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bling our English oak, in all the glories of the year, I quitted the path and ran towards it, to sit under its shade; but my companion, in great seeming agitation, called out loudly to me, "Come back! come back! or you will be certainly caught; there are traps every where." "Traps!" I replied hastily. — "What! traps for men? I wonder no longer at this solitude. — Are you cannibals then, and do you snare your fellow- creatures as if they were larks?" "No, no," he replied, laughing, " we don't eat one another, but we like to be to ourselves when we eat our mutton; and there would be no end of wanderers if we did not catch them by the leg." It was now my turn to laugh, and I could not help telling him, "that if this were done in England, the owner perhaps would be caught himself, and by the neck too, as Jack Catch might retaliate."[1]

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  1. ↑ Since my arrival in England, I have learned that lawyers differ upon this subject;—but humanity surely dictates the greatest caution in the use of such dangerous protections.
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