All the duck kind waddle; divers and auks walk as if fettered, and stand erect on their tails. Geese and cranes, and most wild fowls, move in figured flights, often changing their position. Dabchicks, moorhens, and coots, fly erect, with their legs hanging down, and hardly make any dispatch; the reason is plain, their wings are placed too forward out of the true centre of gravity, as the legs of auks and divers are situated too backward. REV. GILBERT WHITE. * * * * * THE VILLAGE. Sweet was the sound, when oft at evening's close Up yonder hill the village murmur rose. There as I past with careless steps and slow, The mingling notes came softened from below; The swain responsive as the milk-maid sung, The sober herd that lowed to meet their young, The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool, The playful children just let loose from school, The watch-dog's voice that bayed the whispering wind, And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind; These all in sweet confusion sought the shade, And filled each pause the nightingale had made. But now the sounds of population fail, No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale, No busy steps the grass-grown foot-way tread, For all the bloomy flush of life is fled. All but yon widowed, solitary thing, That feebly bends beside the plashing spring: She, wretched matron, forced in age, for bread, To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread, To pick her wintry faggot from the thorn, To seek her nightly shed, and weep till mom; She only left of all the harmless train, The sad historian of the pensive plain. Near yonder copse, where once the garden smiled, And still, where many a garden-flower grows wild; There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose, The village preacher's modest mansion rose, A man he was to all the country dear, And passing rich with forty pounds a year; Remote from towns he ran his godly race, Nor e'er had changed, nor wished to change his place; Unpractised he to fawn, or seek for power, By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour; Far other aims his heart had learned to prize, More skilled to raise the wretched than to rise. His house was known to all the vagrant train; He chid their wanderings, but relieved their pain; The long-remember'd beggar was his guest, Whose beard descending swept his aged breast, The ruined spendthrift, now no longer proud, Claimed kindred there, and had his claims allowed; The broken soldier, kindly bade to stay, Sat by his fire, and talked the night away. Wept o'er his wounds or tales of sorrow done, Shouldered his crutch, and showed how fields were won. Pleased with his guests, the good man learned to glow, And quite forgot their vices in their woe;