sound of our English song-birds, and see the spring flowers come up, because our early poets were so fond of them, and, indeed, talked of little else, so that they seem a part of the middle ages; and we are somewhat puzzled to think that they should have survived its brave customs-but here they are. A great religion has passed away; we hunt the branches of the yew-tree no longer for the trusty weapon; where once the villagers shot with the crossbow, now come Commissioners of Inclosure, and obliterate its sod, and the footpaths that generations have graven; the passage of swift, rushing steam seems to have put our great mother herself into irons. Amid all these changes nature works still by her eternal laws. You see that clump of cowslips, just beside the freshly shrouded tree; those flowers are as old as time itself (to put aside the theory of the "Vestiges of the Creation"). We shall all die and be dust, we and all our friends, but those cowslips will spring up in pretty nearly the order they now stand in some fine day centuries hence, and they will hang their heads, and the soft shadows of the perfect day will lie upon them just the same; so many will have pearls in their eyes, and so many will be without them. Talk of ancestors, indeed: we should like to see the genealogy of one of these flowers-what a family tree it could show!!! Let us leave, however, the stile, over which in fancy we have been leaning, and turn again into our green lane.

Two labourers are approaching each other, homeward bound after the toils of the day. They meet, and stop some little apart, for labourers rarely come near, or shake hands, in their passing recognitions.

"Well, Tummas," says one: "how be you?"

"Purty well, Willum; how be missus, now?"

"She be getting on prime; please God the fine weather do last she'll soon be about again. I be just come drew the five acre-the young wheat do thrive amain."

"Ah! it do then. Why, what's to do up at the Hall. I hear tell the Squire be going."

"Ah, sure enough; somebody from up Lunnon ways a' took it. Bob Wiltshire was a saying, down at the 'Open Hand,' as how the new comer's name be Smith."

“Sure. Well, the old Squire was a good friend to the poor, but a little hasty like; and Miss Emily, a good many folk will miss her hereabouts."

"Ah, they wool. Good night, Tummas."

"Good night, Willum."

And thus the two labourers parted. Their little conversation, however, especially the latter part of it, seemed of not a little interest to a third party.

On one side of the lane was a ploughed field; and close to the hedge, perched upon a fresh lump of loam, shining from the recent passage of the share, stood a very knowing looking old file of a rook. A little red worm twisted and tied and untied knots in his beak; but the rook seemed lost in thought, as he caught the last words of the labourers' talk. He cocked his shining head on one side, and seemed to drink in every word with his little clear black eye. When the sound of the speakers' footsteps were heard widening apart, he seemed suddenly to remember the agile little worm, and making a sudden bolt of it, said to himself, as if he mused over some great fact,-"The old family going-a Smith coming-here's a go!"-and fled off rapidly to where the distant top of a rookery stood painted against an evening sky.

It was a pleasant scene, up in the windy crowns of those ancestral elms. Every available fork of their "marriageable arms" was filled with a black comfortable-looking nest. Here and there a callow beak was seen sunning itself, as it rested upon the edge of its cradle, and the level light of a declining sun shone upon a glossy poll. Other young rooks more actively inclined, and "just going off,”—to use a maternal term, were hopping from branch to branch, and making balancing poles of their fluttering wings to steady their unstable footing. Below, just seen between the green branches, like a picture of

Rysdale's, showed the fine rubicund* visage of the old hall, made more glorious than ever in colour by the red glow of the setting sun, which fell upon it sideways, and threw a deep shadow from every projection and bossy ornament, and at the same time stamped upon the background of deep green trees, the golden dragon on the clock tower; its burning stillness giving a wonderful repose to the picture. The trim garden at its front lay like a map rolled out before it, cut into a thousand quaint walks and flower-beds.

Who is that, dressed in the loose white robes of summer, who wanders so disconsolately along the old yew tree walk? She turns into the summer house, and sits down as if full of thought; she gazes upon the little windows, and burst into tears as she sees some name scratched upon the pane-a brother's, perhaps, long dead and gone; the bees come stealing by, and their bum is drowned in the deep honey cups; the butterflies in pairs come dancing through the air, and palpitate upon the swinging flowers at her feet; but she looks not, her heart is full-'tis the Squire's fair young child taking her last walk in the garden- the old family are about to leave their inheritance, and to-morrow comes the foot of the stranger.

The evening was fast gathering in, and the sky was dotted with the flight of rooks coming home from the distant woods. Upon the highest perch of the rookery, meanwhile, the old bird took his post. Presently the rooks, one by one, came dropping down, waving the light branches of the elms as they perched. They could all see that something was in the wind. What could it be? There was a deep silence in the rookery.

Reader, have you never, when dreamily sauntering up some

*They have lost the art of building these old brick mansions now,—or rather the art of making the materials. Look at an old Elizabethan house: how time seems to have fused the bricks together into one kindly whole, and tinted it with a colour which fills the painter with delight at its repose, and the harmony it exhibits to the surrounding scenery. Our modern villas rejoice in a burning yellow, bright enough to scorch the eyes out of & salamander.

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old avenue of elms, been suddenly brought to a state of consciousness by the sudden ceasing of that dignified "caw! caw!" which, unobserved, formed a pleasing running accompaniment to some vague regret that you had not ancestors also, and a wish that the fine coat of arms so elaborately graven upon your handsome seal ring was something more than a delusion and a snare;" have you not, on such occasions, stood still and, peering up between the green network of leaves, asked yourself, "What are the rooks so quiet about?" Depend upon it there was much in their silence; who knows but that they might have been breathlessly awaiting the discovery of a fact as important as the old rook is about to unfold.

It was provoking, even to rook nature, to observe the coolness with which the old bird stretched out his wing, with a kind of yawning expression, then looked up with a glance, as much as to say, "The honour of rookdom is in my hands," then turned his unimpassioned beak down again upon his languid wing, and set smooth some erring feather.

"I have lived here, rook and squab, this last ninety years," said he, mournfully, as if soliloquising; "and to come to this in one's old age!-I have watched three generations of the family pass away, and to see this day at last!"

"What, are they going to cut down Butleigh wood?" cawed out a beak from a distant branch.

""Tis worse than that!" said the mournful bird.

""Tis all along of the Corn Laws," said another. "They are going to turn the arable into pasture, so good-by to the red worms and the wheat-ears."

"Base worshippers of the belly god," said the old rook, with rising indignation, "'tis no question of brandlings and sweet grubs, but of the old hereditary house. I overheard Will White say in the lane that the old people are going (which by the stir below I fear is true), and that a new man has bought the place. Now, the question is, shall we, the old Rashleigh rooks, submit tamely to the dynasty of the Smiths?"

"The SMITHS?" cawed the whole rookery, in one wild chorus of indignation.

"Did you say SMITH?" said a very respectable middle-aged rook, putting his claw to his ear, as though he did not exactly catch the word.

“S:M:I:T:H-SMITH!!" said the old bird, dwelling with a painful distinctness on each naked letter, and then summing the whole up into one crushing total.

"Smith! what's a Smith?" said a pert young chip, like Beau Brummel speaking of a pea.

His further impertinence, however, was put an end to by a dolk in the poll from a beak close by, which sent him purling into the branches below.

"If we stop," said the old bird, 'we know what we have to expect. The whole crew will be down here by shooting time, in flash sporting coats, fresh from Moses's with buttons as big as sunflowers, and Brummagem guns, and pop away at us-we who never gave in to anything meaner than a Manton or a Nock."

"And then," said another, "we know the smell of the old keeper's gun so well; but with these low people we shall never be safe." Like the Bourgeois Gentilhomme, the speaker seemed to think the greatest fencing skill of little avail against the chance hits of the ignorant.

"As for you young squabs," said a third, turning a particular eye on the pert young gentleman, who had by this time climbed into his place again,-" you will be shot sitting-a Smith never gives law !"

The younkers trembled violently in their legs, and felt a very unpleasant sensation-something like a dose of No. 10, in their bellies.

"Oh, let us be off!" said they, in an agonizing tone. "Yes, let us be off!" said the unanimous rookery.

"By worm time to-morrow, then," said the old bird; "and towards Butleigh woods."

Before the morning had well broken, the tall trees of the