dinner-the one dinner of fresh meat for the week-all sat down; and a happy meal it was, with no lack even of dainties for there was a flowing bowl of cream to make palatable the hard suet pudding, and a large vinegar-bottle with notches in the cork to besprinkle the cabbage, and a Dutch cheese-and if I dream not, a taste from a flask that immerged mysteriously from a corner cupboard. Then came the cricket and trap-ball of Southern England, yawns in the twilight, a glimmering candle, the chapter in the Family Bible, and an early bed.

The morning of Monday was a busier scene. I was roused at six; but the common breakfast was over. The skillet had been boiled at five; the farmer was off to sell a calf; the ploughmen had taken their teams a-field. The kitchen was solitary. I should have thought myself alone in that world, but for a noisy companionship of chickens and ducklings, that came freely in to pick the crumbs off the floor. I wandered into the farm-yard, ankle deep in muck. In a shed I found my hostess, not disdaining to milk her petted cows. Her hand and her eye were every where-from the cow-stall to the dairy, from the hen's nest to the fatting-coop. Are there any such wives left amongst us ?

Bloomfield has described the milking-time, pretty much as I saw it in those primitive days:

'Forth comes the Maid, and like the morning smiles;
The Mistress, too, and follow'd close by Giles.

A friendly tripod forms their humble seat,
With pails bright scour'd and delicately sweet.
Where shadowing elms obstruct the morning ray-
Begins their work, begins the simple lay;
The full-charg'd udder yields its willing streams;
While Mary sings some lover's amorous dreams;
And crouching Giles beneath a neighbouring tree
Tugs o'er his pail, and chants with equal glee;
Whose hat with tatter'd brim, of nap so bare,
From the cow's side purloins a coat of hair,
A mottled ensign of his harmless trade,
An unambitious, peaceable cockade.
As unambitious too that cheerful aid

The Mistress yields beside her rosy Maid;

With joy she views her plenteous reeking store,
And bears a brimmer to the dairy door;

Her cows dismiss'd, the luscious mead to roam,

Till eve again recall them loaded home.'

After the milking-time was the breakfast for the good wife and for Mary.' Twice a week there was churning to be done; and as the butter came more quickly in the warmth of the kitchen the churn was removed there in that chilly spring-time. There was no formal dinner on week-days in that house. The loaf stood upon the table, with a vast piece of bacon, an abundant supply of which rested upon a strong rack below the ceiling. Some of the men had taken their dinner to the distant field; another or so came carelessly in, and cutting a huge slice of the brown bread and the home-cured, pulled out what was called a pocket-knife, and despatched the meal with intense enjoyment. At three, the ploughmen returned home. That was an hour of delight to me, for I was privileged to ride a horse to water in a neighbouring pond. The afternoon, as far as I remember, was one of idleness. In the gloaming (why should we not Anglicise the word?) the young men slid into the kitchen. The farmer sat reading, the wife knitting. There was a corner in the enormous chimney, where I dwelt apart, watching the turf-smoke as it curled up the vast chasm. There was no assumption of dignity in the master when a song was called for. How well do I remember that song of Dibdin—

'I left my poor plough to go ploughing the deep!'

That song told of a war-time, and of naval dangers and glories; and the chorus was roared out as if the inconstant wind' was a very jolly thing, and the carfindo' who tempted the ploughman for to go and leave his love behind,' not at all a bad fellow.

I read The Farmer's Boy' after I was familiar with the farmer's kitchen. It is worth reading now, if it were only for its picture of a past age. Even at that time the Harvest Home was becoming ungenteel :

'Here once a year Distinction lowers its crest,
The master, servant, and the merry guest,
Are equal all; and round the happy ring
The reaper's eyes exulting glances fling,
And, warm'd with gratitude, he quits his place,
With sun-burnt hands and ale-enliven'd face,
Refills the jug his honour'd host to tend,
To serve at once the master and the friend;
Proud thus to meet his smiles, to share his tale,
His nuts, his conversation, and his ale.

Such were the days-of days long past I sing,
When Pride gave place to Mirth without a sting;
Ere tyrant customs strength sufficient bore
To violate the feelings of the poor;

To leave them distanc'd in the madd'ning race,
Where'er Refinement shows its hated face:
Nor causeless hated;-'tis the peasant's curse,
That hourly makes his wretched station worse;
Destroys life's intercourse; the social plan
That rank to rank cements, as man to man:
Wealth flows around him, Fashion lordly reigns;
Yet poverty is his, and mental pains.

*

*

Our annual feast, when Earth her plenty yields,
When crown'd with boughs the last load quits the fields,
The aspect still of ancient joys puts on;
The aspect only, with the substance gone:
The self-same Horn is still at our command,
But serves none now but the plebeian hand;
For home-brew'd Ale, neglected and debased,
Is quite discarded from the realms of taste.
Where unaffected Freedom charm'd the soul,
The separate table and the costly bowl,

Cool as the blast that checks the budding Spring,
A mockery of gladness round them fling.'

Were I to see that homestead once more, I have no doub I should find, like the grandsire of Crabbe's poem, that 'all is changed.' The scenes which live in my recollection can never come back; nor is it fitting that they should. With the primitive simplicity there was also a good deal of primitive waste and carelessness. Except in the dairy. dirt and litter were the accompaniments of the rude house. keeping. The fields were imperfectly cultivated; the

headlands were full of weeds; there was one meadow close to the house, called the Pitle (still a Norfolk word), in which I assiduously, but vainly, worked with a little hoe at defying thistles. I have no doubt that all is changed,' or the farm would be no longer a farm. The neglect belonged to the times of the dear loaf. The 'refinement' of Bloomfield really means the progress of improvement.

Sir John Dinely.

WINDSOR, AS IT WAS.

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My earliest recollections of Windsor are exceedingly lightful. I was born within a stone's throw of the Castle gates; and my whole boyhood was passed in the most un restrained enjoyment of the venerable and beautiful objects by which I was surrounded, as if they had been my ow peculiar and proper inheritance. The king and his family lived in a plain barrack-looking lodge at his castle foot, which, in its external appearance and its interior arrange