when once used to the society of men, are very
sociable, wandering about the neighbourhood
of their owner's house, and paying visits
wherever they find an open door. When annoyed,
they are dangerous; for, besides biting, they
will knock a man down with a flap of the wing,
or a stroke of the foot. They are generally
sedate silent birds, and if not frightened,
walk about slowly and solemnly. Their cry is
a short roar, but with this they seldom favour
human ears, though when out of temper
they will sometimes utter a low hissing noise.
The upper part of the neck of the ostrich is
bare. Then come very delicate black feathers,
which, increasing in size towards the tail, cover
the whole body. In the wings and tail, are the
beautiful white feathers so much admired upon
the heads of ladies. The female has not such
fine white feathers as the male, and even her
black feathers want his raven hue. Indeed, the
greater part are rather greyish brown than black.
The skin of the female (Rabda, it is called by
the Arabs) does not fetch nearly so high a price
as that of the male (Dhaleem). One of the best
skins in its nuptial plumage, will sometimes
bring the Arabs seven or eight pounds. But
this is an unusually high price.

FIVE HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

IT is probable that the greatest alterations in
the aspect of England since the fourteenth
century have been wrought within living memory. A
lapse of five hundred years is a geological second,
and no instances of upheaval or subsidence
on a large scale are recorded within the period.
The railway system, by its junction of town and
country, its creative operations within its line
of progress, and its destructive influence
elsewhere, has effected in thirty years the work of
ages. Yet the city or town keeps its cathedral,
churches, and castle, its gateways, market-cross,
and town-hall, scarcely altered in external
appearance. The village has still its Gothic
church, its mill, its pond, its green, sometimes
even its maypole. Essex, Kent, and Lincoln
yet have their marshes; Oxfordshire,
Gloucestershire, and Berkshire their forests;
Westmoreland and Cumberland their lakes;
Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Surrey, their moors and
commons. Even the Roman roads preserve
their traces. If the bridge has somewhat
changed its form, it has kept its position.
Though often ruinous, the baronial castle still
occupies the heights, and the abbey nestles
among woods beside the stream. North, south,
east, and west, those immemorial landmarks, the
church and the mill, unfailingly meet the eye.
In the rural districts, at least, the typical
timbered mansion is scarcely less common than its
successor in stucco. Prior to the present
century the labourer's cottage might have defied
art-critics and antiquaries to predicate its age
from its style.

As with the work, so with the worker.
Despite the mediævalists, the Englishmen of the
nineteenth century prove themselves of the same
calibre as those of five hundred years ago. The
enormous increase of population has necessitated
a greater division of labour, and created a larger
class of brain-toilers; but that the mettle which
won Cressy and Agincourt has lost nothing in
quality or quantity by the lapse of time, is
periodically demonstrated whenever a war, a rumour
of invasion, an Arctic expedition, or a shipwreck,
calls it forth. What national peculiarities
characterised our forefathers that do not
characterise ourselves?

The same political and social contentions that
we witness, agitated the Englishmen of the
middle ages. The contest between free trade
and protection was just as violent. Labour and
capital were as often at war, and as quickly and
inevitably reconciled. The readiness of the rich
to tax, and the disinclination of the poor to pay,
were as strongly asserted. Commercial panics
and religious revivals were as frequent phenomena.
Fraudulent bankers, swindling speculators,
frantic preachers, and credulous fools,
were quite as numerous. How little have we
deviated from many modes of life familiar to
mediæval Englishmen! Could they reappear
on the scene, they would recognise the main
features of their own social fabric. The peer
would meet his fellows in the Upper House;
the knight of the shire his fellows in the
Commons. The priest would find little difference
in the form and arrangement of his church,
and would remember the greatest portion of the
service. The lawyer would have few formulas
to forget or to learn in the process of an action
at the Exchequer or Common Pleas. The citizen
might take his place among his brethren at
wardmote or common council, and scarcely feel
a stranger. The lord of the manor would hold
his court baron, and pocket his chief rents and
fines as of yore. If he missed his hawking, and
thought shooting new-fangled, he would turn
with the old zest to hunting and fishing. The
labourer on many a farm would handle plough,
harrow, and fork, and see no change in his tools.
The jollity at Christmas, the fasting in Lent,
crossed-buns on Good Friday, and salt fish on
Ash Wednesday, would go far to persuade the
risen generation that England had stood still.

There is a healthy sense in the scorn wherewith
business men of average intellect and
education, treat the proceedings of most of
our antiquarian societies. The error into
which such scorners fall, is in supposing
that the gentlemen who "communicate" their
twaddling lucubrations touching fragments of
Roman pipkin and mediæval parchment are
archæologists. The error is natural, however, for
until lately the professors of antiquarian science
in England—with honourable exceptions—were
all of this kidney. Accordingly, while the soil of
the Wiltshire downs has been probed and
honeycombed again and again, the dust on our public
records has never been blown off. Profoundly
acquainted with the mode in which our ancestors
were buried, we have remained ignorant as to
the mode in which they lived.

But, for those who care to study the