classes of people of anything which has been so firmly rooted in their minds as these superstitions have. But The notion that killing a mad dog will effectually prevent hydrophobia in the person whom it may have bitten, is a delusion which if not so wide-spread as formerly, still in some districts is firmly believed. Bees settling on dead wood when they swarm, is looked upon as portending some dreadful calamity to their owner. the most curious, and perhaps most amusing piece of superstition attaching to bees is, that what is vulgarly called "tinging"* them induces the new swarm to alight sooner than it otherwise would; and it is often most ludicorous to see the bee-owner when a hive is swarming, rushing out with his family armed with shovels, warmingpans, and other household goods, thinking by knocking them together to induce the bees to pitch close home. Now these good people would stare strangely if you told them that this "tinging" was only an old custom of claiming the bees, and did not do one atom of good in making them settle soon: nor would they for one moment believe what you said. In every district there is some local remedy for a bee-sting, and in some places great consternation is expressed, if by some means or other the bee forgets its nature and omits to leave its sting in the tiny wound. It is hard to say what evil may follow in such a case as this. Ignorance and superstition are so near akin to each other that in many cases they cannot be separated. One would think that the labouring class, especially the men, would be less ignorant of those things that they constantly see as they go to their daily work; but this is far from the case, they know nothing of the things around them, beyond what experience may tell them of their sheep, or bullocks, or horses. There is one tiny little worm called the "hair-worm,"† which nine out of ten of our villagers verily believe to be horse-hairs that have been thrown into the water and have come to life. How many there are who think that the whiskers of a cat, "smellers," as they call them, enable it to smell its prey; and these feelers they call "smellers" in all animals, as, for instance, in the crawfish; and so the antennæ in different species of lepidoptera. What do they know, too, of butterflies and moths, except that they are butterflies and moths; not one in fifty knows of any other moth but the clothes-moth: as for their caterpillar or pupa state, that they never heard of. Suppose you tell them that there are sixty different kinds of British butterflies, and about nineteen hundred different sorts of moths, and if of these latter you told them that their own garden in the course of a year would furnish probably several hundreds, do you suppose you would get anything for your information beyond a stare or a monosyllabic ejaculation? Yet there are no books published that we have ever seen that could be put into the labourer's hands; and it is a difficult problem to solve how he is to be taught these things, which he most certainly ought to know. It is so easy to make superstitious * Also called "charming." + Gordius aquaticus. ideas tally with the vagaries of the object of superstition. A magpie on a house is a sign of death, but if the death occurs some houses off, it is very easy to say that the bird pitched on that house first and then flew on to another. If a dog howls or an owl hoots after dark, it is so easy to say that it was done before the house in which a death first occurs, for no one can say it was not. I can't swear to the precise spot within a hundred yards or so, where the owl hoots or the dog howls, and a hundred yards will often take in a great many houses, especially if they are built on both sides of the road. Superstition seems to be handed down from mother to daughter. We say from mother to daughter because the men do not appear to have so much to do with it; ignorance in every-day occurences, in the objects of animal life which cross their path, seems to be their fate, superstition belonging almost exclusively to the women and girls. Ignorance of, and superstition of, natural objects should be, as they have been in these remarks, kept separate to a certain extent. Of course there are exceptions on both sides, the women shewing with their superstitions the ignorance of the man, the men adopting the superstition of the women. The worst cases are those where the two meet in the same individual; then indeed there is much to grieve those who know better. The end of the matter is this, that although superstition and ignorance are far less than they were in the days of "wise" King James, yet that there is much of both to be got rid of even now. It is no mean occupation to try to accomplish this, and if the fruits of the labour do not ripen during the labourer's life-time, they will doubtless come to perfection in a future generation. Nil Desperandum. Never despair! Not though a warlike host Think how young David, when his cause was holy, Never despair! No, not when, worst of all, One whom thou lovest as thine own soul seems lost On Him Who gave His Life as that soul's cost: H. B. Rambles & Reveries of a Modern Moralist. VII.-VANISHED THINGS. "The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The Tempest. Few people can look back into the past without a sigh. Even the most fortunate among us, for whom the bitter cup has seldom been mixed, treasure up recollections of lost friends and sad partings from pleasant places, of things which were, but never can be again, which have merged into the vanished things of earth. If we reflect a moment, we shall find that very few pleasures which we have enjoyed have equalled the delight of anticipation, or the sad chaste joy of retrospection. How bright were the pictures of anticipated pleasure which imagination drew in those rosy tints which only imagination can produce; how rich was the enjoyment of living from day to day, not in that "hope deferred, which maketh the heart sick;" but in eager expectation, feeling that every hour brought us nearer the wished-for object! In such cases as this there can be no doubt that "distance lends enchantment to the view;" for when the real enjoyment came at last, though possibly very delightful, yet how far inferior was it to the anticipated joys and bright visions of our expectant fancy! And then when the wished-for pleasure has passed away into the place of vanished things, is there not real comfort in looking back upon it, though we may do so through a mist of tears? All my readers must know this feeling well; they must know the void which is left between them and the past, even if that past be but of yesterday. Who has not experienced this feeling of isolation and loss when they have parted with some dear one, perhaps only for a short time? When the last words are spoken, and the train glides swiftly out of the station, how mournful is the look of that last carriage as it vanishes round a curve in the line! The rest of the train passes away with little notice, but the back of that last carriage seems sternly mocking our impotence to stay the course of the tyrant which is bearing off the loved ones from our eyes. This may be thought fanciful, but I am writing what I have felt many times. It is the same when the steam-boat has left the pier; the trough in the eddying waters which the keel has ploughed for a moment in its course, seems to swallow up the hope of meeting once again; it tells us that the last moment is past and gone, that we are alone! We may meet those friends again on earth in a few months or years, but we may have to wait till both have reached the echoless shore, where the winds sleep, and whence “ no traveller returns," and the uncertainty is overwhelming. Of a truth, there are not in our language two more difficult words to utter than these, "Farewell," and "Gone!" The one is the sad signal of separation, the sign which tells us that the last moment has arrived and will soon be past; we would lengthen it out as long as possible, we would gladly dwell on its syllables; but in vain, the fatal word is said, and we have to realize the second hard reality— "Gone!" Yes, the ties are broken; the silver cord of companionship is loosened; there is a void, a blank; the loved ones, "the old familiar faces," the long seen spots, are gone. Let it not be supposed that I write this in a spirit of morbid discontent; on the contrary, I find pleasure in living in the past and the future, as well as in working in the present; I do not agree therefore with Longfellow's words— "Let the dead Past bury its dead!" We may look back along the course we have travelled, and learn from it some lesson to guide us on our farther way. Let me ask you then, my reader, to ramble with me for a while, not forward, among the scenes and sounds which are, but back to the phantoms of past people and places and thoughts, over which the curtain of oblivion has not yet descended. There are not many among us, I fancy, who have not a secret store-house of vanished things, laid up somewhere or other in their memory. Even the hard, unsentimental man of business, who pretends to think everything romance and nonsense which does not in some way tend to the production of money, even he has some green oasis in his barren desert of dry bones, and recollects some vanished things over which he can afford to sigh when he can find time to think. There is that spot some where away in the country, where he played and worked and fought through his schoolboy years. Think you, that that man who looks so hard and close and worldly, never goes back along the pleasant paths of memory to that old school-house, where the white-haired master bore his pupils' stupidity with such gentle resignation, and sighed over the beautiful thoughts of those of old time which they could not discover? Think you, that many a busy worldling who now pretends to laugh at anything except "business," and "getting on in life," does not occasionally open the penetralia of his heart, and look into the past with sad or cheerful eyes, according as he has used the days that are gone? I believe fully that there is more sentiment in this world than most people imagine; the fault is, that men now-a-days are ashamed of their sentiments, and are afraid of being thought to have hearts that beat for anything beyond the gifts of great King Mammon. But let me pass on to some of my own vanished things. I am far from country scenes and sounds now; the noisy road, the smoky atmosphere, the November fog are my companions; yet I can live back into the summer weather, I can hear the sky-lark instead of the carriages; and November's muddy streets are blooming forth into golden corn-fields and waving flowers. I am away among the sweetsmelling hop gardens of pleasant Kent, where the wandering Arab tribes have found a brief abiding place among the green clusters of the hops. There hop-pickers have come from far, in every direction, from the wretched purlieus of eastern London, from the Irish haunts of evil St. Giles's, and once courtly Kensington, from the wretched hives of crime and misery which fringe the mud of unlovely Thames; and from many a place besides these wandering families have met together among the sweet, breezy hop gardens. Again, the green meadows are all around me, I am rambling among the wild flowers in the hedges and sunny banks beloved of brightwinged insects. The delicate pink and white blossoms of the wild Convolvulus are climbing luxuriantly over every hedge, and the lilac-flowered Scabious is blooming on yonder sloping bank where the sunlight sleeps so dreamily. A bright and pleasant flower is that wild Scabious: very different to her mournful sister, that sombre flower which St. Pierre tells us of in the sad and beautiful story of "Paul and Virginia." On the uplands yonder the ruddy corn is waving, its golden billows diversified by the gaudy crimson poppies, (fit emblem of vanity) and by many another gay flower. reapers have already begun their work, and the golden corn fields will soon be, in fact are now, whilst I write these lines, bare stubbledeserts where the partridge hides, and the field-mouse has her subterranean abode. But anon I am away by a lone stream's side, and may say with Milton, "There, in close covert by some brook, Where no profaner eyes may look ; Hide me from day's garish eye, Whilst the bee, with honeyed thigh, The |