In the stillness of the night, I could hear one of the guards without, ask his fellow, "What made him, wit ye, so cry out?" The other responded, "They may say what they list; I take it that he was tormented of the devil." Musing much of this, and of the distinctions between chastisements and temptations, I fell on sleep or ever I was aware, with my head on my arms and a prayer on my lips; and thereupon had a dream, which was, indeed, but that of a child, yet which, for its singularity and the impression it made upon me for a long time afterwards, I cannot refrain from here recording. Methought I was still waking, and reclining, because of my weariness, on an oaken settle that stood overagainst the casement, when a bright figure stood suddenly beside me, and said, "Arise up quickly!" So I did; and we passed through my sister's chamber, where she and the prince lay strait and stiff, like two monumental figures on an altar-tomb carven out of stone; and her veil of stars, which methought she still wore, hung nigh unto the silver lamp, but burnt not. For why? A watcher sate at their head, and another at their feet, clad in long white garments, looking holier than men, stronger than women, fairer than either; and they were keeping ward. So we left them, and passed on through the outer door, that unclosed and folded again of itself; and without, in the gallery, were the lights burning dim, and men dropped asleep after all sorts of fashions; but, among them here and there, spiritual beings in orderly array, silent and attent. At each door and each bed-head as on we passed, were still other vigils on guard; and so we passed on from the chief chambers to the low, narrow, and close rooms and offices round about the court-yards beyond; and even here, too, amongst the tired servants, were other watchers. In special, I marked two in the women's quarter leaning over a poor wench, Æthelice by name, of fearful and sorrowful mood, and one said softly to the other, "How troubled she is above measure!" and the other made answer, "Yea, but not for long." Then the first saith, ""Tis a vain terror, a mere shadow she has started at;" and the other saith, "Yea, but whileas it lasteth, 'tis no mere shadow to her!" And so, made a cross on her forehead, and its furrows disappeared. But the brightest watcher of them all, in appearance like to a king, stood by a poor esne1 that was driven from pillar to post from morning to night. This angel had a pale blue star on his brow, and was so deep in thought, that he noted us not as we passed by. Then we came into the outer court, into the dark glooming shade and cool night air; and, methought, my guide said "Go forward, and see the wonders of the night." So I went forward alone, and a little but not much afraid, into the chase, which soon became a forest with moonlit glades. But here and everywhere, I encountered spiritual beings, in companies or alone; some in inaudible discourse, walking, standing, or lying; some busied among the leaves and flowers; and it seemed unto me, that every tree and herb had its (1) Slave. gardener, though so shadowy, so silent, so like it in colour, as to be only with pain made out. None looked on me, but many looked up, and I wist not whether there were more of gravity or happiness in their faces. After a while, they seemed all to look round with reverence at some one preceding me, and then quietly return to their labours; but I could see none before me. However, I came at length to a high wall, still in the blackness of midnight shade, and in the wall, a door, and in the door, a key; and I heard some one between it and me turn that key, and that door opened and I went in. Withinside, I could discern rather than see there was a fair garden, for I could smell aromatic herbs and sweet spices, such as are used by our priests, and the odour of sweet flowers; and once and again my foot caught in the tendrils of creeping plants that seemed to grow too rankly, intermixed with weeds. A pleasing kind of fearfulness overcame me in this garden, and I went on through a tangled foot-track that descended pretty steeply to the brink of a little lone pool or well, lying in the darkness of brightness. It looked so cool and pure, that I took some of the water in my hand to drink, but it tasted bitter; and I stooped over it to look in its clear depths, expecting to see myself reflected in it; but, instead thereof, lo! another face, not mine own! And I trembled, and awoke. . . There was Ethelswitha standing over me, looking haggard in the grey light of dawn; and she said, Poor child, sorrow hath made you heavy to slumber-send me my women, and go you and sleep on your bed." So I did as she bade me, and sank into dreamless sleep; for, indeed, I was new to night watching. The busy throng soon dispersed; and the prince, making out from his leeches that they knew not what ailed him, and could give no certitude of speedy recovery, gat up from his couch, saying, "Then I'll bear it as best I may." And calling me to him, he took from his vest little note-book full of wiselike sentences and saws of Scripture, whereon he loved to look, though he was not fluent at reading; and he bade me write therein a saying of Ethelswitha's, which had much pleased him,-"Jesus hurts but to heal." Having fulfilled his behest, I returned it unto him; when, regarding it admiringly, he said, "Thou'rt the featest little scribe in Christendom or Kent. I will give you my silver pen." It came to pass after those days, that our country had no rest. Without, were fightings; within, were fears. We were tried and put to the proof every way; in assaults, in sieges, in pillagings, in the burning of our houses, in the destruction of our crops, in the peril of our lives. What wretchedness did those pagans, the Danes, occasion! yea, what weariness of living; yea, what difficulty to live! I have known rulers in high places as hard put to it in those days for a dinner, as were the princes of Samaria during the siege, when an ass's head sold for fourscore pieces of silver; and though a man were liable to the heals fang or neck-catch if he gave his servants flesh-meat | pleasant, to camp out, in that warm climate, under date-trees and palm-trees, out of reach of the enemy, sleeping on honeysuckle banks, crossing brooks, resting in cool valleys, and dining under hedges! . . 1 depicted them, to the best of my ability, halting at one of these rustical resting-places; the ass turned loose to graze, Joseph dipping water from the spring, Mary setting out their frugal repast, and the Holy Child, looking with grave serenity at two pieces of wood, fallen over one another in the form of the cross. It was a delightsome subject; only that I Ethelfled, wist not how to make the rivulet look as if it wound away into the distance; it would go up into the sky. I thought about it and dreamed about it, and I think over-application to it made me ill of cheer, but my mother thought I had taken the lung-ail,' and dieted me on chestnuts and honey; but this doing me no good, she made out that I was bewitched; and in the following manner. Straying one morning in the cow-pastures, hunting for the first primroses, there comes me a pretty white doe, flitting among the bare trees, and presently trots from the brake close up to my side. I hold out my hand, which it licks; and to my surprise I note a leathern bottle tied about its neck with a thong. On handling the same, I find some drops of sour milk hardened about its mouth, and guess whosoever hath tied it about the doe's neck must depend on it, somehow, for a supply. Remembering Elijah and the ravens, I tempt the doe towards the dairy, feed it with crumbs, and fill the bottle with milk; whereon it trots away as though its mission were fulfilled. Day after day it returns with the empty creche, which I as constantly replenish; and at length I am avised to track the pretty creature into the woods. Having now become friendly with me, it ambled on a little in advance, oft stopping for me and then trotting on again, til it had led me much further than I reckoned on, quite beyond my knowledge, and far away from home. At length I became scared, doubting how I should find my way back, and apprehensive of some salvage beast rushing out upon me . . . as for the more harmless sort, we scattered herds of them, right and left. All at once, we reach a glooming brake, with dead men's bones whitening among the grass, as though some death-struggle had occurred there long ago; and in the midst a prodigious luge Ignarred oak, of unaccountable age, and embost with moss; in the hollow of which, cowers or crouches an old woman, a gnawing of her arm, as it seemed to me, and muttering in a strange, eldrich fashion, "What ho! Thor! what ho, Odin! Bring back my little lad. . . Did he then? Lordsake, who'd mind a child? What wouldst have? here's fever-few an' time past in a honey-bag-indeed purslane's wanting.. oh! oh!" And seeing the doe trot up to her, she clasped her skinny arms about its neck, undid the bottle with trembling hands, drained it as though she were famishing, and then fell to kissing and hugging the doe as though she were crazy, which indeed she was. In those days was it feelingly to be experienced, in the words of the holy Shepherd-king, that it is better to fall into the hands of God, than of man; for albeit the famine and pestilence had been hard to bear, the war was much worse. These infidel wretches embittered the very morsel between our teeth, scouring the country like troops of wolves, violently taking aviy our flocks and feeding thereof, driving away the ass of the fatherless, and taking the ox of the widow, turning the needy out of doors, and causing the naked to lodge without covering; insomuch that they were wet with the showers from the mountains, and constrained to burrow in caves and holes of the earth, or to roost in the forest for shelter. As for ourselves, ... to-day there would not be a man on the premises; every soul of them fluttered like sparrows from corn; anon, like the sparrows to their meat, they come back again, every man with his hart or roebuck, or maybe a handful of them with a wild boar; and so we eat and are refreshed, till a cry comes sooner or later of "The Danes!" Howbeit, I am running on too fast, into the middle and latter part of the year, and must return for a little to the beginning of the spring, after my sister's marriage, when the clods of the valley began to show their tender blades, and the primrose and celandine to peer forth on the banks, and jack-i'the-hedge to show his saucy face along the by-paths; and the jays and starlings to chatter, and the wrynecks to pipe, and the rooks to utter their hoarse notes. had shot up very fast, of late, into a mere cornstalk, and had, I think, a little outgrown my strength; add to which, I had applied somewhat too closely to a wall-hanging I was working for Ethelswitha, so that I lost my health a little, and was dull and sorry of cheer; but my mother thought I should clear up in the spring; howbeit, I did not. The subject of my hanging, which was lovely, I will here describe. It was the flight into Egypt, which has always had somewhat about it very pastoral and pleasant to my mind. Joseph and Mary would, no question, shun the walled towns and populous villages, and trace their way through the most sylvan and sequestered paths. How (1) Consumption. I have often since thought, how sad to be old Mulla, how happy to be old Gunfried. There was everything about the one to make old age fearsome; there was nothing about the other to make old age otherwise than pleasant. Her face was more like that of a man's than a woman's, | nourishment to you, wit ye? We must all walk along more like a fiend's than either; her skin like old brown the strait path ourselves, if we would wonne through leather, eyes red as ferrets, with grisly hair falling the gate at the further end of it." over them. Nor had I a doubt, hearing her name the names of the Danish gods, but that she was a wicca or witch; and, in my fearfulness, making a little rustling noise which caught her ears, she started up, caught sight of me, and was about to fall on me, when a savage growl from behind, followed by the spring of a huge, hairy, dark body over my head, towards her throat, so skeared me as that I fell lifeless to the ground. When I recovered, there was Eadwulf's great black and tawny blood-hound licking my face, and Eadwulf himself, with eyes as red as his hair, coming up all panting. His first greeting was, "Tell 'ee what, mistress . . thou's led me a pretty dance; and may I be hung for a Danes' spy if e'er I let thee out o' sight of us all, so long together again!" He'd been crying, I think; and I was somewhat cowed, so 'companied him homewards quietly enow, without saying, as I sometimes did when he chode mc, "Where's the harm?" or "Where's the wrong? Some foresters, whom we met by the way, reported old Mulla, as they called her, to be a harmless maniac, whom the pagans had bereft of her wits by slaying her sons; howbeit, my mother apprehended her to have somewhat of malign power about her; and, seeing me much fluttered by the encounter, would have it I was bewitched. An ashen bough was therefore placed over my pillow, and Gunfried, the wise woman, was called in. As for the doe, I regret to relate that the poor, harmless creature was chased away by the serfs, who held it to be little better than its mistress. I had a secret fear of one who, like Gunfried, was reported to have some mysterious insight into bodily and mental diseases; which left me, however, the moment I saw her; for she was the kecnest, yet gentlest and sweetest-looking old woman I ever set eyes on. She took me readily in hand, and made much of certain herbs which, to be of any good to me, I must gather at day-dawn myself; to wit, white horehound, hyssop, brown-wort, parsley, rue, and groundsel; of each twenty penny-weights, seethed in a syster-full of old ale till half boiled away; of which I was to drink a neap-full cold every morning fasting, and in the evening as much warm. To collect the roots and fresh leaves, she and I footed it together over the early dew many a May morning; and, whether owing to the fresh air, or to her medicine, I became quite strong and well. Many a wise lesson did she teach me of the goodness and glory of God, as set forth in the properties of this and that herb and flower; and many a lovely tale did she tell me that carried me quite out of myself. On my putting it to her, one day, why the herbs, to do me any good, must be gathered by my own hands, she, smiling, made answer, "There are many things which, to be of any good to you, must be done by yourself. You must pray for yourself, you must sleep for yourself, you must eat for yourself. Can my having a full meal afford any Now, ever since my encounter with old Mulla, my walks had been more guarded and circumscribed. For some time, save with Gunfried, Eadwulf, or some of our own women, I stirred not. Howbeit, as habit bates sense of danger, and over-charge is onerous, I gradually became less watchful and watched, and made long progresses in and about the woods on foot, attended only by the wolf-dog, Bran. One day we met a prodigious large wolf, who had scarce glared on me with his red, hungry eyes, when Bran throttled him and laid him dead at my feet. I was so pleased with myself for being no more scared than I was, that it was the greatest effort to me to refrain from brag. ging of it on my return home; howbeit, I abstained, that is, for three days, lest my walks should thereon be forbidden. At the end of that time, my natural sincerity made the concealment extremely burthensome unto me; and, as the Psalmist expresses it, my heart was hot within me." Howbeit, it seemed so stupid and shameful then to reveal a matter I had already made a secret of, that I could not bear to tell it, except to my confessor, to whom I mentioned it in confession, but so slightly, and, as it were in parenthesis, that I much think the old man never heard it at all. Howbeit, I got absolution, which peaceified me at the time, though, in the end, neither that nor my old "Where's the wrong ?" proved of any avail; and I refrain not from saying that since I have come to mature years, I have done penance for that little fault. However, the secret... (I pray thee, reader, bear awhile with my garrulity,) the secret, I say, was not to be so kept, whether I would or no. Previous to the appearance of the wolf, I had been knitting bluebells about Bran's neck with an azure twine; and the very next time we three went that way together, Eadwulf, Bran, and I, Bran pulled Eadwulf by the skirt of his skin hunting-frock, to the place where the dead wolf lay, and looked up in his face, as much as to ask whether he had not done a clever thing. The moment Eadwulf saw it, he cries, "Hey! here's been death-work! This twine is thine, mistress!-I marked it, last week, in thine hand. Did the wolf, then, fly at thee ?" I hastily cried, "Dear Eadwulf, it did;-but don't tell. It did me no harm, you see." He stood musing, and looking on me awhile, the blue twine still in his hand, and then delivered himself thus :-"Don't tell,' thou says, mistress ? and, ‘it has done thec no harm ?' Has it done thee no harm, mistress, if it comes to 'Don't tell? Why, thou's putting a rope round thine own neck, and giving me the other end of it! I've only to say, Wolf, or to growl a little, or to say, I wish I had a piece of twine, to make thee ready to kill me! ... I cares for thee, mistress, as thou wert mine own daughter; howbeit, let it be as thou wishest. . . . An thou bids me, I'll not tell.” So, of course, I consented to make no secret of the matter any longer; and all the better, I think, for my own heart and soul. Trifle as it was, I have often since remembered the wolf. I know not whether I were at this time what is ordinarily thought comely. Ethelswitha was always so much more thought of than myself, that I thought as little of myself as the rest did, and never troubled the looking-glass much. In sooth, I was apt to take too little rather than too much thought of what I should put on; and left the charge of my hair, which was now very long, entirely to my women, who seemed to me to spend a good deal more time than they needed to have done, in smoothing and trifling with it. But the sensation was pleasant and soothing, and left me to pursue my own thoughts; so I never hurried them. My father called me his apple-blossom; and, one day, I heard some one say, to another one, without thinking I noted him... somewhat about... "Sweet as the breath of morning." "Tis strange, how we remember such-like things. was, The About this time, for as young as I was, my marriage with the Earl of Berks became the common report; not that I had seen much of him. He was a brave man, with a face like an owl; and I must say, I should have preferred his younger brother. However, it of course, quite out of the question to think of the latter, since, though noble, he had not forty hides of land, and could not sit in the witena-gemot. earl his brother was good-hearted, but somewhat tedious. He sang a song at the prince's wedding, that, had he not been who he was, every one would have lost patience with. Notwithstanding which, had we been espoused, I could have found it in my heart to be unto him a good wife; but, on the whole, am thankful it went otherwise. My mother thought me too young; my father thought, if 'twere delayed too long, it might, in such unsettled times, never come to pass at all. Had he had his will, I Ethelfled might not now be writing this chronicle. to However, the lamentable event which deprived me of intended husband, demands a new book,-not my Osay a better and more moving writer than my most contemptible self. Nor is it to be supposed that I should ever have attempted to preserve, by my mean pen, events so worthy of a much better narrator, had it seemed likely that, in the much greater importance men attach to themselves and their own sayings and doings than to those of other people, any other chronicler would address himself to my task, or, if he did, be able to make half so much of it as I can. -It was among the loveliest customs of the ancients to bury the young at morning twilight; for as they strove to give the softest interpretation to death, so they imagined that Aurora, who loved the young, had stolen them to her embrace. «I HAVE heard," says Macgillivray, "of a closet naturalist, who, slighting the labours of a brother of the field, alleged that he could pen a volume on the Robin; in the manner of the Classification of Birds in Lardner's but surely if confined to the subject, written Cyclopædia and without the aid of fable, it would prove a duller book than Robinson Crusoe." Now naturalists, to which the term we are free to confess that we belong to that order of "closet" is here somewhat slightingly applied; and it seems to us, that it exceedingly interesting, without the aid of fable, we, too, could pen a volume on the Robin, and make although it should be very different from a mere book than De Foe's immortal production perhaps it scientific classification of orders and genera. A duller might prove, and yet not be so very dull either. There is much in natural history, even if an author confines himself to strict and literal facts, to instruct the heart and delight the understanding; and if he call in the aid of memory and association, he may, without wandering into the misty region of fable, find sufficient material for his purpose, even when writing on the least known and admired of God's living creatures. How easy, then, is his task, when he essays to place before his readers an account of so lively, and familiar, and interesting a bird as the Robin Redbreast; spruce Robinet, the cheerful Ruddock, as he is called in some districts, welcomed and loved alike by old and young;-the bird to which Carrington addresses these fine lines, in the sentiment of which all must cordially sympathize:- "Sweet bird of Autumn, silent is the song It is, indeed, truly a "household bird," and one many a young heart has bled, and for whom many youthful eyes, and, for that matter, older ones too, have shed tears of sorrow; even as, according to the nursery rhyme, did all "the birds of the air""When they heard the bell toll for poor cock Robin," slain by the wicked sparrow, no doubt for sheer envy at the universal regard in which Robinet was held. around which home memories and associations most | dear children, at the account of whose cruel death thickly cluster; a lively and pleasant feature in the scene, when there is least in the outward aspect of nature to cheer and gladden us, and we love it accordingly, with an affection such as we bestow upon few other irrational creatures. How cheerily sounds its short sweet warble, amid the gloom and silence of a winter's day! How brightly gleams the ruddy breast, contrasted with the dull, leaden-coloured sky; the brown, naked branch; or the snow-covered earth! Who is there to whom the Robin is not a welcome visitant, and to whom these sweetly simple lines, by Dr. Jenner, seem other than appropriate? "Come, sweetest of the feather'd throng, Then soothe me with thy plaintive song, Can we suppose that the part which the Robin is made to play in the well-known story of "the Babes in the Wood" had its origin in any other than a deeplyseated and widely diffused sentiment in favour of the bird? It is in such fables as these, that popular feelings and superstitions are embodied, and made manifest, so that the likes and dislikes of a people may be surely traced in their national ballads, not one of which is more beautiful and pathetic than that wherein the untimely fate of the fair children is so sweetly and touchingly described, and in which it is said "No burial these pretty babes Of any man receives; In a poem entitled "England," by John Walker Ord, we find these simple lines expanded into a fine Spenserian stanza "And at their graves no virgins clad in white Where nature was their tomb, and no one might Ever mingled with the feeling of pity, called forth by this story of helpless innocence perishing thus untimely, is one of love for the bird, which so "painfully," that is, tenderly-carefully, performed the last sad rites of sepulture, and sung a requiem over the But a field naturalist would perhaps tell us that we are now getting very deep indeed into the region of fable, and call us back to the terra firma of fact, to which we shall endeavour to keep, at all events until we get to the end of the chapter; not that we are ready to admit that fables are at all times, or generally, pure fictions; they embody thoughts, and feelings, and beliefs, which have their origin in truth, if they be not at all times themselves literal verities. The matter-of-fact field naturalist, however, tells us, that "The Robin is a privileged bird, spared even by Cockney sportsmen, every one looking at him as a friendly and pleasant little fellow, whose company is never tiresome;" and therefore we speak advisedly, when we give him the praise which is justly his due, and feel that we are fully authorized to quote the "mad poets," who have sung the praises of our little favourite, which, with J. A. Wade, we observe, is the bird of memory and of pity "This was the home of Memory, the grave betray'd." This is quite in accordance with the feeling which has prompted so many a poet, when selecting some green spot of earth, where, when life's "fitful fever" is over, he may rest in peace, to wish that— "There the earliest flowers may spring, And there the Redbreast build and sing." As an introduction to a more precise description of the Haunts and Habits of the Robin, we may quote Grahame's peotical and graphic lines"How simply unassuming is that strain! It is the Redbreast's song, the friend of man. Oft near some single cottage he prefers |