Mr. Waterton at Home. 305 



opened and shut you within leafy solitudes which were 

 surrounded by a nine-foot wall. He had accurately 

 gauged the jumping power of a fox, and we think it 

 was his boast that one, and only one had ever got its 

 pads on the coping, and that it made no second 

 effort. Walton Hall seemed quite a city of refuge, 

 where a man might lay by all care and sorrow for a 

 season ; but still, no one without the high spirits of a 

 schoolboy or the heart of a naturalist could enjoy it 

 to the full. The birds were to him a living poem all 

 the year round. " The change of seasons was his 

 calendar." Rooks cawed gratefully as they dug up 

 the wire-worm at eve in the old grass, and " the 

 royal birds" built their clumsy nests, and did their 

 fishing in peace. Not a gun or a trap was known 

 about the domain. We ventured to suggest that the 

 water rats must increase terribly under the golden 

 age ; and he replied quite angrily : " Kill the water- 

 rats ! they're my greatest comfort they're the English 

 beaver !" Still a stewed carp from the lake carried 

 you back to the " good old times," and furnished a 

 dish not soon to be forgotten. 



The house was girdled by a moat, and the cross 

 rising above the ivy stood near the drawbridge en- 

 trance, as the earnest and symbol of his faith. Every 

 tree had its story, or was peopled with some myste- 

 rious feathered tenant in fee. There was the owl's 

 hole in the oak beyond the bridge; a tower was pierced 

 with " chambers" for the jackdaws' parliament which 

 never " rose for the holidays ;" the American haw 

 was there in plenty, for the missle-thrush or storm- 

 cock ; and there too was the shattered elm, from whose 

 shade, as he so often recounted, under a prescience of 

 ill which made him hurry home from the confessional, 

 he warned off two visitors, just before it was struck by 

 lightning. 



He delighted to point out the window from which 

 when a child the good Abbe rescued him as he 



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