igh in the air about the village steeple. It was one of
those genial days when we seem to draw in pleasure with the very air we
breathe, and to feel happy we know not why. Whoever has felt the worth
of worthy man, or has doted on lovely woman, will, on such a day, call
them tenderly to mind, and feel his heart all alive with long-buried
recollections. "For thenne," says the excellent romance of King Arthur,
"lovers call ageyne to their mynde old gentilnes and old servyse, and
many kind dedes that were forgotten by neglygence."

Before reaching the village, I saw the May-pole towering above the
cottages, with its gay garlands and streamers, and heard the sound of
music. I found that there had been booths set up near it, for the
reception of company; and a bower of green branches and flowers for the
Queen of May, a fresh, rosy-cheeked girl of the village.

A band of morris-dancers were capering on the green in their fantastic
dresses, jingling with hawks' bells, with a boy dressed up as Maid
Marian, and the attendant fool rattling his box to collect contributions
from the bystanders. The gipsy women, too, were already plying their
mystery in by-corners of the village, reading the hands of the simple
country girls, and no doubt promising them all good husbands and tribes
of children.

The squire made his appearance in the course of the morning, attended by
the parson, and was received with loud acclamations. He mingled among
the country people throughout the day, giving and receiving pleasure
wherever he went. The amusements of the day were under the management of
Slingsby, the schoolmaster, who is not merely lord of misrule in his
school, but master of the revels to the village. He was bustling about
with the perplexed and anxious air of a man who has the oppressive
burthen of promoting other people's merriment upon his mind. He had
involved himself in a dozen scrapes in consequence of a politic
intrigue, which, by the by, Master Simon and the Oxonian were at the
bottom of, which had for object the election of the Queen of May. He had
met with violent opposition from a faction of ale-drinkers, who were in
favour of a bouncing barmaid, the daughter of the innkeeper; but he had
been too strongly backed not to carry his point, though it shows that
these rural crowns, like all others, are objects of great ambition and
heart-burning. I am told that Master Simon takes great interest, though
in an underhand way, in the electio