strife for existence was not fo keen, nor the struggle of competition fo fierce then as now. At break of dawn and close of day, at the early blush of May-tide, amid the bleak winter of Christmas, there were heard from the hill-fides and valleys of old England the joyous fhouts of a contented and a happy people. The peasant in his humble abode, the young trading Guilds of the towns, the noble in his manfion, the baron in his caftle, the monk in his abbey, and the courtier that applauded the king's jester in the palace, were gay and light-hearted ;—men laughed and women smiled, and minstrels fang, and all fared well in "the merrie days of England."

We have culled from poets and writers who lived in the "Olden time," and from a few of our own day who have studied the past, fome descriptions of the sports, the pastimes, and the occupations of our forefathers, even when living amid wars and rumours of wars, civil diffenfions, and much perhaps that might well have been spared for history to record. Our pen and pencil "fketches of the olden times are not fubmitted as finished pictures; our object is merely to present to this utilitarian age fome features of the "merrie days" of our ancestors.

E. McD.

THE TERRACE, CAMBERWELL.

NOAH'S ARK—A DRAMATIC MYSTERY E. H. Corbould.

ENGRAVED BY

PAGE

E. Evans. Frontispiece

W. J. Linton
H. Harral.
W. Thomas
H. Harral.

W. Thomas

E. Wimperis .

20

24

30

40

48

E. H. Corbould.

Joseph Nash

W. J. Linton .

George Thomas.

W. Thomas

104

Birket Foster

W. H. Palmer.

112

Birket Foster

J. Cooper

124

Initial Letters and Ornaments designed by HARRY ROGERS and T. MACQUOID,

The Drawings by JOSEPH NASH, copied upon Wood by J. F. SKILL.

153

COTTAGE HOMES.

HERE are few, if any fcenes in England

which are more fuggeftive of the "merrie" days of the past, than the picturesque

villages which are to be met with in every part of our country. Not only do they convey to the mind pleafant pictures of rural life, of healthy occupations, of fimple pleasures, and contented minds; but they carry us back in imagination to the days when poets fang the charms of peafant life, and Spenfer told the loves of fhepherdeffes, and the wooings of "gentle herdímen." Who has not been charmed with the fight of an English village, neftling amid the

B

foliage of fome thickly wooded spot; its humble fpire pointing with tapering finger to the clear blue heaven above; its ancient church marking the hallowed spot beneath whofe bright green turf,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

As we look upon thefe "God's acres," and their "mouldering heaps," we reflect that many a time and oft the occupants of thofe "narrow cells" had wended their way along those grafgrown walks, when the village chime fummoned them to their devout worship; or when, at the folemn tolling of the bell, stalwart men fobbed, and maidens wept, as they bade the last adieu to thofe alike "to fortune and to fame unknown."

It is fuch a village church that Mrs. Hemans describes in her graceful fonnet :

Crowning a flowery slope, it stood alone

In gracious sanctity. A bright rill wound,
Caressingly, about the holy ground;

And warbled with a never-dying tone
Amidst the tombs. A hue of ages gone

Seem'd, from that ivied porch, that solemn gleam,
Of tower and cross, pale-quivering on the stream,
O'er all th' ancestral woodlands to be thrown-
And something yet more deep. The air was fraught
With noble memories, whispering many a thought

Of England's fathers: loftily serene,
They that had toil'd, watch'd, struggled to secure,
Within such fabrics, worship free and pure,

Reign'd there, the o'ershadowing spirit of the scene.