248 HELIOTEOPES. 



a warning voice lie bids his family beware. The gallant 

 chanticleer has, at command, his amorous phrases, and his 

 terms of defiance. But the sound by which he is best known 

 is his crowing : by this he has been distinguished in all ages 

 as the countryman's clock or larum as the watchman that 

 proclaims the divisions of the night. Thus the poet elegantly 

 styles him 



" The crested cock, whose clarion sounds 

 The silent hours." 



A neighbouring gentleman, one summer, had lost most of 

 his chickens by a sparrow-hawk, that came gliding down 

 between a fagot pile and the end of his house to the place 

 where the coops stood. The owner, inwardly vexed to see his 

 flock thus diminishing, hung a setting net adroitly between 

 the pile and the house, into which the caitiff dashed, and 

 was entangled. Resentment suggested the law of retali- 

 ation ; he therefore clipped the hawk's wings, cut off his 

 talons, and, fixing a cork on his bill, threw him down among 

 the brood-hens. Imagination cannot paint the scene that 

 ensued ; the expressions that fear, rage, and revenge inspired, 

 were new, or at least such as had been unnoticed before. 

 The exasperated matrons upbraided they execrated they 

 insulted they triumphed. In a word, they never desisted 

 from buffeting their adversary till they had torn him in a 

 hundred pieces. 



LETTEE LXXXVI. 



TO THE SAME. 



SELBORNE. 

 Monstrent 



9 * v - * V v 



Quid tantum Oceano properent se tingere soles 

 Hyberni ; vel quse tardis mora noctibus obstet.'' 



They show 



Why winter-suns so rapidly descend, 

 And what delays the tardy nights extend. 



GENTLEMEN who have outlets might contrive to make orna- 

 ment subservient to utility ; a pleasing eye-trap might also 



