an average fleece is worth about seven shillings
and sixpence.

The farmer who has got back all his sheep
from the washing without losing one by drowning
(an accident that sometimes happens in the
confusion and inevitable haste), and has had
them sheared without getting them much cut,
and has lastly been to the wool-market, and got
a good price for his wool, may then turn the
sheep out of his mind for a time, and go on
steadily to his hay-harvest.

And now the great annual Chicklebury sheep-
washing is over. The little blue pulpits are
unlashed, the hurdles pulled up and flapped
together, the sousing-poles stacked and put away.
The washers shoulder their brown beer jars,
shake hands and congratulate each other. Again
the shepherds seek their old haunts under the
fir woods and in the furze patches; and I dare say
their old companions the plovers and the wheatears
rejoice to see them once more, and the
rabbits gambol all the blither for their return.

MY NEPHEW'S COLLECTION.

Most manias, whether chronic or acute, fail
to become cosmopolite; they rage within a
limited area, beyond which they do not spread;
or they are confined to certain classes of society,
above or below which they do not rise or sink.
The rows of Donnybrook Fair are a notoriously
Irish mania; howling religious revivals are
American manifestations. In one century,
choice tulips hardly got out of the hands of
merchant princes; in another, they became
the exclusive delight of weavers. Auriculas,
with their formal and powdery beauty, have
been stigmatised, by those who cannot grow
them, as shoemakers' flowers. Lancashire is
the centre of the gooseberry mania.
Bullfighting is a mania, which, although fierce on
the spot, we should be sorry to see gaining
ground outside the Spanish dominions. Every
country in Europe has its own special mania;
and there are doubtless plenty of little localities,
both within the pale of Christendom and without
it, each with its own pet mania, which, as
far as the rest of the world is concerned, is born
to break out unseen and waste its weakness on
the desert air.

My nephew is a victim of the last new mania.

Harry is not a bad sort of fellow, being neither
rebellious, saucy, unsteady, nor priggish. For
his age I thought him wonderfully quiet and
studious, given to more serious pursuits than
most other juveniles. He brought with him,
from Dr. Trimmeboy's establishment, a thick
square strong-bound manuscript, entirely filled
with a series of sums, ranging from simple and
compound addition (with the lines ruled with
red ink), through cube-root extraction, tare and
tret, interest for various terms and at various
rates per cent, timber-measuring and land-
surveying, and concluding with a mild foretaste of
trigonometry: showing how to calculate the
height of a steeple—all transcribed in his own
handwriting, with corrections, passim, by the
head usher. It was (for it is no longer) an
autograph volume of which any ciphering-master
in the land might boast.

His aunt Rebecca (my maiden sister) and
myself, after close inspection of the manuscript,
were duly edified—so duly, in fact, that I believe
we never opened it afterwards, until the occasion
I am about to relate. But what
subsequently excited our approbation was the
constant reference which Harry made to his model
ciphering-book. He would lay down the Times
to recur to its perusal. When I opened a light
chat on the City article, he would take up his
book, as a help to a clearer comprehension of
the topic. If, alluding to the Court of the
Vatican, I mentioned the intrigues of the ex-
King of Naples, he replied perhaps, consulting
the book again, "Ah, yes; I have it." If I
wondered whether Hesse would make it up with
Prussia, " Let me see; unluckily, no," was his
answer, after a glance at the oracle. He never
parted from the book. He thought more of the
book than Abernethy did of his. It was his
handy book, his vade mecum, his manual, his
companion by day, and his bedfellow, I believe,
by night. Beholding this strong attachment to
figures, vague thoughts came over us of his
being destined to succeed the astronomer-royal,
or to rival the fame of Bidder amd Babbage.

At the same time he seemed to become
strangely and even unpleasantly inquisitive
respecting our own private affairs. Neither
Rebecca nor myself receive letters that contain
deep secrets, political or family. We do not
correspond with Garibaldi, Mazzini, or the
Count de Chambord. We hold no communication,
in cypher or otherwise, with any foreign
government. Still, we like that the few letters
we do receive should be regarded with respectful
reverence—should be touch-me-nots, scarcely
to be looked at, handed in on a waiter. We
even thought of starting the fashion of having
them covered with a napkin besides. Instead
of which, Harry at once took to answering the
postman's knock, although Mrs. Price, our
housekeeper, always did so before his arrival.
Not only that: we felt aware that the outside of
every letter was scrupulously examined while
he closed the hall-door as slowly as possible and
returned to the breakfast-room at a funeral
pace. Newspapers sent by absent friends—
three distinguished families on our visiting
list were then enjoying a continental tour—
were subjected to the same inspection. Every
cast-off envelope was carefully but silently
secured, for the sake, as we thought, of studying
and comparing the handwriting. We
noticed also that, young as he was, more letters
arrived for him than for us, the contents of
which he never communicated. Strange, and
slightly impertinent!

Yesterday, Rebecca's forbearance could hold
out no longer. At the postman's rap, Harry
jumped up as usual, before Mrs. Price—who is
not so active as she was twenty years ago—
could get to the door; and he returned with two
letters, one half hidden in the cuff of his sleeve,