I do not think I should have trusted in such a matter Charles Cotton, although he was agricultural as well as piscatory,—­having published a “Planter’s Manual.”  I think he could, and did, draw a long bow.  I suspect innocent milkmaids were not in the habit of singing Kit Marlowe’s songs to the worshipful Mr. Cotton.

One pastoral remains to mention, published at the very opening of the year 1600, and spending its fine forest-aroma thenceforward all down the century.  I mean Shakspeare’s play of “As You Like It.”

From beginning to end the grand old forest of Arden is astir overhead; from beginning to end the brooks brawl in your ear; from beginning to end you smell the bruised ferns and the delicate-scented wood-flowers.  It is Theocritus again, with the civilization of the added centuries contributing its spangles of reason, philosophy, and grace.  Who among all the short-kirtled damsels of all the eclogues will match us this fair, lithe, witty, capricious, mirthful, buxom Rosalind?  Nowhere in books have we met with her like,—­but only at some long-gone picnic in the woods, where we worshipped “blushing sixteen” in dainty boots and white muslin.  There, too, we met a match for sighing Orlando,—­mirrored in the water; there, too, some diluted Jaques may have “moralized” the excursion for next day’s “Courier,” and some lout of a Touchstone (there are always such in picnics) passed the ices, made poor puns, and won more than his share of the smiles.

Walton is English all over; but “As You Like It” is as broad as the sky, or love, or folly, or hope.

* * * * *

THE FRENCH STRUGGLE FOR NAVAL AND COLONIAL POWER.

In comparison with our national misfortunes all beside seems trifling.  Else nothing would so fasten our attention as the French invasion and conquest of Mexico.  A dependency of France established at our door!  The most restless, ambitious, and warlike nation in Europe our neighbor!  Who shall tell what results, momentous and lasting, may follow in the train of such events?

What is the explanation of this conquest?  Is it the freak of an ambitious despot?  Or is it only a stroke in the line of a settled policy? one fact, which we see, amid a great number of facts which we do not see?

This particular enterprise comes close to us.  It affronts our pride and tramples upon our political traditions.  It establishes, what we did not wish to see on this Western Continent, another foreign jurisdiction.  But for more than twenty-five years France has been engaged in a series of like enterprises.  In places not so near to us, by the same arbitrary methods, she has already achieved conquests as important.  With soft-footed ambition, she has planted her flag and reared her strongholds on spots full of natural advantages.  But the aim is the same everywhere:  the reestablishment of her lost colonial and naval power.  And the hope of France is, that in the race for mercantile and naval greatness she may yet challenge and vanquish the Sovereign of the Seas.