more ! to the top of the tent, and I see a stain there; | berries? Could you not let us alone? Was it and I see another; and more and more! And absolutely necessary to remind us of the dear I slip furtively through the canvas-and the old days when Blackberrying was a reality? Let ladies are going or gone, and the sky is blacken- me see: When was it that I went Blackberrying ing or black; and the Rain is upon us once last? It was in the Autumn of 1860: and the scene, North Devon. I state that I went blackberrying; but, in point of fact, I simply bowed to circumstances. He chose to eat blackberries, the fresh and ingenuous lad for whom I had obtained a half-holiday. I accepted my destiny, and watched him do it. I had been spending a sad and moody morning; for on the morrow I had to leave that glorious coast for Byles "On Bills." I had wandered, through slight drizzling rain, up and down the streets of Appledore, and mentally touched my hat to the grand boatmen there-fellows whose gallant deeds in their lifeboat do one's heart good. And I remember wondering, as I walked along, that the inagnificent Subscribing-Public of England, which will give its thousands for the evangelization of oleaginous and malodorous blacks, will not come forward very readily to aid the National Lifeboat Institution. Nobler Institution, for nobler work, to be done by nobler men, has never existed in this land: and it is pitiful, pitiful, to see subscriptions raised at a rate which might almost provide three Missionaries for one Kaffir, whilst such a Society languishes through its paucity of funds. The need is so very urgent! Few of us but have friends at sea: few of us have listened at evening to the dull dim rising of the wind without thoughts of some one dear to us, who might, at that very hour, be drifting and driving, through blinding sleet, before a wild gale, dead on-shore: few of us but have pictured to ourselves that supreme Do I now get excited and enraged? Do I now long for the back-settlements of Wisconsin? In faith, not I. With a considerable amount of cool happiness, I take from my cigar-case a guaranteed Havannah (I always smoke cigars when we seem winning, short black clay-pipes when we appear to be losing), and smoke, and look out upon the pleasant rain-the dear, fresh, quickening shower. I protest it is beautiful. Never mind the match. Some of the unpoetical tribes have already started loo in the back of the tent; but most of us look wistfully upon the shower, and talk critically of the game, and are really not so very unhappy after all. And for myself, looking at summer rain (early autumn rain, rather), and being in want of fresh vivid words to paint it with, I will just fall back upon the charming verses of a young American, gifted alike as Poet and as Painter-Mr. Thomas Buchanan Read. They have been widely quoted already, but will nevertheless be new to some readers; and those who have seen them before will thank me for again reminding them of a poem so charmingly true, so briskly musical, so unaffectedly and sweetly natural: Before the stout harvesters falleth the grain, And loiters the boy in the briery lane; Like a long line of spears brightly burnished and hour, of crisis, of agony, of deliverance, when, tall! after the ship has struck, her crew (lashed to step out. To rain he was callous; for mud he had contempt; for blackberries a keen and irresistible desire. A mad and criminal wish to rush upon him, to pinion him to a tree, and compel him to eat his "faithful dog” instead of blackberries, startled me for a moment; but as I watched his intense enjoyment, as I thought of my own miserably indiscreet indulgences in the same fruit years ago-I sat me down upon a stile, and lit my Meerschaum, and was at peace. at the embers. The little girl whom you can't keep quiet-she will be quiet enough, in good time; quiet enough, awake, in her bed, through the long winter night, when the world and she have grown somewhat more acquainted. There, there: let us get back to our black| berries. Alas, it is somewhat difficult to do so: difficult to call up again, by any effort of remembrance, the feelings and enjoyments of a time which might be a hundred years ago, to judge by its difference from one's present mood. We may even be thankful that we can look back on these things contentedly at all: but we can't reproduce them. The effort to do so is very spasmodic. A man with a ruined digestion and confirmed neuralgia (not the present writer !) running_after a butterfly-you don't often see that! Let us be very grateful for what is left. Yes: a time there was when to go blackberrying was a glory and a joy. Dear, dear! How one used to tear one's clothes, in strainings and strivings to get at some peculiarly tempting cluster! How, with careful hand and beating heart, a stick was gently raised and deftly guided through the brambles, that it might aid us in obtaining some one particular bunch, upon which we had so set our hearts that, | without it, the whole expedition would have More and more grateful do I grow every day seemed a failure. Then we would sit down of my life for one gift-the power to see Beauty (our hands and faces all of a sweet purple) in and to feel enjoyment in ordinary things. This, the cool shade of the hedge we had rifled; and with what I have called the "Tapleyan" feeling, we caught the sound of the brook that went by, will tide a man comfortably over many awkward or watched the men at labour in the fields, and shoals. Nor let me be told that it is merely a thought not of Virgil and recked not of Cocker, beggarly Barmecide-banquet to set the memory and marked not how the hours passed by. to work. I find it a very substantial advantage Well it rained. I don't mind admitting that. indeed. My memory is to me a pictureIt rained: what did it matter? There was a gallery, whereof I alone have the key. I can't glorious elm near us, big enough to shelter half- show the pictures to any one else-haven't the a-dozen more of us: and to the fresh open eyes power to do so: but there they are: I see of a boy, that elm was a glory and a wonder. them: I can look, and look, and look, and not One of us was studying Entomology, and deep grow tired. I see a little village amid the Sussex in that most admirable book "Kirby and Downs; see its flint-houses, see its old pigeonSpence:" well, had he no tales to tell us of the holes, see its older elms. There it rests, cradled. insects that crawled over the old elm's bark? I upon the round grassy bosom of the rolling was then a wee bit of a Botanist, and could talk Downs. I see the Rain falling round it in a "Heptandria" and "Monogynia" with con- heavy, weary shower and I call to mind that siderable fluency-a faculty which I no longer in the one inn of that little village I spent some possess: well, were there not little flowers, to very pleasant hours. It is said that a small villagebe plucked to pieces with a scientific hand, that inn, on a rainy day, must needs be a miserable I might take a census of their pistils and their place to stay at. I deny the assertion. It all destamina, and talk of corolla, and anthers, and pends upon yourself. If you choose to make it calyx, and I know not what? Meanwhile, over miserable, by fretfully stamping to and fro over head, the rain was playing a dance-tune; and the clean-sanded floor and shaking your clenched we, who had been hot and wearied, would make fist at the hostile elements, so be it. Very misudden sallies from under the shelter of the elm, serable, indeed, in such a case, it assuredly will and revel, bare-headed, in the sweet fresh cool be. If you like to go a little further, and to drops. How young animals do enjoy mere life, satirize and snub the landlord because he has to be sure! Kitten or girl, puppy or boy, there nothing in the house but cheese, well and good: is an absolute ecstacy in the very fact of exist- but you are not obliged to do all this. You can ence. To stretch out your little limbs is para- sit down close to the wide chimney, and make disaical to open your eyes an entrance- friends with the landlady-who, the chances are, will be able to tell you some stories, quite worth your hearing, of the old smuggling days. Why, just opposite to you, in the chimney-corner, may be an old man who, years ago, formed one of the gangs who rode inland with their smuggled brandy, and with pistols-which they perfectly well-knew how to use in their pockets. Then, there are the children, who (to-day happens to be Sunday) were about to walk three miles to get some "schooling." Out upon you if you wrap yourself up in your dignity, and refuse to take an interest in the little bullet-headed, ment. "Never still for a moment?"-Why, of course they are never still for a moment, my dear Sir; and why on earth should they be? They will get still enough by-and-bye. There is plenty of time left for inertia. Yonder boy, shouting for mere happiness, and tossing his arms in the air, simply because he must-the time will come, I dare say, when, with a very dismal outlook in life, he will sit, still enough now, before a slowlydying fire, a black pipe in his mouth, black care at his heart, peering wistfully and woefully white-haired, blue-eyed South Saxons! You grumble because you have to stop here? You were glad enough to get in! In comes one as glad-poor Irish tramp, only. Landlady is for stowing him away in an outhouse, poor creature-and I own he is dirty, and unkempt, and unshaven. "There are a great many impostors about". It is perfectly true: but I suppose the Rain is not an imposition? There is no imposition in those dull, yet restless eyes, eyes of a man who has been moving on, and moving on, without any definite object, for God knows how many years-no imposition, I rather think, in that crouching and shivering by the fireside, as though he were taking a liberty in being warmed! Slept under the Batthery, last night, did he― in that rain? Hasn't any money, hasn't he? Probably this is a falsehood; for these wondrous Celts sometimes would rather starve than spend, and will sleep out, during a night when you would not turn a dog to-doors, rather than take fourpence out of some greasy hiding-place to pay for a night's lodging. I know all this: we all know it; and we know that Spirits are a main source of crime: but I think we will give the poor wretch some whiskey, and a shilling, for all that. . . . On my life, there is something that goes to one's very heart in a poor creature's surprise at being kindly treated ! Had you ordered him out, I do not think he would have sworn at you. He is used to be ordered out, you see; and though it is raining hard, and though it grows bitterly cold on these bare Downs, he is used to cold and rain. There are dogs that are used to kicks and blows, and there are men, too; and their faces get to be very much alike, with the same wistful, appealing look in both! I am not very clear that this tramp ever had the chance of being, in certain important matters, much better than the miserable dog who goes limping down the street, and avoids you as if he feared your foot-who skulks along, and seems to know that he is a degraded and a worthless animal, scarcely deserving of human recognition even in the form of kicks.. There is virtue in raw whiskey, Mr, Gough! You might have lectured, in your own peculiarly intemperate style, for a good many hours, to the poor wretch, without doing him so much good as has been done by the contents of that glass! There is a feeble human look in him again. He is rather less like a suffering dumb animal. The rain ceases, and he goes away. My gossip with the landlady draws to a close. Her children, who have honoured me with playful recognition in the shape of pulls, are kind enough to express, with the artless tumult of infancy, their regret at my departure. I assuage it. How glorious is the walk! Bewildering in its beauty is the vivid green of the turf, refreshed by the rain. I drive away the cold by stepping briskly out. The breeze, that blows inland over the Downs from the sea, seems to smite my cheeks, and its every blow to give health! The shepherds are leading their flocks to the fold-a patient, stolid, much-enduring race of men. And after a few hours, I see the lights of the town to which I am bound-and I think of toasted slippers, and a bath, and a bed, and I fairly quicken my pace into a run. It may rain again to-morrow? It did. I was, for eight hours, rained up and snowed up, and windbound, at the CoastGuard Station on Beachy Head. Well? It is not everybody who has the opportunity of passing eight hours there under similar circumstances. Wait till the next storm comes : run down and try it; and, if a true Tapleyan, you will thank me for the hint. CURIOUS EPITAPHS.-Much has been written about the extraordinary epitaphs found on the old graves of eccentric persons. The following has been transcribed by Mr. Hannay, watchmaker, Wyle-cop. It is taken from a brass tablet in a carved oak frame in Julian's Church, in this town:-"The remains of Henry Corser, of this parish, Chirugion, deceased, April the 1st, 1692, and Anne his wife, who followed him the next day after: "We man and wife, A double prize this grave doth finde; The following is a sample of another kind, to the memory of Philip Brace, a painter, who was drowned in the river Severn in the performance of an heroic action: "Twine garlands round the memory of the brave Swift Severn's swollen flood he plunged in, He twice had braved the flood in days of yore, MATERIALS: Fine Crochet Silk, of three harmonizing colours; small gold Buttons, and gold Beads, No. 5. This pen-wiper is made in a sort of crochet patchwork, done in the stitch introduced by ourselves, some two years ago, and called Crochet Cross-stitch; because it appears like cross-stitch worked on canvas. It is done thus: Make a chain in the ordinary way, and work on it one row of sc, in the ordinary way; except that you put the hook over the silk, and draw it through the [Section, full size,] stitch, instead of the usual mode. In future rows, insert the hook under both sides of the chain, instead of one only: you can work backwards and forwards. In this design, every diamond is done in the same way-11 ch, miss 1, work on 10 as above. Turn, miss the first, crochet cross-stitch under the others, doing two stitches in the last, and ending with a chain-stitch. Thus you make one at one end, and miss one at the other, in the alternate rows, to form the diamond |