enough to form two or three fine cottages ornées in these degenerate days; seen between the various buildings which with all conceivable irregularity surrounded the spacious farm-yard, glittering with the clean crisp covering of straw with which it was very literally littered, and giving due token of their presence by bleatings of lambs seeking their mothers, and ewes in pursuit of their lambs, by barking of dogs and shouting of men and boys, were the fine flocks of Farmer Holden returning from their distant pastures to the fold in a rich meadow near the homestead; horses mounted by young carter-boys sitting loungingly upon their naked .backs, and riding them to and from the village pond with an indescribable air of lazy pride; whilst cows, driven by urchins on foot somewhat brisker, but every whit as dirty, stumbled amongst the sheep and jostled the horses in their haste to reach the calves, who were lowing in their pens eager for the moment that should at once appease their own "pleasant enemy hunger," and relieve the "mothers of the herd" of their milky burthen.

Mingled with these larger comers and goers, biped and quadruped, together with occasional passers-by, as the thresher or the seedsman flung himself heavily over the threshold of the barn, or the ploughman stalked from the stable to the hay-rick, were innumerable lesser denizens of