"Tak it! tak it!' says the divel; 'they'll niver know!'

"But the Lord said in my heart, Dunna tak it, woman, it's none o' thine !'

"Tak it!' again says the divel. "Let it alone!' says the Lord.

ups

"Oh! what a day I had on't; till at last I and rolls the piece together, and off to th' young woman, and flinging it down, says-There ! there's that too much! Away I goes back, thinking then what gladness I should have. But I was mistaken. The divel seemed like a raging going fire. He war at me aw the way home. He seemed to drive me up th' street like a great wind. Well,' said he, and what better art thou now? Art ta any fuller, or any fatter; any richer or any better?' Oh! what a nasty divel it is! Well, well, I mun bear my trials and my temptations, I reckon, like other folks; and learn not to set my heart too much on the things of this world. And that's what that dirty rogue o' a husband o' mine is always telling me; and it's true, but I know why he tells me that,-it's because he wants to find th' owd stocking-full of guineas. But I'll tak precious good care that he doesna. Oh! what a dirty rogue he's been to me, he has driven me to God!"

With this the old dame turned to walk out,

nodding significantly to my friend, but stopping suddenly, she looked at the two halfpenny-worths of red ochre which she held in her hands, and said as to herself," Let me see, which is which? Aye, this is for mysen, it's the biggest-tother's for a neebor!"

IF every man who was brought up in a thoroughly old-fashioned country village, would turn back to the memory of his boyish days, and call to mind the people and their habits that he finds there, what a curious assemblage would they be! Never was there a part of the nation where a more odd set of fellows lived and flourished, than in the very neighbourhood where I was born. have given some good specimens of this free and humoursome race, both in the "Boy's Country Book," and the nooks included in my "Rural Life of England." These were so uncommon, that there were sagacious readers who winked

I

knowingly, and set them down, in their superior sagacity, for inventions of my own; while so true were they, and so immediately recognised in the place itself, that more than one burly son of queer independence threatened hard with actions of libel, but felt the sketches of himself or his fathers so true that he grumbled, bit his lips, and died like the wolf, in silence. As in many another neighbourhood, the flood of population and taste has now rushed in there, washed away many a heap of gathering eccentricities, which time would otherwise have matured into racy richness, and left a bustling, and yet poor generation, where all, fifty years ago, was still as Sleepy Hollow, except when the little knot of its roystering eccentrics made the public-house ring with their fits of laughter, and gave birth to anecdotes which still live and circulate amongst a less old-fashioned tribe. It is time to snatch a few more shadows from the retreating past, and let them live a little longer as they lived in the days of our fathers.

Oh, for a few years of leisure to wander about in the rural districts of Old England; to sit on the bench of the village ale-house, or by the farm or cottage fire, and hear the stories of the country round circulate, as I used to hear them in my boyhood! There would be more knowledge of English country life and character thus brought to

light than has ever yet been so by the keenest or most honest observer. What tales, what jokes, what scenes and characters, has every old villagethat live only there, and die for ever to the world at large! Sunlit side of the odorous haycock; russet and shady side of the corn-shock; sweet shadow of the summer tree, where the labouring rustics and the rustic dames and damsels refresh themselves from their field labours; sunny ingle of farm and hamlet inn! what wealth of wit and humour, story and exhibition of life, do you daily enjoy and then let perish, that would enrich the written page, beyond the proudest stretch of imagination! Where was it but here that Shakspeare picked up his exhaustless affluence of sly humour, quaint adage, flash of rustic wit, snatch of merry or melancholy song, and rare treasury of home knowledge of human nature? What a field for him would have been my native hamlet! What a strange old scene it must have been in my father's time! There was old Squire Fletcher that lived at the Hall, and old Kester Colclough that lived at Godkin House up in the fields; they were the old gentlemen of the place, and the centre of the village knot of merry fellows that made the King of Prussia, the chief ale-house, ring with their mirth. And how often was the mirth at their expense! For there was Dick