. The
following is his description of the much-longed-for, but
sorely-ill-treated, hawk of Sir Hubert.

"It served him, too, of evenings:
On a sudden he would rise,
From book or simple music,
And awake his hawk's large eyes,
(_Almost as large as Mabel's_)
Teasing out its dumb replies,

"In sulky sidelong glances,
And reluctantly flapp'd wings,
Or looks of slow communion,
To the lightsome questionings
That broke the drowsy sameness,
And the sense, like fear, which springs

"At night, when we are conscious
Of our distance from the strife
Of cities; and the memory
Of the spirit of all things rife,
_Endues the chairs and tables
With a disagreeable life_."

A Scotch lyrist, who, we are told, sings his own songs to perfection,
has also recorded the very singular fact of various articles of
household furniture (not exactly tables) being occasionally endued "with
a disagreeable life." One of his best ballads, in which he describes the
bickerings which, even in the best-regulated families, will at times
take place between man and wife, and in which various domestic missiles
come into play, contains the following very excellent line--

"_The stools pass the best o' their time i' the air_"--

than which no sort of life appertaining to a stool can be more
disagreeable, we should imagine--to the head which it is about to come
in contact with. We doubt whether Mr Patmore's, or rather Sir Hubert's,
chairs and tables ever acquired such a vigorous and unpleasant vitality
as that. What may have happened to the "stools" after Mabel was married
to Sir Hubert, we cannot take it upon us to say. At any rate, we prefer
the Scotch poet's description, as somewhat the more pithy, and graphic,
and intelligible of the two. The coincidence, however, is remarkable.

After Sir Hubert has retired to his farm, the state of his feelings is
described in the following stanzas. We suspect that the metaphysical
acumen of Boccacio himself would have been a good deal puzzled to
unravel the meaning of some of them.

"He gather'd consolation,
As before, where best he might:
But though there was the difference
That he now could claim a right
To grieve as much as pleased him,
It was six years, since his sight

"Had fed on Mabel's features;
So that Hubert scarcely knew
What traits to give the vision
Wh