THE SHEPHERD LORD.

You have heard of the wars of the Roses in the fifteenth century. One of the warmest adherents of the Red Rose of Lancaster was John, Lord Clifford, who barbarously killed the youngest of the princes of York. At the battle of Taunton the White Rose triumphed, and Edward IV. was made king. Edward then sought to exterminate the Clifford race-to avenge the murder of his young brother. The cruel Lord Clifford had died in the battle of Taunton, but he left an infant son, Henry, Lord Clifford. For him every search was made, but his widowed mother fled with him to the solitudes of the lake region, leaving his inheritance to strangers, anxious only to save his life. The poet Words

worth, who has written their story in beaut ful verse, describes her tears and anguish :-

To the caves, and to the brooks.

To the clouds of heaven she looks;
She is speechless, but her eyes,

Pray in ghostly agonies.

The mother and son were long concealed in Blencathara, and the boy was employed in tending flocks.

Now who is he that bounds with joy,
On Carrocks side, a Shepherd Boy.

As the young Lord Clifford grew toward manhood, his danger increased; and as it became whispered about at court of his existence, his mother, now married to Sir Lancelot Threlkeld, thought it necessary to remove him from Blencathara into Cumberland, where he was kept as a shepherd; sometimes at Threlkeld, sometimes amongst his father-in-law's kindred, and sometimes upon the borders of Scotland, where his mother bought lands, purposely for her son's safe residence, and for those shepherds and their wives who had the custody of him.

Again he wanders forth at will

And tends a flock from hill to hill,

Many times his father-in-law came purposely to visit him, and sometimes his mother, though very secretly. He could neither write nor read, for they durst not bring him up in any kind of learning, lest by it his birth should be discovered.

Henry, Lord Clifford, lived twenty-four years a shepherd, and was then restored by Henry VII. to his family estates.

"He hath thrown aside his crook ;"

He

but he did not throw aside with it the plain and peaceful virtues that had adorned it. He became known as a very wise man. was also a very good manager of his estates. His numerous castles which had gone to decay in strangers' hands, he carefully restored,

His favourite occupation was astronomy. He loved to contemplate the stars from a tower which he built, called Barden Tower, where he had furnished himself with astronomical instruments. He was a plain man, and lived a country life, seldom visiting the court or metropolis. Once, however, he was called thither to sit as a peer of the realm, and it was said he behaved

himself wisely and nobly, and like a good Eng· lishman.

Love had he found in huts where poor men lie;

His daily teachers had been woods and rills,

The silence that is in the starry sky,

The sleep that is among the lonely hills.

In him the savage virtue of the race,
Revenge, and all ferocious thoughts were dead.
Nor did he change; but kept in lofty place,
The wisdom which adversity had bred.

Glad were the vales, and every cottage hearth;
The Shepherd Lord was honoured more and more:
And ages after he was laid in earth,

The "Good Lord Clifford" was the name he bore.

A FOREST ADVENTURE.

MR. Davenport, an old black gentleman, lived quite alone in a vast and solemn old Canadian forest, not far from Lake Simcoe. He was a settler or bushranger. Grand and gloomy pinetrees, too lofty for the tops to be easily seen, with trunks that require fathoms of line to span them, stood close about his log dwelling, as they had stood for ages before he was born to tread in their shadow; and there were poplars, and lindens, and walnut trees, and birch, and cherry, and oak, and many others, all vaster than you can easily imagine, if you have seen only the trees of Europe. And most of them were clothed and linked together by evergreen and by moss.