The old country dances which used to delight our fathers seem to be vanishing. I have not seen for many years the village rustics "crossing hands" and going "down the middle," and tripping merrily to the tune of a fiddle; but perhaps they do so still. In olden days the city maidens of London were often "dancing and tripping till moonlight" in the open air; and later on we read that on holidays, after evening prayer, while the youths exercised their wasters and bucklers, the maidens, "one of them playing on a timbrel, in sight of their masters and dames, used to dance for garlands hanged athwart the streets." Stow, the recorder of this custom, wisely adds, "which open pastimes in my youth, being now suppressed, worser practices within doors are to be feared." In some parts of England they still trip it gaily in the moonlight. A clergyman in Gloucestershire tried to establish a cricket club in his parish, but his efforts were all in vain; the young men preferred to dance together on the village green, and the more manly diversion had no charms for them. Dancing was never absent from our ancestors' festivities, and round the merry May-pole "Where the jocund swains Dance with the maidens to the bagpipe strains;" or in the festal hall, adorned with evergreens and mistletoe, with tripping feet they passed the hours "till envious night commands them to be gone." CHAPTER II. FEBRUARY. "Down with rosemary and bayes, Down with the mistleto, Instead of holly, now up-raise The greener box, for show." "The holly hitherto did sway; Let box now domineere, Untill the dancing Easter-day, Or Easter's eve appeare." Hunting--Candlemas Day--St. Blaize's Day--Shrove-tide-- Football--Battledore and Shuttlecock--Cock-throwing. The fox-hounds often meet in our village during this cheerless month, and I am reminded by the red coats of the huntsmen, and by the sound of the cheerful horn, of the sportsmen of ancient days, who chased the wolf, hart, wild boar, and buck among these same woods and dales of England. All hearts love to hear the merry sound of the huntsman's horn, except perhaps that of the hunted fox or stag. The love of hunting seems ingrained in every Englishman, and whenever the horsemen appear in sight, or the "music" of the hounds is heard in the distance, the spade is laid aside, the ploughman leaves his team, the coachman his stables, the gardener his greenhouses, books are closed, and every one rushes away to see the sport. The squire, the farmers, and every one who by hook or by crook can procure a mount, join in the merry chase, for as an old poet sings-- "The hunt is up, the hunt is up, Sing merrily we, the hunt is up; The birds they sing, The deer they fling: Hey, nony, nony-no: The hounds they cry, The hunters they fly, Hey trolilo, trolilo, The hunt is up."