beautiful as her poet's dreams! Further on stands Broadway, and sure we were at first sight that it was Stratford. There was an Inn, that must be "the Garter;" there were houses most like that in which Shakspere himself was born; peaked, and quaint and venerable; there were men just like Falstaff, Bardolph, and Slender, and women resembling Dame Quickly, and fair Ann Page, and merry Mrs. Ford. Entering the Inn we could not help calling to mind the comical scene between Falstaff and the hostess :

Falstaff. What is the gross sum I owe thee.

Hostess.—Marry if thou wert an honest man, thyself and the money too. Thou didst swear to me upon a parcel-gilt goblet, sitting in my Dolphin-chamber, at the round table, by a sea-coal fire, upon Wednesday in Whitsun week, when the Prince broke thy head for likening his father to a singing-man of Windsor, thou didst swear to me then as I was washing thy wound, to marry me, and make me my lady thy wife. Canst thou deny it? Did not good wife Keech the butcher's wife, come in then and call me gossip Quickly? coming in to borrow a mess of vinegar; telling us she had a good dish of prawns; whereby thou didst desire to eat some; whereby I told thee they were ill for a green wound; and didst thou not when she was gone down stairs, desire me to be no more so familiarity with such poor people; saying that ere long they should call me madam? and didst thou not kiss me, and bid me fetch thee thirty

shillings? I put thee now to thy book-oath, deny it if thou canst."-HENRY IV. Act II. Scene I.

Nor was our strong impression of the similarity of these scenes to representations in Shakspere's plays unfounded, for on inquiring we found that Stratford on Avon, the birth-place of the Immortal Bard, was only some twelve miles distant! And now proceed we on foot to Middle Hill. We ascend the tall range of Hills above Broadway, and reach the Fish Inn, a strange place, strangely adorned with some enormous fish, which we defy any man to describe as shark, cod, turbot or salmon; where we enquired our rout. Proceeding according to instructions we came to a fine, old tower perched on the summit of the hills, and commanding a grand view of thirteen counties, comprising the romantic Malvern hills and the misty summits of the remote mountains of Wales. A little further amid the thick shelter of the woods, where at our approach hundreds of rooks sailed upwards from their dwellings, filling all the heavens with their ancient voices, a language old as the Ark, and unchanged as the Jews-and at length we came into the park immediately fronting the mansion of my learned and hospitable friend. It is needless to speak of the appetite with which I sat down to a breakfast (for it was still only breakfast time) of coffee and tea, ham and eggs, mutton chops and beef-steaks, kidney and brawn, rolls, muffins, toast and cake, a breakfast just such as a coach passenger who had travelled thirty miles in the

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cold morning air, might be presumed heartily to relish. Breakfast finished, the first question was "Will you hunt to-day?" Our reply may be guessed. The luggage having arrived from Broadway, we soon made a trifling change in our outer man.

And here they come the gallant steeds, joyous as their riders, at the approach of their accustomed sport! how beautifully their nostrils snuff the morning breath; sleek as silken down their glistening skins; neat and clean their tapering fetlocks; the veins full and sinuous run along the polished head; and those eyes instinet with life and vigour seem as if human intelligence beamed within their orbs. A playful salute of female voices bids the worthy baronet, a morning farewell. Upward we ascend among the tall ancestral trees, through dim poetic avenues, till we reach the higher range. Here is a sight to gladden and cheer the eye. At least two hundred gallant redcoats are assembled, a fine, bold, manly race of men, inured to hardy sports, and eager alike to join in the noble pastime beloved by their forefathers peculiar to the genius of Englishmen-such as made the bold riders of Crecy and Agincourt-conquerors for future Blenheims, Talaveras, Waterloos. And lo, what a splendid array of hounds, broad-chested, strong-limbed, richly marked with black and yellow, images of beauty and vigour. Here again we discover a trace of Shakspere's early life :

'My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,

So flew'd so sanded; and their heads are hung
With ears that sweep away the morning dew:
Crook-knee'd and dewlapp'd like Thessalian bulls;
Slow in pursuit but match'd in mouth like bells
Each under each. A cry more tuneable

Was never holloa'd to, nor cheer'd with horn,

In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly; Judge when you hear."

Nor is it long before the gallant pack are in cover. Lord Fitzhardinge, a fine specimen of an English nobleman, with the bearing of the old Norman descent on his brow and in his eyes, is himself huntsman to-day. These are splendid woods, and thick, wide-spread, lurking places for sly reynard. But if there is a fox in Worcestershire, he cannot escape this determined pack. Away they gallop, keen as foumarts, and rapacious as wolves, cheered on by the well-known voice of their master; and now, hark it is, it is,-Tally-ho! tally-ho! tally ho! away he goes! Help us again, good Shakspere : "I was with Hercules and Cadmus once,

When in a wood of Crete they bay'd the bear, With hounds of Sparta: never did I hear Such gallant chiding; for, besides the groves, The skies, the fountains, every region near Seemed all one mutual cry: I never heard So musical a discord, such sweet thunder." And, truly, as on this day, I never before so deeply enenjoyed

-the musical confusion

Of hounds and echo in conjunction."

They are off, onward, onward like steeds of fire over the fallows, over the young wheat, over hedge and ditch, and those terrible stone walls which the horses leap by instinct with drawn-up hoofs, past the tower, past the picturesque mansion at Middle Hill, through the woods, through the shaded avenues, up the precipitous side of the hills, along the wide open downs :—— Away! away my steed and I,

Upon the pinions of the wind,
All human dwellings left behind;
We sped like meteors through the sky,
When with its crackling sound the night
Is chequered with the northern light:
Towns,-villages-none were on our track,
But a wild height of far extent,

And bounded by a forest black."-Mazeppa. And joyful is the hunter's pastime. He rises fresh in the morning, prepares himself for his darling sport with as much pride as a fashionable belle for the ballroom, and when he mounts his horse, feels all the full independence of a man, elate and vigorous and joyous, like a giant refreshed with wine. If he have an ear for music, what so sweet as the merry peal from the eagerthroated hounds. If an admirer of the picturesque, what more delightful than the sweet patches of scenery, the airy uplands, the lonely secluded glens, the panora