with trees and bushes, with a south-east | These sculls were tilted up against the mixture of sunlight and shade, and little wall, and as you innocently went to take touches that cannot be suggested by writ- one, wauw! a dirty little ill-tempered ing. Job had not got the Semitic instinct mongrel poodle rolled himself like a ball of keeping. The art of acquisition he to your heels and snapped his teethpossessed to some extent, that was his wauw! At the bark, out rushed the old right hand; but somehow the half-crowns lady, his housekeeper, shouting in the slipped away through his unstable left shrillest key to the dog to lie still, and to hand, and fortune was a greasy pole to you that the bailiff would be there in a him. His left hand was too cunning for minute. At the sound of her shrewish him, it wanted to manage things too "yang-yang "down came the old man cleverly. If it had only had the Semitic from the bank, and so one dog fetched grip, digging the nails into the flesh to out the lot. The three were exactly alike hold tight each separate coin, he would somehow. Beside these diamond sculls have been village rich. The great secret he had a big gun, with which he used to is the keeping. Finding is by no means shoot the kingfishers that came for the keeping. Job did not flourish in his old little fish; the number he slaughtered was days; the people changed round about. very great; he persecuted them as DomiJob is gone, and I think every one of tian did the flies; he declared that a kingthat cottage is either dead or moved. fisher would carry off a fish heavier than Empty. itself. Also he shot rooks, once now and The next cottage was the water-bailiff's, then strange wild fowl with this monstrous who looked after the great pond or iron pipe, and something happened with "broad." There were one or two old this gun one evening which was witnessed, boats, and he used to leave the oars lean- and after that the old fellow was very being against a wall at the side of the house. nevolent, and the punt was free to one or These oars looked like fragments of a two who knew all about it. There is an wreck, broken and irregular. The right- old story about the stick that would not hand scull was heavy as if made of iron-beat the dog, and the dog would not bite wood, the blade broad and spoon-shaped, the pig, and so on; and so I am quite so as to have a most powerful grip of the water. The left-hand scull was light and slender, with a narrow blade like a marrowscoop; so when you had the punt, you had to pull very hard with your left hand and gently with the right to get the forces equal. The punt had a list of its own, and no matter how you rowed, it would still make leeway. Those who did not know its character were perpetually trying to get this crooked wake straight, and consequently went round and round exactly like the whirligig beetle. Those who knew, used to let the leeway proceed a good way and then alter it, so as to act in the other direction like an elongated zigzag. These sculls the old fellow would bring you as if they were great treasures, and watch you off in the punt as if he was parting with his dearest. At that date it was no little matter to coax him round to unchain his vessel. You had to take an interest in the garden, in the baits, and the weather, and be very humble; then perhaps he would tell you he did not want it for the trimmers, or the withy, or the flags, and you might have it for an hour as far as he could see; "did not think my lord's steward would come over that morning; of course if he did you must come in," and so on; and if the stars were propitious, by-and-by the punt was got afloat.

sure that ill-natured cur could never have lived with that "yang-yang" shrew, nor could any one else but he have turned the gear of the hatch, nor have endured the dog and the woman, and the constant miasma from the stagnant waters. No one else could have shot anything with that cumbrous weapon, and no one else could row that punt straight. He used to row it quite straight, to the amazement of a wondering world, and somehow supplied the motive force the stick-which kept all these things going. He is gone, and, I think, the housekeeper too, and the house has had several occupants since, who have stamped down the old ghosts and thrust them out of doors.

After this the cottages and houses came in little groups, some up crooked lanes, hidden away by elms as if out of sight in a cupboard, and some dotted along the brooks, scattered so that, unless you had connected them all with a very long rope, no stranger could have told which belonged to the village and which did not. They drifted into various tithings, and yet it was all the same place. They were all thatched. It was a thatched village. This is strictly accurate and strictly inaccurate. for I think there were one or two tiled and one slated, and perhaps a modern one slated. Nothing is ever quite rigid

changes and the pressure of these hard times have driven out most of the rest; some seem to have quite gone out of sight; some have crossed the sea; some have abandoned the land as a livelihood. Of the few, the very few that still remain, still fewer abide in their original homes. Time has shuffled them about from house to house like a pack of cards. Of them all, I verily believe there is but one soul living in the same old house. If the French had landed in the medieval way to harry with fire and sword, they could not have swept the place more clean.

or complete that is of man; all rules have a chip in them. The way they builded the older thatched farmhouses was to put up a very high wall in front and a very low one behind, and then the roof in a general way sloped down from the high wall to the low wall, an acre broad of thatch. These old thatched houses seemed to be very healthy so long as the old folk lived in them in the old-fashioned way. Thatch is believed to give an equable temperature. The air blew all round them, and it might be said all through them; for the front door was always open three parts of the year, and at the back Almost the first thing I did with pen the dairies were in a continual blow. Up- and ink as a boy was to draw a map of the stairs the houses were only one room hamlet with the roads and lanes and paths, thick, so that each wall was an outside and I think some of the ponds, and with wall, or rather it was a wall one side and each of the houses marked and the octhatched the other, so that the wind went cupier's name. Of course it was very through if a window was open. Modern roughly done, and not to any scale, yet it houses are often built two rooms thick, so was perfectly accurate and full of detail. that the air does not circulate from one I wish I could find it, but the confusion of side to the other. No one seemed to be time has scattered and mixed these early ill, unless he brought it home with him papers. A map by Ptolemy would bear from some place where he had been visit-as much resemblance to the same country ing. The diseases they used to have in a modern atlas as mine to the present were long-lived, such as rheumatism, state of that locality. It is all gonewhich may keep a man comfortably in rubbed out. The names against the whole aches and pains forty years. My dear of those houses have been altered, one old friend, however, taking them one by only excepted, and changes have taken one, went through the lot and told me of place there. Nothing remains. This is the ghosts. The forefathers I knew are not in a century, half a century, or even in all gone the stout man, the lame man, a quarter of a century, but in a few ticks the paralyzed man, the gruff old stick; of the clock. not one left. There is not one left of the I think I have heard that the oaks are old farmers, not a single one. The fa- down. They may be standing or down, it thers, too, of our own generation have matters nothing to me; the leaves I last been dropping away. The strong young saw upon them are gone forevermore, nor man who used to fill us with such aston- shall I ever see them come there again ishment at the feats he would achieve ruddy in spring. I would not see them without a thought, no gymnastic training, again even if I could; they could never to whom a sack of wheat was a toy,- the look again as they used to do. There are strong young man went one day into the too many memories there. The happiest harvest-field, as he had done so many days become the saddest afterwards; let times before. Suddenly he felt a little us never go back, lest we too die. There dizzy. By-and-by he went home and be- are no such oaks anywhere else, none so came very ill with sunstroke; he recov- tall and straight, and with such massive ered, but he was never strong again; he heads, on which the sun used to shine as gradually declined for twelve months, and if on the globe of the earth, one side in next harvest-time he was under the daisies. shadow, the other in bright light. How Just one little touch of the sun, and the often I have looked at oaks since, and yet strength of man faded as a leaf. The have never been able to get the same hardy dark young man, built of iron, effect from them! Like an old author broad, thick, and short, who looked as if printed in another type, the words are the frost, snow, and heat were all the same to same, but the sentiment is different. The him, had something go wrong in his lung; brooks have ceased to run. There is no one twelvemonth, and there was an end. music now at the old hatch where we used This was a very unhappy affair. The to sit in danger of our lives, happy as pickaxe and the spade have made almost kings, on the narrow bar over the deep a full round to every door; I do not want water. The barred pike that used to come to think any more about this. Family up in such numbers are no more among

the flags. The perch used to drift down the stream, and then bring up again. The sun shone there for a very long time, and the water rippled and sang, and it always seemed to me that I could feel the rippling and the singing and the sparkling back through the centuries. The brook is dead, for when man goes nature ends. I dare say there is water there still, but it is not the brook; the brook is gone like John Brown's soul. There used to be clouds over the fields, white clouds in blue summer skies. I have lived a good deal on clouds; they have been meat to me often; they bring something to the spirit which even the trees do not. I see clouds now sometimes when the iron grip of hell permits for a minute or two; they are very different clouds and speak differently. I long for some of the old clouds, that had no memories. There were nights in those times over those fields, not darkness, but night, full of glowing suns and glowing richness of life that sprang up to meet them. The nights are there still; they are everywhere, nothing local in the night; but it is not the night to me seen through the window.

to note the number of fields, so busy were they with the nests and the flowers, they could never be sure at the end of the journey whether there were eight or nine. To make quite sure at last, he took with them a pocketful of apples, one of which was eaten in each field, and so they came to know for certain that the number of meadows was either eight or nine, I for get which; and so you see this great experiment did not fix the faith of mankind. Like other great truths, it has grown dim, but it seems strange to think how this little incident could have been borne in mind for a century. There was another footpath that led through the, peewit field, where the green plovers forevermore cir cle round in spring; then past the night ingale field, by the largest maple-trees that grew in that country; this too was all grass. Another led along the water to bluebell land; another into the coombes of the hills; all meadows, which was the beauty of it; for though you could find wheat in plenty if you liked, you always walked in grass. All round the compass you could still step on sward. This is rare. Of one other path I have a faded There used to be footpaths. Following memory, like a silk marker in an old book; one of them, the first field always had a in truth, I don't want to remember it, exgood crop of grass; over the next stile cept the end of it where it came down to there was a great oak standing alone in the railway. So full was the mind of ro the centre of the field, generally a great mance in those days, that I used to get cart-horse under it, and a few rushes scat- there specially in time to see the express tered about the furrows; the fourth was go up, the magnificent engine of the broad always full of the finest clover; in the gauge that swept along with such ease fifth you could scent the beans on the hill, and power to London. I wish I could and there was a hedge like a wood, and a feel like that now. The feeling is not nest of the long-tailed tit; the sixth had quite gone even now, and I have often a runnel and blue forget-me-nots; the since seen these great broad-gauge creaseventh had a brooklet and scattered trees tures moving alive to and fro like Ezealong it; from the eighth you looked back kiel's wheel dream beside the platforms on the slope and saw the thatched houses of Babylon with much of the same old you had left behind under passing shad-delight. Still I never went back with ows, and rounded white clouds going them to the faded footpath. They are all straight for the distant hills, each cloud faded now, these footpaths. visibly bulging and bowed down like a bag. I cannot think how the distant thatched houses came to stand out with such clear definition and etched outline and bluish shadows; and beyond these was the uncertain vale that had no individuality, but the trees put their arms together and became one. All these were meadows, every step was among grass, beautiful grass, and the cuckoos sang as if they had found paradise. A hundred years ago a little old man with silver buckles on his shoes used to walk along this footpath once a week in summer, taking his children over to drink milk at the farm; but though he set them every time

The walnut-trees are dead at home. They gave such a thick shade when the fruit was juicy ripe, and the hoods cracked as they fell; they peeled as easy as taking off a glove; the sweetest and nuttiest of fruit. It was delicious to sit there with a great volume of Sir Walter Scott, half in sunshine, half in shade, dreaming of "Kenilworth" and Wayland Smith's cave; only the difficulty was to balance the lux uries, when to peel the walnuts and when to read the book, and how to adjust oneself to perfection so as to get the exact amount of sunshine and shadow. Too much luxury. There was a story, too, told by one Abu-Kaka ibn Ja'is, of the

alive. The book I have still, it cannot die; the ash copses are cut, and the hazel mounds destroyed.

caravan that set forth in 1483 to cross the | desert, and being overwhelmed by a sandstorm, lost their way. They wandered for some time till hunger and thirst began to Was every one then so pleasant to me consume them, and then suddenly lit on in those days? were the people all so an oasis unknown to the oldest merchant beneficent and kindly that I must needs of Bagdad. There they found refreshing look back; all welcoming with open hand waters and palms and a caravanserai ;·and and open door? No, the reverse; there what was most pleasant, the people at the was not a single one friendly to me; still bazaar and the prince hastened to fill them that has nothing to do with it, I never with hospitality; sheep were killed, and thought about them, and I am quite cer kids were roasted, and all was joy. They tain they never thought about me. They were not permitted to depart till they had are all gone, and there is an end. Incomfeasted, when they set out again on their patibility would describe our connection journey, and each at leaving was presented best. Nothing to do with them at all; it with strings of pearls and bags of rubies, was me. I planted myself everywhere — so that at last they came home with all the in all the fields and under all the trees. magnificence of kings. They found, how- The curious part of it is that though they ever, that instead of having been absent are all dead, and "worms have eaten them, only a month or two they had been gone but not for love," we continually meet twenty years, so swiftly had time sped. them in other shapes. We say, "Holloa, As they grew old, and their beards grey, here is old So-and-so coming; that is exand their frames withered, and the pearls actly his jaw, that's his Flemish face; " or, were gone, and the rubies spent, they said," By Jove, yonder is So-and-so; that's his "We will go back to the city of the oasis." very walk; one almost expects them to They set out, each on his camel, one lame, speak as one meets them in the street. the other paralytic, and the third blind, There seem to be certain set types which but still the way was plain, for had they continually crop up again whithersoever not trodden it before? and they had with you go, and even certain tricks of speech them the astrolabe of the astronomer that and curves of the head a set of family fixes the track by the stars. Time wore portraits walking about the world. It was on, and presently the camels' feet brought not the people, neither for good, for evil, them nearer and nearer the wished-for nor indifference. spot. One saw the water, and another the palms, but when they came near, it was the mirage, and deep sand covered the place. Then they separated, and each hastened home; but the blind had no leader, and the lame fell from his camel, and the paralytic had no more dates, and their whited bones have disappeared.* Many another tale, too, I read under the trees that are gone like human beings. Sometimes I went forth to the nooks in the deep meadows by the hazel mounds, and sometimes I parted the ash-tree wands. In my waistcoat pocket I had a little red book, made square; I never read it out of doors, but I always carried it in my pocket till it was frayed and the binding broken; the smallest of red books, but very much therein the poems and sonnets of Mr. William Shakespeare. Some books are

I planted myself everywhere under the trees in the fields and footpaths, by day. and by night, and that is why I have never put myself into the charge of the many wheeled creatures that move on the rails and gone back thither, lest I might find the trees look small, and the elms mere switches, and the fields shrunken, and the brooks dry, and no voice anywhere. Nothing but my own ghost to meet me by every hedge. I fear lest I should find myself more dead than all the rest. And verily I wish, could it be without injury to others, that the sand of the desert would rise and roll over and obliterate the place forever and ever.

I need not wish, for I have been conversing again with learned folk about this place, and they begin to draw my view to certain considerations. These very learned men point out to me a number of objections, for the question they scepti cally put is this: are you quite certain that such a village ever existed? In the first place, they say, you have only got one other witness beside yourself, and she is aged, and has defective sight; and really we don't know what to say to accepting such evidence unsupported. Secondly,

Mordaunt walked daily up and down the long slope to enquire; acquaintances wrote reams of condolences; every one, in short, did everything that was incumbent, but that was all. Seeing that he was doomed, it was perhaps as well, and yet surely a death that is scarcely mourned at all is a more tragic thing, if one thinks of it, than a death that is mourned by thousands.

John Brown cannot be found to bear testi- |:had a responsible physician's cares and mony. Thirdly, there are no ghosts there; anxieties; John Lawrence and young that can be demonstrated. It renders a case unsubstantial to introduce these flimsy spirits. Fourthly, the map is lost, and it might be asked, was there ever such a map? Fifthly, the people are all gone. Sixthly, no one ever saw any particular sparkle on the brook there, and the clouds appear to be of the same commonplace order that go about everywhere. Seventhly, no one can find these footpaths, which probably led nowhere; and as for the little old man with silver buckles on his shoes, it is a story only fit for some one in his dotage. You can't expect grave and considerate men to take your story as it stands; they must consult the ordnance survey and Domesday Book; and the fact is, you have not got the shadow of a foundation on which to carry your case into court. I may resent this, but I cannot deny that the argument is very black against me, and I begin to think that my senses have deceived me. It is as they say. No one else seems to have seen the sparkle on the brook, or heard the music at the hatch, or to have felt back through the centuries; and when I try to describe these things to them they look at me with stolid incredulity. No one seems to understand how I got food from the clouds, nor what there was in the night, nor why it is not so good to look at it out of window. They turn their faces away from me, so that perhaps after all I was mistaken, and there never was any such place, or any such meadows, and I was never there. And perhaps in course of time I shall find out also, when I pass away physically, that as a matter of fact there never was any earth.

RICHARD JEFFERIES.

John Lawrence found the condolences hard work. The village people of Lugliano especially, were untiring in enquiries and expressions of friendly sympathy. It was quite a great event, a sort of melancholy festivity to them. This magnificent signore- so young, rich, handsome, with his wife, and child, and doctor, his maidservants and menservants, and everything that heart could desire! For such a one to die was to bring the underlying equality of rich and poor- not always an easy matter to believe in into highly edifying relief. They could not help feeling, for instance, that it was a more affecting spectacle than that of Tomaso Botti's wife, who was also dying of consumption, and who would leave a husband and four small children to lament her. Poor Marianetta Botti! they knew her well, a more industrious, faithful soul never breathed, nor a better wife. Still, she was only the same as themselves, and had tended her little plot of vineyard, and led her goats to pasture as long as she could move, and now was lying in the little, dark, unplastered cabin, waiting for that summons which seemed so long in coming. How different from this milordo, on his soft bed with all his comforts and luxuries! Yet perhaps the same coach would be sent for both, they said to one another, not without a natural relish in so interesting a conjunction.

John Lawrence took great pains to evade these kindly demonstrations. He felt ashamed of them, they seemed to make a hypocrite of him, seeing that, like young Mordaunt, he could not profess to be sorry. There were moments, indeed, when he felt inclined to show openly that he was the reverse, if only by way of vindicating his honesty. Practically, however, he did not do so. That invisible potentate, whose sign-manual none of us dare openly flout, restrained him, and he doffed his cap to it like the rest. Inwardly, however, his sense of emancipation was complete. It was better, far better that he should die! who, he asked himself,