by marching round the stump of the tree three times, and then to adjourn for dinner to the "Maypole," the "Bald Hind," and the "Roebuck." The return journey is so timed that the procession arrives in Mile End Road late in the evening, when the toiling masses can stroll forth and participate in the festival. Fireworks and coloured illuminations are exhibited from the boat itself and from the public-houses en route, and the latter part of the journey, delayed through sundry "calls" and the obstruction to the traffic which the occasion itself creates, is performed with the aid of torchlights. The The centuries-old tree has disappeared. eccentric founder of the fair was laid to rest in 1767, in Barking churchyard, in a coffin made under his own direction from a branch of his favourite tree. The merry-makers have been succeeded by others who seem not less intent upon gaining some of the pleasures of this world. Thomas Tusser, and his “Five Hundred Τ Points of Good Husbandry." BY W. H. THOMPSON. USSER, the author of the "Five Hundred 66 Points of Good Husbandry," is one of those characters who have had the ill-luck to have their names handed down to posterity with an unfortunate reputation, which probably was not altogether warranted by their history. Quaint Thomas Fuller, in his Worthies of Essex," says, "he was successively a musician, schoolmaster, serving man, husbandman, grazier, poet, more skillful at all, than thriving at any vocation. He traded at large in oxen, sheep, dairies, grain of all kind, to no profit. What he bought or sold he lost, and when a renter impoverished himself, and never enriched his landlord. Yet," he adds, "hath he laid down excellent rules in his book of husbandry and huswifry, so that the observer thereof must be rich." The belief that our author was a master ་ at giving advice, but lamentably shortcoming in practice, appears to have been very widespread. It is hit off in the following epigram: Tusser, they tell me, when thou wert alive, Though teaching thrift, thyself couldst never thrive.” He may not have been successful in all his undertakings, but his will, published in 1846, would seem to prove that in his later years he certainly was not in poverty. Possibly his thriftiness itself may have been to some extent responsible for his reputation, and he may not have been so poor as he appeared to be. Almost the only source we have of reliable information respecting Thomas Tusser, is his amusing poetical autobiography. Unfortunately this production is defective in dates. Belonging to a family, which we know from the Herald's visitation of 1570, had the right to bear arms, he was born at Rivenhall, near Witham, it is thought about the year 1515. Early displaying a musical gift, he was sent to be a chorister at the collegiate chapel at Wallingford Castle. Here he got coarse fare and rough treatment; and somewhat later he was "pressed" into the royal service. In those days the crown had the power to impress choristers to sing in the chapels royal. Subsequently he went to Eton and Cambridge, and then for ten years he lived at court, as a sort of retainer to William, Lord Paget. At length he married and settled down as a farmer at Katwode, in Suffolk. It was here he published the first edition of his celebrated work, “A hundred good points of Husbandrie," which was at a later date enlarged to "Five Hundred pointes of good Husbandry, united to as many of good Huswiferie." Tusser appears to have regarded a country life as the ideal of human felicity, and he certainly has left us one of the most interesting early pictures of the rural life of our ancestors which can be found anywhere. Southey speaks of his work as the "most curious book in the English language." He seems to have written it with the aim of benefitting the poorer classes, farmers, housewives, ploughboys, and the like. In it he catalogues weather signs, field work, agricultural duties, and wise saws; winding up with a strange medley of household rhymes, household physic, etc. Amongst many other matters, this old poet's verses reveal the difficulties of a farmer's life in winter, at that period. It affords a lively picture of the troubles he had in carrying his stock over that inclement season, before the days of field turnips; and of the miserable expedients which had to be resorted to in order to save his beasts from absolute starvation. He directs that all trees should be pruned of their superfluous boughs, that the cattle might browse upon them. The myrtle and the ivy are the wretched fare he points out for sheep. Even spring did not end the anxieties of the farmer "From Christmas to May, be well entered in, Some cattle wax faint, and look poorly and thin ; A curious table, dividing and describing the various periods in a man's life, forms part of the closing medley. It is well worth giving— "Man's age divided here ye have By 'prenticeships from birth to grave. 7. The first seven years bring up a child : 35. The next, let Lusty lay wisely to wive; |