and pleasure, that the diversified scenes of this fine park were surveyed on that day-pain at the devastation produced by one day's snow-pleasure in the sight of the fair flowers and trees bursting into vernal beauty, as if eager to outgrow and efface, by their luxuriance, the temporary check that vegetation had sustained. It was truly the union of the hopefulness of spring with the ravages of winter-emblematic of human life, with its smiles and tears, its mingled sorrows and joys.

out since the storm occurred, anxious to ascertain of snow. It was, therefore, with feelings of pain the fate of my feathered favorites, in this unlookedfor visitation of churlish winter. The effects have been serious to the nesting birds, particularly the ground-builders, as larks, grouse, &c. A handsome cock whinchat had been brought to me, starved to death, and numbers of eggs were found cold in the deserted nests. To my great surprise, on passing down the fields to the Old Mill, I found the birds were neither chilled into torpitude, nor voiceless. The tree pipit, green linnet, and storm-cock, were singing merrily about the gardens and fields. The snow was fast melting away from the neighboring slopes, but laid white and cold on the distant hills: there having been a partial frost during both nights after the snow. An unusually large flood had filled the Dearne valley. The water still covered the Fleets like a miniature lake. Rooks, skylarks, meadow pipits, swallows and thrushes, were flying over the waters, or picking up insects or worms on patches which the flood had left. On the near bushes, the whinchat, the sedge warbler, the willow wren, and the jenny wren were singing merrily; and in the Cliff Wood, lower down, the blackbird, the whitethroat, and the blackcap, were tuning their mellow pipes; as if no unseasonable visitation had but a few hours before taken place, leaving its traces still on the fresh leaves and blossoms of spring.

May 16.-I accompanied the Temperance Procession to Stainbro' Park. The visitors were, as usual, not numerous in the fore part of the day; but before evening were estimated at 1,500 to 2,000. The amount taken at the gates, at the small admission fee, was near £15, leaving a profit of £7 clear, towards the beneficent object of the society. The day was as fine as could be desired for this exhilarating and rational mode of spending Whitsun holidays.

In sad contrast to this genial weather, and the budding promises of summer, were the devastating traces of the late heavy snow-storm. The fine beech trees we had so much admired the week before, one below the canal partially leafed, and the one a little beyond the bridge, which we had contemplated as a perfect model of this noble tree, so ample in bulk, the trunk being about twelve feet in diameter, and so graceful in the proportion of its bold, leafy branches,-exhibited now a sad wreck of their former beauty and stateliness. In taking the round of the park, to preserve order among the "irregulars" always mingling in such companies, restraining the juveniles from pelting the swans, or running the timid hares and deer,-I found constant traces of the devastating storm.

The branches of many trees of the rookeries in the menagerie, and amid the tall oaks near Queen Anne's Lodge, were broken down by the weight of snow, increased by the quantity of nests they supported. In many cases, the branches, nests, and young birds, had come down in a confused mass. The ravages made on the trees near the Gamekeeper's cottage were still greater; but this was said to be nothing to the destruction experienced in the woods about Rockley. The splendid avenues of beeches, the admiration of all beholders, had many of their finest branches-some of them comparable to trees in themselves-fairly borne down on all sides by the superincumbent masses

I had little leisure to search for rare birds; the nuthatch abounded in the pleasure-grounds. The pied flycatcher was yet invisible, as on my last visit. The late cold, changeful weather, may have retarded its arrival in this its only haunt in our neighborhood. Beyond the temple, I saw some boys pelting what they called "jinties," one of their names for the jenny wren. that they were the tree-creepers, running busily I soon perceived around the boles of the huge oaks. I let the lads which softened down their persecuting instinct see them through the telescope; the amusement of into a sort of admiration for these tiny interesting creatures. The Gamekeeper, who had supplied me with some eggs of daws and other birds, had reserved for me the eggs of what he called the blue hawk, which he, with the fatal antipathy of his profession, had shot on the nest, but not captured. Comparing them with Morris's colored plates, I ascertained at once that they belonged to the sparrow-hawk, the blue tint on the back of the male bird gaining it the above title. It could be no other bird; as the blue hawk, the hen harrier, setting aside the color of the eggs, would not have been found here-it having become, with many more of its doomed race, extinct in this country, owing to the rapacity of scientific collectors, and the undying hate of game protectors.

This keeper maintains that the kestrel preys on birds as well as mice. He is backed out by others of his class, one of whom states that he has seen the kestrel devouring a partridge: unless the merlin or hobby, both of which occur, though rarely, in this part, has been mistaken for this bird, the statement is at variance with the views of most writers. I lean to the book opinion, that with respect to destroying game, this hawk is as harmless as it is handsome.

We have also the testimony of the most observing field-naturalist, Waterton, as to its harmlessness, and utility to the farmer and landed proprietor. The excellent remarks of his, quoted in the article on Persecuted Animals by Dr. Morris, editor of the Naturalist, appearing in KIDD's pleasing JOURNAL OF NATURAL HISTORY, are surely sufficient to settle this point, both with the learned and unlearned world.

What with vulgar prejudices, and wanton destructiveness towards eggs and birds, encouraged instead of being checked by the scientific in their over-anxiety for making collections, and a grudging jealousy of losing a few brace of game, our hawks and eagles will follow the fate of the vanishing bittern and extinct bustard; and instead of being admired in their living state, be known only to a future race, like the dinorsis of New Zealand, by their wasting skeletons.

T. LISTER.

WIVES, USEFUL AND USELESS. Whoso findeth a good wife, findeth a good thing. SOLOMON.

WE HAVE NOT FAILED TO ACKNOWLEDGE on several occasions, the obligations we have been under to a certain writer in "Bentley's Miscellany" for a smart hint or two on the present alarming state of society.

prohibits any young lady to shine in the useful or domestic arts. People of the present day see no charms in a quiet, "happy home ;" and as to the term "domestic wife' woe be to him who has the temerity to utter it in "genteel" society! His sentence would be banishment, from that day forward.

It seems sad to us, that the word "domestic" should be so universally despised. Nor can we see any just cause for a man or woman being so thoroughly hated for their being

Again do we register our friend's happy thoughts, and this time, his arrow is levelled at Modern Education. He has cleft the bull's-"home-birds." eye right in twain. Listen!

Look here! behold these twenty-seven advertisements from people wanting pupils; the greatest drug in the advertising market is education. We are too clever by half now-a-days; everybody, in their own opinion, can teach anybody. Here's a lot of knowledge for twenty guineas a year, extras included! French, German, washing, board, lodging, music, drawing, Calisthenics-what's that?-geometry, arithmetic, and the use of the globes? Why, its dog_cheap-too much by half for the money. Old Peacham in "The Beggar's Opera," who wondered how any man alive should ever rear a daughter, must, with respect, have been a fool; when daughters can be instructed in everything for nothing, we wonder who wouldn't rear scores of daughters if he could get them off his hands.

But there's the difficulty; for, when a man comes to choose a wife in this worky-day world, bis object, in nine cases out of ten, is to get a woman who will strive to make a shilling do duty for eighteenpence, who will attend to her household, watch over her family, and not be above doing her duty; and we think we can see in these multifarious accomplishments of the present day, and the necessary neglect of that solid practical education which gives woman a position of utility, the reasons why daughters, now-a-days, are stock slow of sale, and apt to hang heavily on hand.

Who on earth, unless he be a fool, or a man of fortune, can abide to sit down to an ill-dressed dinner in a slatternly house, with the bitter relish for his victuals from the knowledge that his "lady," at a five-and-twenty pound boarding-school, has acquired an appreciable quantity of French, Italian, German, Calisthenics (which I suppose is some other outlandish lingo), geometry, or globes? Pickling, preserving, cooking, making and repairing her children's dresses and her own, and a knowledge of the use and economy of money, are things a marrying man can understand and appreciate, particularly if he is under the necessity, as most of us are, of earning his own bread; and this, I think, is the reason that sundry friends of ours, despising boarding-school accomplishments, airs, and graces, have gone down to the country, and brought up wives who had learned by experience of their respectable mothers, the art of presiding over a "comfortable home," and who-to their credit be it spoken-don't know the difference between the Italian and Irish, or could not distinguish Calisthenics from Carlotta Grisi.

Our friend is a bold man, to speak heretical language such as this. Fashion strictly

There are some points on which we set Fashion at defiance. Those we have hinted at are among the number. With our dying breath, we shall sing of

Home-sweet Home!

and seek no "fashionable" hand to close our eyes.

THE CHARMS OF POETRY.

The world is FULL of Poetry. The air
Is living with its spirit. The waves, too,
Dance to the music of its melodies,
And sparkle in its brightness.

PERCIVAL.

IT IS WITH THE POET'S CREATIONS AS WITH NATURE's,-great or small, wherever and answer to some demand for it in our truth and beauty can be shaped into verse, hearts, there poetry is to be found; whether in productions grand and beautiful-as some great event, or some mighty, leafy solitude, or no bigger and more pretending than a sweet face or a bunch of violets-whether in Homer's Epic or Gray's Elegy, in the enchanted gardens of Ariosto and Spenser, or the very pot-herbs of the "Schoolmistress" of Shenstone. Not to know and feel this, is to be deficient in the universality of Nature herself, who calls upon us to admire all her productions.

What the poet has to cultivate above all things is-love and truth. What he has to avoid like poison is the fleeting and the false. His earnestness must be innate and habitual; born with him, and felt to be his most precious inheritance.

auditors who think themselves called upon Treatises on Poetry may chance to have to vindicate the superiority of what is termed useful knowledge; but if the poet be allowed to pique himself on any one thing more than another, compared with those who undervalue him, it is on that power of undervaluing nobody and no attainments different from his own, which is given him by the very faculty they despise. The greatest includes the less. They do not see that their inability to comprehend him argues the smaller capacity.

No man recognises the worth of utility more than the poet; he only desires that the

i

WE GAVE, IN OUR LAST, a racy descrip-
The fol-
tion of "A Village Tea-Party.'
lowing gem from the same pen, is equally
worthy of a "setting" in our columns.

person on whose plate it lies unused, sud-
denly breaks off a piece of toast (which he
does not want at all) and eats up his butter.
They think that this is not waste."

Is this not a rich morceau of its kind?
We can, many of us, point out the very
person indicated, and say "Thou art the

FLOWERS ON THE TOMB.

BY HELEN HETHERINGTON.

Oh, let the sweetest flowers bloom,
To breathe an incense o'er the tomb
Where soft winds gently sigh,-
Let myrtle, and forget-me-not,
And cypress mark the sacred spot,

I have often noticed, says Mrs. Gaskell,
that almost every one has his own indivi-man ! ”
dual small economies-careful habits of
saving fractions of pennies in some one pecu-
liar direction-any disturbance of which
annoys him more than spending shillings or
pounds on some real extravagance. An old
gentleman of my acquaintance, who took
the intelligence of the failure of a Joint-
Stock Bank, in which some of his money
was invested, with stoical mildness, worried
his family all through a long summer's day,
because one of them had torn (instead of
cutting) out the written leaves of his now
useless bank-book. Of course, the corres-
ponding pages at the other end came out
as well; and this little unnecessary waste
of paper (his private economy) chafed him
more than all the loss of his money.

Envelopes fretted his soul terribly when
they first came in. The only way in which
he could reconcile himself to such a waste
of his cherished article was, by patiently
turning inside out all that were sent to him,
and so making them serve again. Even now,
though tamed by age, I see him cast wistful
glances at his daughters when they send a
whole instead of a half sheet of note-paper,
with the three lines of acceptance to an in-
vitation written on only one of the sides.

I am not above owning that I have this
String is my
human weakness myself.
foible. My pockets get full of little hanks
of it, picked up and twisted together, ready
I am seriously
for uses that never come.
annoyed if any one cuts the string of a
parcel, instead of patiently and faithfully
undoing it fold by fold. How people can
bring themselves to use India-rubber rings,
which are a sort of deification of string, as
lightly as they do, I cannot imagine. To me
an India-rubber ring is a precious treasure.
I have one which is not new; one that I
picked up off the floor, nearly six years ago.
I have really tried to use it; but my heart
failed me, and I could not commit the extra-
vagance.

Small pieces of butter grieve others.
They cannot attend to conversation, because
of the annoyance occasioned by the habit
which some people have of invariably taking
Have you not
more butter than they want.
seen the anxious look (almost mesmeric)
on the article?
which such persons fix
They would feel it a relief if they might
bury it out of their sight, by popping it into
their own mouths, and swallowing it down.
And they are really made happy if the

Where friends and kindred lie!
It is a rest for those who weep;
Calmly and peacefully they sleep,

Beneath the bright blue sky:
They know no care, they fear no foe,
They leave this joyless world below

For endless bliss on high.

Oh, plant upon the friendly tomb
The fairest, sweetest flowers that bloom
Beneath the summer's sky;

A faithful vigil they will keep,
And sympathise with those who weep,
Where friends and kindred lie!
Yes, plant the sweetest flowers there;
None are too delicate or fair
Το
that sacred rest.
grace
Oh, waft a fragrance o'er the grave,
Where calmly sleep the good, the brave,
The dearest and the best.

Friends of the mourner! smile and bless
The heart that feels its loneliness!

Oh, lead their thoughts on high!
Point to that happy land above,
Where we shall meet with those we love,
To live and never die!

THE MODESTY OF TRUE GREATNESS.

THE modesty of great minds, like their tendency to rest, generates an apparent inconsistency, at which vulgar observers are amazed. It is a dissonance full of sweetness and power; but pleasing to well-taught ears.

For just as there is an alternation between the love of repose and the desire of action, so is there also in noble spirits a counterpoise between the consciousness of superior power and native high quality, and the characteristic humility or meekSuch are the changes in a spring day, when ness. the sun, returning to our hemisphere, and about to is seen contending with the heavy exhalations of put forth anew the generative fervor of summer, earth.

For awhile, these vapors gather over the Heavens and darken the landscape; but at length they divide, and even while tepid showers are falling, the source of light is revealed in all his effulgence; and yet only to be seen again veiled in the mists his own rays have drawn into the sky.