the wise utterer of the saying. He would perceive from that huge promontory the gradual going out of the vigorous tide of imagination; not a stormy or accidental recoil, but a slow, certain, and universal ebb. The force of the tide is not, indeed, entirely exhausted; it still comes in with a languid flow, but losing more by its retreat than it gains by its return; now and then, fancy and all the higher and purer powers of the mind assert their presence and their rank; but the triumph is momentary; the base spirit of the age conquers; the tide still recedes; low, level, noxious mud widens every minute; until, at length, the victory of the utilitarian and economist being consummated, the eye will rest on one vast, unvariegated surface of shingle and slime.

We speak thus, without any intention of denying that much may be found in our condition and prospects to gratify the lover of peace and good order. Mr. Mackinnon dwells with satisfaction on the improved aspect of the public streets. The picture is pleasing. If a second Gay were to give us a second Trivia, he would be obliged to find new actors and new accidents. Mr. Duncombe incurs no peril of being rolled down Holborn Hill in his way to a soirée at the Freemasons' Hall; and Mr. Rogers apprehends the onset of no Mohawk, emerging in all the fierceness of impunity, from the

alleys of Pall Mall. But think of the thousands who pine and starve in the very shade of our palaces! Think of the destitute families who toil out the fire of life and hope for their miserable wages of water and bread! Think of the darker industry in evil, of the thousands and tens of thousands, who, in our magnificent thoroughfares and squalid recesses, by night and day ply their sad variety of trade, in plunder and guilt; picking pockets or bartering souls! Alas! is this civilisation? Wonderful changes are still in store; the wheel is going round. The darkness will follow the light; and the evening and the morning will make the day. It is not to be expected that England will escape the vicissitudes of Athens, of Rome, or of Venice. The subterranean fire glows in the deep laboratory of Time. The promise of a fine noon must not deceive us into luxury and indolence. Lisbon had rejoiced in sunshine when the earthquake overwhelmed her. England, with all her beauty of civilisation, may disappear from the eye by a catastrophe not less tremendous, though accomplished by a different operation. Other kingdoms not less splendid have been visited by the Divine judgments when they despised the Divine laws; and may even now be seen, by those who look back into the mist and gloom of remote ages, involved in flame and sinking in thunder.

I SHALL not mention the real name of the village in which, about four years ago, I halted while on a tour, attracted by the exquisite beauty and quiet of the place. I had become wearied of being cheated by innkeepers and vetturini in Italy; of riding behind cart-horses, harnessed with ropes and plough-collars, in France; of paying for fine views from an hotel-window in Switzerland; of drinking mint-julep and dog's-tail in the United States; of smoking seven-league chibouques and giving bachshish in Turkey; of being frozen, both in soul and body, in Russia; and of losing my heart three times a-day in Vienna, only to find it again when I saw my goddesses before they had made their toilette on the

morrow.

I was wearied, in short, of playing the grand seigneur; of being pestered by a courier, engaged to speak seven languages, who never could get at the one which was wanted until we had left the country where it was spoken; by a valet, who acted by my gloves and neckcloths as his companion did by the "living languages," lucus a non lucendo; of a carriage, which always broke down either in the depth of a forest or on the crest of a mountain; of beggars, clamorous everywhere for golden alms from that Fortunatus of the nineteenth century, a Milord Anglais; and of all the other myriad "ills that (pride) is heir to." I had gone over a vast extent of country, and no small number of leagues of sea; I had visited a score of capitals (of course I include those of every calibre, that of the Grand Duchy of Modena inclusive), had eaten saurcraut or olives, fried frogs or pillauf, maccaroni or fricasseed snails, at one or other of them; I had spent more money than was necessary, as well as more than I could quite afford, and I was sitting over my "wine and walnuts" at Long's, when a fit of philosophy suddenly grew upon me. My banker's book lay beside my hand, I had just steamed home from the Nile, and had been informing myself of the real state of affairs in the link between me and

Messrs. of Fleet Street. It is to be presumed that my acquired knowledge was not altogether so palatable as that of the fine old poet, by whom we are told that "Savourie knowledge giveth zeste to life;"

for I found myself, half unconsciously, tracing on the cover thereof the well-worn school quotation of Quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat; and, sooth to say, in financial affairs I had latterly been demented enough. What was to be done? In town I neither could nor would stay, for I saw that I should be obliged to put down but, pshaw! what does the reader care about my pecuniary experiences ? Enough that, while perfectly bewildered as to what I should do with myself, having already done every thing every where, I suddenly remembered that I had never seen one tenth part of England, small as it is, though I had sailed or scampered over quite as great a proportion of the whole habitable globe.

I recovered my spirits at onceHere was novelty with a vengeance! Not only new scenes, new faces, new feelings, and new impressions, but also the novelty of acting for myself, outrunning my age, perhaps founding a new school, leaving others to contend for the dust that I had already shaken from my shoes, and being the first to explore the mysterious recesses, and to dive into the hidden secrets, of my own land. The little which I as yet knew about it I had gathered from the published travels of Frenchmen, Germans, and Italians, who had taken the trouble to come and look at all these matters, about which we never condescend to trouble ourselves; and I confess to having, by this method, acquired rather a confused idea of both persons and places, owing to the peculiarly erratic system of nominal orthography adopted by all our European brethren when they discourse on the individuality and merits of le perfide Albion.

I boldly determined, moreover, to do nothing by halves, but to wander about "my own, my native land,”

on foot, with a stout stick for my weapon, and a knapsack for my equipage. I had hurried away from Egypt to be in time for the London season, and I had succeeded. Peas

were two guineas a pint, and white satin slippers at a premium; Jullien had reduced his bouquets to two pounds ten, and every thing looked promising. I had a sore struggle with myself. In order to sustain my impulsive heroism I ought to start at once, while, in order to indulge my vanity, it was necessary to defer my departure. Who, in the name of Confucius! could reconcile such jarring elements? It was too much for my moral strength, so, being an Englishman, I decided the point in the essentially national way so popular among us, I drew a crown-piece from my pocket, betted on tails, lost my bet, and forthwith sprang from my chair to go in search of a knapsack.

My preparations were soon completed, and my only companion was a sharp white terrier, who had travelled with me for the last five years, and whose society had become almost as essential as that of my own thoughts. I had been a pilgrim, and a happy and astonished one, for about three months, when I arrived in the secluded little hamlet with which I commenced my narrative. I was possessed of good health, stout limbs, and a clear conscience; for not only I had never written a book, in a moment of weak acquiescence to "the wishes of a large circle of friends;" but I had not even kept a journal. Had I been subject to attacks of the cacoëthes scribendi I should, however, have succumbed during those three months for the first time in my life. I had seen and learnt so much; I had been where railroads were not yet projected, and where Almacks had not been heard of; I had gossipped with sturdy hinds who took their hats off when I addressed them, and with women who plied the distaff or the lacebobbins while they were talking, and who talked well, if old Sam Johnson was correct in saying that condensation was the perfection of language; I had seen young girls blush and look shamefaced when I told them that they were pretty, and young men obey the bidding of their parents without either repugnance or

contempt. In short, I had, for the first time, come into contact with pure, fresh, unadulterated human nature, as unlike the caricature of it to which I had been hitherto accustomed, and of which I had been the dupe, as the picturesque lakes and leafy groves amid whose free and wholesome beauties I had been wandering, were to the police-guarded waters and gasping verdure of Hyde Park.

The village was really beautiful : seated in a basin, and environed by hills, whose bosoms swelled in the sunshine like the waves of the Atlantic, only greener and more inviting; the houses surrounded a small common, dotted here and there with fine old thorns, whose twisted trunks gave token of their antiquity. I am quite sure that not an urchin in the hamlet would have been renegade enough to wrench a bough from any one of them; the very donkeys who were grazing in their neighbourhood passed them by without an onslaught, and they were invaded only by the small birds, who built their nests among the boughs as boldly as though they were conscious of the impunity of the shelter they had selected. Whiter sheep or sleeker cows were never looked upon than those which browsed on that village common; while even Mr. himself would have been safe had he read his last new "comedy" to the geese there, for they were too well-bred to hiss, even upon the greatest provocation. The cottages were charming by their cleanliness; each gleaming out in its whiteness from amid a group of fruittrees, full of luscious promise, and surrounded by a neatly fenced-in garden, gay with cabbage-roses, gillyflowers, marigolds, and sun-flowers. Most of them had projecting porches, with a wooden seat on either side, where the good man smoked his evening pipe, and the quick-handed matron plied her busy needle. The house of the curate was quite in keeping with the pretensions of the hamlet, and, doubtlessly, of his means also; in his little garden, as in those of his modest parishioners, bulky cabbages kept company with tufts of white lilies, and scarlet-runners flaunted their gaudy blossoms in the very faces of turk's-caps and cam

panellas. But this very incongruity was not without its charm; and the box-borders were so trimly cut, the pebble-path up to the house so carefully swept, and the calico curtain, which occasionally escaped through the open casement and fluttered joyfully in the breeze, like an Eton boy out of bounds, so curiously white, that you might have sworn there were happy and contented hearts within.

Then there was a roadside house of entertainment-not an inn, nor even a tavern, and still less a beershop, for the most determined sot could assuredly never have made up his mind "to be drunk on the premises" at that particular "Queen's Head." I stood for five minutes to look at this pretty "public" it was half cottage and half farm, with new milk, eggs, and fresh butter, folded in clean linen for sale in one window, and a showy half-curtain of scarlet moreen drawn across the other. It had no garden: the descent to the road, which might have been so appropriated, being occupied with benches and narrow tables of wood, painted the same colour as the curtain, and affording, also, an admirable match for the floor of vivid red brick which was visible through the hospitably opened door. Noise there was none, unless the cackle of the fowls which were walking a polonaise through the intricacies of the chairs and tables, may be so called, or the low, untutored, but still melodious voice of a woman soothing her child to sleep within the house may be libelled by such a name. The sign was, however, the glory of the establishment. It had evidently been copied by some village Reynolds from those quaint little "curiosities of literature," the postage stamps. And what a head it was! The Lady of the Isles, whom it was intended to portray, would have looked at it more than once and found food for mirth in the contemplation; for she may well afford to make merry over the soi-disant transcripts of her noble and queenlike head, caricature it as they will. Her tiara was gorgeous, and its colouring must have cost the rustic artist an immense expenditure of intellect; while her richly gathered-up hair may well have excited a sigh of envy in every thrifty housewife who

passed along that quiet road on her way to purchase new hanks of flax for her spinning-wheel. Nevertheless, it was evident that the painter was proud of his work, and did not understand raillery, for underneath this specimen of art he had inscribed in a text quite worthy of its position, THE QUEEN'S HEAD.

In this house I took up my abode; and during the three days that I remained there I had no reason to find fault with my quarters. My host was a fine specimen of the openhearted, sturdy English yeoman; my hostess, a bright-eyed buxom young mother, radiant in all the glory of her firstborn. Affairs were slack at the drinking-tables, but better in the farmyard; and more tempting pork, plumper chickens, or fresher vegetables, never satisfied the rapacious appetite of a pedestrian tourist. When I had made a hearty meal, I wandered to the churchyard. The church itself was almost entirely overgrown with ivy, and its low square tower was even overtopped by the vigorous parasite by which it was embraced. As I had been ciceronised over every foreign country that I had visited, and was now resolved to follow a totally different course, I asked no questions, and trusted to my own talent for exploration to discover all the lions into whose dens I might penetrate. I did not, consequently, seek for the key of the church and a catalogue of the monuments, a demand which, in this instance, I should, moreover, have considered as somewhat more than supererogatory; but with Snap at my heels, I turned towards the spot where the modest temple stood in a shady niche between two of the hills which framed in the hamlet.

As I approached I was struck by the extreme beauty and antiquity of half-a-dozen stately yews, which kept their funereal watch over the narrow space where

:

lead me to expect it, I saw upon my right hand, in the full blaze of the southern sun, a raised tomb of stone, surrounded by an iron railing, and evidently covering a vault. I was about to turn my steps that way, when, chancing to glance in the opposite direction, my eye fell upon a grave, made immediately under the north wall, and crushed into the extreme angle of the corner, as though he who dug it had grudgingly yielded the space which it must necessarily occupy; while near it, as if to contradict this soul-chilling suspicion, two white rose-trees had been planted, one at the head and the other at the foot of this nameless mound; and they were both in bloom, but not kindly the aspect was unpropitious, and the soil evidently ungenial, and thus the stems were too fragile even to support the dwarfed and languid blossoms which they had borne, and which hung their heads, and suffered their sickly petals to be scattered by the light breeze that should only have extracted their perfume. I advanced slowly and reverently towards that isolated grave, and I stood long beside it. It was, as I felt at once, that of an outcast; but, assuredly, not of one who had been totally unloved. There had, perchance, been error, even sin, hidden beneath that grassy tumulus, but human affection had as clearly outlived the fault; and those white blossoms were, like the wings of the dove of Noah, the harbingers of a brighter hope. I had a strange desire to learn the history of the silent heart now mouldering into dust beneath my feet, but there was not a letter, not a clue to guide me to such knowledge; and at last I turned away and walked across the churchyard to the tall square tomb. There I read that beneath that stone lay the bodies of I know not how many esquires and dames of the name of Darcourt, and they were all of old date save one; that of Richard Darcourt, Esq., who died in August 1812, and in whose person the family became extinct.

Who was Richard Darcourt, Esq. ? And how came he and his ancestors to be buried here, in this secluded spot of earth, where their proud monument was out of keeping with every thing about it? There were

scarcely half-a-dozen headstones throughout the whole extent of the churchyard; one of these identified the remains of a former curate, who died at the patriarchal age of eightynine; another recorded the death of a fair girl, just advancing into womanhood: the last, as the inscription said, and how mournful was the reflection!-the last surviving child of that same widowed old man. had gone before him, and he had borne up for five long months after his bereavement before he "fell asleep" in his turn.

She

I was still meditating upon this melancholy record when I heard, at no great distance, a dull, measured, monotonous sound, which I could not mistake. I was not alone in the death-garden. It was the opening of a grave, and the work was going forward behind the church, where I had not yet penetrated. I turned in that direction and found that I had not deceived myself; a half-dug grave was before me, and in the pit stood an old man, so old that it was clear some one must soon render the same Christian service to himself. He had thrown off his coat, which lay upon the grass, his head was bare, and his long hair, which glittered in the light like silver, fell over his shoulders. I watched him as he worked. His sun-burnt and muscular hands grasped the spade with a strength which seemed incompatible with his years, and he pursued his task steadily, and with a precision evidently the result of long habit. After a time he raised his head, and seeing me observing him, lifted his hand as if to withdraw his cap, which being already thrown aside, he was compelled to substitute a grasp of some of the white hair which had elicited my admiration.

"You have a hard task there, my friend," I said, as I advanced to the edge of the grave.

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Not so hard as you think, belike, sir," was the quiet reply; "the soil's kindly, and I've been at it all my life."

"And that life has been a long one," I rejoined; "you must have stretched many to rest in their last home since you dug your first grave."

"You are right, sir," said the old man, ceasing from his labour, and