gave evening concerts, at which Rana contrived to be present, and he would sometimes stay a little later than the rest of the audience, and beg Madame Philomel to give him a lesson. As the lady had originally come from France, you may imagine that she had a slight contempt for everything that was not French; but she was wonderfully polite and good-natured.

One evening, after the Parish Clerk had sung to her a song of his own composing, she said, "Ah, my poor little Rana, thy song is well enough, but thy voice is not that of a bird; it hath a hoarse croak belonging to it that must come of the fens and the swamps of Batrachia. Your country is much like a place I once visited called Holland, a land with a hole in it, and where the hole is filled with water. The fog there gets into the throat of the people as it does into thine, and into that of my friend the Duck. You deserve to be a Nightingale, since you are my pupil, but you are so much like these people, that you can never be mistaken for a French singer. You shall be the 'Dutch Nightingale."" And by this name Rana was known for a long time, and his fame actually travelled to France itself, where the Batrachians were. generally spoken of as Dutch Nightingales, as you may see if you read the pages of history in the Middle Ages,-volume eleven hundred and three, chapter nineteen thousand and one.

Of all the birds that Rana knew, the Oozly bird was by far the wisest; she was a downy bird, with very fluffy feathers, short wings, and a large family, and she lived

C

amongst the reeds and rushes by a stream on the northwest side of Toppititti.

The Ancients always supposed the Owl to be the very emblem of wisdom, because the Owl never made known anything at all, but was constantly hooting at other people. You will often find it the case that those who laugh loudest, and hoot longest, at what others say and believe, manage to get a reputation for being very clever. The Ancients, as I said before, and as you very likely know, thought that there was nobody so clever as the Owl. They were many of them great donkeys, those Ancients, and were easily imposed upon by a solemn look and a hookey nose. The fact is, that whatever little sense the Owl had was all spoilt by late hours, and that dreadful habit of sitting up at night, and going to sleep in the morning. The Owl was nothing at last but a stupid old frump, not to be compared even to the Raven, who was a very artful person, or to the Rook, who had taken a living in the Church. But none of them all could equal the Oozly bird. To prove what I say, let me ask you if you have ever seen an Oozly bird in a cage, or shut up in a wire house at the Zoological Gardens, or sitting tame on a perch? No, there never was one caught alive, and nobody but a gentleman named Darwin has ever seen one stuffed, or the skeleton of one. The Oozly bird's legs were green, with great broad feet like a rhubarb leaf, and whenever anybody came near the place, amongst the rushes and weeds where she had set her nest, she and her young ones would plunge head

first down into the mud and ooze at the bottom of the river, with only their legs sticking up, like those that you see coming through the crust of a pigeon pie. As these legs were green and the feet were like rhubarb leaves, they could not be distinguished from weeds. One day an old Botanist thought he should like to take one of these great leaves home with him to put his silkworms in; but he no sooner touched it than his old spectacles were torn off in a moment, and he was obliged to give a man sixpence to take him across the fields to the optician's to buy a new pair.

I wish I had more time to tell you about the Oozly bird, and how in her long life she had come to know almost everything about everybody in and around Batrachia; for though she seldom went very far from Toppititti at the time of which I am writing, she had been a great traveller. Everybody knew that she was connected with very ancient families. She was first cousin. to the Ibises, related on her uncle's side to the Phoenixes, and might, if she had liked to go to the Antipodes, have come into the great Dodo estates; but she didn't. She preferred to stay at Batrachia, eat water-cresses with her tea, and attend to the education of her family. It was wonderful how many things she heard, and how much she knew about the private histories of almost everybody. It was even said that the King himself would sometimes go to see her like a common Batrachian, and take her advice about the national affairs.

She had often encouraged Rana to call on her after

evening school, and to bring his Mandolin to play and sing to the little ones, and so he naturally thought he had better consult her on the subject of his journey.

She gave him a great deal of information about the country round Batrachia, and told him something of the people and of their habits. She advised him to avoid gluttony, which had been the ruin of so many young people; to hear what people had to say before he gave an opinion, and, above all, not to be too ready to talk, especially as it was his business to sing.

What cheered him most, however, was her assurance that Sauriana still loved him, in spite of the Spider; for as she had sat there quietly in her nest she had overheard the Duck, who was in the Spider's confidence, cackling all their secrets, and so had learned that Sauriana was shut up in her own room for refusing to listen to his suit, and being shut up, had gone off into one of those long sleeps to which her family were very subject, and which might perhaps last for days and days before she could be awakened.

"My advice to you, my dear Rana," said the Oozly bird, when she had seen what an effect this last piece of news had upon the young Froglander, "is to set out without delay, and do something worthy of your love, so that when you come back again you may boldly claim the Mayor's daughter as an equal, and defy all the Spiders and all the Sandboys, to say nothing of all the silly Ducks in Batrachia."

"Ah, but what if I can find nothing to do?" said Rana.

"Go and look for it. Nobody ever looked for some duty to be performed without finding out what it was that they must do first.”

"I will go," said the Parish Clerk, “and in the morning there will be no school. When I come back it will be as Rana the Troubadour."

"Will you promise me," said the Oozly bird, in a solemn voice, "that you will never whisper what I am about to tell you till you return. It may be that you can do the King a great service, and I know of no one that I can trust better."

"I promise," said Rana, as tears fell from his eyes upon the friendly pinion that the old bird held out to him. "I will be as loyal to you as to Sauriana herself."

"Have you heard of any troubles at the Court?" asked the Oozly bird, fixing a cautious eye upon him.

He was silent till she took that cautious eye off him again, and then said he knew nothing of any events beyond those that happened in his own village.

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Then," said she, "I will trust you with a state secret. The King's health is not as it used to be, and there has been a clamour amongst the people (who are not satisfied with the game laws which preserve the King's land when he goes out midge-hunting), that he should appoint a successor. You know of course that the infant Prince is only what, if he were a common Batrachian, would be called a Tadpole; but I need not tell you that Royal Families are essentially different from those of the