my father had some business, I saw a noble and beautiful
animal of this kind lying in great state and laziness on the steps, and
felt an immediate desire to make acquaintance with him. My father, who
had had the same fancy, had patted him and called him 'poor fellow' in
passing, without eliciting the smallest notice in return. 'Dash!' cried
I at a venture, 'good Dash! noble Dash!' and up he started in a moment,
making but one spring from the door into the gig. Of course I was right
in my guess. The gentleman's name was Dash.

NUTTING.

September 26th.--One of those delicious autumnal days, when the air, the
sky, and the earth seem lulled into a universal calm, softer and milder
even than May. We sallied forth for a walk, in a mood congenial to the
weather and the season, avoiding, by mutual consent, the bright
and sunny common, and the gay highroad, and stealing through shady,
unfrequented lanes, where we were not likely to meet any one,--not even
the pretty family procession which in other years we used to contemplate
with so much interest--the father, mother, and children, returning from
the wheat-field, the little ones laden with bristling close-tied bunches
of wheat-ears, their own gleanings, or a bottle and a basket which had
contained their frugal dinner, whilst the mother would carry her babe
hushing and lulling it, and the father and an elder child trudged after
with the cradle, all seeming weary and all happy. We shall not see such
a procession as this to-day; for the harvest is nearly over, the fields
are deserted, the silence may almost be felt. Except the wintry notes
of the redbreast, nature herself is mute. But how beautiful, how gentle,
how harmonious, how rich! The rain has preserved to the herbage all
the freshness and verdure of spring, and the world of leaves has lost
nothing of its midsummer brightness, and the harebell is on the banks,
and the woodbine in the hedges, and the low furze, which the lambs
cropped in the spring, has burst again into its golden blossoms.

All is beautiful that the eye can see; perhaps the more beautiful for
being shut in with a forest-like closeness. We have no prospect in
this labyrinth of lanes, cross-roads, mere cart-ways, leading to the
innumerable little farms into which this part of the parish is divided.
Up-hill or down, these quiet woody lanes scarcely give us a peep at the
world, except when, leaning over a gate, we look into one of the small
enclosures,