may be of service to the great men 
 who use and marshal the materials supplied to them 
 into large and important generalisations, and no one 
 can tell beforehand which will be the brick necessary 
 to clinch an arch. 
 
 
LITTLE MAEY CEADOCK. 
 
 I SAT waiting for a busy man, and as the old horse 
 moved slowly backwards and forwards for the 
 benefit of his health in the north-east wind, sharp, 
 though it pretended to be May, we came opposite 
 a cheap draper's at the corner of a poor street. The 
 windows were full of earnest adjurations to " purchase 
 .this splendid article, the only thing worn, price five- 
 pence three-farthings ; " or " this entirely new and 
 fashionable design in mantles, just out, at less than 
 cost price." I wanted a ball of string, and utilised 
 my enforced leisure by going in to get it. It is a 
 tedious business to buy even a ball of string at a 
 cheap draper's, and I had long to wait. Presently 
 the shop door opened and two little children came in 
 hand-in-hand ; their brown frocks were of the simplest 
 possible stuff, but there was quite a poetry of neatness 
 in the exquisite nicety of their dress, the little lines 
 
240 SKETCHES 'FROM NATURE. 
 
 of white frill round their throats and sleeves, the 
 strings of coral round their necks. They had nothing 
 on their heads, but their beautifully plaited hair hung 
 down their backs. There was almost a foreign air 
 about them, but their accent was purely English. 
 Altogether they had a refined, cared-for look, con- 
 trasting with their premature shifting for themselves, 
 which was very touching. 
 
 They were both very pretty children, with small 
 regular features, but the anxious considering expres- 
 sion in the dark pale face of the eldest was much too 
 old for her years. Her long eyelashes almost rested 
 on her cheeks, and when she raised them the large 
 liquid-brown eyes had a whole world of thought and 
 feeling in them. She began in a low, gentle, shy 
 voice to set forth a long list of infinitesimal wants ta 
 the shopman. " Three small hooks and eyes, half-a- 
 dozen pearl shirt buttons, two large horn ones, a reel 
 of black thread, a skein of worsted," and so on. She 
 was very clear and precise in her enumeration, and 
 evidently scrupulously exact, and while the shopman 
 was very patiently looking out her requirements, she 
 ranged three pennies and a halfpenny, kept tight and 
 hot in her little hand, on the edge of the counter to 
 pay for her large order. I spoke to her, and asked 
 if they lived near. " Not far," she said in a reserved 
 
LITTLE MARY CRADOCK. 241 
 
 tone. How old were they? " Annette is six, I am 
 eight," she answered, but in the same cold, self-con- 
 tained manner. They had evidently been told not to 
 gossip with strangers. 
 
 " What little things to send on errands ! " I said 
 to the shopman. 
 
 " They do their work much better than the big 
 ones, 77 he replied. " "We'd ten times rather have 
 such than their mothers. They loiter and talk and 
 look at a dozen things without buying; these do their 
 business and have done with it." 
 
 I had at last received my string; I could not 
 infringe further on the quiet dignity of my little 
 companions, and went away. 
 
 Not many days after I was waiting again in the 
 same neighbourhood, but this time in one of the 
 busiest of the busy London thoroughfares. It was in 
 the height of the fearful rush of the season, and I sat 
 watching the heavy omnibuses crowded with masses 
 of human beings which came bearing down upon us. 
 Great waggons crushed heavily on ; dashing Hansom 
 cabs swung recklessly past cutting in swinging- 
 turning crossing ; horses were prancing and plung- 
 ing ; it was a network of legs and wheels, a perfect 
 Babel of noise and bustle. As I looked on I noticed 
 two little girls, with a small boy about two years old 
 
242 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 between them, hurrying along the pavement. The 
 nurses held tightly on to the child's hands, and his 
 black beads of eyes peered out of his shelter with the 
 wide-awake sharp expression of a London baby. Sud- 
 denly, to my distress, the convoy began to attempt to 
 cross the street in the face of the hubbub, and I 
 recognised the long tails (though the heads were now 
 covered with hats) and the brown frocks of my small 
 acquaintances of the week before. It was a raw, 
 gusty, disagreeable day, the water-carts and the east 
 wind were fighting against each other, and water and 
 dust had been churned into a sort of greasy mud. 
 The horses had a very infirm footing on the slippery 
 steep incline of the wide street. There was no regular 
 crossing, but the children were following the lead of 
 some older adventurous passengers. I watched the 
 perilous passage anxiously, too far off to be of any 
 help. All seemed at first to go on well ; even that 
 incarnation of the London savage, a butcher's boy, 
 had turned aside for them in his reckless course. 
 They were so small and innocent-looking that the 
 omnibuses swerved an inch or two in their favour, 
 and the prancing horses in a barouche drew up by a 
 hair's breadth to let them pass. I began to breathe, 
 they were already half-way across in safety, when the 
 little group was cut off from the rest of the company 
 
LITTLE MARY CRADOCK. 243 
 
 and stopped in the very middle of the road by an 
 enormous dray with four horses, which was taking its 
 slow length along. They stood beside it as behind a 
 rampart of defence as long as its course lasted, but it 
 had stopped the way for a whole entanglement of 
 impatient cabs and carriages, and as the last heavy 
 wheel rolled stolidly on, two violently driven Hansoms 
 cut across each other, both trying to be first in the 
 narrow free way which now opened for them. There 
 was just time for the children to get past the rival 
 horses' heads, not the twentieth of a second to spare, 
 when to my horror I saw the little nursechild slip 
 on the greasy pavement. There was a tumbling heap 
 of little petticoats for a moment, and a frightful 
 confusion of hoofs and wheels and children's limbs. 
 The horses had, almost miraculously as it seemed, 
 avoided trampling on them, but the wheels had been 
 less merciful, and by the time I reached the spot 
 the bystanders were raising a fainting child from the 
 ground, with a poor little crushed bleeding foot and 
 ankle which I could hardly bear to look at. Every- 
 body was very helpful, some water was brought from 
 a shop, smelling-salts came out of somebody's pocket, 
 sal volatile from the chemist's below ; but there was 
 nothing really to be done but to take her to the nearest 
 hospital. A policeman came forward and took hold of 
 
244 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 the hands of the two younger children. " Where do 
 you live ? " he said in a very fatherly tone. " Mary 
 knows, we haven't been there long," replied little 
 Annette, pointing to her sister and sobbing. " But 
 at least you can show me the way to it," inquired the 
 man kindly. She nodded and pointed down the 
 street. " Eobby and me can find it," she said, and 
 they trotted off trustfully, one on each side their 
 guardian, as we drove away. 
 
 "Where's Eobby, he's not hurt, I hope?" asked 
 the poor child, waking up from her swoon. "I did 
 try to push him out of the way of the wheels, and 
 Annette too. You'll tell mother," and she relapsed 
 into a half-conscious state. 
 
 It was not very far to the hospital, but it seemed 
 hours before she could be delivered over to the shrewd, 
 quick-looking surgeon and the pleasant-faced nurse. 
 He shook his head. 
 
 "It's a case of amputation chloroform: she won't 
 feel it," pronounced he gravely and decidedly, and 
 the poor little prostrate form was hurried off, the 
 large eyes looking round with a puzzled, half-scared 
 expression, which was infinitely pathetic, at my face, 
 as the only one she had ever seen before. 
 
 " She'd better be kept as quiet as can be," said the 
 nurse kindly, when I asked how soon her friends 
 
LITTLE MARY CRADOCK. 245 
 
 might see the little girl. " They'll do no good, and 
 only worry her by crying, most likely." 
 
 I had no means of communicating with the child's 
 home. She herself could not be troubled about it, 
 and the policeman must be trusted to give the direc- 
 tion of the hospital to which he knew she had been 
 carried. " You'll get the address for me as soon as you 
 can," I said, as I went away. It was now nearly dark. 
 
 The next morning, when I went to inquire for 
 Mary, " She's asleep," said the nurse, " she's going 
 on all right, but it's a nervous little one, and best 
 kept quiet. Chloroform's all very well, but it's the 
 being sick after it's over, and the first dressing, and 
 the healing, which must be gone through all the 
 same, and all the rest that's so trying ; as we nurses 
 know none so well. You'd best not see her yet. 
 Her father came late last night, and here's the address 
 where they live, which he gave me Jem Cradock's 
 the name." 
 
 I went in search of the place. At the end of a 
 quiet cul-de-sac, opening out of the great thoroughfare, 
 were a pair of lofty iron gates belonging to the 
 departed greatness of some old-fashioned " mansion " 
 entre cour et jar din. I passed in. A wild tangle of 
 lilacs and pink May in full flower, great bunches of 
 white elder, and broad-leaved sumach, with tall elms 
 
246 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 overarching the whole, were growing about deep 
 hollows, where the bricks had been dug out of the 
 foundations of the deceased great house, and upon the 
 desolate heaps of refuse overgrown with long grass. 
 Only the gloomy backs of a few almost windowless 
 houses looked into the space, which was very large, 
 and everything was so still that the birds were sing- 
 ing as in a country lane'; yet on all sides the roar of 
 the great city seemed to hem it in, and was heard 
 rising and falling occasionally, but with the con- 
 tinuous undertone of the sea the silence seemed like 
 a presence, by force of contrast. The garden had once 
 run down to the edge of the river, but the new enclosed 
 foreshore of the embankment had isolated it from the 
 world beyond with a broad strip of frowsy, untidy, 
 unoccupied land shut in by a high fence. Amongst 
 the grass, surrounded by the flowering shrubs, over- 
 shadowed by the tall trees, was u large old boat, 
 evidently dragged up and forgotten when the river 
 wall had been first made, and now left stranded, far 
 from the only element where it could be of " any use 
 or significance " whatever left behind in the race- 
 empty, useless, " remote, unfriended, melancholy, 
 slow." It was very strongly built, and there was 
 a good deal of work left in it, if it could have been 
 in its right place ; but now it lay blistered by the sun, 
 
LITTLE MARY CRADOCK. 247 
 
 its planks gradually rotting away mouldering piece- 
 meal, in unlovely decay. King Theodore was painted 
 in rude red letters on the bows. Poor King Theodore ! 
 I felt quite sorry for him one out of sorts with for- 
 tune, like his namesake " out of gear " in the world. 
 
 I made my way to the door of some old stables 
 which had belonged to the ex-great house, and had 
 not been pulled down. I was met by a groom coming 
 out from attending to his horses. 
 
 "Jem Cradock yes, that's me. You're come to 
 see my missis?" said he. " It's a poor place, will 
 you walk up-stairs? She've just a-been brought to 
 bed of her fourth, yesterday, and she've a-been rarely 
 put about with all this worry, so to speak. She took 
 on greatly about Mary. I'd a hard matter for to 
 pacify her last night, when I come home." 
 
 Then, as we went up the steep rickety staircase, he 
 went on 
 
 " I were out a' most all yesterday, and the nurse 
 she just sent the children off to be out of the way for 
 the day to their aunt's that's my sister and there 
 wasn't anybody to see to them there, I take it she's 
 so busy, is my sister and so they gets into trouble 
 trying to come home, I suppose. Mary's such a one 
 to be with her mother." 
 
 The room was small and dark, looking out, not on the 
 
248 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 garden, but on a narrow yard beyond, which was very 
 close even on this breezy day. The poor woman's 
 pale face was so painfully eager and nervous, that it 
 made one's heart ache to see her, at the time when 
 she most required rest of mind and body. A wailing 
 baby lay on the bed beside her. 
 
 "Had I seen her child? was she in great pain? 
 what did she say? She was a great help to her 
 mother, was Mary. "Where's Mary?" she sobbed 
 pitifully. " Oh, Jem, why weren't you there, not to 
 let her be sent off like that out of the house when I 
 couldn't see to it ? " and the big tears rolled down her 
 white cheeks. 
 
 I saw where Mary's large eyes and long lashes 
 and clear brunette complexion came from. Annette 
 was from Jersey herself, she told me. 
 
 The two other children were playing in the room. 
 " She couldn't bear them now out of her sight," 
 said the loud-voiced drabby nurse, when I proposed 
 to take them away for a time. 
 
 " You'll have her in a fever, if you don't keep her 
 quieter than this," I said to the husband, as I came 
 away to get some more and better help. 
 
 Jem began explaining rather confusedly about his 
 being away till so late the day before; his broad, 
 good-natured, weak, handsome face, had a sort of 
 
LITTLE MARY CRADOCK. 249 
 
 blush up to his red ears. I am afraid it had been 
 enjoying itself at the public-house, instead of helping 
 in the trouble at home. To conceal his shamefaced 
 look, he stooped down and took up a child on each 
 strong arm, and little Bobby crowed with delight, 
 and patted daddy's face as he went along. He was 
 evidently fond of his children, and kind to them after 
 his fashion, and when he remembered them. He now 
 carried them both out, and put them into the old boat, 
 the sides of which were too high for them to crawl 
 out unassisted. 
 
 " There ! " said he, with great satisfaction at his 
 own invention, " they'll be safe here, anyhow for a 
 while out of harm's way, and I shan't be far off 
 with the horses. Mother was Jersey born, and 
 knowed as much about a boat when I married her 
 as I does of a horse, so I think she'll be pleased 
 like to know they're in it." 
 
 The two small young faces peered curiously and 
 rather anxiously over the weatherbeaten timbers as 
 I handed up all the things to play with that we 
 could lay hands on. I looked back as I left the 
 place. The weather had recovered its temper. The 
 shadows of the trees nickered over them, the soft 
 May wind blew the petals of the laburnum in their 
 faces. Eobby had hooked himself on by his arms over 
 
250 
 
 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 the edge of the boat ; Annette was resting her round 
 cheek on her hand : they looked like the cherubs 
 
 at the foot of the San Sisto Baphael, without any 
 inconvenient little stomachs to be filled, or active 
 
LITTLE MARY CRADOCK. 251 
 
 little limbs to be clothed, while the bright eyes watched 
 me intently as I walked away, promising to return. 
 
 The poor woman's recovery was very slow. I 
 thought she looked more white and more nervous 
 than ever when next I brought her news of Mary. 
 
 " She was such a one to help at home ; she'd more 
 thought in her little finger nor yonder woman in 
 her big body," said she irritably, as the heavy- 
 handed, heavy-footed charwoman clattered among the 
 crockery, and disturbed the equilibrium of everything 
 which could be shaken or overset. Poor Annette's 
 fastidious neatness was cruelly insulted by the din 
 and disorder of her drabby nurse, but this was to 
 be remedied to-day, and more efficient help was to 
 come. 
 
 " And Jem says she's lost her foot," she went on ; 
 "it's bad enough for a man, but for a little girl, and 
 such a pretty one, and so light to go," she sobbed. 
 " Folk mayn't like to marry her with but one poor 
 little foot, perhaps ; and how's she to get her living 
 with crutches like that ? My little Mary, ma petite, 
 my darling, my pretty one ! " 
 
 " She'll get about wonderfully, they say, with an 
 artificial foot. You'll hardly find out that she's got 
 one, for she's so young that she'll learn to manage it 
 like a real one ; she's doing very nicely at the hospital, 
 
252 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 and they're all so fond of her in the ward, and pet and 
 spoil her to your heart's content. I wish you could 
 see her ; she looked quite happy to-day, and a little 
 colour in her cheeks." 
 
 But Annette the mother refused to be comforted ; she 
 pined to go and see her child or that she should come 
 to her, and neither the one nor the other was possible. 
 
 Although the shock had been great to the nervous 
 child, she was up and about before her mother. It 
 was the first day that the poor woman had come 
 down- stairs, and she insisted on sitting under the 
 trees, with an empty chair beside her, watching 
 anxiously for the sound of the wheels which were to 
 bring her Mary home. Presently the great iron gates 
 creaked majestically, and poor Mary on her crutches 
 came slowly in. Annette held out her arms ; she 
 was white even to her lips, and looked as if she were 
 going to faint; but she recovered herself, and sat 
 stroking her child's face, and crooning inarticulate 
 welcomes, with a shower of pet names in her long- 
 unused Jersey patois, which seemed to come more 
 naturally to her in moments of emotion. " Mon chou ! 
 mon ange ! mon petit cceur ! my precious ! " And 
 then the two sat side by side in silence, holding each 
 other by the hand. 
 
 " Was it very bad, Mary ? " said her mother at 
 
LITTLE MARY CRADOCK. 253 
 
 last. " And your poor foot gone and all ! " And her 
 tears began to flow. 
 
 "They were all so kind,' 7 answered the little girl 
 cheerfully ; u and nurse had a canary sung so nice ; 
 and Mrs. Jones gave me, oh ! such a pretty picture- 
 book (it's in my box), and a doll with real petticoats 
 to take off. They were all quite sorry when I came 
 away." 
 
 " And you can't get about without your crutches," 
 sighed her mother, not listening to the list of delights, 
 and even, I thought, a little jealous of the new 
 friends whom her child had made and whom she her- 
 self knew nothing of. 
 
 " I'm to be measured for my foot in next week," 
 answered Mary proudly; "and I shall walk now 
 soon so nice with the crutches. There was a little 
 boy, younger nor me, used to hop about so funny 
 with them. He'd get across the ward so as they 
 could hardly catch him ; and I can do a great deal 
 too : only see ! " 
 
 And she began to show off her proficiency; her 
 mother uttering a faint cry at the sight, doleful 
 enough, of her efforts to make the best of the great 
 loss. The wind had been tempered to the shorn 
 lamb, but the poor mother's tears were hardly to be 
 wondered at. 
 
254 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 I thought I detected a strong effort in the child to 
 bring forward all the cheerful side of the story, 
 springing almost unconsciously out of her old life of 
 ardent devotion to her mother ; but the struggle was 
 growing almost too much for her, as I saw in her 
 little quivering lips and drooping head. 
 
 " Here's some bread and butter, and tea and cake 
 we're making a feast for Mary's coming home so 
 well," made a wholesome diversion. 
 
 " And you haven't seen the baby," said the new 
 nurse, judiciously bringing forward the very ugly 
 little red bundle which few but mothers can admire. 
 
 And presently, to the joy of his little daughter, Jem 
 rode in at the gates, mounted on one horse and lead- 
 ing another, with a grin and a smile of welcome, and, 
 coming out again from the stables, seized hold of the 
 younger children, who had been kept till now in the 
 background, and hoisted them both into the old boat, 
 where they sat looking down on us as out of a big 
 cradle, munching cake and drinking mugs of tea, in 
 a serious, earnest state of mind, as if they were per- 
 forming a grave and solemn duty to themselves and 
 the public. 
 
 Even poor King Theodore had found a certain use 
 by waiting patiently for his time. 
 
 The cloud had lifted from poor Annette Cradock's 
 
LITTLE MARY CRADDOCK. 255 
 
 face, as Mary crept very close to her in the little 
 low arm-chair, her small arms and soft cheek resting 
 on her mother's hands and lap, with a sort of pro- 
 tecting comfort and care in them which was inex- 
 pressibly touching from the child to the parent. 
 The sun shone, both morally and materially, on the 
 little group, for that evening at least, and I came 
 away. 
 
A PAIE OF FEIENDS. 
 
 HE was a good deal above seventy, and she was 
 only two and a half ; but this did not prevent 
 there being a tender I might almost say a passionate 
 attachment between the two. They lived side by side 
 in a pair of cottages in their secluded corner of the 
 world, but had no other connection with each other. 
 The hamlet was a most picturesque one, of the 
 true old English type : half-timbered black and white 
 
A PAIR OF FRIENDS. 257 
 
 houses, with sharp gables, heavy red stacks of chim- 
 neys, and projecting eaves of thatch (full of swallows' 
 nests in the spring season), were scattered irregularly 
 up and down between the tall elms, oaks, and limes, 
 which grew in and out of the steadings of a couple of 
 quiet-looking farms, and among the hedgerows of the 
 bright green meadows which surrounded the village 
 for miles in every direction. 
 
 The twin cottages, with their garden-plots, bright 
 with flowers, stood opposite a triangle, where three 
 roads met, in the middle of which grew a great tree, 
 to whose trunk are periodically nailed the small notices, 
 public and private, which comprise the general life of 
 the community ; while close by is the village well, 
 with its little conical tiled roof, to protect the users of 
 the pump. Farther on comes the wheelwright's, with 
 bright dabs of colour on his shutters, and the still 
 brighter red and blue carts which he adorns. A box 
 hedge, which Evelyn might have envied, and some 
 elaborate works of art in Yew, looking like gigantic 
 green dumb-waiters, grace the gardens of the cottages 
 farther on, while a high kitchen-garden wall, fringed 
 with ferns and mulleins, mark the remains of an old 
 manor-house, now dwindled to a farm, at the "Town 
 end."* The grey old church, with its low stone tower, 
 
 * " Town," originally meant only an enclosed space. 
 S 
 
258 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 and fourteenth- century windows, closes the whole, the 
 road going no farther; and about it sleep the " fore- 
 fathers of the hamlet," who have been buried there for 
 a thousand years more or less certainly long before 
 Domesday book shows that a church existed on the 
 spot. 
 
 Old " long Jem " Erazill had lived all his life in the 
 place. He was a lonely man and a stern one. His 
 wife was dead; and he was supposed in former 
 drinking bouts to have beaten her more than once. 
 " "What's wronged on earth will be righted in heaven ! " 
 she had consoled herself by saying ; but there seemed 
 to have been a doubt in the popular mind whether she 
 intended thereby that she hoped to be able to return the 
 cuffs she had received here below. His three sons had 
 wandered off in different directions. One had " listed " 
 as a soldier ; but this was all that was known of them ; 
 there had been little tenderness in the family. 
 
 Jem was a tall, gaunt, severe-looking man, who had 
 been one of the strongest and best workers in the 
 village, but was now so crippled by an injury, and by 
 repeated attacks of rheumatism, that he could but just 
 hobble from his bed in the corner of the room to the 
 great open fireplace and back again. He was "done 
 for," " washed and mended," by the old u dame " next 
 door, a good deal older than himself, indeed consider- 
 
A PAIR OF FRIENDS. 259 
 
 ably above eighty, but as hale and strong and hearty 
 as most women of half her age. And the small Eachel 
 had followed her granny into the house almost ever 
 since she could walk, to protect and patronise Jem 
 as befitted her advanced years. 
 
 She was a little scrap of a child with dark blue 
 reflecting eyes, and long, curly, golden-brown hair, 
 quite healthy in spite of her precocity, and with a 
 very strong will. 
 
 " * What, be ye goin' in to my Jem, granny ? I 
 must come too, and help,' she'd up and say when she 
 saw me ready for to go to Master Brazil!' s. She were 
 a wonderful one for to trade wi'," the old woman 
 told me. " And then she'd drag up her cheer to the 
 table alongside he, when he was goin' to get his 
 dinner, and her legs was too short to hang down, and 
 they stuck out straight. < And who asked you for to 
 come in here ? ' says the old master, rather grim. i I 
 be come to my Jem,' says she so cheerful. He were 
 a very temperous man, but he did love she, and if he 
 didn't see her for a bit he'd go on, < "Where's my girl ? 
 you send my girl in to me.' Then another time she'd 
 be to him in the garden, and say, Gie me a gilli- 
 flower, Jem,' and he'd pick her one, and she'd be sot 
 on the dreshle and talk to him so. ' It do smell 
 good,' and she'd play wi' 'em, and pick 'em to bits ever 
 
260 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 so long. She were fond o' flowers, she'd bring her 
 pinny in full on 'em and sot 'em up upo' the cheer 
 and all about. ' Aynt they pretty, granny ? they do 
 be nice,' she'd go on, so pretty." 
 
 One day when I came in the old man had had news 
 of his soldier son. " He have a been killed in a sharp 
 battle out in the India country, and there came a 
 horficer yesterday, his master, and telled me all about 
 it. From what I could make out o' him, my Tom had 
 a been wounded, and he'd a pulled off his coat, and 
 were sot down, when a bomb-shell blowed he all to 
 bits. There was a biggish river where they was a- 
 fighting, and the enemy they was drownded one atop 
 t'other, so that you could ha' walked on 'em for to 
 cross over, they lay so thick. And the gentleman's 
 house " (the Eajah's) " what made the battle, lay just 
 across, and a deal o' firing there was, and they took 
 the place, but my poor boy he were dead. He were 
 a good lad as ever lived, that's what he were ! " 
 
 Old Jem felt the loss a good deal ; he cared for his 
 son much more dead than when the young man was 
 living, and he " took on " about it sorely. 
 
 The next time I saw him he was " unaccountable 
 
 middling," he told me. " It's a toiling life to lead, 
 
 wi' all these yecks and pains. The Lord, he knows 
 
 He's very good, and gives me time to repent o' my 
 
A PAIR OF FRIENDS. 261 
 
 sins ; and there I sets and thinks : I've just had my 
 dessarts, I've had a hard heart. I shall be glad to go 
 in His good pleasure ; but there, we've nothing to do 
 but to wait ; we can't do nothing afore we gets our 
 orders for to go, wheresoever. I were all over bad 
 last night, and with such a grumbling in my head, 
 but I prayed to the Lord, and he holp me. I told* 
 the clock best part o' the long night, I can tell ye I 
 did. I scarce know whether I were awake or no, but 
 such a lot on 'em comes trooping in round my bed, 
 and sings out quite loud, men and women, and mid- 
 dling boys, all dressed so fine, white and golds, and I 
 says, ' Don't you make that nayse o' Sunday night,' 
 and they goes on just the same. So I riz me up in 
 bed and says, ' Well, if so be you won't be done, I'll 
 just set up wi' you and sing too.' ' 
 
 " Has little Eachel been in to-day ? " I said sooth- 
 ingly. 
 
 " Haven't she just ! She come and says, i Shall I 
 break up the wood, my Jem ? ' as if she could do it 
 with them little hands of hers. 'No, that'll never 
 do ! ' says I. So she goes and gets the broom and 
 sets to sweeping, after her manner, you know. I'd 
 made her a little 'un, but she looked up in my face so 
 sharp, and dragged out the big 'un, and just set to wi' 
 
 * " He telleth the number of the stars." 
 
262 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 it, dragging it after her up and down the house. She's 
 a very cunning* little wench, to be sure, for all she's 
 only in her three, and a way o' her own too !" 
 
 The summer went by ; the damp autumn leaves 
 were blowing about; the place looked sad when I 
 came back to it after a couple of months. It was 
 evening, and a great bank of dark cloud was heaped 
 up high into the zenith, but through a rift far above 
 our heads shone out a single little bright star, and just 
 over the horizon gleamed a few streaks of deep red 
 sunset light, where the storm curtain had lifted a little. 
 
 " They tells me Eachel have a got the whooping 
 cough, and that it's a turning to the denomination,"- said 
 the old man uneasily, as I came into the dark room 
 where he sat, solitary and sad. 
 
 The cough increased day by day, and it was very 
 distressing to witness the child's struggles for breath. 
 A sick child is a most pathetic sight the helpless 
 dependence, the trust in its eyes, asking for the relief 
 which it is such a heartbreak for the loving ones 
 about it not to be able to give. 
 
 She lay on her grandmother's lap, and would go to no 
 one else for hours and hours of the long weary evening . 
 
 " She ailed unaccountable, and coughed that bad as 
 I never heard," the old woman told me next day. 
 
 * " Let my right hand forget her cunning." 
 
A PAIR OF FRIENDS. 263 
 
 " f I be going to die, granny/ " says she last night. 
 " ' So am I too some day, dear,' says I, not to let her 
 think too much; but she know'd better, and she's 
 gone back, that's what she is, to Heaven ; it was afore 
 daylight. And old Jem he just wriggled in for to see 
 her, and laid three rosebuds (they was all that was 
 left) upon the little dead body; 'Nobody musn't 
 move them away,' he said. There she used to put up 
 her two little hands and say something, we couldn't 
 tell what, but she meant it for a grace, when we was 
 having our meals like. She died so easy, with just a 
 smile on her face so pleasant. You'll come in and 
 see her," and she opened the door where the child lay. 
 She looked like a marble baby, as still and as white, 
 with the bright eyes closed and the little bud of a 
 mouth shut, and the colour faded out of the rosy 
 cheeks ; but with a strange look of rapt surprise, as if 
 the spirit had opened on a new and beautiful life, and 
 had just marked the impression on the forsaken shell 
 it had left behind. " Their angels do always behold 
 the face of my Father which is in heaven," I felt as I 
 turned away from the beautiful little image, so calm, so 
 pure, so restful, after the distress of the previous days. 
 
 I went in next to her old friend alongside. 
 
 " I never did think to miss anything so much," said 
 he; " she were a wonderful rare little 'un; she'd 
 
264 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 come and stand by my side where I sat, and look up 
 in my face. < He's my old Jem,' she'd say. ' Have 
 you a took my Jem his pudden ? ' she'd ask her 
 granny, and she'd stand by my knee and ate the sop 
 out o' the tea, ' ducks ' she'd call 'em, and bring me 
 a bit o' a posy or that like, and comfortate me. She'll 
 never come in no more," said he with a deep sigh 
 " little creetur. I shall go to her, maybe perhaps 
 God willing," he ended after a long pause. 
 
 The two friends are buried not far from each other 
 in the quiet churchyard, which lies high, and looks 
 over a wide expanse of meadow, and wood, and hedge- 
 rows, and spires of half-hidden villages, and lines of 
 winding white roads, with a very distant line of low 
 pale blue hills, far off as eye could reach. 
 
 " James Brazill, aged seventy-five," says one 
 stone. Eachel has only a brief line on her little 
 wooden memorial, " Aged two years nine months and 
 three days. " But 
 
 ' It is not growing like a tree 
 In bulk, doth, make man better be, 
 ' Or standing long an oak, six hundred year, 
 To fall at last a log, dry, bald, and sere. 
 A lily of a day 
 Is fairer far in May ; 
 Although it fall and die that night, 
 It was the plant and flower of light. 
 In small proportions we just beauties see, 
 And in short measures life may perfect be." 
 
A PAIR OF FRIENDS. 
 
 265 
 
 " She had done what she could ; " her little life on 
 earth had not been wasted. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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