times, would have noticed the specific articles that formed this kind of character: the short green coat, the black velvet cap, with its appropriate gold band and tassel, the buck-skin gloves and breeches, the belt with its dependent whistle, and the all-commanding whip. Let your fancy assist you in placing these upon the person above described, and the exterior of John Grounds will figure before you. But this will be doing the good old man but half justice. Oh! the heart, the heart; what is the painting of the man, without the portrait of the heart?

Represent, I pray you, to your mind's eye, this venerable personage running into my arms the moment he observed me, exclaiming, in tones which nature never gave the hypocrite"I beg pardon, sir, for my boldness, but I thought you would like to see me in my old dress, which I have kept ever since in my drawer by itself, and never take it out but now and then of a Sabbath, in summer, and to put an old friend as your honour, begging your pardon-in mind of old times. I know well enough it don't become me to take such a gentleman by the hand, and hold him so long in my arms, only seeing I have carried you in them from one place to another, al! about the premises of the squire's old house and gardens, years upon years"

After a pause he adverted to the particulars of his dress, assuring me they were the very

same things he wore the last year at my father's, except the plush waistcoat, which was a part of my Lady St. John's livery. "To be sure, your honour," said he, gayly," they are like myself, a little the worse for wear; the old coat, you see (turning it about) has changed colour a bit, from green to yellow; the cap is not altogether what it was; and this fine piece of gold round the crown is pretty much faded; but we are all mortal, your honour knows; but old friends must not be despised."

During this converse, John and Dame Hills may be truly said to have "devoured up his discourse." All he had said had reference to my family or myself a magnet which had power to draw their attentions and affections at any time. Nor did they neglect the dues of hospitality, which, on my account, and their own, were doubled; and they placed before their guest, with whom they had always lived in good neighbourhood, whatever the farm, its pantry, and its cellar, could afford. "A flow of soul" soon followed this feast of friendship. Grounds had before forgot his fatigue, his long walks, and his new trades; and soon remembered only his fine days of youth, his masters, his kennel, and his former self. "You was too much of a youngling, I suppose," said Grounds, “to recollect the many times I carried you to see my hounds fed, and told you the names of every one of them, and as I gave my signs, bade you

bark to Ringwood, and Rockwood, and Finder, and Echo; then put you before me upon Poppet, your father's favourite hunting mare. But I think you can't forget my stealing you out from old Mrs. Margaret, the housekeeper's room, to show you a thing you often wished to see-puss in her form-and your bidding me to take it up gently, that you might carry it home and bring it up tame; then, on my telling you, laughing, it would not let me, your creeping on tip-toe to catch it yourself; upon which it jumped up and set off, and you after it as fast as you could run; and your coming back to me, crying-when it took the headland and got out of sight- you should have had it, if I, like an old fool, had not made so much noise;' and when I told you you stood a good chance to see it again, and smoking on the squire's table-after giving us a good morning's sport-which, by the bye, was the case, for we had her the very next hunt-you said you did not want to eat, but keep her alive, and make her know you. And when I offered to stick her scut in your hat you threw it at me; and Mrs. Margaret says you would not touch a morsel of it, for spite; ha ha ha!"

After some hours, passed in these and in other remarks, which, while they delineate character, and describe the present time and circumstances, renew, and give, as it were, a second life to the past, Grounds took leave of the party

with tears, that spoke the sincerity of an apprehension, that he was looking at and embracing me for the last time; and then hurried over the fields, which gave me a sight of him near a mile. And, when his figure became diminished, I did not quit the window, till an interposing hedge shut him wholly from my view.

P. S. The portrait of this laborious, grateful, long-lived, and blessed old man, will be rendered doubly acceptable to the public by the pencil of the elder Barker, as that excellent painter has perpetuated the veteran with his family and cottage, on canvass; whose figures genius will long preserve.

This is a most exquisite performance, and it is to be seen at Mr. Barker's house, Sion Hill, Bath.

REYNARD'S FAREWELL.

BY T. BEDDOES.

THE horses are panting, the bugle has blown,
The hare has passed by, and the partridge has flown:
The hunters are leaving the brow of the hill,
But Reynard alone stands mournfully still;
Deprived of his youth, of his strength, of his pow'r,
These words he repeats in the terrible hour-
"In vain have I hid 'midst the covert of thorn,
To my death I am called by the threatening horn;
In vain have my feet far distanc'd the pack,

Those feet shall he wrench'd and their tendons shall crack;
That brush which was mine since the day of my birth,
Shall be torn from my body, and crush'd in the earth,

Shall be drown'd in the draught which is swallow'd with mirth.
Farewell, ye fair streams, where first I beheld

The form of my bride, where our nuptials were yell'd.
Farewell, thou low cave, where our dwelling we shar'd
Farewell, ye soft, herbs, where our couch was prepar'd;
Farewell, thou green farm, which we oft have purloin'd
The straggling fowl, when the banquet we join'd;

Farewell, ye thick woods, where I trembling have laid,
Whilst the bugle has sounded round the broad glade;
Farewell, oh Farewell! I am seiz'd by the hounds;
Farewell, oh Farewell! I die covered with wounds;
Farewell, ye dark woods, each dingle, each dell,
Ye mountains, ye valleys, for ever farewell!"

A SPORTINC BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF WILLIAM HABBERFIELD, SLANGLY DENOMINATED 66 SLENDER BILLY."

Jonathan Wild, in his day, it appears, was not of greater importance to the cross* part of society, than a confidential acquaintance with Slender Billy, rendered essentially necessary towards furthering the exertions of the Family People,† and also to secure them from detection, during the existence of his career. But with this difference-Fielding's Hero possessed all the machinery and baser traits of man : Wild was made up of design-as insensible to feeling and humanity as a rock-and all his calculations were directed to entrap, and then destroy those persons connected with him, in order that he might obtain, without any danger to himself, the possession of their ill-gotten stores. Billy, on the contrary, was not without gene

* Persons who live by unfair practices.

+ Another term for people of the same description, for even slang is not without its synonyms.