O'er spade or hammer? If that Benedict
Saw good in labour, let none interdict
Good Benedict from labouring all the day;
Meanwhile our monk would ride, and hunt, and play.
Nor stinted he in dress-I saw his hand
Border'd with finest ermine of the land;
His hood was fasten'd underneath his chin
With curious wrought and massive golden pin,
And at the end a love-knot met my sight.

His head was bald, and shone like mirror bright;
So did his face, as if it were anointed,-
A well-condition'd man, and well-appointed.
His eyes deep sunk, and rolling in his head,
Which steam'd and smoked like pot of melted lead.

The FRIAR is described next, and is drawn in very dark colours, much the same, indeed, as in the prose descriptions of the poet's friend, Wiclif. The Friar is thoroughly venal and corrupt; a smooth-tongued, cringing hypocrite, who will talk of the most sacred things with his tongue in his cheek, to wheedle money from the simple-hearted, but who especially prides himself in robbing the poor and widows. With this, he is also profligate in life. Passing him by, we come to the Merchant.

A MERCHANT next among the throng appear'd,
In motley coat, wearing a forked beard;
With shining boots and Flanders beaver hat;
And as he solemnly on horseback sat,

He spoke of trade and gains, and thought the sea
From Middleburgh to Orwell wall'd should be,
To guard from foes. Right well he bargains made,
And used his eyes and ears in foreign trade;
And none could ever to his secrets get,
Whether he rich had got, or were in debt.

A CLERK was next, come up from Oxford town,
Who had in logic gotten great renown.
His horse as lean and thin as any rake,
Himself no fatter, I my oath will take.

His cheeks were hollow, and his coat threadbare,
He had no living yet, you might be ware;
Nor cared he for such things, or worldly gain,
Yet there were things which he desired amain.
To have a score of books at his bed's head,
This was his pleasure, and he truly said
That he found Aristotle's logic sweet

Beyond all music which our ear doth greet.

He had but little gold, but sometimes friends

Would make him presents, which he straightway spends In buying books, and as he does so, prays

That God will bless the givers all their days.

And as he gave to study earnest heed,

He spoke not single word more than was need;
And this he spoke with formal reverence,
Quietly, calmly, but with all good sense;
Sounding in moral virtue was his speech,
And gladly would he learn and gladly teach.

A FRANKLIN was there in the company,
With snow-white beard, right comely for to see;
And broad red cheeks, which plainly told the tale
That in the morn he loved a sup of ale.
Own son of Epicurus sure was he,

And held good living true felicity;
In his large household, every one could tell,
His patron saint, Saint Julian,* serv'd he well.
His bread, his ale, were always of the best,
A better filled cellar few possess'd;
Fish, flesh, and fowl, in larder, one might think
It snowèd in his house of meat and drink.
And as the quarters of the year came round,
Sure was each dish in season to abound.
Full many a partridge fat had he in mew,
And many a bream and many a pike in stew.

*St. Julian was the patron saint of hospitality.

Woe to his cook, unless the sauces were
Poignant and sharp, and ready all his gear.
His board, which stood fix'd in the hall alway,
Was ready cover'd all the livelong day.
At quarter sessions he was lord and sire,
And many times was chosen knight o' th' shue.

A WIFE came next, of ancient Bath's fair city,
But she was somewhat deaf, which was a pity.
In making cloth much labour had she spent,
And far surpass'd those of Ypres and Ghent.
Whene'er she went to church none must be seen
Approach the offering till that she had been;
And if they did, so very wroth was she,
It took her clean out of all charity.
Her dainty head-dress was so fair of ground,
I could be sworn it weighed full a pound.
At least on Sundays; then her scarlet hose,
So smartly bound, match'd with her fresh new shs.
She was a buxom woman all her life,
Husbands at church door had she married five;
Not to make mention of her friends in youth,
Which should but little edify in truth.
Thrice had she visited Jerusalem,
And she had crossèd many a foreign stream;
Had seen great Rome, and Cologne by the Rhine,
And in Galicia, Saint James's shrine;
And so had knowledge good of pilgrim lore.
A front tooth had she lost long time before;
Upon an ambler easily she sat,

Her shoulders mantled, on her head a hat
Broad as a target, while a flowing skirt
Her broad and comely hips around engirt.
Sharp spurs upon her feet, yet sharper still
The jest and laughter which her mouth doth fill.
A well-skilled adept in the tender passion,
Of charms and philtres knew she all the fashion.
(To be continued)

enable one to write his biography with that completeness required for other subjects. Living near the haunts of the cuckoo, where I could observe his movements, I had an opportunity of proving or disproving some of the characteristics given by other historians of this curious bird; and after my observations, which extended over several years, I am not able to confirm all that has been said by the cuckoo's numerous biographers. My remarks, however, will be confined to the strange and apparently unnatural propensity, peculiar to this bird, of leaving to others the care of its young.

May 25th, 1862. In the nest of a meadow-pipit I found a cuckoo about three or four days old. The young stranger was the sole occupant of the nest, near to which three of the meadow-pipit's eggs were strewn, and lay at about equal distances from each other and the nest. At the second inspection, made about a week after, the cuckoo seemed half feathered, and nearly filled the nest; in another week it was well feathered, and completely filled the nest. It was much annoyed, and snapped at my fingers, and fought hard for its place when I attempted to raise it up. I left it till the end of another week, when the nest was empty, and appeared to have been so for some days.

About four hundred yards from this place I found the nest of another meadow-pipit. Three eggs were in the nest; and two-one of which was a cuckoo's were lying near, apparently cast out. How they had been thrown out is not easy to explain; but I am inclined to believe that the small bird herself had dragged them out after her in leaving the nest. By this accident the cuckoo's egg was not included among those of the meadow-pipit, who in this case attended only to her own.

This instance, though curious, did not furnish evidence either to confirm or disprove the statements of modern naturalists. The author of "British Birds in

their Haunts says: "It is pretty clear from other evidence that the egg (cuckoo's) is in all cases laid at a distance from the nest, and carried by the bird in her bill to its destination." If this be true, which nothing short of a reliable eye-witness could make conclusive, it may account for the cuckoo's egg being at the side instead of in the nest.

On the 22nd of June I found another meadow-pipit's nest, thirteen yards or so from the first; in it were four eggs, one of them a cuckoo's. When, three days after, I visited the nest, the young cuckoo was newly-hatched, and the remaining three eggs were cast out of the nest. I replaced the eggs, and laid one on the shoulders of the cuckoo, but it seemed quite unable to eject from the nest anything whatever. Every way that my ingenuity could suggest, I tried if the young cuckoo could throw anything out of the nest. So strongly was I convinced, that I would have given large odds against the young cuckoo's reputed ability of casting either eggs or birds from the nest. The growth was very rapid. At my next visit, after three days, it was thrice as large as when I first saw it.

I found an instance in the following year, which is at variance with all the accounts given by former writers. In a meadow-pipit's nest which I discovered, on the 14th June, 1863, there was, besides a young cuckoo, a young meadow-pipit. Both appeared to be about four days old, and were living together amicably. Whilst I handled them, about the eighth day afterwards, the young cuckoo pecked fiercely, and the meadow-pipit crept close in under the wing of the cuckoo. Four days later they were still enjoying each other's company, the meadow-pipit being on the eve of leaving the nest, which it did on the 28th, when the enckoo was impatient to be on the wing. This is decisive against the belief that the nest is always cleared of everything but the cuckoo.

On the 28th of June, in the same year, I saw another curious instance. In a meadow-pipit's nest I found a young cuckoo, black, blind, bare, and alone in the nest. When I looked for outcasts I was surprised at finding, lying beside the nest, the egg of a cuckoo. In another meadow-pipit's nest, on the same day, I found two cuckoo's eggs, one a little lighter spotted than the other. This season, the nests of meadow-pipits being unusually scarce, it is probable that one nest was used by two different cuckoos. At my next visit, on the 6th, the young cuckoo and the nest, with two meadowpipit's eggs, were forsaken.

On the 12th of this month I found two meadowpipit's nests, each containing four eggs; and as one of the four in each case was a cuckoo's, I resolved upon another experiment, to test my impression that the cuckoo's egg required a shorter time to be hatched than the egg of the meadow-pipit. Breaking one, to ascertain that the eggs were fresh, I placed the other two meadow-pipit's and one cuckoo's under a hen canary. In size and colour the eggs are very dif ferent, so that a mistake in identity might easily be guarded against. This experiment proved that nearly two days less brought out the cuckoo than was suffi cient for the incubation of the meadow-pipit-a fact to which it may be necessary to refer again.

Remembering that all writers, whose descriptions I have read, affirm that the cuckoo deposits her egg in the nests of several small birds, I was disappointed at not meeting with a cuckoo's egg in the nest of any bird but the meadow-pipit. Mr. Gosse says: 66 In this country the hedge-sparrow, the pied-wagtail, pipit, and the robin are the species most frequently chosen by the cuckoo to be the nurses of her offspring; and it must be confessed, that, notwithstanding the destruction of their own callow brood, the charge is responded to with the utmost assiduity and tenderness.”

Bishop Stanley, in his excellent "History of British Birds," is very reserved upon this point. He names only the hedge-sparrow. These are his words: “We know nothing of the strange ways by which Providence brings about some of the apparently singular contradictions in its established rules; but knowing for a certainty, that by some strange delusion, a small hedgesparrow is persuaded to look upon an enormous cuckoo as its own beloved young one, may we not suspect that the cuckoo has some instinctive mode of gaining the affections, or attracting the attention of those birds from whom it requires assistance."

Edward Blyth, the editor of one of the editions of "White's Natural History of Selborne," says: "I have ascertained, either from direct observation, or from the testimony of respectable eye-witnesses, the fact of its (cuckoo's egg) occurring in the nests of the following numerous species, namely the blackbird, song-thrush, skylark, green grosbeak, chaffinch, hedge bunock, different pipits and wagtails, yellow and reed bunting, and sedge-reedling; and there are instances recorded of its having been found also in those of the red-backed shrike, linnet, fen-reedling, song pettychaps and locus

tille."

In a beautiful book, "British Birds in their Haunts," recently published, the author has this sentence. "The nests in which the egg of a cuckoo has been found in this country are those of the hedge-sparrow, robin, redstart, white-throat, willow-warbler, sedge-warbler, wagtail, pipit, skylark, yellow bunting, chaffinch, linnet, blackbird, and wren; the pipit being the most frequent."

As my observations of this curious bird have extended over several years, in which I have hunted, watched, and waited, without even once discovering a cuckoo's egg in the nest of any bird but the meadowpipit, I read these statements with some surprise. Nor can I hear that any of my neighbours' boys, who know thoroughly the haunts of the cuckoo, have been

more successful.

In reference to the other disputed question, whether the cuckoo's egg is laid in the nest or at a distance off, and carried by the bird in its bill and placed there, my own experience warrants me in saying that I have never found a cuckoo's egg in a nest in which the cuckoo would have any particular difficulty in laying it. The meadow-pipit's nest being invariably placed in a concealed spot, where the rising ground forms a bulwark round the edge of the nest, it may easily be supposed, that upon a small nest so situated, a cuckoo would have no difficulty in dropping its cgg; and that the same instinct which guides her in other matters will lead the cuckoo to select a nest which will serve as

a safe habitation for her young. Besides that I have never found the cuckoo's egg in any but the meadowpipit's nest, there are other reasons why I would not expect to find them elsewhere. The time, place, and other circumstances which surround the nests of other small birds, render it improbable that one would meet with the cuckoo's egg in any nest but the meadowpipit's. The hedge-sparrow and some other small birds build theirs before the arrival of the cuckoo; the wagtail and others on places rendered dangerous, either by the near proximity of man or by the unsafe position of the nest itself.

Whoever saw the cuckoo accompanied by any small bird but the meadow-pipit ? "There does not appear to be any intimacy or any hostility between the illmatched pair. The larger bird flies first, the lesser one, as if spell-bound, follows it: if the cuckoo perches in a tree, the pipit posts itself on another hard by, or on another branch of the same: if the cuckoo alights on the ground, the pipit is by its side."*

From the early part of May to the latter end of June, while the cuckoo is depositing her eggs, the pipit, who is her constant companion, seems to say, "Honour me with your favours; I will take charge of your young, and fit them out in time to depart with you."

Gilbert White says: "A countryman told me he had found a young fern-owl in the nest of a small bird on the ground; and that it was fed by the little bird. I went to see this extraordinary phenomenon, and found that it was a young cuckoo hatched in the nest of a tit-lark (meadow-pipit); it was become vastly too big for its nest, appearing

in tenui re

Majores pennas nido extendisso

and was very fierce and pugnacious, pursuing my finger, as I teased it, for many feet from the nest, and sparring and buffeting with its wings like a gamecock. The dupe of a dame appeared at a distance, hovering about with meat in its mouth, and expressing the greatest solicitude."

same cage.

As an instance in direct opposition to my own know. ledge and experience, I may quote the following from Bishop Stanley. "A young cuckoo was taken from the nest of a hedge-sparrow, and a few days afterwards a young thrush, scarcely fledged, was put into the The latter could feed itself, but the cuckoo, its companion, was obliged to be fed with a quill; in a short time, however, the thrush took upon itself the task of feeding its fellow-prisoner, and continued so to do with the utmost care, bestowing every possible attention, and manifesting the greatest anxiety to satisfy its continual craving for food.”

The following is a still more extraordinary instance, corroborating the above, and for the truth of which I can vonch in every particular.

A young thrush, just able to feed itself, had been placed in a cage; a short time afterwards a young cuckoo, which could not feed itself, was introduced into the same cage, a large wicker one, and for some time it was fed with much difficulty. At length, how

Johns' "British Birds in their Haunts."

ever, it was observed that the young thrush was employed in feeding it, the cuckoo opening its mouth and sitting on the upper perch, and making the thrush hop down to fetch food up. One day, when it was thus expecting its food in this way, the thrush, seeing a worm put into the cage, could not resist the temptation of eating it; upon which the cuckoo immediately descended from its perch, and attacking the thrush, literally tore one of its eyes quite out, and then hopped back: the poor thrush, lacerated as it was, felt itself obliged to take up some food. The eye healed in course of time, and the thrush continued its occupation as before, till the cuckoo was full grown.

This instance would hardly form a good exception to the rule of my experience, as the two birds were placed in a confined and probably unnatural position. But I cannot say the same of the following instance, which Mr. Johns quotes from Mr. W. F. Thomas, in the 97th page of the "Zoologist." "At the latter end of July, 1829, while reading in my garden, I was agreeably surprised to see a young cuckoo, nearly full grown, alight on the railings between the two, not more than a dozen yards from where I was sitting. Anxious to see what bird had reared this cuckoo, I silently watched his movements, and had not waited more than a minute! when a reed-warbler flew to the cuckoo, who, crouching down with his breast close to the rail, and fluttering his wings, opened wide his orange-coloured mouth to receive the insects his foster-mother had brought him. This done, the reed-warbler flew away for a fresh supply of food. The difference in the size of the two birds was great; it was like a pigmy feeding a giant. While the reed-warbler was absent, the cuckoo shuffled along the rail, and hopped upon a slender post to which it was nailed, and which projected about eight inches above the rail. The reed-warbler soon returned with more food, and alighted close to the cuckoo, but on the rail beneath him. She then began to stretch herself to the utmost, to give him the food, but was unable to reach the cuckoo's mouth, who, like a simpleton, threw his head back, with his mouth wide open, as before. The reed-warbler, by no means at a loss, perched upon the cuckoo's broad back, who, still holding back his head, received in this singular way the morsel brought for him."

"The young cuckoo," say most of this bird's biographers, "is provided with a depression between the shoulders, by which it ejects its young companions or remaining eggs;" and this it is supposed to do immediately after it is hatched. But is this a reasonable supposition? On the 22nd of June, 1862, when I replaced the eggs I found cast out of a nest in which there was a young cuckoo, I had, as far as my know ledge could suggest, a practical illustration of the young bird's utter helplessness. After waiting near the nest in which I replaced the eggs, and observing that the young cuckoo never even attempted to displace the eggs, I placed one upon its broad back. but I could not induce it to make the least effort to "hurl the egg overboard." Indeed, so little had it the appearance of being able, that, had I seen the young cuckoo throw the egg from the nest, I would have placed the action in the category of the mira culous. That the eggs are cast out by something there is no reason to doubt. How they are cast out is a question which hitherto has been answered only by conjecture. I was never myself lucky enough to catch any bird in the very act. I will add a conjecture to those already on record, in reference to the life of this curious bird; and say that, in my opinion, the eggs are cast out by the meadow-pipit herself; that the period of incubation required for the cuckoo being less-as I have proved by trial-by two days than that required for the meadow-pipit; that the presence of the young cuckoo charms the meadow-pipit, which immediately clears the nest of her own eggs.

PARISIAN SKETCHES.

II.-HÔTEL DES INVALIDES.

WHATEVER faults may be observable in the character of the French people, a want of respect or gratitude for their infirm or aged soldiers cannot certainly be ranked among them. So far to the contrary, there is no country where the disabled warrior is more liberally or carefully tended than in France. The French also have the honour of being the first nation in Europe which made provision for its invalid soldiers. Even in the feudal times, when military service was part of the government system, and the tenants of the nobles were obliged, in return for the land they held, to bring forward their labourers or serfs in the wars of the crown, those of the soldiers who were wounded in battle were entitled to relief from the conventual institutions of royal endowment; and this too at a time when in all other nations the disabled soldier, the wars being over, was thrown upon the casual charity of private individuals for support. Indeed, the French kings from a very early period appear to have held it as a great moral duty to succour in their old age and infirmities those, no matter in how low a rank, who had fought and bled to defend them on their thrones.

Although the establishment of the Hôtel des Invalides is not anterior to that of Chelsea College (the first provision made in our own country for disabled veterans), in France even at as early a date as the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the nucleus of institutions of the kind were to be found.

It was not, however, until the reign of Henry IV. that a separate asylum was set apart and adapted for their reception. In the year 1596, that king fitted up an old convent in the Faubourg St. Marcel for the

reception and maintenance of infirm and wounded soldiers. Here they continued until the reign of Louis XIII., when the convent being found too small, they were removed to the chapel of the Bicetre, where, although they had more space, it is doubtful whether they did not, to a certain degree, suffer to an equal extent by the reduction in their provisions and other appointments; for although their numbers had greatly increased, there is no record extant of any addition having been made to the funds of the institution. In consequence of the wars in which the French nation was engaged in the reign of Louis XIV., the number of invalid and wounded soldiers increased to such an extent, that a far larger building was required for their reception; and that monarch then determined on founding the present magnificent establishment of the Hôtel des Invalides, which he resolved should be on a scale of such magnitude, as should provide a home and provision for every wounded soldier in his kingdom. A convenient site having been determined upon, the foundation of the present building was laid in 1670, although the main building and church were not finished till more than forty years afterwards. Louis XIV. died before its completion, but the subject interested him to the last. În his will he speaks of it in a manner which does his memory great credit, and in some degree counterbalances the reputation for selfishness and consideration for his own glory alone which was otherwise so prominent in his character.

It is but justice to state that all succeeding governments-whether royal or republican-have zealously exerted themselves to carry out the wishes of the Grand Monarch, and the three thousand Invalides who now inhabit the Hôtel are treated in every respect with the kindness, honour, and attention they deserve. It is true, that in the different wards and apartments des