The system of hiring servants is one of the great plague-spots in the county. Below the gentry character is hardly ever inquired into, and servants are taken on their own showing. Michaelmas is the season for hiring: the engagement is for a year, and they leave as a matter of course, unless they are asked' to stay by their master or mistress. The meetings held for the purpose before Michaelmas are called Statties, i. e. Statutes, which were first established by act of parliament in the reign of Edward III., for regulating wages, &c. Those after Michaelmas are called Mops, perhaps from being the clearing off of those servants who had not got places at the more regular time. These gatherings, held at particular villages, are looked forward to by the young servants as the chief holidays in the year. Stalls for gingerbread and ribbons give the meeting the appearance of a small fair, and the lads and the lasses both come in their best attire. The men wear in their hats the emblems of their particular service; the plough-boy or carter has a piece of whipcord, the shepherd a lock of wool, and the milk-boy a tuft of cow-hair. Miss Baker in her Glossary,' and Clare in his 'Village Minstrel,' give full and lively descriptions of these meetings, which, both in themselves and as the remnant of a degraded condition of labour, and as perpetuating a declining and unamiable relation between master and servant, are full of evil, and, if discountenanced by the farmers, would soon pass away as an old fashion that we could part with without regret. More than Christmas or Easter, the Feast-Sunday and the Feast-Week are kept by the poorer classes. These follow the anniversary of the feast of the dedication of the church. All Saints', being a prevalent dedication, has a large number of feasts dependent on it; but whatever the season of the year, plum-pudding is provided, and plenty of it. These holidays give the mnemonic date of the simple annals of the village poor, and Rothwell feast or fair is a great memoria technica in the mid-county districts. Proverbial distichs, such as 'Hardingstone snow feast; mark the winter and summer seasons of the feasts of two neighbouring villages. Another is given by Miss Baker : 'On the Sunday after Trinity Come to Denford feast and dine with me.' The Village Minstrel gives his own delightful description of these happy gatherings. The topping farmers are now growing too fine to recognise the season of their servants' holiday, and it would be a good example if the gentry would take more note of it, and show a sympathy with their poorer brethren, by honouring the period of their honest household joy. The prime county holiday for rich and poor, Boughton Green fair, has lost its glories. A century ago buckskin-gloves and goldlaced hats used to be given for wrestling and single-stick, and the ladies and people of rank met there to see the sports and shows, to raffle, and thence adjourn to a ball at the Red Lion at Northampton in the evening; even as late as 1822, Baker tells us that the neighbouring families of distinction breakfast in the tea-booth, and mingle in the rustic holiday.' The standard dish of ducks-and-green-peas tells, especially to an Etonian, the season of the meeting. Then there was a twelvepenny ordinary every Thursday afternoon during the season, at the bowling-green, Highgate-house, where, we read, a handsome appearance of gentlemen' was expected on the opening-day. These were times when Kingsthorpe and Weston Favell each turned out from its village three coaches and six, almost as much for use as for state, when, as old people can yet remember, the carriages, sticking in the ruts in the middle of villages, often called the cottagers out of their beds. Travelling has improved since then; and Telford's fine road, and the tram attempted by the side of it, have been superseded by the North-Western Railway, at first so obstinately opposed in the county. Old road-side associations quickly succeed one another: we miss the arched entrancelodge to Easton-Neston, on the old North road, and the former view of Weedon barracks is poorly exchanged for the present pit-hole station; even Denbigh-Hall, whose ephemeral fame and bustle seemed to mark it for a moment as a new midland metropolis, has become rather a recollection than a memory. The train now dashes by, and the old-fashioned farmhouse has returned to its original quiet and insignificance. The canals when they were made caused far more excitement than did the railways, and the offices were filled with crowds rushing to take shares in the navigation.' That mischievous waterweed (anacharis alsinastrum), now choking up all our rivers, was first found in 1849 in the Welford branch of the Grand Junction. The greatest local water-work of modern times is that of the Nene Valley Drainage, for which a most stringent and powerful act was carried by an indefatigable committee. The old story of the Haycock in Wansford-in-England tells of the disastrous floods of the Nene, and the improved drainage of late years has greatly increased them. Formerly the county was a great sponge, saturated with water and gradually giving it out; now now it is a cullender pierced throughout, and discharging the rain as quickly as it receives it. It is part of the Drainage scheme to recover to the river Cowper's character of 'Nen's barge-laden wave,' and make it navigable to Northampton, a measure referred to by Fuller, with a viler pun than usual, but in words still applicable: The worst I wish this my native county is, that Nine (a river which some will have so termed from nine tributary rivulets) were Ten: I mean made navigable from Peterborough to Northampton-a design which has always met with many back-friends, as private profit is though a secret yet a sworn enemy to the general good.' The Oundle water-mills, an early bone of contention between the Abbot of Peterborough and the inhabitants, are still a distinctive feature of the neighbourhood; while the old specialities of malting at Peterborough, lacemaking at Wellingborough and Towcester, loom-work at Kettering, whips at Daventry, only faintly linger. Brackley has always had an ill name, and Ray affixes an ugly proverb, which Fuller had charitably omitted. We will follow his good example. Drunken Barnaby glances at the poverty of the borough in describing the mayor as thatching his own house; but better things are in store for it, if all be true that we hear as we write, that Magdalen College is about at once to restore the fine dilapidated chapel as the first instalment towards reviving the old college as a middle-school. Weedon-Bec (not Beck), so called from half its manor having belonged to the abbey of Bec in Normandy, has a happier fame, and of especial significance to it in these days of barrack-joking: 'Weedon, where, 't is said, Saint Werburgh, princely born, a most religious maid, This patroness of bird-tenters, niece of Ethelred king of Mercia, forbade the wild geese to invade the grain crops of her demesnes, and no wild geese,' says Bridges, are ever seen to settle or graze in Weedon field.' The charm should have been extended to the crops of Weedon-Lois (so called from the holy well of St. Loy's), now becoming as famous as fruitful under the spade-husbandry system of the Rev. S. Smith. The gardens of the county are not what they once were. The fine tulips of Mr. Mansel of Cosgrove, and Mr. Bateman of Sibbertoft, mentioned by Morton, exist no longer; and Lord Dysart's terraces at Harrington, and those of the two Boughtons, must be added to the others we have deplored. Mr. Annesley's garden at Eydon, by a favouring pronunciation (Eden), has become become a proverb. Capability Brown has left the mark of his thumb at Burghley and Castle Ashby. Finedon has its arboricultural rarities, and Lamport a most choice rockwork of alpine plants. Lilford and Bulwick rejoice in their formal borders. The flowers that gladden the village of Whittlebury may be traced to my lady's parterres close at hand, just as the rare plants found in the gardens near King's Cliffe are to be referred to the botanical proficiency of the rector. The natural flora of Northamptonshire, from its uniform geological formation, is neither numerous nor rare. rare. The cryptogamous list, however, of which Mr. Berkeley, the incumbent of King's Cliffe, is the great master, is good, and few counties can boast so great a number of fungi, in consequence of the variety and extent of its old forests. Truffles were once erroneously considered peculiar to the county; and at least a third of the species indigenous to England have been detected in its woods, though hardly yet much searched after. We could be well content, did the time permit, to wander on still in the old chaces and forests of the county in quest of these or other treasuresWake's oak in Whittlebury, that Bloomfield sung-Gog and Magog' in their giant weirdness-royal footprints in the lawns and lodges-traces of Roman villas and Saxon forges-walks where the charcoal-burners set up their huts; and all the more that the decree has gone forth against Whittlebury, and the advertisement for its disafforesting has appeared. And when the court of commissioners have weighed the various claims and assigned the equivalents to the claimants, the verderers and the foresters and the woodwards must follow the fate of the courts of swanimote and woodmote; and merry Greenwood, with its walks and its browse, its hay bote and ploughbote, its quaint words and obsolete customs, its comfortable and begrudged perquisites, its old associations for evil and for good, must pass away and be forgotten. But we repeat the conviction with which we started, that it is these local objects and scenes, and other far less romantic things and places, teeming with the annals of history, and lying unheeded about every one's home, that are the best starting-posts of all historical study; and that this is a principle which requires to be recognized in England before Parochial and County history can regain the regard and dignity which is their unquestionable due. ART. ART. II.-1. The Ferns of Great Britain, &c. Nature-printed by Henry Bradbury, with full descriptions of their different species and varieties, by Thomas Moore, F.L.S. Edited by Dr. Lindley, F.R.S., &c. London, 1856. Imp. folio. 51 plates. 2. Species Filicum, being descriptions of all known Ferns, &c. &c., accompanied with numerous figures, by Sir W. J. Hooker, K.H., D.C.L., &c. London, 1846-56. 8vo. 3. An Analysis of the British Ferns and their Allies, by G. W. Francis, F.L.S. 5th edition. With Engravings. Revised and enlarged by Arthur Henfrey, F.R.S., Professor of Botany, King's College. London, 1855. 8vo. 4. The Handbook of British Ferns, by Thomas Moore, F.L.S., &c. 2nd edition. London, 1853. 12mo. 5. A History of British Ferns, by Edward Newman, F.L.S., &c. 3rd edition. London, 1854. 8vo. 6. An Introduction to Cryptogamic Botany, by the Rev. M. J. Berkeley, M.A., F.L.S. London, 1857. 8vo. 7. Nature-Printing, its Origin and Objects. A Lecture delivered at the Royal Institution, May 11, 1855, by Henry Bradbury. London, 1856. 8. Physiotypa Plantarum Austriacarum, by Prof. von Ettigshausen and A. Pokorny, with 500 plates Nature-printed. Vienna, 1856. Folio. L' IKE the grasses, the palms, and other groups of vegetable forms on which Nature has set a well-marked family likeness, the ferns have found a native 'name' wherever they possess a local habitation. The Farrn of our German relatives, the Varens of our neighbours the Dutch, they come of a good old stock, the male branches of which can point to their shields,' while the females of the line, the lady-ferns, have been favourite types of grace and loveliness to painters and to poets. The large share of attention which they have recently attracted, the numerous treatises which have been published on them, the important discoveries in physiological botany to which they have given rise, and the new art of nature-printing' which has been employed to illustrate them in the beautiful work of Mr. Bradbury, all require that we should do our part in bringing the subject before our readers. We have asserted for the ferns their right to a place among the ancient families of the country, a præ-historic antiquity, deduced according to a sound ethnological canon, from the existence of their name in the old tongue of the nation. But his |