old tree. These half-hours were always grateful; and conscious that the tree drew me to it I questioned myself as to the reason. It was, I told myself, nothing but mental curiosity: my interest was a purely scientific one. For how comes it, I asked, that a thorn can grow to a tree and live to a great age in such a situation, on a vast, naked down, where for many centuries, perhaps for thousands of years, the herbage has been so closely fed by sheep as to have the appearance of a carpet, or newly mown lawn? The seed is carried and scattered everywhere by the birds, but no sooner does it germinate and send up a shoot than it is eaten down to the roots; for there is no scent that attracts a sheep more, no flavour it has greater taste for, than that of any forest seedling springing up amidst the minute herbaceous plants which carpet the downs. The thorn, like other organisms, has its own unconscious intelligence and cunning, by means of which it endeavours to save itself and fulfil its life. It opens its first tender leaves under the herbage, and at the same time thrusts up a vertical spine to wound the nibbling mouth; and no sooner has it got a leaf or two and a spine than it spreads its roots all round, and from each of them springs a fresh shoot, leaves and protecting spine, to increase the chances of preservation. In vain ! the cunning animal finds a way to defeat all this strategy, and after the leaves have been bitten off again and again, the infant plant gives up the struggle and dies in the ground. Yet we see that from time to time one survives-one perhaps in a million; but how-whether by a quicker growth

or a harder or more poisonous thorn, an unpalatable leaf, or some other secret agency-we cannot guess. First as a diminutive scrubby shrub, with numerous iron-hard stems, with few and small leaves but many thorns, it keeps its poor flowerless frustrate life for perhaps half a century or longer, without growing more than a couple of feet high; and then, as by a miracle, it will spring up until its top shoots are out of reach of the browsing sheep, and in the end it becomes a tree with spreading branches and fully developed leaves, and flowers and fruit in their

season.

THE

EMPTY HOUSE

BY MAURICE HEWLETT

THE gate is padlockt, and the blinds
Close-drawn, the chimney's task is o'er;
Pity the traveller who finds

His journey's ending at this door.

How still, how watchful! Like a grave It keeps the secret in its hold;

The very tree-tops fear to wave, very shadows are acold.

The

Come in the garden. Cabbage stalks
Wither'd and bleacht in sorry rows;
But arabis aligns the walks,

And still the golden wallflower blows;

And tangled o'er the apple-stump
A budding Gloire or Maiden Blush ;
And there's a thriving lily-clump,
And ribes still a burning bush.

Tread lightly, for this place is haunted :
Who knows what guarded eyes might peer

Between those curtain-folds enchanted?

The ghost of Love inhabits here.

Those curtains, poor and yet discreet-
I know not how they hold the air

Of hearts that must have loved and beat,
And drawn each other up the stair!

Pass lightly, lest the dead should waken ;
Ask no more questions, lest the dumb
Should tell of love forsworn, forsaken :
Respect this house of shadows-come.

If, in the fall of the leaves, many wither on the boughs and hang there, it betokens a frosty winter and much snow.

When the hern or bittern flies low, the air is gross, and thickening into showers.

The frogs' much croaking in ditches and pools, &c., in the evening, foretells rain in little time to follow also, the sweating of stone pillars or tombs denotes rain.

The often doping or diving of water fowl foreshows rain is at hand.

The peacock's much crying denotes rain.

Rain before seven, fine before eleven.

A mackerel sky and mare's tails
Make lofty ships carry low sails.

AT this time Miss Williams, as she was then called, though she did not reside with him in the Temple under his roof, but had lodgings in Boltcourt, Fleet-street, had so much of his attention, that he every night drank tea with her before he went home, however late it might be, and she always sat up for him. This, it may be fairly conjectured, was not alone a proof of his regard for her, but of his own unwillingness to go into solitude, before that unseasonable hour at which he had habituated himself to expect the oblivion of repose. Dr. Goldsmith, being a privileged man, went with him this night, strutting away, and calling to me with an air of superiority, like that of an esoterick over an exoterick disciple of a sage of antiquity, "I go to see Miss Williams." I confess, I then envied him this mighty privilege, of which he seemed so proud; but it was not long. before I obtained the same mark of distinction.

On Tuesday the 5th of July, I again visited Johnson. He told me he had looked into the poems of a pretty voluminous writer, Mr. (now Dr.) John Ogilvie, one of the Presbyterian ministers of Scotland, which had lately come out, but could find