agreeable; nor was a certain convenient gravity wanting; for, soon after the house was completed, some rooks had come to settle upon the large trees on the north; and as their presence was deemed lucky, they were not disturbed, and had increased greatly. As the residence of Leofric was known by the voices of the pigeons, so was that of Adhelm by the cawing of the rooks: the latter, however, was much louder; for in a still evening it might be heard very distinctly at Greenford. On the division of the estate, the Abbot of Westminster advised that the parish should be divided also. It was so; and that of Little Greenford, or Greenford Parva, for the present name of Perivale is not older than the sixteenth century, was separated from Greenford. On the spot where the church now stands a small one was built of shingles: there was no parsonage, for a monk came from Westminster on one Sunday in every month, and on the greater festivals, to perform the offices; and he used to be entertained on these occasions at Adhelm's, and excellent was the entertainment, and right hearty the welcome. The wooden temple was so small, that it was more like a box than a church; the good monk, laughing heartily at his own pleasantry, was used to call it the Ark. If the afternoon was fine, he would sometimes come out of the Ark, like Noah, and deliver his discourse in the open air, to a small but attentive audience, by the side of a large yew tree which had sprung up many centuries before on the south-east of the church, as if in anticipation, as an Abbot of Westminster observed, when he visited the spot, that the place was some day, by the blessing of God, to become a churchyard. During the sermon the rooks would sometimes raise an overpowering clamour; the preacher lifted up his eyes towards them, and watching them until they were silent, seemed to say, by his impatient looks, "Pray do not begin until I have finished; let us not all talk together!" When the discourse was concluded, and the honest rustics suddenly struck up a psalm, the rooks withdrew abashed to more distant trees from the unequal contest.

The church at Greenford was a more important edifice; it occupied the same position as at present. A parson had always resided permanently in this parish his parsonage was on the north of the church; it was small, mean, and old; there was a little chamber for himself, another for his housekeeper, a lumber room, a kitchen, and a hall; for what Saxon, lay or ecclesiastic, would be without his hall. It was long since any labour had been bestowed in ornamenting its walls; nevertheless a liberal hospitality was afforded to all visiters. The outbuildings were better than the house itself, especially the brewhouse, which might, perhaps, be called handsome. Whilst dinner or supper was prepared, the parson used always to say to the stranger, "You have seen my church, no doubt; it is open: travellers always visit the church first." And without waiting for an answer, he added- "Come and see my brewhouse-come along, and I will show you a fine stately brewhouse." The parson was named Master Peter, and he was an excellent and most jovial fellow; - but of him hereafter.

THE DEATH OF GASTON DE FOIX.

66

BY JOHN EDMUND READE, ESQ. AUTHOR OF ITALY,"

I.

GASTON DE FOIx, the flower of chivalry!
Why on the earth is fixed his downcast eye?
Why is his brow deep-lined-his raven hair
White with the snows Time hath not planted there?
Why heaves the sigh suppress'd from his sear'd heart?
Why doth he walk in sullen gloom apart?
Despair, undying, in that breast doth dwell,
Which vain remorse hath tortur'd to a hell!
Not Hope herself would listen dar'd he pray;
Even from his prayer would Mercy turn away!
No time can heal the deed which he hath done,
He stands on earth the murderer of his son !

The chase. the chase

II.

aught that may leave behind Remorseful memories of the sleepless mind.

Familiar was each spot of that wild wood,

Even from boyhood's days; whence then had birth
Those solemn walls that, dreamlike, rose from earth;
Red lights its casements' hollow eyes illume,
Glimmering from far, like meteors o'er a tomb.
Is it a phantom pile, or demon's den,

That silent fabric, or the abode of men?

No warder hears his bugle-horn, none wait,

No

page attends him at the open'd gate:

Through lonely halls he wanders, each more bright;

When, lo! the banquet meets his dazzled sight:

Long tables spread with golden cups are crown'd,

But where the guests who should have crowded round?

IV.

He gain'd the crowning seat: "Ah! now," he cried,
"Would that my son attended at my side!
Smiling, as once he stood, while ever nigh,
With the brightewear and the welcome eye;

yet why

His eyes-his sightless eyes glare on me now
My son my son I feel that it is thou!
Thou hold'st the bowl as thou wert wont
Dost thou so fix me with thy stony eye?
I place my
hands within -ha! warm the flood
It is O God! - it is thy reeking blood!
I see
I feel the truth and thou art come
From high, to tell me, silently, my doom:
Angel of mercy, sent from heaven thou art,
To still the fire that preys upon my heart.
I feel a coldness creep throughout my veins :

This this is death! - and these ensanguin'd stains

O How delicious in the warm, bright sun,
While whispers the long grass with reedy tone,
To sit and watch the blue sea, all alone,
Sink on the sands as if with toil foredone,
And with an indolent and fitful will !
Then shut one's eyes in fond abstraction till,
Borne onward to Elysium's brightest bowers,
We talk with those we love uncounted hours,
And hear those blessed waters where they roll,
Stealing oblivion on the tranced soul,

While communing with spirits. Blissful mood!
When we feel nothing round us will intrude,
Or break upon our voiceful solitude;
But that, reposing among haunted dreams,
We colour them with fancy's loveliest gleams.
Sooth'd by the water's mingled world of sound;

Clear, slumb'rous, deep, full, peaceful, and profound!

THE FIRST OF SEPTEMBER.

It is the First of September. Not such a First of September as Mackenzie describes in the "Man of Feeling," when he gives a twaddling history of the way in which he came by that precious MS. What better use could have been made of the said MS. than to convert it into wadding? Happy the paper that is so employed; for if paper be conscious of any glorious achievement on this earth, we know none so ecstatic as that of helping to scatter a cloud of birds in the grey of the morning, or half an hour before dusk — the most killing time in the sportsman's calendar. "It was on a burning First of September," says Mackenzie- what follows is pure moonshine. Now, this is not a burning First of September. It is cool, crisp, and renovating: the breeze pours down from the hills laden with the fragrance of heather, and all along the valleys a low gusty whistling wind rushes through the feathery bushes, and, sweeping past a cluster of gables that goes by the name of a village, loses itself in the eddies of a far-off lake, where all the children, for twenty miles round, fish for tench, carp, and perch. The art of man, or of woman, which surpasses all masculine calculation, could neither stop nor catch that invisible wind. If you built a wall as high as Saturn it would be useless; for the wind, scoffing your labours, would whistle at the base as merrily as ever, and shoot into the sky faster than thought or light, blowing the lusty dust, like chaff, before it. But who that has ever taken a gun in hand is ignorant of the value of this sportive and, not unfrequently, tantalizing wind? Mark how the dogs snuff it, and track it wherever it flies, until they fall upon the scent of the grouse, and start a forest of wings into the air for your ready-cocked double barrels. A good sportsman, if he is sure of himself, and is not troubled with too many companions, will always keep his gun ready-cocked. But your inexperienced Southern must not venture upon such a risk. He may, perchance, endanger the brains of some of his friends—always provided they have

any.

Take the side of a dark mountain, looking as if it were in a brown. study, and let your range be from the foot halfway upwards. There you will have game to your heart's content, if you only know how to set about it, and have a wary helper, who will beat, with tumultuous energy, the bushes that fringe the wild plantation, keeping the dog always in sight. "If the day is favourable," says that stalwart gentleman, John Colquhoun, " and you have not strangely mismanaged, you ought to make bloody work."* There is no place in all the world like the moors. You grow stronger every step you take in these bracing latitudes: your chest expands, the stomach-film falls from your eyes, your muscles acquire the solidity of iron, and you seem to obtain the elasticity of the deer, as you bound up the ribs of the hills. As for the black-cock it is a perfect paragon of a bird. Audubon never saw such a specimen of winged life in the depths of Florida. The colours of the rainbow, that sprinkle the gay plumage of the American races, fade into mere mouldy tapestry in comparison with the noble grandeur of that ebony bird, everlasting in its hue, and of a most stormy vigour of constitution. There he couches in the belts of juniper, or carouses on the tender food of the alder and birch, or whizzing on the undulating and ragged surface of the moors, melts into the darkness of that umbrageous landscape.

*The Moor and the Loch, By JOHN COLQUHOUN. Edinburgh: Blackwood & Sons, 1840.

Apropos of Audubon. He is at home in his own majestic region of primitive forests, and foaming rivers, and giant mountains. Great in the unstained simplicity of his nature, he stands alone amongst naturalists. He has accomplished in action more than was ever dreamed of by the elegant Buffon or the romantic Waterton. He has combined science and poetry into one magnificent whole, and produced, in his "Birds of America," a work that must remain to the end of time a monument of unexampled perseverance, worthy of an ardent lover of Nature. It is the only work that represents birds as they are; presenting, in a single view, their forms, their habits, and their climates. All other works take single phases, and at best are nothing better than illustrative memoirs. But here is the bird in all its ways of life-in pursuit of its prey, if it be voracious, or flying from pursuit, according to its nature; building its nest, fostering its young, poised on the tip of a spray, a hovering over the sedgy margin of a lake; cowering in a fen, or sailing in the clouds; we have it in all its characteristic aspects in love, in contest, from the shell to the museum. This is the ideal of high art, carrying us out of the descriptive catalogue into the green woods, and giving us the whole history of these races in a single tableau.

Audubon is exactly the sort of man in whom this true love of Nature might be expected to be predominant over all other objects. He spent a princely fortune on that magnificent work; and, to the eternal disgrace of England, we believe his subscribers in this country were not sufficient to pay the expences of one of his numerous journeys into the far West, in search of specimens. But the courtesy with which he was received!—the panegyrics that were showered upon him from the highest quarters!-the wonder, and curiosity, and admiration his labours excited! - these were the rewards which the living Audubon enjoyed, to be eclipsed, no doubt, by marble tributes and literary memorials, when he shall be called into another state of existence a translation which, we trust, may be far distant. How intensely Audubon despised all this ceremonial flattery and hollow protestation. With what inborn pride of heart he looked down upon the empty gorgeousness of our artificial society! His life had been a life of energy passed in the forests and on the broad lakes: he had communed with Nature in her grandest solitudes; and he sickened at the effeminate pomp and pampered selfishness of the old world. There never breathed a finer spirit. Cast in a manly mould, fitted for toil, stamped with the noble attributes of courage, patience, and hearty enthusiasm, no dangers appalled, no disappointments discouraged him; and whatever enterprises he undertook in the pursuit of his favourite science, were prosecuted with a vigour which can be intelligible only to natures capable of a similar integrity of purpose. His "Ornithological Biography" is a monument of extraordinary labour. The vastness of the design startled every body except himself; and the very apprehension that he should not live long enough to complete so gigantic an undertaking repelled many people from venturing even to purchase the numbers as they appeared, lest an imperfect publication of such magnitude should be ultimately left upon their hands. When he delivered his first drawings to the engraver, he had not a single subscriber. His friends pointed out to him the rashness of the project, and candidly told him that they did not expect to witness the issue of a second fasciculus. Even at starting, he calculated that the engravers would take sixteen years in accomplishing their task. Not one single individual held out the least hope of his success, and many sincere and anxious friends strongly urged him to abandon his undertaking, to dispose of his drawings, and return to his native country. "But," he exclaims, "my heart was nerved, and my reli