eggs, and destroys vast numbers of chickens and rabbits, but so far as the poor hedge-hog is concerned most unjust.

This parish custom, and the ignorance of many of the parish officers, led to great abuses, and it is well that the custom is done away with. It tempted many lads to practise a piece of trickery which might lead them to further attempts at dishonesty. It was reckoned a good joke with many of them to watch the parish officer after they had sold him a quantity of sparrows and their eggs, for it was not unusual for him, when the lads appeared to be out of sight, to throw the sparrows into the street; having observed this, they would go presently and pick them up, and sell them two or three times over; and some lads have been known to put amongst them the heads of hedge-sparrows, buntings, and larks, for which the parish allowed nothing, but which the overseer did not always know from real sparrows.

But let us leave these young impostors, and follow a more honest company. At the head of my crew of village ragamuffins, my adroitness became so celebrated for miles round, that if there were a crow's or a hawk's nest in some place that defied all the efforts of the other lads to come at it, I must be fetched to master the difficulty. I climbed rocks and trees, and was held by the heels over old coalpits sixty yards deep, in pursuit of such things, so often that it seems only by some special providence that I escaped with life.

I remember on one occasion, a boy brought what he called a tree-fox's tail into the village, with a wonderful story that there were hundreds of them growing on the roots of trees by a certain pond. It was then eveningthe pond was some miles off-but away we went, and in the last glimmering of twilight arrived at the place. It was a deep, dark lake, surrounded by woods; the foxes' tails

were the roots of willows, that, growing in the water, had put out thousands of fine fibres, which really much resembled foxes' brushes. While getting these treasures, a water-hen flew from her nest in a little sedgy island near, with a rushing sound, which in that silent solitude at first terribly startled us, but in another moment, only filled us with a flaming desire to seize the nest. To get at it, the only way appeared to be, to pass along the trunk of a long slender willow that hung over the water, when, on the instant I grasped the nest, snap it went, and plunged me headlong into the dismal lake. The boughs of the tree bore me up for a moment, and in that moment my bold followers seized the lower end of the tree, and dragged it, me, and the nest safely to land. Had I parted from the tree, I had certainly been drowned; but with our foxes' tails and waterhen's nest we jogged home, and never troubled ourselves for a moment about the danger I had escaped.

Thus passed some years, as it would seem in considerable wildness and danger; but, as I have observed, my parents knew very well the characters of the boys I associated with, and as to the danger, that I believe to be more apparent than real. The skill, activity, and adroitness which country boys acquire by the daily habits of running, leaping, bathing, climbing, etc., render these habits in reality little dangerous to them. You very rarely hear of any serious accidents to country lads from such habits, for in the midst of their most adventurous attempts there is the strong natural love of self-preservation at work in them; and the self-confidence, free use of their limbs, and acquaintance with a thousand common things which they acquire, and which town boys do not, place them in fact in after-life out of danger in numberless occurrences. One would think that children who live by rivers and ponds

would often be drowned, but such children seldom are. Familiarity with danger does indeed wonderfully diminish that danger. I am indeed a striking instance of this truth, for in a very active and varied life, by land and water, I never met with one serious accident, but have on many occasions had to congratulate myself on my early acquaintance with field and flood, when I have seen people otherwise courageous, lose all presence of mind in some critical moment, when they must certainly have suffered serious injury but for the assistance of myself and others of similar early habits.

How few country huntsmen ever meet with severe hurts in comparison with those who have spent their early lives in town, and learned horsemanship only in riding-schools. You rarely hear of a shooter being hurt by his gun, who has learned to shoot in his youth in the country; almost as certainly as townsmen go out on a shooting expedition, they either shoot themselves or their companions. Their guns not being properly cleaned or kept from wet, burst, and shatter their hands; or they go through hedges with their guns cocked, when a branch catches the trigger and shoots the person just before them; or they take the gun from their companion who has yet to come over; they receive it by the muzzle, the same accident occurs, and they themselves are shot. Such things never can happen to the sportsman who has had a country education. A certain hardihood and daring acquired in boyish country life, are often the harbingers of future destination. The celebrated Lord Clive, when a simple village lad, was found astride on a spout on the top of the church steeple. The story of Lord Nelson's laddish wanderings in the country, when he was asked by his uncle if he had no fear of strolling so far, and his reply, that "he never saw

fear," is well known. I do not mean however to advocate rashness in children, or carelessness in parents; a watchfulness on the part of parents and guardians is always necessary, and every child should be taught not to run wilfully into peril; but it seemed right for me here to intimate that undue caution and overweening fearfulness are equally erroneous, as producing timidity of character, or ignorance of much that is of inestimable value. What a world of knowledge and of beautiful ideas we should have lost had not Shakspeare rambled about the country in his boyhood.

But enough of this digression. During this period, I and my village comrades had various kinds of amusement. At one time we spent whole days in making bricks of clay in the bow of a mole-trap, calling them shoe-heel bricks, which they resembled, and baking them in little kilns, intending to build a wall, and cope it with those bricks. At another, we burnt bones in a little kiln which we built in our garden, and half-poisoned the whole village with the smell; at another time we haunted the joiner's shop, chipping and boring, and endangering our toes and fingers; at another, the smith's forge was our attraction. There we hammered hot iron, blew the bellows, and admired the whole process of paring horses' hoofs and setting on shoes, but more especially the beautiful starry sparks which fly about when the hot iron is drawn from the fire. Many a day of a cold winter did I pass by the pleasant blaze of this forge, delighting in its cheerful blaze, and in all the curious operations going on, such as making chains, and sharpening plough-shares, and so on; and many a day, of a cold winter too, did I sit cross-legged on the board of a good-natured tailor, making pincushions of red and yellow strips of cloth, and feeling it very important to be able to sew with a bottomless thimble. The tailor was six feet

high; had a nose flattened to his face by a blow received in a good-natured effort to part some quarrelers; and must have been a very ugly fellow, but I never thought of that; to me his kindness made him comely, as I believe is the case with all children: and I once went a whole summer's day's journey, on foot, with him to see his mother— a distance which, in my memory, seems immense; but of which I recollect nothing but passing over some large commons, on which were many asses and cows, and dining from a piece of beef, baked in a dish of old-fashioned ware, full of brown and yellow zigzags.

But now came a new era in my life. My father had a clerk, who lived in the house. This young man was a curiosity. At night he was conjuring, drawing circles and triangles on the kitchen hearth with cinders, and muttering strange words, till he half-frightened the maids out of their wits. By three o'clock the next morning, even in winter, he would be up reading his Bible aloud by the same kitchen fire till six, when the maids coming down, he would retire to his office; and in the day-time, if he had any leisure, he would run off with me a shooting; or, if it were dry weather, would play at marbles with me. A stranger medley of a man was never seen. He had often to go to the coal-pits, and I used to go with him. He had the faculty of exciting my imagination to the greatest degree. Every thing we saw he clothed in fairy colours. This was Humble-bee Hall-that was Tom Thumb's Castle; and the next field was Dead-man's Field, where some strange murder had been committed; and that was the Wood of the Web-footed Witches, some awful creatures I never before or since heard of. One house was haunted, or had a murdered infant buried under the floor; or was inhabited by a miser, or a murderer, or a thief, or had been a madhouse.