soon gets stocked with them. There’s a good many shoemakers as catches them. They are a very common-looking bird, but a beautiful singing bird, and there is not a bird of the size can beat them in the note. I means to go out next spring after them; but I think I shall get down a good ways from London for ’em” 1 cannot refrain, in conclusion, from mentioning a passage (I was flogged at Winchester for not being able to construe it, so I do not swagger about recollecting the quotation) in one of the Greek plays,* where the poet compares, in the most beautiful words, the solitary mourning, in silence and solitude, of the lone nightingale,

A lady has been kind enough to send me a Milanese song about the nightingale, of which the following is a translation

There once was a king As wicked as possible, The Lord changed him Into a Upoe. Who passes here? We are Procne And Philomela, Changed into a swallow, Ah, poor creature! Into a horrid castle Philomela was put But she opened Doors and windows, And flew away To the woods singing And a nightingale became.

to a heart-broken mother who, at the dead of the night, when sweet sleep has departed from her weary eyes and sobbing breast, bewails the loss of her dear son, lost to her for ever. The song, the “ Jug Jug,” of the bird, is supposed to be represented in the soft silky Greek words in which the description is penned by the ancient poet. The idea has struck me whether the nightingales do not go to Greece for the winter, and that the poet might have listened to the song of one of the ancestors of our own sweet songsters. Nor must I neglect to quote honest Izaak Walton, whose marvellous portrait in the South Kensington Museum has lately so riveted my attention that if I were to meet him in the street to-morrow I should know him again. This is the man who wrote the following:— “ But the nightingale, another of my airy creatures, breathes such sweet loud music out of her little instrumental throat, that it might make mankind to think miracles are not ceased. He that at midnight, when the very labourer sleeps securely, should hear, as I have

very often, the clear airs, the sweet descants, the natural rising and falling, the doubling and redoubling of her voice, might well be lifted above earth, and say, c Lord, what music hast thou provided for thy saints in heaven when thou affordest bad men such music on earth!’ ”

182

A VISIT TO “THE WHITE-HORSE

HILL,” BERKSHIRE.

I arrived at my friend’s hospitable mansion late in the evening in February, 1864, after a long drive over bad roads. It was so dark during the journey that I could see nothing whatever of the country, but, on arrival at the house, I heard the tinkling of a brook, a grateful sound to my ears, as I knew there were trout in it, and that we should be after their eggs* on the morrow.

On looking out of the bedroom window at early morning I saw an apparition which pleased me greatly. The house was built in a valley (I was told by my hostess that it was called “ The Manger,” but she did not give the reason), and right opposite the window was the far-famed u White-Horse Hill,” and the white horse upon it. “ I must be off after you at once, old hoss,” said I to myself, “and see what I can find out about you for my friends, who doubtless have often seen and wondered at your gigantic proportions as they are * My errand was to get the eggs of these very trout that I might hatch them artificially; and when the little fish were big enough turn them down into our noble Thames.

I j whisked on in the Great Western Kailway express along the Vale of White Horse.”* Almost everybody has read the “ Scouring of the White Horse,” by T. Hughes, Esq., M.P., and therefore does not need to be told that the horse is not a metal or a stone statue, but simply a rude figure of a horse cut out on the turf on the side of one of the lofty hills which forms part of the range of the Berkshire downs. The horse is situated in a most bleak and exposed position, and is not often favoured with visitors in the winter, though frequent pic-nics take place on the hill during the summer. Passing along the side of my friend’s fish-pond, and along the brook, and through the copse, I soon arrived at the spring-head where the water gushes out from the chalk in a perpetual, ever-flowing, never-freezing stream, and as cold as ice itself. Emerging from the wood, I was at once on the downs; and here, for the first time, I was enabled to perceive the gigantic proportions of the horse, though he

’ was still several hundred feet above me. ‘ Forward was the word, and a few steps brought me suddenly to the brow of a precipice, which formed one side of an enormous valley, or ravine, so deep and mysterious-looking that I felt a species of awe come over me. This is, with the portion of the plain below, what they call

Reader, if you want to see the “ White Horse.” look out for him on the brow of the highest hill you can see on the left hand, just before you get to Swindon station on the Great Western.

the White Horse’s “ manger.” The south side of it is nearly smooth, and is covered with grass about a foot high. The other side is a series of frowning bluffs, such as we see in pictures of the American prairies. Both sides of the valley are terraced off* in a most curious manner in neat little platforms, a few inches broad, reminding one of the tiers of seats in the ancient Boman amphitheatres. These terraces are said to have been formed by the sheep feeding along the side of the hill, and are known in the down county as “ sheep-paths.” Though their origin is thus accounted for by the local inhabitants, a stranger is greatly puzzled by their appearance. I doubt if they are not formed by slips of the

chalk stratification.

This deep valley has a dark, ancient, mysterious gloom about it, and is, I am convinced, the theatre used by the ghosts of the ancient British and Saxon warriors whose bones are turned up by the ploughmen in the chalk hill just above. In this valley they must meet at midnight at Christmas time; and while the great King Alfred, seated by the White Horse, over-looks them, as he did hundreds of years since—

The chief beholds their chariots from afar,

Their shining arms and coursers trained to war;

Their lances fixed in earth, their steeds around,

Free from the harness, graze the flow’ry ground;

Their love of horses which they had alive,

And care of chariots after death survive.

;

CURRANT JELLY ! 18o

But what can that object be moving, far, far away at the bottom? I cannot see it now. I certainly saw something move among the long grass; ah! there it is again there she goes at full speed up the hill-—a hare—look, side. She stops and listens; I blow my whistle; she is off again. Ah! poor puss, you may well keep yourself in training. You have probably escaped but yesterday from the greyhounds at Ashdown Park, and you had better be off at once, or my noble friend’s harriers will be after you to-morrow. So I shouted “ currant jelly” as loud as I could, and poor puss put on the steam, and was soon out of sight.

The ascent becomes steeper; but steps cut in the turf assist one a little, though it is like going up the roof of a house. What a curious-looking gutter this is on the right hand, and how clean it is kept. I wonder what it is. I go further, and perceive that the gutter widens out into a broad ditch, about six yards across, and two feet deep, cut in the turf. I walk along it but where can the white horse be? I go higher up the hill, and at once perceive that these apparent ditches form the outline of the white horse himself.

It is indeed a most gigantic beast. When near him he is not the least like a horse, but by walking up the white path which forms the back bone, one arrives at the head. On a little consideration its form can be made out; the two ears are triangular places cut out of

the turf like a big flower-bed; the main body of the head is nearly, if not quite as large as one of the Charing-cross fountains, and in the centre is a round patch of white chalk, which forms the eye. The lower jaw is composed of two pathways cut in the turf, so that the white horse’s mouth is represented as being open, as though pulling hard at the bit. In order to give some idea of the size of this head, I now give its measurements as I stepped it out. The eye is just four feet across; the off ear is fifteen yards in length; from the top of the head to the lower jaw there are twenty yards 5 from the lower jaw to the base of the off ear eighteen yards. I then proceeded to step out to other portions of the horse, and found that the length of the lower foreleg is twenty-four yards, and of the hind-leg forty-three yards. The tail of the horse is two yards across, and forty yards long; the lower part of it, in consequence of the drainage of the wet, reminding one much of real hair; the entire length of the body of the horse along the line from the lower jaw to the tip of the tail is one hundred and thirty yards; add to this the forty yards for the tail, and we have the total length of the white horse one hundred and seventy yards, as near as possible. Eeader! mark the space out with sticks on your field, and you will see what a gigantic fellow this white horse is. The whole animal is said to include a space of about two acres, but I have not time to verify this. If

Londoners wish to realise his size, let me tell them that the line from the lower jaw to the end of the tail is about the same as the length of the pavement on the top

side of Trafalgar square at Charing Cross, opposite the

National Gallery. For many centuries has the White Horse been keeping watch over the country below, and been admired and wondered at by generation after generation of worthy Berkshire men and women; but it is occasionally “ scoured,” that is, the pathways are cleaned out from the grass which has grown up upon them, and fresh chalk added to make the horse clean and bright, for on a clear day he can be seen sixteen miles off; the last scouring being that described by Tom Hughes, Esq., M.P., in his admirable work the “ Scouring of the White Horse.” It is at this time that various rustic games are played, and I listened to a long disquisition on the art of playing 45 back-swording,” &c. I learnt all the mysteries of back-swording from Thomas Butler, the old man, who went out to “ Idlle Tump,” an old camp close by, to gather moss for me to pack up my trout eggs with. Thomas informed me that he had both “ a-seen it and a-done it many a time on the hill, and that he had generally got the best on it.”

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