every day during her sickness, and stand by
her, and even cry heartily over her.'

Jeanette should have borne a collar of
gold to the day of her death. But Professor
Lipsius knows of some other histories at
second–hand well worthy of record. Witness
that affecting story of the Corsican hunter
who used to take a favourite hound with him
upon his excursions, in one of which he was
buried below the snow and perished
miserably. His friends, missing him, set out to
look for him, and at last discovered his body
all stark and frozen. 'But the dog '(O,
what noble yet what ill–timed fidelity!)
'guarded his master jealously, and drove
them off furiously, taking them for robbers
come to spoil his body. They tried to soothe
and coax him off; but all without avail,
though he had been in the habit of receiving
his food from their hands every day. At
last, they were put to the alternative of
leaving the body there, or else of destroying
the dog. They are therefore compelled to
shoot him with their arrows: and so he yields
up his life and his honest heart together upon
his master's body.'

All honour, then, to the Dog All
honour, too, to those who appreciate his
virtues so heartily—even though virtues of
a poor dumb brute. As was said at the
beginning, it is comforting to think that
his social position is improving. Hearts as
gentle as those of the Professor are looking
after him. His millennium is drawing near.

In course of time the good Professor's
hour came, and he died and was buried in his
old university. An old traveller, by name
Golnitzius, coming that road some thirty or
forty years later, was shown his rooms and
the portraits of the three dogs hung up. It
is not written whether any one has seen them
later. The old traveller strolled into the Dominican
church hard by, and read the Professor's
epitaph. Passing afterwards on to Halle, they
showed him there all the notable things of
that curious city. He saw in the cathedral
all the offerings of generals and statesmen;
the silver statues; the tree with fruit of
solid gold; the twenty silver lamps; but
was most struck by a certain casket hung up
by silver chains, with a tablet and inscription
below it. This was the Professor's pen
which had written for him many volumes,
now laid humbly at the feet of Our Lady of
Halle.

THE BLANKSHIRE THICKET.

THICKETS in Blankshire are not now the
dense masses of underwood which they are
still popularly believed to be, and which,
perhaps, once they were. The ram of the
patriarch Isaac would scarcely be caught in
any one of these by his horns; vast quantities
of sheep, indeed, make their pasture land
of our thicket without paying further tribute
to the briars and the prickly gorse than a
few handfuls of wool, and a man may walk
miles and miles upon it without meeting with
greater inconveniences than an occasional
thorn in his flesh.

The lordly stag (not seldom uncarted on
our thicket) finds scarce an obstacle which
his easy canter cannot surmount without a
bound; the large limbed hounds, whose
mistress is the queen herself, dash through it
at full speed, unheedful of the gorse which
reddens their tail tips; and the scarlet–coated
hunters take their way by fifties and
by hundreds across the densest part of
it almost as swiftly as along its open turf
roads.

A lonely spot it is at all seasons, bleak
enough in winter, but beautiful and brilliant
with colour in the summer time; then, except
the little round bald patches which mark the
halting places of the numerous companies of
gipsies who at that period haunt our Blankshire
thicket, all is green or golden. The soft south
wind is never weary of blowing there, although
always somewhat faint with the odour of the
gorse blossoms; the lark is never tired of
singing in the blue above, nor the grasshopper
in the green beneath; nor the butterfly
of roaming over the dangerous blootng
whose sharp spears threaten in vain its delicate
fairy wings. There are few thickets
like it, and those few are growing fewer day
by day. It is not impossible ihat the
Enclosure Act may lay its claws, or one of its
clauses, before long, even upon Brierly
Thicket; indeed, I have missed a corner here,
and a good strip there, and what I have
known to be a capital rabbit bank, has
become a cornfield patch already, so that the
sooner I say what I have got to say about
our thicket—while it is a thicket—the
better.

In the good old times, which were
five–and–thirty years ago exactly, Brierly, which
is now a stagnant country town, was a place
of importance. The great western road to
London, the king's highway (which is now,
alas! the railroad), ran through it, and upon
that road seventy–three coaches passed and
repassed daily. Forty–five of these changed
horses at the Calderton Arms, which was
the best hotel in our town, and patronised
by Lord Calderton of Brierly Park, who in
those days saved us the trouble of choosing
a representative in Parliament by
nominating one himself, and bidding us vote
for him.

In those good old times it must be confessed
that our thicket was not so safe as it
is now. No coach ever crossed it after
dusk without the guard having his loaded
blunderbuss ready to his hand, lest he should
meet with any gentlemen of the road, and
many were the robberies to which, despite
that precaution, passengers were obliged to
submit.

Brierly farmers driving home from market
in the evenings used to go armed, and with