“You have had years of full delight, Your girlhood’s passion-dream Was realized to touch and sight As bright as it could seem;-- And now you interpose, like Night, Before my life’s first gleam. “Yet you were once what I am now,-- You wore your maiden prize; You told me of my Father, how You lived but in his eyes;-- You spoke of the perpetual vow, The troth that never dies. “Dear Mother! dearer, kinder far, If by my childhood’s bed Your care had never stood to bar Misfortune from my head;-- But laid me where my brothers are, Among the quiet dead. “Ah! why not die? This cruel strife, Can thus--thus only--cease? Dear God! take home this erring life-- This struggling soul release: From Heaven, perchance, upon _his_ wife I might look down in peace.” That prayer--like some electric flame, Struck with resistless force The lady’s agitated frame,-- Nor halted in its course, Till her hard pride was turn’d to shame, Her passion to remorse. She spoke--her words were very low, But resolute in tone-- “Dear child! he comes.--Nay, blush not so To have your secret known: ’Tis best, ’tis best, that I should go-- And leave you here alone.” Then, as his steps grew near and fast, Her hand was on the door, Her heart by holy grace had cast The demon from its core,-- And on the threshold calm she pass’d The man she loved no more. R. MONCKTON MILNES. Studies in Animal Life. “Authentic tidings of invisible things;-- Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power, And central peace subsisting at the heart Of endless agitation.”--THE EXCURSION. CHAPTER II. Ponds and rock-pools--Our necessary tackle--Wimbledon Common--Early memories--Gnat larvæ--Entomostraca and their paradoxes--Races of animals dispensing with the sterner sex--Insignificance of males--Volvox globator: is it an animal?--Plants swimming like animals--Animal retrogressions--The Dytiscus and its larva--The dragon-fly larva--Molluscs and their eggs--Polypes, and how to find them--A new polype, _Hydra rubra_--Nest-building fish--Contempt replaced by reverence. The day is bright with a late autumn sun; the sky is clear with a keen autumn wind, which lashes our blood into a canter as we press against it, and the cantering blood sets the thoughts into hurrying excitement. Wimbledon Common is not far off; its five thousand acres of undulating heather, furze, and fern tempt us across it, health streaming in at every step as we snuff the keen breeze. We are tempted also to bring net and wide-mouthed jar, to ransack its many ponds for visible and invisible wonders.