the cover. These poles are visited every morning when the trap is there, and the captured creature put out of pain. Of the cruelty of the trap itself there can be no doubt; but it is very unjust to assume that therefore those connected with sport are personally cruel. In a farmhouse much frequented by rats, and from which they cannot be driven out, these animals are said to have discovered a means of defying the gin set for them. One such gin was placed in the cheese-room, near a hole from which they issued, but they dragged together pieces of straw, little fragments of wood, and various odds and ends, and so covered the pan that the trap could not spring. They formed, in fact, a bridge over it.

Red and yellow fungi mark decaying places on the trunks and branches of the trees; their colour is brightest when the boughs are bare. By a streamlet wandering into the osier beds the winter gnats dance in the sunshine, round about an old post covered with ivy, on which green berries are thick. The warm sunshine gladdens the hearts of the moorhens floating on the water yonder by the bushes, and their singular note, " coorg-coorg," is uttered at intervals. In the plantation close to the house a fox resides as safe as King Louis in "Quentin Durward," surrounded with his guards and archers and fortified towers, though tokens of his midnight rambles, in the shape of bones, strew the front of his castle. He crosses the lawn in sight of the windows occasionally, as if he really knew and understood that his life is absolutely safe at ordinary times, and that he need beware of nothing but the hounds.

THE BATHING SEASON.

MOST people who go on the West Pier at Brighton walk at once straight to the farthest part. This is the order and custom of pier promenading; you are to stalk along the deck till you reach the end, and there go round and round the band in a circle like a horse tethered to an iron pin, or else sit down and admire those who do go round and round. No one looks back at the gradually extending beach and the fine curve of the shore. No one lingers where the surf breaks-immediately above it-listening to the remorseful sigh of the dying wave as it sobs back to the sea. There, looking downwards, the white edge of the surf recedes in hollow crescents, curve after curve for a mile or more, one succeeding before the first can disappear and be replaced by a fresh wave. A faint mistiness hangs above the beach at some distance, formed of the salt particles dashed into the air and suspended. At night, if the tide chances to be up, the white surf rushing in and returning immediately beneath has a strange effect, especially in its pitiless regularity. If one wave seems to break a little higher it is only in appearance, and because you have not watched long enough. In a certain

number of times another will break there again; presently one will encroach the merest trifle; after a while another encroaches again, and the apparent irregularity is really sternly regular. The free wave has no liberty-it does not act for itself,-no real generous wildness. "Thus far and no farther," is not a merciful saying. Cold and dread and pitiless, the wave claims its due-it stretches its arms to the fullest length, and does not pause or hearken to the desire of any human heart. Hopeless to appeal to is the unseen force that sends the white surge underneath to darken the pebbles to a certain line. The wetted pebbles are darker than the dry; even in the dusk they are easily distinguished. Something merciless is there not in this conjunction of restriction and impetus? Something outside human hope and thought-indifferent-cold?

Considering in this way, I wandered about fifty yards along the pier, and sat down in an abstracted way on the seat on the right side. Beneath, the clear green sea rolled in crestless waves towards the shore --they were moving "without the animation of the wind," which had deserted them two days ago, and a hundred miles out at sea. Slower and slower, with an indolent undulation, rising and sinking of mere weight and devoid of impetus, the waves passed on, scarcely seeming to break the smoothness of the surface. At a little distance it seemed level; yet the boats every now and then sank deeply into the trough, and even a large fishing-smack rolled heavily. For it is the nature of a groundswell to be exceedingly deceptive. Sometimes the waves are so far apart

that the sea actually is level-smooth as the surface of a polished dining-table-till presently there appears a darker line slowly approaching, and a wave of considerable size comes in, advancing exactly like the crease in the cloth which the housemaid spreads on the table—the air rolling along underneath it forms a linen imitation of the groundswell. These unexpected rollers are capital at upsetting boats just touching the beach; the boat is broadside on and the occupants in the water in a second. To-day the groundswell was more active, the waves closer together, not having had time to forget the force of the extinct gale. Yet the sea looked calm as a millpond-just the morning for a bath.

Along the yellow line where sand and pebbles meet there stood a gallant band, in gay uniforms, facing the water. Like the imperial legions who were ordered to charge the ocean, and gather the shells as spoils of war, the cohorts gleaming in purple and gold extended their front rank-their fighting line one to a yard-along the strand. Some tall and stately; some tall and slender; some well developed and firm on their limbs; some gentle in attitude, even in their war dress; some defiant; perhaps forty or fifty, perhaps more, ladies; a splendid display of womanhood in the bright sunlight. Blue dresses, pink dresses, purple dresses, trimmings of every colour; a gallant show. The eye had but just time to receive these impressions as it were with a blow of the camera-instantaneous photography—when, boom! the groundswell was on them, and, heavens, what a change! They disappeared. An arm projected here,

possibly a foot yonder, tresses floated on the surface like seaweed, but bodily they were gone. The whole rank from end to end was overthrown-more than that, overwhelmed, buried, interred in water like Pharaoh's army in the Red Sea. Crush! It had come on them like a mountain. The wave so clear, so beautifully coloured, so cool and refreshing, had struck their delicate bodies with the force of a ton weight. Crestless and smooth to look at, in reality that treacherous roller weighed at least a ton to a yard.

Down went each fair bather as if hit with shot from a Gatling gun. Down she went, frantically, and vainly grasping at a useless rope; down with water driven into her nostrils, with a fragment, a tiny blade, of seaweed forced into her throat, choking her; crush on the hard pebbles, no feather bed, with the pressure of a ton of water overhead, and the strange rushing roar it makes in the ears. Down she went, and at the same time was dragged head foremost, sideways, anyhow, but dragged-ground along on the bitter pebbles some yards higher up the beach, each pebble leaving its own particular bruise, and the suspended sand filling the eyes. Then the wave left her, and she awoke from the watery nightmare to the bright sunlight, and the hissing foam as it subsided, prone at full length, high and dry like a stranded wreck. Perhaps her head had tapped the wheel of the machine in a friendly way-a sort of genial battering ram. The defeat was a perfect rout; yet they recovered position immediately. I fancy I did see one slip limply to cover; but the main body rose manfully,