to conger, that is to say, a hind-quarter of
native lamb, weighing only three pounds seven
ounces; the whole side, indeed, weighed but
seven and a quarter pounds. The flavour of
Guernsey lamb would have been delicious to a
more delicate appetite than my day's fishing had
provided for me.

     COMMON RIGHTS AND COMMON
                          SENSE.

WHEN noble landowners fall out, common
people may hope to hold their own—an axiom of
limited application, and referring mainly to
common lands. Where I have been lately staying
down in Hertfordshire, the two great people of
the county have had a fierce dispute about
common land; and the example set some time since
by Mr. Augustus Smith has been followed by a
noble earl. There are no prettier lanes in
England than may be found round Hatfield. A
rich border of grass, from which natural
avenues spring up and blend their foliage into
a leafy archway; glimpses on all sides of bright
meadows, fine trees, and richly cultivated
ground, make them the very places to drive or
ramble through on a summer's holiday. The
land unused upon each side these lanes, and
upon which the neighbourhood has strolled,
and played, and wandered ever since there was
a neighbourhood at all, was quietly enclosed
the other day by the noble marquis, who is the
earl's political and territorial rival in the county.
Worse than this, some of it formed the frontage
ground to the earl's fields, and was
subsequently let off, at a small rent a year, to the
earl's own tenant. Nay, as if to carry defiance
to extremity, this grass lane, which divides
lands belonging to the earl and his relative,
the viscountess, was also calmly appropriated
by the marquis, a gate fixed at each end, and
the lane itself let to another of the earl's
tenants. The only conceivable plea for these
strange proceedings was that the marquis, as
lord of the manor, was asserting what he
believed to be his rights. Rumour says that, a
formal correspondence and remonstrance being
found unavailing, the young earl summoned his
retainers together, and, reviving old feudal
times, led them against his rival's outworks.
It is certain that fences, palings, quickset
hedges, bolts, bars, and gates, suddenly
disappeared one fine night, and that the earl and his
followers were seen in the vicinity immediately
before and after the event. Imagine the
delight of people who had seen piece after piece of
common land enclosed by the proud old noble
in the venerable brick mansion yonder, and
who had never dared to say him nay! It was
not the value of the land thus filched away and
restored, but the having found an aristocratic
and powerful champion, that delighted them.
It is said that legal proceedings will follow,
that the marquis is obdurate and the earl
determined. All the better for the general question;
and no better earnest of having the vexed question
of the rights of lords of manors settled
could be hoped for than that a nobleman of
high position should be stung into doing battle
in the people's cause.

I only wish we had some one equally daring
at Wimbledon; things have gone ill with our
common ever since it was proposed to
dedicate it to the public. They tell us that its
present abuse and disfigurement is for our
and its ultimate good; that the lord of the
manor takes a parental interest in us and in
the public; and that we shall in the end be
hugely benefited by what is annoying us so
desperately now. Piety defines afflictions as
blessings in disguise, and on this principle we
are expected to welcome what seem to be
aggression and outrage, with a blind faith in the
wisdom and benevolence of the lord from whose
hands they are said to come. It is because,
some of our more rebellious spirits are murmuring
loudly, and for the reason that our beautiful
common is rapidly deteriorating, that I wish to
state briefly what our common was a few years
ago, what improvements were proposed and
rejected, and how thoroughly anomalous is its
present condition.

The shepherd in As You Like It was not
more astonished at learning his "parlous state"
from Touchstone, than we were at hearing of
the terrible condition of our breezy open space,
when it was proposed to enclose it "for
the benefit of the public." Numerous tramps,
gipsies, annoyances, nuisances, and abuses,
defective drainage, and bad pasturage, were
all said to be prevalent; and the panacea to
protect residents from outrage, and to secure
to the public their rights, was said to be the
creation of a "lord-protector," the conversion of
one portion of the common into a park with
lodges, railings, gates, and keepers, over which
this protector should have absolute sway, and
other portions into building lots. Never were
the benevolent impulses of a nobleman more
cruelly perverted than by the framers of the
measure embodying the foregoing provisions.
It is an old story now, and the bill was first
modified, and altered until its character was
entirely changed, and then withdrawn; but as
most of the nuisances it proposed to abrogate
have increased since, it will be useful to recal
the professed kindness of the lord of the manor,
and the questionable way in which his advisers
attempted to carry that kindness into effect.
There is no doubt that our common would be
better for draining. After a few wet days
certain parts of it become swampy; but it was
concluded, strangely enough, that building villas
on the prettiest portion of it, and making
of the rest a neat enclosure, something
between Kensington-gardens and a mammoth
pound, would be an agreeable remedy for this
swampiness, and would suit conflicting tastes to
a nicety. The perversity of;those who thought
a wild common, within twenty minutes' ride of
Waterloo-bridge, to be a greater boon to smoke-
dried London than any park, however trimly
disciplined, is now meeting with condign-