beauty. We walked together to the margin of the Mere, and then up to Wordsworth's old house, where, on the famous terrace, we found cowslips and daisies, mingled with snowdrop and crocus; and, under the porch, in pots, carefully tended as a kind of votive offering to the dead, there was the lesser celandine, his own chosen and favourite flower. IX.-SHROVETIDE. March 12. In the Third Book of Kenelm Digby's Broad Stone of Honour, there is an eloquent passage in which the writer, trying to set forth, as is his wont, the attractive side of the Middle Ages, shows how the common life was then beautified by the mingling of the natural and the ecclesiastical seasons. Without accepting in full these romantic and sentimental views, one may admit the wisdom of breaking the dead monotony of modern existence by observing, especially for the sake of the young, such simple festivals as yet remain in vogue. Since I last wrote, the feast of Shrovetide has been duly honoured among us, in the oldfashioned country style, with all customary rites and ceremonies, æsthetic and culinary. The first thing is to take down the 'Christmas,' as the decorative evergreens are alway called in Lancashire." We never allow this to be done until Shrovetide has come in, and then the doing of it is not an operation but a ceremony. It marks a point in the history of the year, when, even if we look back with some regret on the indoor festivities of Christmas, we are also looking forward to the out-door pleasures of spring. And so there was much seasonable merriment and boisterous shouting as the ladder was carried about, and the great bunches were hauled down and taken by many willing hands to an open space in the garden. Then, when all had been heaped up, a live coal was put underneath, and the dry but yet resinous mass of holly and ivy, laurel and fir burst into such a fire that the light of it, for a few minutes, might have been seen for miles over the dark fields. It was a fine thing to watch the sharp, arrowy flames darting out from the central mass like living creatures, as if in search of something to devour. When we went indoors again we found the house filled with the sweet scent of the burnt branches. I must not omit to mention that a bough of mistletoe was saved and laid up with the yule-log brand to be kept until next year. And then came the scene in the kitchen, where one who will not wear that symbol again, at any rate D ⚫for a twelvemonth, donned the cook's apron, wielded the hissing pan, and tossed the savoury cakes into the air. Herrick has a quaint little poem on the taking down of the evergreens, but he fixes the time for it as Candlemas Eve, not Shrovetide : Down with the rosemary, and so Down with the bays and misletoe ; Wherewith ye dress'd the Christmas hall; No one least branch there left behind; So many goblins you shall see. Our maid carefully gathered up the scattered leaves, and so, even in the old oak-room after midnight, there were no goblins to be seen. The hall looks naked enough now the accustomed garnishing is gone; but to-morrow we shall put up the orthodox branch of green box, and that will hold its place till Easter comes round. The weather has been quite March-like in character. We have had some rain, a little light frost at night, and much heavy wind, rising on one occasion at least into a gale. At sunset there was a momentary gleam of crimson, over which the clouds suddenly swirled and it was dark: a little while after, through another rift in the vapour, there was a vision of the new moon with the old moon in her arms-the strange, spectral disk, with the thin bright crescent at its edge O say na sae, my master deir, For I fear a deadlie storme. Late late yestreen I saw the new moone Wi' the auld moon in hir arme; And I feir, I feir, my deir master, No doubt, as Coleridge has it— The bard was weather-wise, who made The grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence. At any rate, soon after this there was a great roaring in the wood, and a tossing and smiting together of branches, which continued through the night. The next morning the dead twigs of winter were strewn all over the ground. The leafage is increasing in the garden, and is now for the first time beginning to be perceptible as a cloud of green. The fruit-trees-currant, gooseberry, cherry, and pear-tree-are most forward. The laburnum shows its white leaf-bud, and the lilac its dark green. The flowering currant is in bloom. In the greenhouse the camellias, which have been making a great show with their scarlet and white, rose-red and blush-pink, are now nearly over. By the way a friend gives me intelligence from Cornwall which makes our latitude seem cold and bare indeed. There, he tells me, the camellias are flowering in the open air, the primroses are by thousands in the hedge-banks, and men lie on their backs in the sun. The birds are hard at work on the lawn in a morning. They seem to get an ample breakfast with marvellous rapidity. To-day I counted fourteen starlings in a flock, 'feeding like one '-the sun shining on their metallic-looking plumage as they struck their long, yellow bills into the ground. A little apart from the crowd were three or four throstles, less bold, and feeding more daintily. The starlings, I think, have begun to build. We see them carrying sticks and straws under the eaves of the barn. The plumage of this bird, though subdued, is very beautiful if carefully examined. The feathers are blue, green, black, and a lightish purple, and some of them are curiously tipped with buff. As the bird moves in the sun these colours mingle, and produce that steely appearance to which I have already alluded. X.-DAFFODILS. March 20. IN the early part of the past week there have been some nights of keen frost; the thermometer marked |