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Very different was that memorable disaster to the British arms which was taking place at the same time at Ticonderoga. The fight here was on a scale numerically still more worthy of the great issues at stake than even at Louisburg. Six thousand regulars and nine thousand provincials under the inert Abercrombie embarked upon that beautiful chain of lakes and narrows which at this time was the great, indeed the only inland highway from the English colonies to Canada. Many pens, some in the plain fashion of blunt soldiers or provincials who were there, others in the more polished language of later historians and novelists have described that scene. It is certainly one of the most striking pageants in American history, and none have been more happy in its description than Mr. Parkman, who indeed is at his very best when peopling his own familiar lakes and forests with those figures of the past in whose company he may almost be said to have spent his life.

A stirring sight it must have been to see upon that July day the great flotilla of over a thousand boats floating upon the glassy waters of Lake George; the Highland bagpipe and the British bugle echoing amid the encircling hills; the gleam of ten thousand oars, the flash of arms, the gay uniforms, the fluttering standards. The pride and confidence of coming victory animated every breast; for no one doubted it, either among the combatants or the shouting populace that had watched them go forth. If the general was of no great account there was with him the most popular and skilful British officer in the Colonies, the young Lord Howe, called by Wolfe "the noblest Englishman that has appeared in my time, and the best soldier in the British army.' But Howe, alas, was killed in the first skirmish, and the brilliant armada, invincible as it seemed, was utterly shattered by Montcalm with three thousand six hundred Frenchmen and Canadians behind the logs and earthworks of Ticonderoga. Abercrombie had left his cannon behind him, and Montcalm's

works were further protected by a chaos of felled trees, their branches facing outward. For seven hours the British struggled, amid a steady rain of bullets and cannon shot, to pierce the tangled maze of trunks and boughs. Desperate valor was shown, and the sacrifice of life was hideous. Two thousand men were killed or wounded; and the repulse, for there was no panic, was turned by the feeble Abercrombie into an undignified retreat down the lakes, the men sullenly cursing their commander for a fool and a poltroon. Montcalm and his troops covered themselves with well-earned glory, which the colonial faction, adverse to the general, did their best to belittle so far as he and the regulars were concerned.

The important French post of Frontenac (now Kingston, Ontario) fell, cutting Canada in half. Fort Du Quesne, after twice in its history destroying an English army, was abandoned. Ticonderoga shared the same fate, and Montcalm, like Cornwallis at Yorktown twenty years later, fell back on the last line of his defence, that was to prove in his case not only the grave of his country's hopes but of his own earthly career.

The fall of the two gallant leaders at Quebec in the final scene of the great struggle is an incident that for all time will captivate the imagination of the most cursory as well as the more serious student of history. The interest of the drama however is still further intensified by recalling the conditions under which either died. Wolfe fell with a frame so suffering and debilitated that life for its own sake could have been little but a burden. Death in such a blaze of glory seemed, if one may say so, marvellously opportune. Montcalm, too, was brave and gallant, faithful to his King and his duty, occupying a position he detested, over yearning for the time when he could return to the olive orchards and chestnut groves of his own ancestral home, and to the wife and family for whom his letters show he felt such constant and deep affection. Macmillan's Magazine.

"BEFORE THE SWALLOW DARES."

BY PHIL ROBINSON.

"AND take the winds of March with beauty." Perdita here speaks of "daffodils"-" the flowers Proserpina let fall from Dis's wagon"-and men and women ever since have taken the name upon trust and are agreed that she meant the yellow narcissus, the flower we call nowadays the daffodil.

Yet, oddly enough, I do not know of any Elizebethan who speaks of it as a yellow flower. One calls it white, another silver-white, a third "purple." Ben Jonson says" chequ'd and purpleringed daffodils." Again, why should Herrick complain of the daffodil as being fugitive and "weep to see it haste away so soon," and beg it to last, at least for a day? The flower we call by the name is by no means quick-wither ing. However, whatever it may really have been, the "daffodils" of Shakespeare are the "daffodils" of to-day, and though it does not invariably anticipate" the sea-blue bird of March," the punctual swallow that wisely knoweth her seasons like the stork, it comes in "the sweet of the year," and is, perhaps, the most welcome of all the flowers of Spring. The primroses and violets are at their best to salute the new arrival where there is elder or dogrose, privet or wild cherry there is a brave green show of returning April: the sloe-blossom lies on the hedges in patches as when " maidens bleach their summer smocks." In the gardens, the crocuses are in full bloom and the squills, the hepaticas and colored primroses, when the daffodil joins them; and some snowdrops and Christmas roses" have lingered to see them. The almonds are in blossom and the nectarines, and the daphne with clustered bloom on its leafless stems, and in the intervals of sunshine the bees are abroad making a prodigious humming over very little honey. The sulphur butterfly is out, too, hurrying along in the hope, perhaps, of meeting with relatives, but stopping as it passes to see if the daffodils have any nectar in their cups. Its mealy wings are bran new, with the bloom of their first freshness

on them, and the poor old tortoise-shell that comes flickering unsteadily along looks very shabby in its last year's suit. all frayed and threadbare with use. And the veteran, knowing nothing of the ways of Spring, sits upon the ivy, to sun itself, just as it did last Autumn when there used to be a gay company of winged things feeding on the austere-looking blossoms, and the ivied wall was the best-frequented spot in all the garden.

Down in the meadow by the water "the faint sweet cuckoo-flowers" are out, and in the warm corner of the copse the first bluebells are just showing their color, "sweet as the lids of Juno's eyes." But the cuckoo itself will not be here till April is well begun. Precocious individuals will, no doubt, be "reported," as usual; but they will not be "on every tree." Yet whenever it comes it will find "cuckoo flowers" blooming. Whether

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"When daisies pied or violets blue

And lady-smocks all silver white
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue

Do paint the meadows with delight,”

later, when the flos-cuculi, the ragged-robin," adorns the summer banks in June. What Shakespeare meant by cuckoo-buds can only be guessed from his saying that they were

yellow-perhaps colts-foot or marshmarigold or the buttercup; while his lady-smocks "all silver-white," are equally a mystery. Not content with white alone, he says they are silverwhite and, therefore, the pretty lavender-colored cardamine, the meadowcress, called "cuckoo - flower" nowa. days, and once called "lady smock," can scarcely have been in his mind. But this is only one out of a myriad of illustrations of our greatest poet's characteristic indifference to details.

The lines are sweetly pretty, the picture is complete, but its components are hopeless, and therefore for all time a delight to the critical trifler. But flower-names know no rules and shift from one blossom to another with the centuries. The "daisy pied'' was once

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the primrose, or rather one of the primroses," for several of our earliest blossoms have borne the name of "the first flower," and Primerole and Primula were complimentary names for pretty women. So, too, lily" meant any flower that was especially beautiful, and "honeysuckle," one that was sweet. I remember when I first went to Western America, being struck by the same generic use of specific names :-"robins," "sparrows,' bugs," "flies," "primroses," and so on; the fact being that natural history was there being sifted down "far West" by exactly the same process as in Elizabeth's days in England. It is a pity, nobody ever called the blackthorn a "daffodil," for if any plant thoroughly deserved the pretty praise of Perdita, it is, surely, the brave and fragile flower that challenges "the black winds of March"-the "blackthorn winter," as they call it in the country-side-and, when other boughs are bare, has the courage to deck itself in bloom in defiance of lowering skies. And how is it that the poets' violets are always scented? It is not often one meets with them out of gardens. Yet I remember in my schooldays at Marlborough knowing of a hedgerow in which white violets grew in extraordinary profusion, and, later, near Cheltenham, of a little copse on a hill-side in which was a local variety of a curious red color, and very large in flower, long in stalk and passing sweet. But the ordinary "dog violet," which makes the banks so pretty just now, has no scent, and yet this must be the flower that poets speak of as "sweeter than Cytherea's breath." But less than two hundred years ago the snowdrop was called violet, and in a "florist's vademecum, too ; so when we talk of oldworld love for modern-world flowers we must go cautiously, as "violet" may mean snowdrop, lily" mean honeysuckle, and "primrose" the daisy. I recollect that when I first learned this it seemed to me as if the world had suddenly narrowed very much, and as if the sympathies and fancies that we had always cherished as having been English from the beginning" had all at once dwindled down to a very contracted period. It seems somehow to be only waste of sentiment to dwell on,

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say, Chaucer's pretty touches of Nature, if we do not know what he is talking about. What was the "popinjay" he was so fond of listening to and observing? The Glossary says" parrot,' but when were parrots common in English woods? Only the other day I noticed a writer in a magazine using the phrase, "the unlucky parrot," when talking of folklore of birds. But the quotation, I happen to know, comes from the poet of the " Purple Island,” and the complete line is "the unlucky parrot and death-boding owl," and the bird intended is obviously an English species. Now two centuries separate Chaucer from Phineas Fletcher, yet both talk of "parrots" as birds that every country bumpkin knew all about.

An Elizabethan, writing about dogs, says such and such a one is good for hunting lobsters-he meant the stoat or ermine in its summer fur; but an incautious person, coming upon such lobsters" in literature unawares, might fall into some strange mistakes if he went about to comment on the accomplishments of Elizabethan dogs.

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Now is the time when the stoat is returning to its ruddier coat, and the squirrel, time out of mind the fairies' coach-builder." The blackbird's beak is already orange, and the bullfinch has put on his rosy vest. March, when fine, is a month of great interest, usurping, as it does, upon April's privileges. The squirrels are still together by their families, but in another month will have scattered, each couple starting on the year's life independently. It is a charming sight to watch a group of squirrels on some old wall, where, in a hole underneath the ivy, they have chanced upon one of the hoards of nuts or acorns that were put by in the Autumn-the pretty way they sit up and eat, and the delightful good-humor with which one gives up to another the halfeaten nut which is asked for. I have seen two squirrels sitting together, the one nearest the hoard taking out acorns and beech-mast, the other helping itself every time it had finished with a morsel from its companion's paws, and never troubling to go to the hoard itself. Every time it took anything the other made the funniest little sound imaginable. but easily translatable into

"Oh, bother! But, never mind, take it," and from first to last there was never the semblance of a squabble. When squirrels put away food, do they do it, I wonder, with any thrifty sense of provision for the next year? as something put by against hard times? The amount of eatables they carry off and secrete is prodigious, and yet in the Spring you will see them creeping about the tree trunks looking for chance insects, rummaging at the roots of nuttrees for fallen nuts, or among the dead leaves for old fir cones. If food is offered them, they come to it with alacrity. But why should they put themselves about so much for a meal, or run the risk of accepting treacherous charity, if they know of larders of their own well stocked with provisions? At Virginia Water I once laid out on a board a handful of nuts in the sight of two squirrels with whom I was on excellent terms, and the rapidity with which the little creatures made away with the whole of them was astonishing. They had only to run about six feet to reach a soft piece of bare ground, and in this, one by one, at random all over it, and not together in any selected spot, they buried all my nuts. When every one was out of sight the squirrels crept about for some time all over the ground with their noses to the mould, giving one the idea that they were sniffing it, as if to assure themselves that other squirrels coming that way could not detect the buried treasure. When they were satisfied, they skipped up into a tree, and, as their custom was, lectured me for being such an ill-mannered boor as to sit and watch them. It was my custom to sit in the same place daily, and though I never failed to have squirrels for companions, I never detected even a gesture that led me to think the small creatures knew of nuts being buried in the ground upon which they were romping, or sat munching the scraps of biscuit that I threw to them. Now, in February that bare piece of ground was thickly overgrown with the yellow-flowered aconite, and it was impossible for the squirrels to have found their nuts.

Other animals put away food, but they do it in a way that shows a positive idea of foresight, for they store it as close to their winter-homes as possi

ble. The dormouse and fieldmouse make their larders close to their hibernating nests, and the husks of grains and seeds that they have eaten in waking intervals are to be found in their nests themselves. But the squirrel seems to have only the instinct to hoard without any guiding intelligence. It will keep on travelling backward and forward from a nut avenue to a spinney for a whole morning, going each time with a nut and coming back without one. But if you follow it you will find that it does not go to any one spot every time. It buries the nuts here, there, and everywhere, tucks them in between the moss and the tree-stump, or pushes them under some leaves, and always with such an expression of feverish haste as gives you the idea that all it is thinking of is to get rid of the nut on hand as quickly as possible and to go back and get another. But their nests, in which they sleep out the winter, are seldom near their feedinggrounds, and it seems incredible that they can ever make their way to and distinguish, in the bare and leafless winter time, with the ground strewn thickly with sodden foliage, the spots where, when everything was green, they scattered their provisions. And even when they make their hoards in the hollow of a tree, or a hole in a wall, they often forget the place, for who has not found these mouldy stores, evidently never needed by the owners or forgotten by them? I remember once in the roots of a tree coming upon a prodigious accumulation of squirrel's foodstuff which had obviously been collected in at least two, if not several, different years; so that I am half inclined to think that the provident instinct of the squirrel, inherited perhaps from ancestors who lived in an England that was as Arctic in winter as Canada, has degenerated into a miserly and unreasonable passion for accumulating acorns and nuts that it will never make any use of. But it is a very delightful little animal, and of all the symbols of approaching Summer none more positive or gay.

The hedgehog now is abroad again after its winter sleep. It lays up no stores against the Winter, for it never wakes till Spring is come. I knew one

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quite well last year. Its winter nest was in a hollow at the roots of a very old laurel which grew in a hedge. I was going to have it stubbed up and came upon the urchin" fast asleep, so I let him and his laurel-tree alone. The nest seemed to me only a collection of the nearest leaves, with some scraps of moss that had got mixed therein in the gathering; but inside them. he was certainly so completely asleep that handling did not disturb him. On St. Patrick's Day I saw him abroad; but how had he got rid of all the leaves that were stuck on his back when I found him on the frosty day in January? For when I picked him up half his nest seemed to come up with him; but here he was as leafless as possible and as cheerful. It is a curious little animal, for it will come straight toward you along a path, and even go over your foot as you stand motionless in its way; or you may walk behind a hedgehog for ever so long without its detecting your presence. I used to sit quietly by its run along the bottom of the hedge and listen to it puffing and snorting to itself, and watch it rooting among the leaves for chrysalises and woodlice, which it ate with a loud munching noise that was irresistibly comic. I put pieces of apple in its usual pathway, and scraps of cooked meat, and either the hedgehog or some other creature made away with them punctually. At one time it was thought the "urchin" sucked cows that lay out in the meadows at night, and that they climbed fruit- trees, bit off the fruit and then, climbing down again, rolled upon them, carrying off the prizes on their spines. It is quite possible there are plenty of people who still believe these things, for I know myself a Hampshire shepherd who believes that horse hairs turn into eels that are poisonous to cattle, and that a shrew-mouse running across a limb will give man or beast the cramps."

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By the waterside, where the willows grow "aslant the stream," and the bees are so busy among the palm, you can see the water-rats diving to the bottom to fetch up the shoots of sedge and flag which they eat, sitting up like little prairie-dogs on the platforms by their strongholds. It is a pretty little

animal in all its movements, and, except for such damage as it may do by burrowing into banks, a perfectly harmless one, and yet it is constantly persecuted. And to-day sitting, as I saw one, beside a tuft of primroses in full bloom, it looked a very charming little person, and nibbling its crisp salad a delightful touch of innocent wild life.

Another little winter sleeper is abroad, the dormouse. He has eaten all the wheat and hips he had put up for winter use, and is out foraging. The sun is beautifully warm, and he goes about with the same engaging little loitering way he has when it is midsummer and there is food in abundance. But to-day he is content with the unfolding croziers of the ferns; and great, no doubt, would be his satisfaction if he could come upon a nut with its shell softened to his weak teeth by snow and frost. It is one of the few animals that are "tame" as soon as caught a delicious little philosopher whose religion is one of peace and rest-its ideal of a perfect life, nuts ready cracked for it, and, between nuts, sleep. It would not do, perhaps, for men to live up to a doctrine of doing no work between meals; but with the dormouse it is different, and I think the fluffy little Sybarite is to be much commended in having resolved existence into the simple formula of eating when it can, and sleeping when it cannot. I know, of course, that "life is real, life is earnest," and all the rest of it, and that sluggards ought to go to the ant, but somewhere about most of us there is a sort of lurking sympathy with the dormouse, who, when it is not sunny and food is not in plenty, simply rolls itself up and goes to sleep inside its own fur, compared to which bedclothes are mere sackcloth and ashes, and in a nest so exquisitely soft that a baby's cradle is by comparison all shards and flints.

In the bird-world there is no idea of sleep in March. Intervals of bitter weather come, as they have done this year, causing nests to be deserted, but on every hand there are signs of returning life. When the hedgerows were only faintly green at intervals, the hedge-sparrow had already been busy with moss and hair, and the pretty nest, one of the prettiest that a bird

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