[ 130 ] [FEB. 



VILLAGE SKETCHES. 



No. IX. 



The Bird-Catcher. 



A LONDON fog is a sad thing, as every inhabitant of London knows 

 full well : dingy, dusky, dirty, damp ; an atmosphere black as smoke 

 and wet as steam, that wraps round you like a blanket; a cloud reaching 

 from earth to heaven ; a " palpable obscure," which not only turns day 

 into night, but threatens to extinguish the lamps and lanthorns, with 

 which the poor street wanderers strive to illumine their darkness, dim- 

 ming and paling the " ineffectual fires," until the volume of gas at a 

 shop door cuts no better a figure than a hedge glow-worm, and a duchess's 

 flambeau would veil its glories to a Will-o'-the-wisp. A London fog 

 is, not to speak profanely, a sort of renewal and reversal of Joshua's 

 miracle ; the sun seems to stand still as on that occasion, only that now 

 it stands in the wrong place, and gives light to the Antipodes. The 

 very noises of the streets come stifled and smothered through that suffo- 

 cating medium ; din is at a pause ; the town is silenced ; and the whole 

 population, biped and quadruped, sympathize with the dead and chilling 

 weight of the out-of-door world. Dogs and cats just look up from their 

 slumbers, turn round, and go to sleep again ; the little birds open their 

 pretty eyes, stare about them, wonder that the night is so long, and 

 settle themselves afresh on their perches. Silks lose their gloss, cravats 

 their stiffness, hackney coachmen their way; young ladies fall out of 

 curl, and mammas out of temper ; masters scold ; servants grumble ; and 

 the whole city, from Hyde Park Corner to Wapping, looks sleepy and 

 cross, like a fine gentleman roused before his time, and forced to get up 

 by candle-light. Of all detestable things, a London fog is the most 

 detestable. 



Now a country fog is quite another matter. To say nothing of its 

 rarity, and in this dry and healthy midland county, few of the many 

 variations of our variable English climate are rarer ; to say nothing of 

 its unfrequent recurrence, there is about it much of the peculiar and 

 characteristic beauty which almost all natural phenomena exhibit to 

 those who have themselves that faculty, oftener perhaps claimed than 

 possessed, a genuine feeling of nature. This lovely autumn, when the 

 flowers of all seasons seemed mingling as one sometimes sees them in a 

 painter's garland the violets and primroses re-blossoming, and new 

 crops of sweet-peas and mignonette blending with the chrysanthemum, 

 the Michaelmas daisy, and the dahlia, the latest blossoms of the year 

 when the very leaves clung to the trees with a freshness so vigorous and 

 so youthful, that they seemed to have determined, in spite of their old 

 bad habit, that for once they would not fall this lovely autumn has 

 given us more foggy mornings, or rather more foggy days, than I ever 

 remember to have seen in Berkshire: days beginning in a soft and 

 vapoury mistiness, enveloping the whole country in a veil, showy, 

 fleecy, and light, as the smoke which one often sees circling in the 

 distance from some cottage chimney, or as the still whiter clouds which 

 float around the moon ; and finishing in sunsets of a surprising richness 

 and beauty, when the mist is lifted up from the earth, and turned into 

 a canopy of unrivalled gorgeousness, purple, rosy and golden, disclosing 

 the splendid autumn landscape, with its shining rivulets, its varied and 



