"It is noble in you, Julius, to lower yourself to the level of my affliction; but will it, can it, always be thus, when the cold-hearted and the calculating may point the finger of scorn at the unknown bride, the neglected orphan, whose paternity, like that of the Arab, if discovered at all, may be traced to the wanderers of the sandy desert?"

"To the noblest blood in the world," exclaimed Fitzgeorge, laughingly-"to the sires of eastern kings, of Moorish heroes, of Chinese emperors, of German dukes, and English sovereigns. For heaven's sake, Mary, do not distress yourself about what the world may say or think of our origin; if they find the shield an unspotted index of the mind, let them sneer at its simplicity while they envy its purity."

"You treat the subject too lightly, Julius; it is one of grave importance to both of us: you may be more than you appear to be; and I, although humble, may be less. When my father returns from visiting the Wild Man of the Wold, I am determined to find the Crone of Thorpe Glen, and question her further.'

"The old witch!" said Julius. "Frank Jessop discoursed with me about her, and wished me to meet her; but I declined to countenance her impositions. She has picked up some vague reports from village gossips, and would convert them into marketable facts; but heed her not, Mary; seek her not, as you value your peace of mind. These pretending fortune-tellers are like the hags in Macbeth'-they promise to the ear, and break it to the heart.'

"Hold thee, Julius Fitzgeorge!" screamed forth a harsh, sepulchral voice, that seemed to come from the trunk of an adjoining tree.

It was with difficulty that the young student could prevent the terrorstricken Mary from falling on the green sward; the surprise had for a moment unnerved his manly frame, and while he clasped the fainting girl in his arms, he felt a thrilling sensation of the blood, as if he had been stung by an adder; large drops of cold perspiration glistened on his youthful brow. In a moment he saw extended before his eyes the bony hands and spectral form of an unearthly-looking, haggard fiend, whose glaring eyes and wrinkled visage were rendered doubly hideous by the faint blue light of the retiring moon, which fell with flickering effect upon her face and tattered garments, displaying an outline of horrible deformity. "'tis

"Hold thee, rash youth!" the hag shrieked, with piercing cry; not for thee to denounce the old Firefly. By yon Great Eye of Heaven I swear thou owest thy life, thy love-ay, start not-and it may be thy future destiny to the old witch,' 'the imposter,' as I overheard thee say but now.

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Begone, thou ragged lump of deformity; begone," said Fitzgeorge, indignantly. "Go frighten timid maidens and young children with thy mystical revelations-I'll none of them."

""Twere bad as blaspheming in thee, young sir, to let thy tongue run riot thus against old Barbara."

"Barbara!" ejaculated Mary, recovering from her terror, but still clinging to her lover for support; surely I have heard that name before? Oh, Julius, do not be harsh with the poor old soul. It is, it must be, the Crone of Thorpe Glen!"

"Ha! ha! ha!" responded Julius Fitzgeorge; but the attempt to raise a derisional laugh at the old crone was a failure; it wanted the

rich hilarity of tone which distinguishes heartfelt mirth; it was rather a croaking, sarcastic, ironical ebullition of a disturbed spirit, than the merry chuckle of good humour; and the shrewd old crone knew it to be so. "And you are Queen Barbara," continued Fitzgeorge, “the renowned hag of Bagley Wood? I pray your majesty's pardon for lack of homage. I ought to have recognised you by oral tradition; although this is the first time, as I think, that we have ever met." "I think not, was the stern reply. "Loose that lovely girl from your embrace, and lend me your ear, but for a minute, while I quicken

your memory."

"Nay," said Fitzgeorge; "an thou hast aught to say that may concern me, say on in the presence of this lady, whose fate is irrevocably linked with mine."

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"Be it so," replied the ancient woman. A few steps hence there is a resting-place-let us there; and, if you fear not to come in contact with old Barbara, you shall hear more than you will wish to forget.'

The waning moon was sinking into mist, but still a spangled host of bright-eyed stars illumed the lofty horizon. The bell clock of the old church had tolled the hour of nine, when the two lovers seated themselves beside old Barbara, on a bench in Christ Church meadows, fearful and full of anxious expectation.

Of all the laws, the maintenance or abolition of which now engages the attention of the public, the game laws are the most clamorously attacked, the most badly defended, and the least understood. There is something repulsive in the very title of "An Article on the Game Laws." This arises from several causes; first, those who discuss the question are either lawyers, who consider nothing but the law of the case-sportsmen, who know nothing of the legal, who care nothing for the social and moral, effects of these laws-or humanity-mongers, who are ignorant of everything relating to the subject, except that so many thousands of the peasantry are yearly sent to the treadmill for offences against the game laws. Therefore it is that the views of writers on this question generally consist of merely professional learning, of gross onesided exaggeration, or sheer rank nonsense. Omitting the little bit of Blackstone, the allusion to the forest laws, and the dictum of Chief Justice Best, with which game law arguments nearly always commence; promising to eschew all references to the feudal system, "suzerain," &c., &c., and to appeal to no statute save that written in every English heart-the eternal law of justice-we will endeavour briefly to discuss some of the common arguments we hear in society for and against these laws. It is a very favourite subject for the declamation and invective of well-meaning, unthinking people, that owners of extensive estates

should preserve a great head of game on their land, the evils being that the pheasants and hares eat corn and grass paid for by the tenant farmer, causing a loss to him, diminishing the food meant for the sustenance of man, and, in addition to this, holding out a temptation to the poor man to poach, thereby ensuring his imprisonment and ruin.

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It is remarkable that these accusations are generally made by radicals (we use the names in no offensive sense), free-traders, political economists, and their followers. Of course they approved of the abolition of the corn-laws. Do they know the principle on which those laws were repealed? It was because they restricted the rights of property; it was because they limited the powers of skill and industry, which, although in a different form, are quite as much property as land; and it is precisely on this same principle, the principle on which we abolished the corn laws, that we should maintain the game laws. impose a law which limits, or repeal a law which protects, equally inflicts injuries on rights. We beg these gentlemen to remember, what they seem to overlook, that there is a distinction between duties created by positive law, and duties merely moral. For instance, each ought "to do his duty in that state of life to which it has pleased God to call him;" but many things are included in this comprehensive injunction that no legislation could enforce. It is the duty of country gentlemen to set a good example to the inferior classes in their neighbourhood, to be friendly, temperate, not given to brawling ; it is the duty of all men, and more particularly of Friends, to show kindness, humility, charity, and love towards all; these are moral duties very proper to be enforced by sermons and advice, but no Act of Parliament can compel them to be observed; and so long as Mr. Grantley Berkeley does not quarrel with his brother or his tailor, and whilst Mr. Bright stops short of libel, neither can be punished, neither can be restrained from indulging in their favourite pursuits, by the interference of law. The inviolability of property is the keystone of civilization. The increase of game may be an evil, but to attempt to check that increase by unjust means would be a much greater evil. You say "much food is consumed by game, which would otherwise go to feed men." No doubt it is true, but the owner of the game is minus so much money in consequence. He would not give away the corn in case his game was gone; he would sell it, and if he chooses to pay a certain price, viz., the value of the food that is now used by his pheasants for his pleasure, on what principle would you interfere with the landowner's right to do so? Everything that is not absolutely necessary is a luxury. All luxuries, in a strictly utilitarian sense, detract something from the general good; and if game is to be destroyed because it is a useless luxury, pictures, books, music, all that grace and ornament existence, all the fruits of, in the language of political economy, "non-productive" labour, should, on the same principle, share the same fate. Certainly, if this argument is to prevail, Lord Derby, and the proprietors of our Zoological Gardens, had better sell their birds and beasts whilst they can command a price, before a panic is in the "non-productive" market. But if game is to be extirpated because it consumes food meant for the use of man, why not go a little further? Why not carry out your principle to its full extent? All the game in England does not consume so much produce as is lost by bad farming, by growing barley where carrots would grow better, and stunted oak trees where firs would flourish. The reason you

do not go so far is, that though men may make mistakes, and may be stupid in particular cases, and may suffer loss through their own folly, yet ninety-nine times out of a hundred they understand their own interest much better than they can be taught it by any Board or Commission. And so it is as regards the loss sustained by the landowners from game, as I shall show by-and-bye.

The second objection is, that game causes a loss to the tenant-farmer. This is a favourite grievance for wandering lecturers to declaim upon; and they have done it so zealously and unremittingly, that honest Hodge, and indeed superior men, farmers of education and intelligence, really begin to believe it. Some enthusiastic patriots even discover a double loss one to the landowner, the other to the tenant. First, the landowner is compelled to ask a diminished rent for his farms on account of the game; secondly, by some odd process, the tenant who pays the diminished rent sustains a loss. Game never causes à loss to the tenants; it, in fact, is profitable to them. One would suppose, from the accounts of certain newspapers and the groans of various philanthropists, that the innocent farmers never saw a hare, or, at least, did not know its food was vegetable till within the last four years. They take their farms, they pay the highest rent, and lo! their crops devastated by marauding pussies show a diminution of twenty per cent. in the estimated amount of produce. Is such stuff to go down with the public? 0, Mr. Bright! 0, ye cockneys! O, ye members of Mechanics' Institutes! and O, ye "middling classes!" do ye in sober truth and verity deem this generation of farmers to be so innocently unwise? The farmers, where there is a good head of game, get the land ten per cent. cheaper than they ought, so tremblingly fearful are shooting squires of offering the least temptation to the farmers to poach, so scrupulously do they avoid putting the premium of even a grain of corn on the death of a pheasant. There is but one answer to this lamentation over Destruction of Crops by Game-Awful loss to the Tenant Farmers," and that answer is one word, perhaps not very elegant, but it has the merit of brevity, being a monosyllable, and that is-Fudge! The loss falls exclusively on the landlord, and they have a right to incur the loss if they choose, just as much as Mr. Bright has to wear a thirty-shilling beaver instead of a four-and-ninepenny silk hat. It may be urged that farms may be let on lease, and the rent may be fixed whilst the game increases-and the game may also diminish. But, if proper agreements are entered into, there can be no difficulty about making a fair allowance to the tenant, and in point of fact there never is any; it is notorious that landowners are liberal to excess in allowing deductions from rent and making payments out of pocket to tenants whose crops have suffered from game. But even if it is true that farmers suffer great losses from game, it is their own fault; the existence of game is no secret it did not come like the Sennacherib destruction of the potato-suddenly in two years; it is an obvious element that should be taken into calculation before the rent is fixed, just as the loss by worms and birds (wire-worms and crows, Mr. Berkeley) is allowed for; and if a farmer omits it, all that can be said is that he is a simpleton, and deserves to suffer like all people who make foolish bargains.

The next argument against the preservation of game is, that it tempts

the peasantry to poach, that poaching is a certain introduction to the treadmill, and that he who has entered the treadmill never is honest again. It is true that if there were no pheasants, clowns could not steal them; it is undeniable that if there was no punishment for stealing game, the thief could not for poaching be demoralized by the inhabitants of the treadmill. But if the landowner has a right to preserve his game, if he possesses a definite and distinct, clear and tangible property in it, then no amount of ruin to the peasantry, no number of criminals, not crowded jails, and poor-rates doubled, could justify us in exempting game from the protection of law. The evils of excessive game-preserving are great and manifold; there is the positive loss to the preserver, of the food they consume; there is the great expense of a staff of keepers and watchers; there is odium and unpopularity attached to it in his own neighbourhood; and twice a year, at least, his name goes the round of the papers, coupled with some deed of cruelty, some tale of ruin, which is to cause him to be execrated throughout the land. This it is impossible to deny. This is a very proper subject for remonstrance and advice, but it brings its own punishment with it, and is out of the province of the legislature to correct. That game is property, even valuable property, no one can dispute: in some places it may be of less value than the crops the land can produce; in others it is of greater value, but at least it is worth as much as fowls or geese anywhere. That being so, it is alleged that so strong is the temptation to steal it, so easy is the commission of the crime, so ineffectual are laws to inhibit poaching, that the only cure for the evil is to remove the temptation by destroying the game. An odd remedy, truly, and one that, if proposed to be applied to any other crime, would be scouted; the man who propounded it would be treated as a maniac. Those who have studied the statistics of crime know they are epidemic; they know that crimes of every species, from the deepest to the lightest dye, prevail in excess over others for years, and then the balance changes. Take any table of convictions for twenty years, and the truth of this will be proved. When a crime prevails in spite of laws, in spite of punishment, the remedy one would suppose would be to change the punishment-to make it heavier or lighter. "Not so," says, or rather said, Mr. Bright and his followers: "we will make it impossible to poach; it shall no longer be poaching; the act we called criminal shall be legalized!" And this is the advocate of the rights of industry and freedom of trade, to let loose a gang of marauders on the pheasants and hares in which landowners have invested capital! It may be difficult to account for an increase in such crimes as picking pockets, &c., but there is no difficulty in accounting for the increase of poaching; to this we may allude presently; it is enough now to remark that to sympathize with poachers, and pay them money for having committed the crime, is not the best or the most obvious mode of checking it.

Without wearying our readers with an examination of the statutes in existence, we will only observe that if a crime prevails in spite of severe laws against it, the probability is that there is an uncertainty in the infliction of the punishment, owing to the disinclination of juries to find verdicts of guilty when the punishment seems disproportioned to the offence. The remedy in this case is to lighten the punishment, and thereby make it certain. Then the tenant-farmers of Buckingham