abolish gardens, groves, and warbling dales, to substitute streets, squares, and alleys. William loved meadow and mountain, moss and moor, autumnal shrubberies and vernal woods. Buggins goes in for lath and plaster band-boxes, which he calls "villas," and which shake when the cat sneezes. "Buggins, you are an imposter! William, you are a gentleman!" So saying, I laid me down recumbent upon the greensward, beneath the shade of a venerable oak, which flourished luxuriantly hundreds of years before I was born, and will doubtless continue so to flourish hundreds of years after I shall be dust. I fell into a romantic reverie, and gave free reins to my vagabond Fancy, who, as is her wont, led me a pretty dance. I closed my eyes in blissful meditation, envying the lot of those unsophisticated rustics whose happy fate it is to dwell under the greenwood tree, far from the madding crowd and the busy haunts of men. “Perish Piccadilly! A fig for Charing Cross! Down with Buggins! Up with the Conqueror!" were the last words that escaped my lips ere I sank into an enchanting slumber. There is no knowing how long I might have slept, dreaming placidly of Robin Hood and his merry men, and instituting invidious comparisons between the vitreous arcades of the Burlington and the leafy colonnades of "No Man's Walk," had I not been suddenly awakened by the sensation of something cold and clammy upon my cheek. It was a frog! At the same moment I felt a strange twitching in moustache, as of a creature struggling to get free. It was a daddy-long-legs who would not say his prayers. I gazed wildly around me, and what, think you, did I see? Horror of horrors! an adder within five inches of my nose! Meanwhile my cow had strayed into Anderwood Inclosure, and

my

was lowing wailingly. "Ah, well!" quoth I, as I sprang to my feet in terror, "it is not all paradise even in the Forest. Piccadilly has its privileges, and there is something to be said for Charing Cross, after all."

Next day we went to Minstead. By "we" I mean my cow and I. I picked her up, or to speak more properly, she picked me up, upon the Brocklehurst road, right opposite the "Crown and Stirrup " Inn. Hoping to get round her with kind words, and so induce her to quit me, I addressed her in the words of that most musical of all poets, my friend George Caswell :

"Oh! my heart is a forest calm and deep,

Where the sunbeams play and the shadows sleep,
And it echoes with melodies sweet and rare,
And thou art the nightingale warbling there."

That is what I said to my cow, adding a polite request that she would go to the devil and leave me alone; but she would not. She evidently did not care to be called a nightingale, and to prove that she was not one began to low furiously. The case was hopeless. So on we trudged together, I and this Ruth of a cow, all the way to Minstead Manor, to see the stone that marks the spot where our king, hers and mine, was surreptitiously murdered. The beauty of it is that it is no stone at all, but an iron column of cubical form, bearing this inscription:-"Here stood the oak tree on which an arrow, shot by Sir Walter Tyrrell, glanced and struck King William II., surnamed Rufus, on the breast, of which he instantly died, on the 2d day of August 1100. King William II., surnamed Rufus, being slain as before related, was laid in a cart, belonging to one Purkess, and drawn from hence to Winchester, and buried in the cathedral

church of that city. That where an event so memorable had happened should not be hereafter unknown this stone is set up by John, Lord Delaware, who had seen the tree growing in this place." So runs the story as told by Rufus's "Stone," with what amount of truth let historians decide. It says something for the interest attaching from generation to generation to matters monarchical in this inviolate island of ours, that the name of the man upon whose cart the dead body of a king was carried to its resting-place should have survived for so many centuries. It will doubtless survive till the last syllable of recorded time. He was one Purkess;" and a lineal descendant of his is supposed to be still living in the Forest. . . . On my way home I wandered many miles out of my due course, but had the good luck to give the cow the slip. It was pleasant to do so, but the pleasure will be marred if the reader makes a pun on the word cowslip. He is respectfully requested not to do so.

66

G

COQUETRY.

HE success which has hitherto attended the

movement for the obliteration of sex in

the human race has not been such as to warrant hopes that the most distinctive division of mankind will speedily cease to exist. Though lady-like men and gentleman-like ladies are unquestionably on the increase, it does not seem likely that, at least for some time to come, it will be a matter of positive speculation whether a casual acquaintance of the railway-carriage or walk is a gentleman or a lady. Without diving to a depth of scientific research that would perhaps be fatiguing to some of the readers of this essay, it may be assumed that in the present state of knowledge it would be difficult to find a substitute for the Angelic Sex. Consequently, while the distinction lasts, a review of the attitude and behaviour towards each other of the two opposite, but not always antagonistic sections of humanity, may not be unprofitable. Bearing in mind the indispensable relations of the sexes, the most rigid precisian will scarcely deny that it is only natural, and therefore excusable, that they should endeavour to please each other. This seems obvious. Dependent as they are on each other's favourable opinion for so much that makes life endurable, or even possible, that they should endeavour to

appear to the best advantage in each other's eyes is a logical sequence. This is so self-apparent as to be evident not only to all reasoning creatures, but even, in the germinal form of instinct, to creatures who do not reason. Hence comes coquetry, which may be defined as an exaggerated desire to please. "Egregious vanity, more likely!" I hear muttered from between the clenched teeth of my amanuensis. Ah! mon beau, monsieur, I pity you. I, too, have suffered, and from the inmost recesses of my bleeding heart my sympathies well forth. Poor fellow! "Stabbed with a white wench's black eye, shot through the ear" with a whisper; and the wounds rankle yet, but never mind, "after you've been fired at once or twice" more, your heart will become much tougher and less nice. Above all, don't interrupt the stage. No doubt coquetry becomes sometimes a disease, a delusion, but that we should rather pity than condemn, proceeding as it does from too ambitious a desire to gratify the other sex. Probably no woman can eternally please more than one man, and of course she does not

try to do so. She only endeavours to be agreeable during your momentary association, and what better means can you suggest than those she employs,—namely, affecting to be smitten with your perfections? But that, you say, is a fraud. Granted, a pious fraud. What would you have, "Que voulez-vous ?" She cannot be really in love with every man she meets; she cannot divide herself into fragments, and you surely do not want her all to yourself? That would be egotistical. I grant you "that there is not a more fearful wild-fowl living" than your coquette acharnée. She spares no age, no station. She will send a schoolboy home to toss on porcupine