OF S E L B O R N E. 
her new relation demands a new language ; flie then runs clocking 
and fcreaming about, and feems agitated as if poflefled. The 
father of the flock has alfo a confiderable vocabulary ; if he finds 
food, he calls a favourite concubine to partake ; and if a bird of 
prey paffes over, with a warning voice he bids his family beware. 
The gallant chanticleer has, at conim.and, his amorous phrafes and 
his terms of defiance. But the found by which he is beft known is 
his crowing : by this he has been diftinguiflied in all ages as the 
countryman's clock or larum, as the watchman that proclaims 
the divifions of the night. Thus the poet elegantly ftyles him : 
*' — — — the crefted cock, wliofe clarion founds 
" The filent hours." 
A neighbouring gentleman one fummer had loft moft of his 
chickens by a fparrow-hawk, that came gliding down between a 
faggot pile and the end of his houfe to the place where the coops 
flood. The owner, inwardly vexed to fee his flock thus dimi- 
nifliing, hung a fetting net adroitly between the pile and the houfe, 
into which the caitif daflied, and was entangled. Refcntment 
fuggefted the law of retaliation ; 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 
fcene that enfued ; the expreffions that fear, rage, and revenge, 
infpired, were new, or at leaft fuch as had been unnoticed before : 
the exafperated matrons upbraided, they execrated, they infulted, 
they triumphed. In a word, they never defifted from buffetting 
their adverfary till they had torn him in an hundred pieces. 
LETTER 
