While she knew but life's purer and tenderer ties, The guardian who watches life's path from our birth Call'd home the bright being Heav'n form'd for the skies Ere its bloom had been ting'd by the follies of earth! Alas! while the light of her young spirit's flame Shone a day-star of Hope to illumine us here, The messenger-seraph too suddenly came, And bore his bright charge to her own native sphere! Yet mourn not for her, who, in Spring's tender bloom, Has made life a desert to those left behind; Like the rose-leaf, tho' wither'd, still yielding perfume, In our hearts, ever fragrant, her memory is shrin'd! FICTIONS OF THE MIDDLE AGES. BY DELTA. THE BUTTERFLY BISHOP. Amongst the numerous grievances complained of, during the reigns of the Anglo-Norman sovereigns, none gave more uneasiness than the inhuman severity of the forest-laws; they disgusted those nobles not in the confidence of the monarch, oppressed the people, and impoverished the country. The privilege of hunting in the royal forests was confined to the king and his favourites, who spent the greater portion of their time, not engaged in active warfare, in that diversion; many of them pursued wild beasts with greater fury than they did enemies of their country, and became as savage as the very brutes they hunted. The punishment for hunting or destroying game in royal forests, or other property belonging to the crown, was very severe: the offender was generally put to death; but, if he could afford to pay an enormous mulct to the king, the sentence was commuted either to dismemberment or tedious imprisonment. The propensity of the dignified clergy to follow secular pastimes, especially that of hunting, is well known: they were ambitious to surpass the laity in the number and splendid livery of their huntsmen, and to excel in making the woods resound with the echo of their bugles; many of them are recorded for their skill in the aristocratic and manly amusement of the chase. Few persons, however, either ecclesiastic or secular, equalled Peter de Roches, Bishop of Winchester, in his fondness for, and prowess in, the chase. Peter had spent the prime of his life as a soldier,[1] and having rendered King John essential service in such capacity, that monarch conferred upon him the lucrative office of Bishop of Winchester, and he thenceforth became a curer of souls instead of a destroyer of bodies. Peter's appointment as a bishop afforded him ample time to devote to the fascinating employment of chasing the "full-acorned boar" and stealthy fox: he thought the hunter's shout, the winding notes of the clanging horn, and the joyous bark of the hounds, much sweeter music than the nasal chaunt of the drowsy monks.