RURAL SCENES. 261 



with pliant twigs of hazel-wood, and occasionally the strong arms 

 of great brooding elms. Then we came upon a low, thick- 

 thatched cottage with many bends in the ridge-pole, with little 

 windows, and thick walls ; a cat asleep in the door, and pigs and 

 chickens before it, and, lying on the ground, in the dust of the 

 lane, playing with a puppy, two or three flaxen-haired, blue-eyed 

 children ; a little further, a drowsy old she-ass standing in the 

 shade, and a mouse-colored foal, as little as a lamb, but with a 

 great head and large, plaintive dark eyes, and a meek and touch- 

 ing expression of infantile, embryo intellect. 



Now and then the hedge is interrupted by the wall of a pad- 

 dock or stack-yard ; beyond it, a number of dilapidated hovels, 

 sheds, and stables, clustering without any appearance of arrange- 

 ment about a low farm-house with big chimneys, wide windows, 

 and a little porch half hidden under roses, jessamine, and honey- 

 suckle. 



Sometimes a big dog would bay at us, and, a woman coming 

 to the door, our friend would ask, " How is the master and the 

 little ones?" and in turn be asked, "How is good mistress and 

 young master?" And then we would be presented as strangers, 

 who had come over the sea to view this goodly land, and would 

 be asked, in pitying tones, about famine, and fever, and potatoes 

 the farm-wife, although she had an exceedingly sweet speech, 

 apparently confounding New York with Connaught or Munster. 



Again, broad fields, and stout horses, and busy laborers, and 

 straight plow-furrows, or the bright metallic green of luxuriant 

 young wheat and barley, in broad glades of glancing light ; and 

 a stout old man, who waddles towards us with a warm greeting, 

 wiping the sweat from his brow, and mounting " a goodish bit of 

 stuff, though she has seen twenty winters," rides for a little way 

 along with us, breathing hard and speaking huskily ; grumbling, 

 grumbling at Free Trade and high rents, but answering all our 



