not seen for many years the village rustics
"crossing hands" and going "down the middle," and tripping merrily
to the tune of a fiddle; but perhaps they do so still.

In olden days the city maidens of London were often "dancing and
tripping till moonlight" in the open air; and later on we read that
on holidays, after evening prayer, while the youths exercised their
wasters and bucklers, the maidens, "one of them playing on a
timbrel, in sight of their masters and dames, used to dance for
garlands hanged athwart the streets." Stow, the recorder of this
custom, wisely adds, "which open pastimes in my youth, being now
suppressed, worser practices within doors are to be feared." In some
parts of England they still trip it gaily in the moonlight. A
clergyman in Gloucestershire tried to establish a cricket club in
his parish, but his efforts were all in vain; the young men
preferred to dance together on the village green, and the more manly
diversion had no charms for them. Dancing was never absent from our
ancestors' festivities, and round the merry May-pole

"Where the jocund swains
Dance with the maidens to the bagpipe strains;"

or in the festal hall, adorned with evergreens and mistletoe, with
tripping feet they passed the hours "till envious night commands
them to be gone."

CHAPTER II.

FEBRUARY.

"Down with rosemary and bayes,
Down with the mistleto,
Instead of holly, now up-raise
The greener box, for show."

"The holly hitherto did sway;
Let box now domineere,
Untill the dancing Easter-day,
Or Easter's eve appeare."

Hunting--Candlemas Day--St. Blaize's Day--Shrove-tide--
Football--Battledore and Shuttlecock--Cock-throwing.

The fox-hounds often meet in our village during this cheerless
month, and I am reminded by the red coats of the huntsmen, and by
the sound of the cheerful horn, of the sportsmen of ancient days,
who chased the wolf, hart, wild boar, and buck among these same
woods and dales of England. All hearts love to hear the merry sound
of the huntsman's horn, except perhaps that of the hunted fox or
stag. The love of hunting seems ingrained in every Englishman, and
whenever the horsemen appear in sight, or the "music" of the hounds
is heard in the distance, the spade is laid aside, the ploughman
leaves his team, the coachman his stables, the gardener his
greenhouses, books are closed, and every one rush