moat. Direct, the lane led into other lanes, beside which deep water-sluices flowed, draining the marshes, and emptying themselves into the neighbouring river.

Right and left stretched acres of osier-beds, where the willows had already grown tall and high, and close together. In one of these osier-holts she was found dead on the following morning; a deep black mark around the throat left no doubt on the minds of the jury, that she had been strangled. The large leathern purse, which was sworn to as having been in her possession when she paid the gipsy woman, was found empty a few yards from the body. Three of Boswell's gang were tried for having murdered her, but were acquitted; for the rest of the tribe swore that they had never quitted the encampment at the corner of Morton Marsh.

These events occurred before our time, although we still remember an old lady who was pointed out to us in our younger days as the Lady Ellen, and the rightful heiress to Morton Marsh Manor-house, which came into her possession a few years after the murder of the wealthy schoolmistress. We also have some slight recollection of her son, a fine, manly-looking gentleman, who, in his youth, our mothers told us, had lived amongst the gipsies. They are reported to have neither visited nor received any of the neighbouring gentry; and the "General," as he was called, was never seen without the limits of his own estate; and it was also rumoured, that in his old age he was a little "flighty." Miles Middleton and Amy were the only acquaintance they acknowledged. Amy, although many years older, and ere she reached her five-and-thirtieth year, was married to the Lady Ellen's son, and became, in her turn, the mistress of the manor-house. As for the trials and

proofs which were necessary to bring about all these changes, they were settled in the Court of Chancery, and few, saving the lawyers employed, knew any thing of the

matter.

There are still a few aged inhabitants in the neighbourhood, who can remember a beautiful young lady galloping about the hills and lanes with a handsome boy, many long years ago. That was Amy Middleton; and ten summers later saw her the wife of her once youthful companion.

Such is the old legend of Morton Marsh Manor-house,— full of ins and outs like the building itself, and resembling like it so many styles of architecture; that as you can scarcely distinguish the Elizabethan from the ancient Gothic, so are you in the old tradition puzzled to separate truth from fiction. Not a servant has ever lived in the family without giving a new version of the story; and when they had retired, and we conversed with one or two of them, in the winter of their age, they so confounded one Lady Morton with another, that we found ourselves hovering between the reigns of George the First and Charles the Second, and so entangled in the events of both periods, SO mixed up again with the Pretender and Cromwell, that for the life of us we could neither tell where the truth

began, nor where the fiction ended. For many years past, one wing of the old manor-house has been entirely closed; rumour, of course, reports it to have been haunted,—noises in the night, shrieks, lights, nay, even the footsteps of the cruel old Lady Morton, to the very "pit-pat" of her goldheaded cane, have been heard along the galleries and on the oaken floors; servants came and went without end, each one

U

retiring with a new tale of horror, and if half that they told could be credited, it would prove that

"Blood hath been shed ere now, in the olden time,
Ere human statute purged the gentle weal;
Ay, and since, too, murders have been performed
Too terrible for the ear: the times have been,
That when the brains were out, the man would die,
And there an end; but now they rise again,
With twenty mortal murders on their crowns,
And push us from our stools."

66

THE FARMER'S BOY.

Meek, fatherless, and poor;

Labour his portion, but he felt no more;
No stripes, no tyranny, his steps pursued ;
His life was constant, cheerful servitude;
Strange to the world, he wore a bashful look,
The fields his study, Nature was his book.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD.

To clearly appreciate the many beauties scattered over Bloomfield's Farmer's Boy," the reader ought to possess some knowledge of country life; for it contains such natural and simple passages, the merit of which consists in their faithfulness to nature, that without an acquaintance with rural objects, much of the truth and beauty of the descrip

tion must be lost. A learned and profound critic, without this knowledge of "fields and farms," would never enter into the minute details which abound in this pure, pastoral poem; would not stoop to look at the little mole-hills covered with wild thyme, nor count the spots in the bottom of the cowslip and yet this exquisite enamelling is the greatest charm of the poem. He could not see the hair, gathered from rubbing against the cow's hide, on the old hat in which he milked, without contrasting his peaceable cockade with that worn by the slaughtering soldier; an insect creeping up a plantain-leaf, conjured up the vast plain which must appear to the tiny traveller; nor could the started thrush hurry from the hedge without his noticing the shower of blossoms she shook from the blackthorn when springing from the branch. The quarrelsome gander with its broken wing, the horse switching its stumpy tail, the hunter's fetlock "sucking" the moistened ground, the hounds ranging through the covert one by one," and the warm grateful breath of the cattle which surrounded him whilst breaking up the frozen turnips, show by what little morsels he managed to make up an exquisite picture. The greatest test of true descriptive poetry is, that you may break it into the smallest pieces, and yet find every bit a perfect part of the great whole; even as a botanist separates a flower, that he may the better understand its wonderful formation. Those who look for great and grand poetry in "The Farmer's Boy" will not find it there, no more than they will find the majesty, strength, and grandeur of the noble oak in the sprig of moss, whose form resembles the giant tree. To make ourselves better understood, few architects could excel Bloomfield in planning and putting together a simple rustic cottage, with its