struck by the intrepid
interference of so pretty and delicate a girl, and was sadly puzzled
to understand the meaning of the violent agitation in his family.

When all this came to the ears of the Squire, he was grievously
scandalized that his May-day fete should have been disgraced by such a
brawl. He ordered Phoebe to appear before him; but the girl was so
frightened and distressed, that she came sobbing and trembling, and,
at the first question he asked, fell again into hysterics. Lady
Lillycraft, who had understood that there was an affair of the heart
at the bottom of this distress, immediately took the girl into great
favour and protection, and made her peace with the Squire.

This was the only thing that disturbed the harmony of the day, if we
except the discomfiture of Master Simon and the general by the
radical. Upon the whole, therefore, the Squire had very fair reason to
be satisfied that he had ridden his hobby throughout the day without
any other molestation.

The reader, learned in these matters, will perceive that all this was
but a faint shadow of the once gay and fanciful rites of May. The
peasantry have lost the proper feeling for these rites, and have grown
almost as strange to them as the boom of La Mancha were to the customs
of chivalry, in the days of the valorous Don Quixote. Indeed, I
considered it a proof of the discretion with which the Squire rides
his hobby, that he had not pushed the thing any farther, nor attempted
to revive many obsolete usages of the day, which, in the present
matter-of-fact times, would appear affected and absurd. I must say,
though I do it under the rose, the general brawl in which this
festival had nearly terminated, has made me doubt whether these rural
customs of the good old times were always so very loving and innocent
as we are apt to fancy them; and whether the peasantry in those times
were really so Arcadian, as they have been fondly represented. I begin
to fear--

--"Those days were never; airy dream
Sat for the picture, and the poet's hand,
Imparting substance to an empty shade,
Imposed a gay delirium for a truth.
Grant it; I still must envy them an age
That favour'd such a dream."

THE MANUSCRIPT.

Yesterday was a day of quiet and repose, after the bustle of May-day.
During the morning, I joined the ladies in a small sitting-room, the
windows of which came down to the floor, and opened upon a terrace of
the garden, which was set