188 JULY. 



any thing but an impediment in the course of a 

 rural courtship. 



Those good old turnstiles too — can I ever 

 forget them? the hours I have spun round 

 upon them when a boy ! or those in which I 

 have almost laughed myself to death at the re- 

 membrance of my village pedagogue's disaster ! 

 Methinks I see him now ! — the time a sultry 

 day, — the domine a goodly person of some 

 eighteen or twenty stone, — the scene a foot- 

 path sentinelled with turnstiles, one of which 

 held him fast as in amazement at his bulk. 

 Never shall I forget his efforts and agonies to 

 extricate himself; nor his lion-like roars which 

 brought some labourers to his assistance, who, 

 when they had recovered from their convulsions 

 of laughter, knocked off the top of the turnstile 

 and let him go. It is long since I saw a stile of 

 this construction, and I suspect the Falstaffs 

 have cried them down. But without a jest, 

 stiles and foot-paths are vanishing every where. 

 There is nothing upon which the advance of 

 wealth and population has made so serious an 

 inroad. As land has increased in value, wastes 

 and heaths have been parcelled out and in- 

 closed, but seldom have foot-paths been left. 

 The poet and the naturalist, who before had, 

 perhaps, the greatest real property in them, 

 have had no allotment. They have been totally 



