vulus that festooned the hedges on the way to Morton still surpass all flowers in true grace and freshness. But where and when was it that I first learnt the worship of flame, and gazed for hours, I may say, on the miracle of combustion? Was it an innate idea derived from an incident in my Irish ancestry which I have already told?

CHAPTER XXIX.

ANGELS EVER BRIGHT AND FAIR.

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THE next thing to an infinite prospect or retrospect is a very old personal recollection. My own faculties of perception were formed by circumstances, whatever they may have been by nature. For two precious years, from five years old to seven, I went town' to the same school as my next elder brother, John; but he to the boys' school on the ground-floor, I to the girls' school above. I was the only male in that pretty little herd, βοῦς ἐν ἀγέλῃ. There was good reason for that singular arrangement, for I was weak and ailing; but, perhaps, all the consequences were not fully recognised. I only joined in the work of the school for form's sake, just as I had my needle, thread, and bit of rag at sewing-time. I was supposed to be generally preparing for my reading down stairs with an old widow lady. Mr. Sudbury was one of my godfather's fellow-trustees of the Presbyterian

MEMINERUNT OMNIA AMANTES.

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Chapel. My schoolmistress was his sister. The old lady was the widow of an Independent minister.

nor more.

But I must confine myself to my own position in this complex establishment. I had seldom anything to do but to sit on my little stool, looking up at the pretty little faces gathered round me, and no doubt doing my best to distract and monopolise their attention. Except when I got into some little trouble of my own, I have not one painful remembrance of these two years. So these were cherubs to me, neither less But their memories are still distinct. I could not describe them, or say wherein their distinctness consisted. Yet I feel sure that in a new form, in any form, so as they retain their respective identities, which I cannot doubt, I shall know them one from another. There was a Flower and an Oglesby, a Garfit, and, I think, a Duckle, daughter of the steward of the manor. There must have been a Fretwell or two, but I doubt whether Messrs. Barnard & Codd, the bankers, contributed. Two were my playmates at home as well, Mary and Charlotte Stuart. The elder died, I think, when I was still at the school, and the younger took her place, but never quite filled it, in my affections.

I will add to these other recollections less likely to be formed or retained, the barest representatives of persons since hardly seen, and with slight threads of association. I cannot recall having seen the Smiths, the shipbuilders, or Mrs. Broadley, of Hull connections; I may have seen them once or so. I cannot remember to have seen Mr. Massingberd, or the Rev. R. W. Vivers, of Marton, or the Rev. H. J.

Wollaston, of Scotter, though I became well acquainted in after years with his two sons. The father was a very old acquaintance of my father's. I see that the copy of the 'Country Spectator' quite recently acquired by the British Museum has his name and coat-of-arms. Of all these I have distinct ideas, separable from circumstances, indeed from whatever constitutes matter.

Now, I ask, are these ideas material or spiritual ? Do they belong to the seen or to the unseen world? There are theologians who profess to know to a certainty where matter ends and where spirit begins. I cannot tell that even with regard to these infantine, unformed, nay, some of them unseen, unheard, individualities. As I scan that now far off firmament, I may be conscious of a smile here, a different smile there a brightness, a darkness, a warmth, a stateliness, a bustle, a rigidity: the dulness of a nebula, the flash of a meteor, a dawn, or a setting; but there is nothing the sense can lay hold of.

On what shelf of this material fabric of mine are these records stored? They are not portraits, annals, or figures of any sort. They come within no known dimensions. Yet they are part of me, and I cannot say how much of myself I should lose were they to vanish away. They are not dependent on words written or uttered, for the name does, in fact, often depart from memory, leaving the idea behind. Indeed, I most cherish and strengthen the idea when in quest of the forgotten name.

THE EAGRE?

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CHAPTER XXX.

OUR WALKS AND WANDERINGS.

As for our walks and wanderings, they were not many, nor were they far, but to me they surpass in interest all that I have since known. We could walk down the river, seeing on our way much shipping at anchor, and ships building in the yards in a more or less advanced stage, and we could get strong whiffs of pitch boiling in huge caldrons.

Under frequently recurring circumstances we could be sure to see the 'eagre' rush up the river, a wall of waters seven or eight feet high, and capable of carrying a ship from its moorings, or floating one that had just before been reposing in the mud. My father once saw a ship caught by the 'eagre' and carried away with such force that the mooring-chain broke and a portion of it flew as high as the masthead. As this formidable power came up the river with the speed of an ordinary railway train, it was the duty of everybody who caught sight of its approach to give the alarm by crying out "'War' eagre!'

Since my writing the above, there has come into my hands the long missed series of letters, written, by way of exercise, to my father and others. Writing on June 14, 1815, the eve of the four days' fighting ending in Waterloo, after relating that I had seen the launch of the 'Rambler,' and that it was a very fine aunch, I proceed: On Friday, for the first time,

Miss Holt saw a Trent tide. She had never before seen any tides but such as came gradually. She was, therefore, much gratified, and has styled it in one of her letters " one of the wonders of nature."

The only rival to the Trent' eagre' that I know in these isles, or indeed anywhere, is the Severn 'bore.' But that is only seen rarely, and under favourable circumstances, and you have to make a journey to an out-of-the-way spot, when after all it may not show itself. On the other hand, at all high tides, the 'eagre' rushes up to the town of Gainsborough, passes its shipyards,' staithes,' and warehouses, and does not exhaust itself till several miles above the bridge. I have alluded to the tradition that this was the tide which Canute made the occasion of a rebuke to his courtiers. He was long at Gainsborough, in the palace then on the site of the later 'Old Hall,' the grounds of which stretched down to the river. There would be some point in challenging the 'eagre,' for it has a strong personality, and the name itself is said to imply a sort of deification, being that of a Scandinavian divinity. This derivation, however, I must give with a doubt. 'Eagre' has a suspicious resemblance to the numerous family of words signifying water and mostly denoting some exceptional form of it.

We could walk up Pingle Hill, or Beaumont, as the Normans appear to have called it, which the railway has now disguised beyond recognition; and from the top we could see, afar off, a glorious vision standing in the sky, quite clear of the horizon, Lincoln Minster, eighteen miles off.

I had not a nearer view of that beautiful pile till