esser birds come over from the hedges to the bunches of rushes. Slowly
wandering along the lane and looking over the mound on the right hand
(cow-wheat with yellow lip is in flower on the mound), there are
glimpses between the bushes and the Spanish chestnut-trees of far-away
blue hills--blue under the summer sky.

FOOTNOTE:

[2] 1881.

_THE GOLDEN-CRESTED WREN._

This lovely little bird is so small and light that it can cling
suspended on the end of a single narrow leaf, or needle of pine, and it
does not depress the least branch on which it may alight. The gold-crest
frequents the loneliest heath, the deepest pine wood, and the immediate
neighbourhood of dwellings indifferently. A Scotch fir or pine grew so
near a house in which I once lived that the boughs almost brushed the
window, and when confined to my room by illness, it gave me much
pleasure to watch a pair of these wrens who frequently visited the tree.
They are also fond of thick thorn hedges, and, like all birds, have
their favourite localities, so that if you see them once or twice in one
place you should mark the tree or bush, for there they are almost
certain to return. It would be quite possible for a person to pass
several years in the country and never see one of these birds. There is
a trick in finding birds' nests, and a trick in seeing birds. The first
I noticed was in an orchard; soon after, I found a second in a yew-tree
(close to a window), and after that constantly came upon them as they
crept through brambles or in hedgerows, or a mere speck up in a
fir-tree. So soon as I had seen one I saw plenty.

_AN EXTINCT RACE._

There is something very mournful in a deserted house, and the feeling is
still further intensified if it happens to have once been a school,
where a minor world played out its little drama, and left its history
written on the walls. For a great boys' school is like a kingdom with
its monarchs, its ministers, and executioners, and even its changes of
dynasty. Such a house stood no long while since on the northern
border-land of Wilts and Berks, a mansion in its origin back in the days
of Charles II., and not utterly unconnected with the great events of
those times, but which, for hard on a hundred years--from the middle of
the eighteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century--was used as a
superior grammar-school, or college, as it would now be called.
Gradually falling in reputation, and supplanted by mod