war's cross-trees. If I had ornithological skill, I
would seek out that feathered attorney, the
cuckoo, and turn him out of the hedge-sparrow's
estate that he has unlawfully seized;
or, I would hunt for rare birds. Then there
are broader tracks of the covert, where the
grim oaks stretch out their muscular arms
defiantly, and tie themselves in robust knots,
where the clean-rinded beech has belts of
dark moss and spots of feathery emerald,
which look like the green plush stolen from a
duck's neck, mixed up with snatches of the
living emerald from the eyes of a peacock's
fan. Then, there are huge antlered bushes
of ash, strong and vigorous, butting the meek
dog-rose and the scrubby elder; and here and
there among the spiked thorn-bushes whose
snow is not yet in the bloom, there are
flowers of burning gold, kingcups whose nectar
the bee drinks thirstily; and when you turn the
corner of a wood walk, there is a stinging buzz of
startled flies, and a great black humble-bee flies at
you like a bullet; and this gay buzz and sense
of life in every square inch of air, is, I think, one
of the most joyous and delicious symptoms of
warm spring weather, especially when you add to
it over and above, a perpetual pulsation of cooing
doves, a contest of birds, and a general unfurling
and unpacking of the little green fairy dresses that
are hereafter to be called leaves, and will eventually
club together to form the shroud of poor
dead King Summer.

Then, you startle a great raven from a tree where
he sits complaining of the exorbitant price of mutton
at Ramsbury market, and you come out in the
open where some moles are making a small parody
of that useful but mouldy institution, the Thames
Tunnel, and you emerge in a small glade, with a
view through oak boughs, barred with sun and
shadow, of a great slope of down, miles away,
with a long slate roof shining in the sun, a
cascade of sheep, and in front a green square
of meadow where some cows are on their knees
in flowers, that look from here like a gold carpet,
woven without seam, perfect from the top
throughout.

It has been a glorious day in Downshire; the
merry wind driving about the cool wavering
shadows; the cuckoo echoing in the woods at
Colonel Hanger's, where the pheasants cluck and
strut, proud of their fat, of their market value, and
of the brazen lustre of their fiery and emeraldine
plumage—no great things at a poulterer's door
but here, in the living sunshine, flashing past us
exquisitely. The wind has been blowing the dust
along the glaring white roads in smoking simooms,
the swallows have been glimmering and crescenting
about the water meadows, like so many wild
horses, and now I am standing on the dewy lawn
of my little country inn—the Three Crows—in
the evening, watching the stars light up their
little diamond illumination lamps in honour of a
young May moon, just at the full.

"Now, the moon," says the landlord, coming
out with his white yard of clay and a burning
Waterloo charge of bird's-eye, to be sociable with
his guest, "seems to me like a bit of butter that
is beginning to melt on a hot toastess."

THE MATCH QUESTION.

OUR French scientific friends are seriously
turning their thoughts to the tender subject of
"Lucifers, or No Lucifers." From the extreme
cheapness and the extreme convenience of lucifers,
they swarm, like the frogs in Egypt, in
every chamber and, what is worse, in every
kitchen. They intrude into your house, and
into your bedroom, and upon your bed and under
it, and into ovens, and into kneading-troughs.
They fall into coffee and into soup, and cause
many lamentable poisonings, unintentionally;
they are so close at hand, and their presence
excites so little suspicion, that they afford a
ready means to unnatural relatives of getting
rid of their encumbrances, to malignant
persons of destroying their enemies, and to the
lovesick and desponding of making an end
of their sweethearts and themselves,
intentionally. And there is no known antidote to
the poison.

In the north especially of France, lucifers, or
"allumettes chimiques " as they are called, are
scattered broadcast over the land; they are sold
by millions and billions in slight paper boxes to
which a piece of sand paper is attached, as if to
increase their dangerousness. Tobacco-smokers
carry them loose, in their waistcoat-pockets, in
their trousers-pockets, in their coat-pockets;
they are strewn about, in a way which looks as if
it were done purposely rather than carelessly,
in passages, on staircases, in outhouses, and
stables, amongst straw, sawdust, shavings,
leaves. In any third class railway carriage, in
any public wheel-conveyance, in any barge or
boat in the northern provinces, you have only to
ask your neighbour for an allumette to have
half a dozen placed at your disposal. The lucifer
is a sort of common property to which every one
present has a claim, as much as to the loaf of
bread lying on the table at which he dines. It
is the favourite plaything of children, the
indispensable necessary of adults, pervading every
place where men either labour or congregate.
Need it be stated that fires, both casual and
incendiary, are frequent? The only wonder is
that houses in France are not annually
decimated by the devouring agent—since it is no
longer called an element. In short, lucifer
matches have risen to the distinction of being
one of the greatest plagues of life. The
Grand Exhibitions of London and Paris showed
what extensive proportions their manufacture
had attained in the German States—the land of
insatiable smokers: and it is increasing.

Naturally, people with a little common sense
are uneasy at this state of things. Exhortations
to prudence, recommendations, reproaches, and
sermonising, have been attended with—the
effects that might be expected from them.
Phosphoric poisonings, and unexpected and