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for themselves when they are turned into the fields. The late Mr. Philip Pusey (brother to the Regius Professor) was one of their most enthusiastic admirers; and Hewer, Throckmorton, and Bailey, in England; and Joyce, in Ireland, are names which stand very high as breeders of them. They are good, hardy doers, and full of lean sandwich meat. The great thing is to get them with plenty of good, soft hair; and if they only have that, they will always keep their tails well. Reading market is one of the best marts for them, and they change hands there in large numbers every market day. They are good mothers, but many good breeders do not care to have more than three litters from them, as they become heavy and careless after that time, and the litters prove rather unsorty as well. They can be forced easily up to fourteen score at ten or twelve months old. In many of the straw yards on the Berkshire, Hampshire, and Wiltshire Downs, they do the straw treading instead of bullocks. We refer to those farms whose occupiers have no lease and very little capital, and who do not do much more than half farm their hill land. In fact, some of them hardly use any cake, and actually plough in the straw. They give their pigs barley, wheat meal, skim milk, and peas; but their main dependence is upon damaged foreign corn from Gloucester and Bristol, which agents sell by sample at the different markets. It is mixed with boiled roots and served up warm, which answers well with a pig. This is a point upon which Professor Voëlcker has always laid great stress. Beans are very seldom used, as the fat produced by them has a tendency to boil out, and the meat is often hard.

There is a sort of ivied gable end in the field fronting the buildings, which tells of some old manor house; and half a mile away, on the hill, is the tower of Cranbourne, among rich oak and hazel copses, and the old gables of St. Leonards. The Hereford herd are in the meadow-Adela with a heifer calf by Deception, but no longer in the holiday time of her beauty when she took two Royal firsts; Agnes, a good second at Leicester, and with all the size and substance of Rea's stock; Maud, the dam of one of the bulls; and Princess Mary, full of quality, but small, and never shown since she was the first calf at Plymouth Royal. Despite these reputed shortcomings in this respect, Mr. Brebner has found Herefords milk to twenty quarts, and considers that there are fewer cases of barrenness with them than with any other breed he knows. Hard by the road stands a scarlet oak, surrounded by a palisade, and an inscription on a tablet tells us that it was 66 Here the Prince Consort finished his last day's shooting, November 23rd, 1861."

The way to the Norfolk Farm lies through some fields, where

Fowler has been busy at work smashing up a stiff clay stubble, nine to ten inches deep. Now we have passed through the grey paling and boundary, we are in the fine natural pathways of the Forest once more; across Queen Anne's Ride, round Holly Bush Corner, and past Poets' Lawn. Holyrood day is over, and so is the fern harvest, which is managed in the Forest very much as the gamekeepers direct. On the Home Farm alone 400 loads are stacked annually, and used for litter. The Prince Consort's workshops are another feature of the ride, and it is there that all the sawing and mechanical work for the Royal farms is done. Then we pass Her Majesty's schools, which have at present sixty boys and fifty girls, all clad in Scotch plaid, with a blue ribbon in the cap and bonnet. They must be born within the limits of Windsor Parks, and their education combines gardening and housewifery in the morning, with sound English instruction in the afternoon. The day is short, so we do not care to look at the great vine at Cumberland Lodge, and do not even linger among the hunters and harriers; and soon the oak belts and thick laurel hedges herald the old Norfolk Farm. There is quite an air of antiquity about the faded thatch, the green moss tinge upon the red moss, where the house-leek clings, and the granary, with its lattice-roofed window, its wooden steps, and rusty staddles, to an eye fresh from Bridgewater tiles and polished engines, and all the modern appurtenances of the Flemish. The former has been in the hands of the Crown since the days of "Farmer George," and he seldom spent a day at Windsor without a drive to it through the Forest. Few reviews, as it was said at the time, either of Life Guards or Scots' Greys, were more to his taste than that of the long, wealthy, yellow line of stacks, which had been marshalled there during his summer sojourn at Weymouth.

The Norfolk Farm lies on a low, clay subsoil, which is not adapted for young sheep; and hence it is not the practice to buy in lambs or to breed them. Its flock consists of 300 Hampshire Down one-shear wethers, which are bought and gradually fatted off. The Devon cattle are not in such force as usual. They have numbered a hundred, whereas now they are down at sixty odd. The Zouave was the first winning bull that Mr. Brebner brought out at The Royal; and The Colonel, Ilex, Prince Alfred, Crown Prince, &c., have all kept up the charter. They are now rather full of bulls which took prizes either in their own or previous owners' hands. One bull, bred by Mr. Turner, was first at the Plymouth Royal; and another, bred by Mr. Farthing, a double first at the Bath and West of England and the Leicester Royal Shows. Among the homestead females we meet

Adela, which was second at Leicester; and the gay and snug Rosa, which was first as a calf at Manchester. Prince Arthur also holds his court, and one out of three bullocks, under Christmas high pressure, is a beauty. Mr. Brebner considers that the Devons prove earlier, and have more good internal fat than other cattle. About fifty head of bullocks, of the three different sorts, graze in the Park. We had not time to go on to the Rapley Farm, where Galloways are the beasts in possession; and we turned home once more by the conservatory and the little chapel in the Forest. At length we wind round the craggy base of the Royal Statue-" Patri Optimo Georgius Rex "--whose outstretched finger is said to point to the place of his royal birth; and so, as the twilight gathers in, and the stags' rutting bellow at the distance alone breaks the silence, we drop down the great elm avenue to Windsor once more.

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THE CHRISTIAN VAGABOND.

BY BLANCHARD JERROLD.

CHAPTER I.

THE CHAPEL OF EASE OF AGE. *

old was he, in that company of the aged, that Dame Rebecca implored Sister Ursula to put back the lapping frill of her nightcap, that she might strive, with her dim

sight of ninety years, to make out his face and figure. He had had the ancient force and frame; and still, although there was infinite weariness in his face, and lassitude in the movement of his stoutly set limbs, he appeared of a race and build whereof we see only rare examples in these later days of an enervating civilisation. Dame Rebecca was the eldest by nine years of the old dames who were gathered about the Vagabond; and she had been, for a year or two, a curious sight to the visitors whom Sister Ursula brought to her bedside. The constant wonder of the sisterhood was—would Dame Rebecca see a century out? They could find no ailment in her. She had neither cough nor craze. Only the lamp gave a pale light-as a beacon seen from afar. The old lady seemed to speak and look from a mighty distance; and the face was not capable of much change of expression. It was sweet and placid: lighted coldly-as with the flickering of a corpse-candle. The wrinkles had lost their depth by dint of stealing one upon the other, until the human mask was broken up like the ancient glaze on jars oldfashioned mothers prize. The colour was solid yellow, white at points or nearly so; but nowhere suggesting the movement of blood beneath. As she looked, supported in the bed by Sister Ursula, Dame Rebecca held forth her hand to the Vagabond. It was of sallowgrey colour, and so thin and frail, the Stranger took it in his ample palm

"What is age?

But the holy place of life, the chapel of ease
For all men's wearied miseries."-MASSINGER.

with the utmost gentleness. And then he bent forward and placed his lips quietly upon the wrinkled brow of the dame, saying:

"Peace be with you, my sister; you have journeyed far."

As the Vagabond withdrew his touch from hand and brow, Dame Rebecca's face beamed with a passing light; and she sank back upon her pillow. The quiet fingers of Sister Ursula played tenderly about the venerable head, smoothing every fold of the clothes-while from the poor mouth, broken out of all shape, came murmurs of something that seemed to be of the far away.

And while the Vagabond looked steadfastly upon the old, old plaything of Time before him, marking all the wonders the years had wrought, without being able to lay an icy finger upon that human heart; he said, as to himself, unmindful wholly of the silent. host of the aged who had gathered about him :

"It is a good face. Smooth the brow: plump the cheeks, and pass a Spring's rosy finger over them: set the dew and crimsons of youth upon the lips; remount the pearly portals of speech, and wake girlhood's music in the alabaster throat. Nay, but it must have been a good face. The barely covered skeleton proclaims it. Lady of Charity," the Vagabond continued, laying his hand on the flannel sleeve of a pale figure that hardly reached his belt, at its full height, and without drawing his eyes for an instant from the placid face of Dame Rebecca, "Lady of Charity, your sister hath a noble countenance, as she waits in the antechamber, to pass. She should have garnered, in the almost complete century she has spent under the stars, a profitable round of experiences. That she has suffered I know; for sorrow has scalded every pore of the comely face. It is reverence-worthy by its burden."

Stealing to the bed-side near Sister Ursula, the Lady of Charity lifted a finger, and inclined her ear.

The eyes of the Vagabond passed from the sleeper to the watcher; from the Sorrow ending upon the bed to the living Beauty, strong and gentle-too humble to meet approbation in the eyes of men, and too earnest to be feeble. She was so light that her movements made no noise. The spirit was held to the earth by a thousand threads of sympathies, and not by a single fleshly tie. Not a woman to be wed, save for the sweet example of a perfect mother. And yet beautiful as a woman is, at her best and highest-and, something more. No feature to commend, still less any to condemn. An expression that resented praise; and, if aught so gentle could command, compelled worship; a voice, gladdening to the ears, and glorifying to the heart, as the melodies to which a hermit sups in summer woods; an eye,

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