shower coursing over the meadow, and giving all
nature a greener smile; and the bright sunbeams chasing the flying
cloud, and turning all its drops into diamonds.

I was enjoying a morning of the kind, in company with the Squire, in
one of the finest parts of the park. We were skirting a beautiful
grove, and he was giving me a kind of biographical account of several
of his favourite forest trees, when he heard the strokes of an axe
from the midst of a thick copse. The Squire paused and listened, with
manifest signs of uneasiness. He turned his steps in the direction of
the sound. The strokes grew louder and louder as we advanced; there
was evidently a vigorous arm wielding the axe. The Squire quickened
his pace, but in vain; a loud crack, and a succeeding crash, told that
the mischief had been done, and some child of the forest laid low.
When we came to the place, we found Master Simon and several others
standing about a tall and beautifully straight young tree, which had
just been felled.

The Squire, though a man of most harmonious dispositions, was
completely put out of tune by this circumstance. He felt like a
monarch witnessing the murder of one of his liege subjects, and
demanded, with some asperity, the meaning of the outrage. It turned
out to be an affair of Master Simon's, who had selected the tree, from
its height and straightness, for a May-pole, the old one which stood
on the village green being unfit for farther service. If any thing
could have soothed the ire of my worthy host, it would have been the
reflection that his tree had fallen for so good a cause; and I saw
that there was a great struggle between his fondness for his groves,
and his devotion to May-day. He could not contemplate the prostrate
tree, however, without indulging in lamentation, and making a kind of
funeral eulogy, like Mark Antony over the body of Caesar; and he
forbade that any tree should thenceforward be cut down on his estate,
without a warrant from himself; being determined, he said, to hold the
sovereign power of life and death in his own hands.

This mention of the May-pole struck my attention, and I inquired
whether the old customs connected with it were really kept up in this
part of the country. The Squire shook his head mournfully; and I found
I had touched on one of his tender points, for he grew quite
melancholy in bewailing the total decline of old May-day. Though it is
regularly celebrated in the neighbouring village,