her little ones, but vainly might she simulate the serpent's voice for him who was endowed with the serpent's cunning. With the advance of more reflective years, he looked back with remorse on the time of boyhood's cruelty, and tried to make atone, by enlisting his Anne's sympathy and aid in repressing like instincts in the existing generation of nest robbers. And how, after nesting-time, the lovers would observe the male's assiduity to his little wife, supplying her with food while sitting, and relieving her not infrequently by himself helping in the tedious duties of incubation. And how he serenades her!-breaking the stillness of the moonlit night with his enchanting love-song; for though he sings to her at all times of the day, it is at night, when all the rest of the woodland singers are hushed in sleep, that the full compass of his strain delights us most; and sweeter then, than in the garish light of day, are those exquisite trills of his, and that "one low piping sound, more sweet than all." It is perhaps that "one low piping sound," plaintive but full of tenderness, that has made almost all the poets, from Homer downward, sing of this sweet bird as sad and grief-stricken, and made them weep "o'er Philomela's pity-pleading strains." But he would agree with Coleridge that in "Nature there is nothing melancholy," and that it is the "merry nightingale," and not the "sad bird of night," that can carol forth his lovelay as joyously when the moon and stars are shining as in the warm daylight. Toward the end of the month his song almost ceases: for the young birds of May are then fledged, his gentle mate no longer requires his sympathetic minstrelsy to sustain her.

Anne and Will were both mindful of the bird's constancy in returning year after year to the same spot, as also the seeming apparent absence of any charm in the immediate surroundings to commend the special selections. Our eyes are not theirs. The

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lovers would note that in a whole wide parish they may be heard only in one spot, and there they would abound. A hawthorn bush near its nesting-place is a sure resort from whence to pour forth the gushing anthem, and yet it alone will not bring

nightingales. Just in one chosen spot they consent to be heard, and here, as it were, in groups, as though revelling in their endeavours to outdo each other in wondrous melody.

Next to the nightingale, the sweetest of our sylvan warblers is undoubtedly the blackcap. He has been called the contralto singer of the woodland choirs. His strain, while rich and deep in its intonation, has also much variety, and is charmingly modulated. Now it is soft and plaintive, as if the singer were far away, and now, gradually rising in power and compass, we catch a glimpse of him in the branches right above us, his wings slightly drooping and his little. throat quivering, while he pours forth a roundelay, witching, wild, and loud. Well may Francis Knight, a sweet singer of the country, say of him, "He is, perhaps, after all, 'the chief of singers." Nowhere is the blackcap heard in better song than in the lanes around Shottery and Luddington.

be sheltered, if only for so brief a span, under a roof which had frequently housed the Immortal, after prolonged strolls with sweet Anne until the witching hour when parting had become "such sweet sorrow that I shall saygood-night, till it be morrow."

In the desire to pass a night in the quaint old inn which, under such benightings and intent on early morning rambles, had held him from his Stratford home, a treaty for a night's lodging was concluded with Boniface, the attempted slumber to be in the very chamber sacred to the blissful reposes of the youthful poet, when a victim to furnace sighs.

The power of the nightingales on that occasion can never be effaced from the writer's memory. We had been wandering from midday until late at eventide, searching out-of

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rain? An incense-breathing odour from Anne's own sweet briar may be permitted to be spoken of in bated breath, but cannot be described. It was barely sunrise; a meekly modest white convolvulus that had timidly crept through the hedge was thinking of opening its eyes. This was the only visible emblem of wakefulness. All else was in blessed solemnity of slumber, though uttering volumes to the heart. Was Anne within? Had he sped over and returned to Stratford on the previous night, and was she in dreams?

There are what may be called lane-haunting birds in every rural village of England, but nowhere do they abound more than in the lanes around and about Shottery. Of all the tribe, perhaps none rejoices more in tangled

the-way lanes and trying to decide as to the most captivating a hopeless task. After enjoying the best fare afforded by mine host of "The Shakespeare," and, by the aid of Broseley clay-pipes, consuming more tobacco than in any one night of a long life, we sought reflection and slumber in the quaintest of all oak-raftered-roof rooms, and which, of course, was the identical chamber in which "He" had recourse when not in the humour to give up the sweeter air for that of Henley Street, Stratford. Sleep, however, was impossible.

With break of day came the "getting up" and sallying forth for an early morning loving peep at the home of Sweet Anne. There had been showers of rain during the night, and there were sweetbriar bushes in that garden of gardens, in which every flower and leaf seemed heart treasures. What can approach the sweetbriar in sweetness after

hedges than the tiny wren, and as the lanes hereabout have long been innocent of shears and pruning hooks, there are plenty of the small round things popping in and out of the hawthorn bushes in all directions. What a restless mite it is, our Jenny Wren! now hopping or creeping, more like a mouse than a bird, through the innermost twigs; now pausing, tail erect, to have a fleeting peep at us: now off again into cover; now, with much fluttering of wing, crossing the lane, and again disappearing, its course only traceable by the trembling leaves; now on a topmost twig, trilling forth its sweet simple lay, doubly dear in the heated summer months, when, in drowsy lethargy, the nightingale and blackcap and most of the lane's warblers have all but ceased their minstrelsy. The little wren, like dear robin red-breast, still sings on. The hedge-sparrow, too, known in Shakespeare's time as the "dunnock,"

has a very tender song, and though the notes are loud and subdued, and but slightly varied, they are exquisitely mellow and plaintive. The so-called hedge-sparrow, or dunnock, is not really a sparrow at all, and is not gregarious like our obtrusive, selfasserting, plump town friend, whose chirp never ceases the live-long day. "His ditty," as Francis Knight says, "is a simple strain; but we accept it thankfully, remembering the constancy of the singer." Near him, through the hedgerow, filters the hurried song of the white-throat, flickering a few feet into the air, singing all the while. Now he balances on a spray, swelling his little throat with music, until it seems positively to glow. Now he disappears in the hedge, and croons a quiet melody to himself so softly that you fancy him in the next field, until, disturbed by the approach of footsteps, he dashes from cover, with angry notes of alarm. Many of the finch tribe may be termed lane birds, the chaffinch, greenfinch, and yellowhammer, in all their gayness of plumage, frequent them in spring and summer. There is scarcely a lane in which Jenny is not to be found, yet she is so ubiquitous as to belong alike to woodland, lake and field. The little wren's song sounds sweeter when given freely in advanced summer, when other frequenters of the lane, having emptied their souls of much of their music, or overcome, perhaps, by the heat of summer, are no longer in fullest concert. The brilliant little

goldfinch hardly can forsake the lane; it revels in its tangled, weed-choked hedgerows, especially where there is a plentiful sprinkling of thistles and other large growths. The robin, too, the unquestionable favourite of us all, haunts the Shottery lanes at all seasons. Other birds may have richer voices, and be gayer of attire, but the red-breast, despite his fighting propensity, holds a first place in all our hearts. There is something irresistibly engaging in the way in which he lets us come so near him. When he looks at us askance with those bright wistful eyes of his, there is such trust in us, our hearts are touched at once, and we are ready to believe all the sweet tales that have been told of him. Strewing with leaves and flowers the graves of the friendless, and covering with moss the dead's unclosed eyes, may be sentiments now scarcely tenable, yet we will hug them, for Shakespeare did, and he loved to tell us "how the little red-breast teacheth charity." Moreover, and above all, he is privileged through the touching thought of having fluttered up to the cross, and drawing one of the thorns from the blessed Saviour's suffering brow, staining