and Correspondence," by S. W.
Fullom. 1863. P. 28.

[164] "History of England, from the Peace of Utrecht," by Lord Mahon,
vol. vii. p. 465.

[165] Life of Sydney Smith, by his daughter, Lady Holland, vol. i. 374.

[166] "Correspondence of Thomas Gray and Mason, edited from the
originals," by the Rev. John Mitford, p. 112.

[167] Dr Bowring's "Life of Jeremy Bentham," Works, vol. xi. p. 80, 81.

[168] "Bowring's Life," vol. x., Works, p. 186.

[169] By Robert Chambers, Edinburgh, 1851, 4 vols., vol. i., p. 146.

[170] The stick used for clearing away the clods from the plough.

[171] An occasional ear of corn in a thrave,--that is, twenty-four
sheaves.

[172] "Worthies of England," vol. i. p. 545.

[173] "Wilson's Life," p. 28.

HARES, RABBITS, GUINEA-PIG.

All gnawing creatures, belonging to the Glirine or Rodentia order.
Charles Lamb has written on the hare, in one view of that
finely-flavoured beast, as only Elia could write. But the poet Cowper
has made the hare's history peculiarly pleasing and familiar. How often
in his letters he alludes to his hares! Mrs E. B. Browning, in her
exquisitely delicate and pathetic poem, "Cowper's Grave," thus alludes
to Cowper's pets--

"Wild, timid hares were drawn from woods to share his home caresses,
Uplooking to his human eyes with sylvan tendernesses;
The very world, by God's constraint, from falsehood's ways removing,
Its women and its men became, beside him, true and loving."

Not many years ago the compiler saw traces of the holes the poet had cut
in the skirting-boards of the room for their ingress and egress, that
they might have ampler room for wandering. His epitaphs on two of them
are often quoted. Rabbits are peculiarly the pets of boys, and though,
when wild, often great vermin, from their destructive habits and their
mining operations, are yet said to contribute much to the revenue of one
European monarch.

How Mr Malthus ought to have hated guinea-pigs, those fertile little
lumps of blotched fur! Few creatures can be more productive.

WILLIAM COWPER ON HIS HARES.

What a model description of the habits of an animal we have in the
gentle Cowper's account of his hares! Would that he had made pets of
other animals, and written descriptions of them, like that which
follows, and which is here copied from the original place to which he
contributed it.[175]

"_May_ 28.