There was a cow—well, ’tis a smartish lot of cows as I’ve seen in my time, but this one, why, the king haven’t got the match to she in all his great palace, and that’s the truth, so ’tis. I bain’t one as can judge of that, my lord, seeing that I be got a poor old badger of a man, and the days when I was young and did carry a heart what could beat with love, be ahind of I, and the feel of them clean forgot. The task of selection has not been an easy one. “The New Year” is the only Country play on large and ambitious lines which Lady Darwin left behind her, and it is on this account, as well as for its own merits, which I venture to think are very considerable, that it has been included. “Princess Royal” was written for a special occasion, and is frankly more conventional and artificial than the others, but it will nevertheless appeal to folk-dancers, and for that reason, rather than perhaps for its intrinsic value, room has been found for it. The remaining four are, in their several ways, typical of the author’s work, and I for one have little doubt but that they will make a wide appeal, more especially perhaps to those simple-minded people (of whom I am persuaded there are many, even in these latter-days) who are able to appreciate the unpretentious beauty of an art that is well-nigh artless in its simplicity. Some of them may be too slight in design, too delicate in texture, their beauty too elusive, to succeed on the professional stage; I do not know. But there is a large demand for plays of a non-professional character; and that Lady Darwin’s will be acted with pleasure and listened to with delight in hut or hall or country-house of a winter’s evening, I cannot doubt. CECIL SHARP. FLORENCE HENRIETTA DARWIN FLORENCE HENRIETTA FISHER was born at 3, Onslow Square, London, in the year 1864; but to those of a younger generation it seemed that nearly the whole of her youth had been spent in the New Forest, so largely did it figure in her stories of the past. It was at Whitley Ridge, Brockenhurst, that her earliest plays were written, and many marvellous characters created; their names still live. It was there that she became a very good violin player, as well as a musician in a wider sense. It was in Brockenhurst Church that, in 1886, she married Frederic William Maitland, later Downing professor of the laws of England. Mr. and Mrs. Maitland lived in Cambridge; for the first two years at Brookside, and afterwards in the West Lodge of Downing College.