the war with the Pretender, and was produced
at Covent Garden on the first of April, in
the year seventeen hundred and forty-seven;
Handel was then sixty-two years old. Its
political significance, as well as the pride
taken in it by the Jews, helped to ensure it
great success. Handel himself performed it
thirty-eight times; at the thirtieth performance,
his receipts amounted to four hundred
pounds. Five years later, having written
Jephtha, his last work, Handel, when within
three years of three score and ten was
blinded by that drop serene which Milton
suffered from, and of which Milton sang. Six
or seven years later he died on Good Friday,
the thirteenth of April, seventeen hundred
and fifty-nine. Of the centenary of his death,
a most worthy celebration is now in progress.

THE MILKY AND WATERY WAY.

WHEN the eastern sky flushed, on a certain
autumn morning of last year, and the white
caps of the farm-women looked very cold in
the grey light, little did the surly farmers
think, as they rubbed the lingering sleep
from their heavy eyelids, that they might be
wide-awake to see the donkeys and horses
loaded—little did they think that in the
little town six miles off, certain angry men
had laid a plot against them. The broad
pans of rich milk sweetened the air, as the
white fluid passed through it, into the shining
buckets strapped to the sheepskin saddles of
the patient donkeys. The milkwomen counted
the eggs, and folded the chrome butter in
damp cloths. And we thought that, amid
the gabble of the servants, the shrill cries for
Cesar, Antoine, Louis, Josephine (who wore
boots that were a reasonable load for any
donkey), and Clementine (who was warding
off the amatory advances of Cesar, with a
pitchfork), we certainly heard the well-known
creak of the well-pulley. The farmer, who,
by the time the farm-servants were fairly on
the move, had fully resumed his daily remarkable
wide-awake appearance, seemed too, to
have very curious business in hand. It had
appeared to us that the Sieur Moineau made,
as forcible ladies express it, " more fuss
than enough" over the milk: and so it
appeared to his enemies, as we shall presently
show. Those sturdy legs of his would
have failed him, even in those stiff leather
gaiters, could he have peered, with those
little grey eyes of his, into the future
that lay but two hours a-head of the
present. But, as our friend Paleyanwater (a
very old family) reminds us, at least twice in
every twenty-four hours, it is a blessing that
we cannot tell what the next five minutes
may bring forth.

The Sieur Moineau, on the morning
when we first made his acquaintance, went
through his regular number of oaths at
his men and women servants, rolled his
potent r's up and down the dairy with his
accustomed vigour, and, at last, saw his milk
off for the market just as the sun had fairly
left the horizon; with the firm conviction
that Cesar, Josephine, Antoine, and Clementine
would return to their midday meal,
loaded with that strange jumble of bell-
metal and copper, that, in France, even last
year, in country districts, represented the
humbler currency of the imperial dominions.
Round about, in the hamlets dotted over the
swell and fall of the land near the little
town to which we have already alluded, and
for which the Sieur Moineau's milk
procession was bound, similar preparations to
those we have faintly indicated, had taken
place. A bird's-eye view of five or six miles
around the town (let us call it Romanville)
would have discovered a series of roads
running into it, like needles into a circular
pin-cushion. And upon one and all of these
roads would have appeared sundry dark gray
spots, relieved, as they neared the town, every
moment by flashing light. These spots were
milk equipages: the flashing lights, the
bright brass-hoops of the milk-pails, the
chirp of the birds—birds that were evidently
sharp searchers for the early worm—was
occasionally drowned by the shriller music of
the milkwomen, who were indulging in
reminiscences of Normandy, and taking, to
musical ears, a very unpleasant means of
communicating to any person who might be
at hand their ardent desire to see it again;
it being their deliberate opinion, after a
comprehensive tour, that there was nothing
like it. Barricaded in their seats by baskets
of eggs and butter, their head and caps
protected from the breeze by ample handkerchiefs,
their substantial ankles cased in deep
blue stockings, these parties of milk vendors
were jolted on their way to Romanville.
Occasionally their animals would loiter to
gather a more than usually attractive thistle
—a giving way to temptation which these
rough Amazons punished by the prompt
incision of a very substantial pin near the
culprit's hind-quarters. Merrily enough
many of these ladies gossiped along the road
about Baptiste, the ploughman who had
jilted Jeannette, and had married Elise
instead, to his cost, as he found out, and serve
him right. About the prodigious number of
litres yielded by the black cow; about the
garde champêtre, who had spied a hare's foot
peeping out of Adolphe's capacious pockets;
in short, about the scandals in general of the
village from which they were being jolted.
And why not, pray? My lady, who spends
her mornings reviewing her long list of
friends—who yawns when they are praised,
and exhibits animation only when something
may be heard of to their disadvantage, is
allowed her malignant pleasure by all the
world, and is permitted as the subject of
sharp reviews by all the world also. Why,
then, should Virginie, the ruddy-cheeked
dairywoman, as she rides to market, be