touched it. It does not stir. Does it breathe? Oh yes, it does! It is
alive, safe enough. Look, it opens its eyes, and, finding the coast
clear and its enemies far away, it springs up in a moment and gallops
to its dam, who has stood bleating the whole time at a most respectful
distance. Who would suspect a lamb of so much simple cunning? I really
thought the pretty thing was dead--and now how glad the ewe is to
recover her curling spotted little one! How fluttered they look! Well!
this adventure has flurried me too; between fright and running, I
warrant you my heart beats as fast as the lamb's.

Ah! here is the shameless villain Saladin, the cause of the commotion,
thrusting his slender nose into my hand to beg pardon and make up! 'Oh
wickedest of soldans! Most iniquitous pagan! Soul of a Turk!'--but there
is no resisting the good-humoured creature's penitence. I must pat him.
'There! there! Now we will go to the copse; I am sure we shall find no
worse malefactors than ourselves--shall we, May?--and the sooner we
get out of sight of the sheep the better; for Brindle seems meditating
another attack. Allons, messieurs, over this gate, across this meadow,
and here is the copse.'

How boldly that superb ash-tree with its fine silver bark rises from the
bank, and what a fine entrance it makes with the holly beside it, which
also deserves to be called a tree! But here we are in the copse. Ah!
only one half of the underwood was cut last year, and the other is
at its full growth: hazel, brier, woodbine, bramble, forming one
impenetrable thicket, and almost uniting with the lower branches of the
elms, and oaks, and beeches, which rise at regular distances overhead.
No foot can penetrate that dense and thorny entanglement; but there is
a walk all round by the side of the wide sloping bank, walk and bank and
copse carpeted with primroses, whose fresh and balmy odour impregnates
the very air. Oh how exquisitely beautiful! and it is not the primroses
only, those gems of flowers, but the natural mosaic of which they form
a part; that network of ground-ivy, with its lilac blossoms and the
subdued tint of its purplish leaves, those rich mosses, those enamelled
wild hyacinths, those spotted arums, and above all those wreaths of ivy
linking all those flowers together with chains of leaves more beautiful
than blossoms, whose white veins seem swelling amidst the deep green
or splendid brown;--it is the whole earth that is so beautiful! Ne