are, like myself, a lover of dogs, I have presented you with these details. But ere we quite relinquish the subject, permit me to offer one suggestion which, should your rambles ever take you hereafter into the cities of southern Europe, may prove practically useful. Strangers visiting those parts, especially Englishmen, are liable to be seriously annoyed, and even savagely assaulted, by the street-dogs. Remarking that the native bipeds enjoyed an immunity from these attacks, I was led to inquire what made the difference. The obvious solution appeared to be, that the dogs recognised acquaintances, and took umbrage at strangers. Noticing, however, that the dogs even in maritime cities made the same distinction to the disadvantage of Englishmen (in those quarters, too, which were perpetually thronged by a succession of fresh visitors from every land), I was led to suspect that my solution did not go quite to the bottom of the difficulty, at least so far as my own Countrymen were concerned. further meditation my conclusion was this, that the special annoyance experienced in our particular case was due to something in our manner -in a word, to our mode of walking. At home, of course, we do not remark this; but notice abroad, and you will at once see the difference. The native's walk is composed; the On Englishman's walk is fussy. The native walks, for the most part, slowly; the Englishman walks quick. The native sets his feet quietly on the ground; the Englishman stumps. The upshot is, that the native passes along in silence, while the Englishman makes no end of noise. When, in three strides, Homer's Neptune ascended from the depths of ocean to the summit of Olympus, the mountain-ranges, and their forests too, trembled as he trod. Now the Englishman in his walk, being a son of Neptune, takes after his Daddy. What wonder, therefore, when he goes clattering along on his hoofs through the purlieus of a southern city, if the dogs of the district take offence, gather at his heels, and express their wrath by doggish indications, which, even if not amounting to a nip or two, prove excessively disagreeable to the impetuous perambulator? Having, while abroad, excogitated this ingenious theory, I promptly reduced it to practice, and found it answer. Often, in returning home at night (the worst time), I had to pass through a low quarter of a Peninsular city, where the dogs were particularly fierce, and where a fellow-countryman, a somewhat pompous personage, had been so mauled by them that he could not sit down for weeks. I invariably slackened my pace, walked quietly, and passed without annoyance. OLDTOWER: A BROOKSIDE DIALOGUE. THE month of June is, in the British year, the queen of all the months; and, to use a mild expression, deserves, we may venture to say, to be better known than it is. Very few people who are able to talk and write know much about the month of June, either at home or abroad. Indeed, we may venture to say that, with the exception of a few stay-at-home country clergymen and gentlemen farmers, it is nearly unknown to the great mass of the intelligence of the country. Merchants, rich tradesmen, barristers, doctors, do not get their holiday in June, but somewhere about the decline and fall of the year. If we ascend in the scale of society, the case is the same; for if we descend, we shall find few persons who have any real holiday, for the railroad-car on the Holy Day, or the steamer to Gravesend, is far from making it a holiday; because, even if the middle classes do enjoy themselves, they are not quite sure, from the force of early education, whether they are quite right in doing so. But Parliament-men, and others of the same kind, in order to fulfil to the letter the curse which mere headwork in cool weather might otherwise seem to avoid, sit perspiring over the affairs of the nation through the dog-days; and her most gracious Majesty herself, who is in many senses, if we may use the Miltonic Græcism, the least free of all her subjects, is bound to the haunts of men in that most charming heyday of nature, sighing most probably for her glorious Balmoral or her gentle Osborne, going through a routine of dull receptions at her crowded drawing-rooms. On such occasions, the coachmen and the footmen, who wait outside, decorated at the breasts with bouquets far surpassing the brilliancy of any foreign orders as much as the lilies of the field surpass the glory of Solomon, are really the only people who can form any idea of what June is, even as it appears in London. For June New keeps a flower-stall in Covent garden, and is nowhere else to be found. The season and the Exhibitions form the sum of the Londoner's notion of June-the season meaning, not the season of flowers, but the season of bouquets, balls, dinner-parties, Regent-Street shoppings, rides in Rotten-Row, and rows on the rotten river-the Exhibitions meaning very pretty displays of pictures after Nature, which might be very well seen at any other time, when there is nothing to see in nature. And why is all this? There is a dark side to all that is bright; and the loss of June is the price the elite of England pay for our glorious constitution. Parliament being, by the constraining nature of our freedom, obliged to sit out the heat as well as the beauty of the year, and our society being fettered to the wheels of Parliament (wheels which do not go at express speed), June goes to the dogs as July to the dog-days, and the youth of the year is struck out of the life of man annually, until his allotted seventy Junes or so have passed away; and unless he is fortunate enough to lay his bones in a country churchyard, he has not even the consolation to think that June will plant flowers on his grave. Often it has been said, and truly, that June with us is the May of the poets; and this is true of the month generally until the latter part of it, when either summer sets in with its usual severity, or its exceptional sultriness. Two circumstances are enough to prove this fact. That hawthorn plant which bears the popular name of May seldom blossoms before June, and it is in the beginning of June that the May fly is seen upon the waters. When the trout refuse the May fly, we may judge that the year is of age, and ready to come into its property. Of this the hay-harvest is the first instalment; and with us, as in cases of human heirs, that coming-of-age is generally more or less wetted. A new kind of beauty comes on the fields when the hay is down-the beauty of neatness and a simplex munditiis style of dress, such as might be assumed by a beautiful wild Irish girl after a season in Paris. With all the flowers and wild loveliness of early June, there is a certain untidiness in its long grass, as if the hair of Mother Earth wanted cutting. The rambler in the fields is fain to keep to footpaths, both on account of the stress laid on trespass at that time and the depth of the dew. But to the fisherman with his Cording boots or Mackintosh hose, it does not matter much; and he leaves a dark trail from fence to fence, unless the rivers allow him to wade the whole way. All men have their chains and fetters. "No one is free," as Euripides says; "for either he is the slave of money or of hazard." Our great palavering Parliament-men are not free, nor can our judges do justice to their own constitutions, whatever they may do to that of the country; our merchants are chained to their counters, and merchant-tailors to their boards; our actors and ministers of public amusement to their boards likewise; as also guardians of the poor and railway directors; other ministers are fettered, some to the pulpit, some to the platform; the Scot, according to Burns, is the best off of all; for he acknowledges but "Love's willing fettersThe chains of his Jean." Nor are we free ourselves: still, thank Heaven! our peculiar manacles allow us to be free to enjoy the month of June, and to enjoy it with Manton Mayfly at Oldtower. Where is Oldtower? It is very little use to look for it on the Ordnance map, although, no doubt, the place itself is to be found there, under a slightlydeviating name. But the Ordnance map is very voluminous, and as puzzling as Bradshaw's Railway Guide; and we judge that it would be a great waste of labour to look for it, so the reader must rest satisfied with our indications. Almost bordering on every mountain-district in the world is an ambiguous country, neither entirely hill or valley, but of a mixed character, which has all the pretty surprises of most mixed characters; it has swelling and interlacing hills, long vistas of fields and woodlands, with converging streams in all the bottoms. This is true of those districts called in ancient times the Marches of Wales, probably because the Saxon invaders marched over them to get at the Principality, and the Welsh avengers and sympathisers marched over them to get at the Kingdom. They are full, not only of peculiar natural beauties, but of the legible or half-legible records of historical events, written in fosse and moat, stronghold and dungeon, coins, old arms, and pottery turned up in the ploughed field. The Roman has passed there in his conflict with the Briton, the Saxon in his conflict with both, and the Norman in his conflict with all; and all have left their names written there in some way or other, but all sufficiently rude and unclerkly. Oldtower itself is situated along the back of an easily-sloping hill, from whose upper extremity starts a naked eminence, with a conical head. This eminence is a spur of the Grey Mountains, which fold round and form with their long outline the horizon of Oldtower on the west, throwing a shadow over it from the sunset, and standing like a curtain between it and the last rays, and shutting out the sight of the setting sun, so that he seems in this place to retire to rest in private, instead of bivouacking al fresco according to his usual custom, or to be modest as a lady in taking his seabath. A spectator, standing on the highest part of the fold of the Grey Mountains nearest to Oldtower, will see on the Welsh side another such fold, enclosing an old abbey between it and the one on which he stands; and above this fold the third fold, a ridge (but it is not sharp) crowned with a knoll, which forms the beacon or topmost height of the whole range, and looks over the whole of the country round about. On the Welsh side nothing is seen but heather and desolation; on the English side, the hill on which Oldtower stands scarcely seems elevated above the valley, but other hills somewhat higher rise behind, between it and the broader sweeps of the plains beyond, with their now grown to an expanse fit for the accommodation of salmon. But as you look from the castle of Oldtower to the south, the long valley which sweeps round the base of the Grey Mountains is closed by the Sacred Hill, a mountain broken by a landslip, and looking on that account extremely picturesque. Why it was called the Sacred Hill, we cannot tell it may have been from some prehistorical secession of the plebeians of Aberdovery, as the hill near Rome was so called for a similar reason. By said town of Aberdovery flows a southern Esk, contained in a southern Eskdale, and Esk receives as tributaries from the Grey Mountains the streams of Brellyl Mawr and Brellyl Vach, both good for trout, and rising in the folds which are farthest from Oldtower. The basin of Aberdovery is thus the receptacle for all the waters of Oldtower and the Grey Mountains, and Aberdovery returns the compliment in an exchange like that of the arms of Glaucus for Diomede's-gold for brass-by sending back all the inhabitants of Oldtower, excepting a few of the steadier farmers and the ministers of the higher denominations, laden, not with water, but with excellent ale, even to excess, on every fair-day and market-day. Thus Oldtower remits water to Aberdovery, and Aberdovery remits it back in malt liquor, by the same beautiful circulating system by which the sun drinks salt water from the sea, and the salt water returns again fresh from the skies, as the Oldtowerites return fresh from Aberdovery. Whatever configuration of scenery presents itself at Oldtower, the castle manages to be seen as the chief point, either in the foreground or middle distance, but there is always, except close under it, a background of hill. The useful productions of Oldtower are chiefly horned cattle, with sheep on the mountains, most of its fields being pasture meadows; but nature, in her war with utility, is more successful than in most places; this re sult being indicated on a large scale by coppice and wandering trees of the natural size and growth; and on the small scale by a large proportion of fenny, or, as they are here called, "feggy," enclosures to the cultivated ground, a circumstance which diminishes the value per acre, but enhances the beauty of the country; for few will deny that the purple foxglove is prettier than the Swedish turnip. The wild flora is peculiarly rich and various. In early spring the brook-sides are golden with narcissus, jonquille, and their congeners; and the poverty as well as the richness of the soil is shown by its enamelled carpet of primrose, hyacinth, and violet—a richness like that of youth as compared with that of old age, one age being richer in golden days, and the other in good things. As summer comes on, and especially our favourite June, the flora changes, and the purple and golden foxglove, the veronica, the myosotis, and the columbine, make a statelier though scarcely a more brilliant show; but the hawthorn, pale, or blushing with its perfumed atmosphere about it, and the unassuming but beautiful dog-rose, which to us who love dogs is no disparaging epithet, drape the sides of the brakes and hedges; while the whole country undulates like a sea of emerald fixed by enchantment during a heavy groundswell. Nor is the fauna less various than the flora. The Grey Mountains are the dwelling of grouse ; partridges inhabit the uplands, and woodcocks, in their season, the copses. As the country is not preserved, pheasants are few and far between; and then of uncovenanted birds there is an abundant variety, the principal being the stately heron. The whole place is one of the ends of the world, wild, free, and fresh, and where the worldchafed man may throw himself at length on the grass, and gulp the breeze, and bless himself that there is a great gulf between him and stiff civilisation, as even his worst enemy, the postman, can scarcely find him there. Up the valley of the Alcon, by one who chooses to follow that mysterious river to its source over extraordinary difficulties, exists the very end of the world itself, in a spot which Chase the artist found out by accident, and called the Studio. This spot is about six miles above Oldtower, a place of extraordinary seVOL. LXXX.-NO. CCCCXCI. questered and deceitful beauty; deceitful, because the nearer one approaches it for some distance, the more palpably do the usual beauties of the stream-side appear to diminish, the trees grow lower, and the stream becomes more insignificant. This whole part of the valley is so sequestered that a gentleman who is outlawed is said here to have defeated, all the rest of his life, in an embowered house, the ends of justice or injustice; and it is currently reported that a place exists on the mountain where illicit malt is made. It is really a place which the conscience of taxgatherer or exciseman could hardly enter without secret terror of the invisible world inhabiting it. Profit and loss, those twin demons of commerce, have never found out the Studio, or they would not have left, in this landlocked nook of rocks, wood, and water, with mountain background, the glorious ashes, oaks, alders, and mountain-ashes to their free unmutilated growth as they have, leaving them standing up in the air and against the sky, forty, fifty, hundred feet, either on the ground or on pedestals of crag, as models for academicians or aspirants; or spreading their shades wide enough to shelter the German Legion, in case they had been wild and taken to the woods, which appears likely enough to happen at present. But no nook or corner in a radius of ten miles round Oldtower is unknown to our friend Manton Mayfly; who, though his business chiefly lies with the biped inhabitants, is equally conversant with the habits, dispositions, and characters of the four-footed, feathered, and finned tribes-so much so as to be able to tell almost to a minute how long a time has elapsed since a particular partridge rested on a particular spot in a ploughed field, or to tell at what hour any particular trout that he has risen once is likely to be at home again to a morning call. Manton Mayfly is the curate of the parish, and as curate has not the same objection to a sequestered curacy that his rector would have to the sequestration of his living. He is in every way very active, the friend of young and old, with a good word for every old dame and Ꮓ |