Slowly she waned, and, cold and senseless grown, Once more she gazed, then feebly smiled and died. It is remarkable that Dean Milman's professional residences have kept close to the great river of England his first curacy at Ealing, his vicarage at Reading, his Oxford professorship, his stall at Westminster, the deanery of St. Paul's. Well! there are other ecclesiastical dwellings on the banks of the Thames Rochester, Fulham, Lambeth; who knows! One thing is quite certain, go where he may, he will find respect and welcome, and leave behind him admiration and regret. XII. AUTHORS ASSOCIATED WITH PLACES. VISIT TO UFTON COURT. W. C. BENNETT. FIFTY years ago, our Berkshire valleys abounded in old Catholic houses, to which tradition usually assigned subterranean communication with neighbouring nunneries, in the case of abbeys or priories, of which, so far as I know, none hath ever come to light; or, if the mansions had been secular, secret hiding-places for priests during the religious persecution (sad words to join) of the seventeenth century, especially during the times that preceded and followed Guy Fawkes's unaccomplished crime, and the frightful delusion known by the name of the Popish Plot. That tradition was right enough there, and that the oppressed Catholics did resort to every measure permitted to their weakness, for the purpose of concealing the priests to whom and to their peculiar rites and ceremonies they clung as human nature does cling to that which is unrighteously persecuted, there exists no sort of doubt.-In an old house which my own father took down belonging to that time, a small chamber was discovered, to which there was no entrance except by a trap-door cunningly devised in the oak flooring of a large bedchamber; and similar places of concealment, sometimes behind a panel, sometimes in a chimney, sometimes in the roof, have come to light in other manor-houses. Now they are nearly all levelled with the ground, these picturesque dwellings of our ancestors; the ancestral trees are following fast; and we who love to linger round the grey walls or to ramble amidst the mossy trunks are left to remember and to deplore. One, however, still remains amongst us, thanks to the good taste, the good feeling, and perhaps a little to the abundant wealth of the present proprietor; and that one is luckily the most interesting of all. I speak of Ufton Court, where Arabella Fermor, the Belinda of "The Rape of the Lock," spent her married life; where she dwelt in honour and repute, receiving in the hereditary mansion of the Perkinses the wits of that Augustan age-Pope, Steele, Arbuthnot, Bolingbroke; where she reared. four goodly sons, became a widow, and was finally buried in the little village church. There her monument may still be seen amongst many others of her husband's family, and her name is still shown with laudable pride and interest in that most levelling of books, in whose pages riches and poverty, beauty and deformity, stand side by side the Parish Register. To this old house I rarely fail to conduct such of my visitors as happen to be poets; and that one who deserves that high title accompanied me thither not very long ago will be inferred, I think, by most of those who read the verses that conclude this paper. The day was one of those between late May and early June-the May of the old style, the May of the poets; a day of breeze and of sunshine. Our road wound through close woody lanes, fragrant with the pearly flowers of the hawthorn, and the opening leaves of the oak just disclosing their silky folds of yellowish brown; then across the villagegreen, gay with happy children let loose from school; then through the little brook where the road dips so prettily; then beside the trickling rill flowing down the hill, as we mounted up, until at last we emerged from the shade of the tall trees and the steep banks of the narrow lane into the full flood of the sunlight, shining in all its glory upon the broad table-land of Mortimer Common. Never did I see that beautiful spot so beautiful, the fine short turf, exquisite in its tender verdure, was, except in occasional stripes and patches, literally encrusted with the golden-blossomed gorse, loading the air with its heavy odour; bright ponds of clear water reflected the deep blue sky; all around in the distance lay cultivated valleys, woods, churches, villages, towns; and in the foreground one or two groups of old, dark, fantastic firs gave something of a wild rugged relief to a landscape almost too gorgeous. Traversing the common, we plunged again into a labyrinth of lanes. This time, however, we passed between fir plantations, mingled with young birches of green leaf and silver bark, with blossomed hawthorn and waving broom; the golden gorse creeping into every nook and corner, and seeming to reflect the yellow sunshine as the water had reflected the blue sky. At length we arrived at the gates opening upon the broad approach to Ufton Court; an ap‐ proach still imposing, although the noble double avenue that once adorned it has long fallen under the woodman's axe. The situation of the house is so commanding that it would be difficult to deprive it of its stateliness and dignity. It stands on the brow of a hill which slopes abruptly from the broad terrace that surrounds two sides of the mansion, and overhangs an oldfashioned garden once elaborately laid out, down into a deep valley, which, with the stream that creeps along the enamelled bottom, forms a beautiful bit of woodland scenery-beautiful and most extensive; the wood climbing up to the top of the opposite hill and spreading on every side until it is lost in the distance. On the lawn in front of the mansion are some magnificent elms, splendid both in size and form, and one gigantic broad-browed oak-the real oak of the English forest that must have seen many centuries. To the right the lawn sweeps down a steep descent to a chain of fish-ponds, communicating with each other, as was usual in large country-houses before the Reformation, especially when so far inland; and beyond the fish-ponds, a winding road leads through the wood past a clear well overhung with trees, that almost tempts you to taste the waters of the fountain, until in the depth of the valley we cross a one-arched bridge, and either follow the road up the long acclivity or diverge into the recesses of the woodland, just now interspersed with piles of faggots and a few fallen trees, and purple with the fragrant bells of the wild hyacinth. By the roadside we found a rarer flower, VOL. II. P |