Time was when by thy marge half-naked bands Returned with cattle to their mountains lone, With Saxon plunder, farms and mills undone ; And horses neighed and ravished oxen lowed, As day broke and the merry grouse-cock near them crowed. How changed the scene! No bloodshed, nay, no fear Strangles thy murmur; lambs skip side by side, And knee-deep cattle dream. The lark-dost hear High in the plighted clouds? The cuckoo tried The silent mountains rear their cloudy dome, Yes, Monnow, thou art beautiful; thy stream, Half hid in darkling trees and woodland flow'rs, Slides neath the fox-gloves, and around thee gleam Scarlet and blue mosaics for thy bowers; Each month its wealth of splendour round thee showers. Do we lament, alas! too transient May? June all our hedgerows with frail rose-buds dowers; If August vainly begs her nurselings stay, November wraps the rifled woods in pall of grey. At Alterynnys with a sudden turn Thou fleet'st to Kentchurch, once Glendower's hold; And, hearing Grosmont's bells, through lengths of fern To Skenfrith rollest. When the flying gold Chokes Autumn's eddies, often have I strolled Beside thee. Mem'ry now those days recalls And fain would gather them in worthier fold, With sylvan blooms of sweetest breath, and falls Of melody might soothe the Naiads' crystal halls. The kindly angler notes, with thoughtful eyes And heart intent on beauty, fish, flow'r, bird; Now mindful to his proper task he hies; Who save an angler could that rise have heard Above the sedge, itself but lightly stirred? And so he pushes onwards through the screen Of boughs, and pities all the maddened herd In terror scatt'ring, as when heav'n's dread Queen Th' Inachian damsel drove from mead to covert's green. With broader stream thou roll'st thy shining way To right or left, whence startled wild-ducks fly And moor-hens croak; while nodding ouzels stray From their loved stones, thou passest softly by 'Twixt copse and meadow with contented sigh. Anon thou hurriest on past dam and mill To fall, thy journey ended, into Wye; So smiles a good soul in death's ocean still, May largest peace all its vague longings fill ! Thou teachest us our life-work with our might Our energies oft seem to run to waste, Flow on next hills, farms, hamlets by thee graced, Where Nature's harmony no jarring discord mars. M. G. WATKINS. THE GREAT WHITE HORSE OF YORKSHIRE. YORKSHIRE has its Great White Horse, as Berkshire has; and YORK in the neighbourhood of the former is the famous old trainingground on the Hambleton Downs, which consist of an elevated plateau crossed by the Thirsk and Helmsley turnpike-road. Hambleton Hotel, half-way between those two towns, is 992 feet above sealevel, or 805 feet lower than the highest licensed house in England, at Tan Hill, on the wild Arkengarthdale Moors, Yorkshire. For all that, it stands high enough to be exposed to the devices of a severely cruel winter, which attacks chimney-pots and windows, and drives men home to their hearths perishing. On the west side of the house is a beautiful villa-like shooting-lodge; on the east side a multitude of commodious stables, where are housed the animals sent from all parts to the care of the training-master of the Downs. Seen from lower lands the block of buildings rather reminds one of an Alpine monastery, or hospice, shielded by judiciously designed plantations of solemn deep-toned firs, which creep up to its very doors on the north and west sides. To the south is the dairy field, to the east ling-grown wastes-whole forests of ling and heather, purple-brown in summer, and glowing with spots of green, where luxuriate the numerous varieties of sphagnums, chadonias, and dicranums. The view over in the Helmsley, Rievaulx Abbey, and Hawnby direction is fine. Hills upon hills arise, and towards sunset-time they shine in blue, purple, green, and brown colours, resolving towards night into neutral and leaden tints. On fine afternoons, when across the sky sail great masses of cumulus cloud, the scene is very effective, and the multifarious objects assume a startling distinctness in the perescope. Yonder, clumps of firs scowl in the shadow; yonder, the yellow and emerald fields glare in the distant hollows. Patches of amber and brown appear; rising higher above them are moors, which will soon assume their brownpurple shades, and these are backed by a horizonal, horizontal line of plateau-topped hills, which are more like uprising clouds than anything else. The insulated mass of Easterside, five miles to the north west, rises like an island out of the sea, and often its bright hues make the table-land background into a mere phantasmal shadow by contrast. For how long the Hambleton Downs have been used as a trainingground it would be hazardous to conjecture. Annual races were held here from 1715 to 1770, and then discontinued for some reason that I have not heard, although in 1855 they were re-established at Thirsk-certainly more desirable as a centre. The Downs make an admirable training-ground. There is ample surface, broad, level, dry, and covered with short but tough grass (Juncus squarrosus). Mr. Thomas S. Green, the registered landlord of the Hambleton Hotel, is known-at any rate among the horsey fraternity of York-as a shrewd, practical, clever man; say, as another William Greyson of the Riddleton training-ground, but without Will's somewhat shady reputation. [The comparison comes from Hawley Smart's York novel, "From Post to Finish."] I have heard it said that Mr. Green's tips are invaluable, and that if from his lips you hear a horse is going to win, it always does win. If there were more men of Mr. Green's stamp, the integrity of the turf would stand a better chance of maintenance. He has inherited a natural love for a bit of good horse-flesh, and a natural contempt for the fools who are led astray by the tricks of turfites. He loves mettle in horses and honour in men. I am dealing with a very horsey country in this article, and storiettes might be given of many of Yorkshire's most remarkable sons who have in one way or another been connected with the Hambleton training-ground. There was, for instance, one Tom Ward, whose father was a "man about stable." Tom became a jockey in the employ of the training-master of Hambleton, and attracted considerable attention here by his tact and superior gentlemanly manners. Before very long he left Hambleton in the train of Prince Lichtenstein of Hungary. The Duke of Lucca eventually made him a Minister of Finance and created him a Baron of the Duchy of Lucca. During the reign of Charles III., Ward remained his Prime Minister and resided principally at the Court of Vienna, where he died October 12, 1858. It is a twenty minutes walk along the moorland road from the Hambleton Hotel to the ever famous "White Horse of Kilburn," its exact location being the flank of a hill which terminates in Roulston Scar, or Knowlson's Drop. The first time I took much notice of this horse was on the morning of September 16, 1890, upon approaching Husthwaite from Harrogate and Helperby on a walkingVOL. CCLXXXV. NO. 2013. Y tour to Whitby. My companion, a small boy of the name of Robert, was the first to espy the animal, and he drew my attention thereto by suddenly crying out in a state of considerable consternation, "Oh, see! there's a big white horse running away on that hillside! Oh! he's going to be over that great high cliff!" But the equine monster has not stepped for forty years; he is stationary for ever, and considered a sort of wonder, but no prodigy. Berkshire, of course, has its White Horse, but this is the only landmark of its kind in the North of England. Our own good animal is an object familiar to all travellers on the North-Eastern Railway between York and Thirsk, or between Pilmoor Junction and Malton or Pickering. Indeed, all the Plain of York looks upon it as the leading land-mark, and Harrogate visitors have often the benefit of it, while from the central tower of York Minster it seems quite near. To the poet this colossal equine figure may be suggestive of some fabled monster guarding the rocky fastnesses of the Hambleton Hills, and on a fine moonlight night he may even discover something a little eerie about it. Quite so; for what does it but really serve to perpetuate the legend of the rampant steed and rider who were precipitated down Whitestone Cliff in the vicinity, and who mysteriously disappeared in Gormire Tarn never to rise again? Some time hence the real origin of the White Horse of Kilburn may be forgotten, as in the case of the much more ancient Berkshire Horse, and it may be left to gather around it a dense atmosphere of legendary lore yet to be invented all for the sake of the country-folk, with whom thrilling stories of the kind are never out of fashion. So that it may be a pity to dispel, by anticipation, the charms that imagination is not unready even now to weave around this wonderful thing. Yet, let its plain matter-of-fact history be told for the benefit of those at home and others afar off. Let the guide-books take the matter up, so that no sojourner in the picturesque Vale of Mowbray shall have excuse for regarding our equine friend as a mystery. In the early part of this eventful century one Tom Taylor was a schoolboy at Kilburn, which rests in the valley below, under the southern shade of the Hambleton Hills. In the course of time this Tom Taylor grew up, and, becoming dissatisfied with the narrowness of his sphere, imitated Dick Whittington by setting off to the modern Babylon, where he was so fortunate as to amass a fortune. In his wanderings he saw the "White Horse of Berkshire," and then it occurred to him that he might do worse than take a copy of it, and so provide a permanent memento of his connection with Kilburn in |