coincide with Mr. Saint Osyth's propositions and practices; for the rector wants to make himself father confessor to all the young ladies in the neighbourhood. He has ideas of the sacerdotal function which are too strong for Mr. Silchester. Doubtless marriage will make him wiser. It is a fine old church, with a keen skypointing spire, that looks down upon Silchester market-place. That market-place is one among hundreds, all alike. An irregular trapezoidal space, where on Wednesdays cattle and sheep are penned, while farmers' traps and carriers' carts occupies the rest of the arena. There is the principal inn, down at the corner of the churchyard stile; and three other houses of entertainment; and a pastrycook's shop, where music is sold for the benefit of the tradesmen's daughters; and a little corner where the briskest and most talkative of barbers will be happy, while shaving you or cutting your hair, to tell you all the news of Silchester; and a chemist's shop of the ordinary village type, whose master would be perplexed if you asked him for hydrate of chloral, or ilicine, or magnesium; and a branch bank from Exeter; and the post-office, kept by a muddle-headed old woman, who also keeps a dame school, and who never can understand how many stamps go for a shilling. Such is the main street or avenue of Silchester. Its outer fringe of surburban life is more difficult to describe. All wayfarers through England must have met with such places, which require rather the pencil than the pen to describe them. Here a cottage in a quiet dell, with a streamlet surrounding it, and no way to the garden gate except by steppingstones. Again, a pleasant little homestead with orchard all round it, and a suggestive ciderpress reminding those who read the eighteenth century verse of Mr. John Philips's directions to the lover of the apple's wine : "Prepare Materials for thy mill, a sturdy post Cylindric, to support the grinder's weight Rounding, capacious of the juicy hoard." Elsewhere the quaintest old structures of granite, roofed with thatch-standing in all imaginable positions, but mostly having enjoyable views of moorland and sea. And suddenly, as you turn the angle of a beech coppice, you come upon the Doctor's house-his den, he usually calls it. There are our rooms, all on one floor-parlour, bedroom, eaboratory, kitchen. The Doctor's sole servant's a boy, who sleeps in a loft over the stable where the Doctor's nag, Asklepios, is made comprtable. Jim grooms Asklepios, and makes his master's breakfast; and an old woman who dwells thereby comes in for other purposes; but he house requires no cookery, for the Doctor dways dines with the Squire. They are intimat in the highest sense. John Silchester, resolved that his people's health should not be ruined through ignorance, was so fortunate as to find a man with real medical capacity who would take charge of his village, for work suited Dr. Sterne, who was only too anxious to retire into the country and complete the Life of Arbuthnot. What happened thereafter was that the Doctor, settling down into his snug though humble cottage, became almost a member of the Squire's household. He might have lived at Silchester, had he liked, but he naturally preferred independence. was so much there, that when colic attacked a man or multiplication a woman thy generally sent first to the Squire's. He John Silchester always maintaned that the State ought to provide for the physical health of the poor as well as their moal health. By the side of the established Church he would have had an established Docorate. As this could not be done, he supplied its place, in his own parish, by engaging a nan of the highest medical capacity to attend m his own household and on the people round him. Dr. Sterne is precisely the man for the position. He is a humorist-first quality both of parson and doctor-not to mention lawyer. He likes the country and the country folk. He is also, what few doctors are, a chemist, and knows in what way the elementary principles act upon each other. He has in his elaboratary salacine, asparagine, vauqueline, digitaline, even the diaboline which blows an hydraulic press to atoms. The saying of Raphel in Balzac's master-work-" Faute de pouvoir inventer des choses, il paraît que vous en êtes réduits à inventer des noms"-applies not to Dr. Sterne. He is chemist and electrician; traces the elements through all their windings; can make a battery in a lady's thimble. Being both chemist and humorist, two faculties which ought to coalesce in every man who dares call himself doctor, Sterne worked well. He had his cures for both mental and physical maladies. He looked after the young girls in Silchester parish, and gave them severe lectures if they |