and died, and taught their children how to enjoy life and meet death, as befitted the "free-born Englishman.” We have culled from poets and writers who lived in the "Olden time," and from a few of our own day who have studied the past, fome deicriptions of the sports, the paftimes, and the occupations of our forefathers, even when living amid wars and rumours of wars, civil diffenfions, and much perhaps that might well have been spared for history to record. Our pen and pencil "sketches of the olden times" are not submitted as finished pictures; our object is merely to present to this utilitarian age fome features of the "merrie days" of our ancestors. THE TERRACE, CAMBERWELL. E. McD. NOAH'S ARK—A DRAMATIC MYSTERY E. H. Corbould. E. Wimperis . 30 40 48 Joseph Nash H. Harral. 339 W. Thomas 54 Initial Letters and Ornaments designed by HARRY ROGERS and T. MACQUOID. 000000000000 HERE are few, if any fcenes in England 200000000006 which are more fuggeftive of the "merrie" days of the paft, than the picturesque villages which are to be met with in every part of our country. Not only do they convey to the mind pleasant pictures of rural life, of healthy occupations, of fimple pleafures, and contented minds; but they carry us back in imagination to the days when poets fang the charms of peafant life, and Spenfer told the loves of fhepherdeffes, and the wooings of "gentle herdfmen." Who has not been charmed with the fight of an English village, neftling amid the B |