3 P. M.; I go on to the ruined priory of the Augustinian friars,-time Richard I,-dedicated to the Blessed Virgin and St. Thomas of Canterbury. The ruin was absolutely lonely; a vagrant horse startled me by poking his head through what was once the great door of the refectory. It begins to rain; I walk back the whole distance in steady downpour; a man who had struck a boy was being hunted by a score of youngsters, keen for retribution. A boy, not alone, under an umbrella, says, "Da-aisy, why don't you make up your mind?" Some swells from London, with hampers, soaked to the skin; left their boat at Weybridge. I reach home at nine o'clock, wet but happy; we dined merrily together, and afterward I read from "The Stickit Minister" and "A Window in Thrums."

AUGUST 14. We lunch at the Bristol with F. and G.; G. a heroic type of man. Cool wind at evening, moaning in the trees like November. We had the first grouse of the season; not very good; champagne without much quality; every one crazy about yachting, shooting, golf, cricket, aquatics; the English are a sporting people; it is pleasant to see at every village, in the evening, games on the green. My shirtmaker has gone for his holiday.

AUGUST 15. Will and I go to town; we walk from the station to the city; buy champagne; see M. and

the beadle at the bank; I stay in the City. Beautiful sunset; cool, windy day, with sharp shower at three.

AUGUST 19. Dull and raining; we drive to Kingston along left bank; beautiful old house; return by Apps Court. P. lunches with us for the first time; at four o'clock Will and I drive to Chertsey; beautiful old place; see the house where Croly died. In the evening we walk back along the river to Walton Bridge; carriage follows us. The ferryman predicted rain in an hour, and it came. drove from Walton; the wind is cold like autumn. Saw Turpin's oak, said to be a thousand years old; Garrick's house; every view nice. We have been testing new champagne-each night two bottles. It is decided that the '84 Krug is beyond the Ayala, while I insist on the reverse.

We

At Chertsey, Croly and a dean got drunk; the former lay out in a field all night, and so caught the fever which ended his days. The bark of the Crouch oak is a love-philter.

AUGUST 21. Rise late; lounge about after breakfast. After lunch, Will and I drive over St. Anne's Hill; it drizzles for a while; beautiful view from the hill. Afterward we go in to see a lovely garden and the old house where Fox and Lady Holland

lived so long; the old woman had been in the service for thirty-six years. We walked home through the beautiful roads, past fields covered with shocks of grain and old cottages. Found a lost dog. This is our last day at Oatlands; we leave this country with regret.

AUGUST 22. We leave in a special train for Malvern, where we are finally settled in pleasant rooms, selected and secured in advance.

AUGUST 26. After thunder showers in the night, a glorious day; we go to church in the morning; priests all bald-headed and mumbling. The British matron at my elbow takes so shrill and persistent part in the services that all piety flees and I am vexed. Will sings the responses to the Creed with such an expression that my shrill dragon boldly turns her head to see what truly holy man is there. After we go out, Will and I pick the fabric to pieces. In the afternoon we go to Tewkesbury; reach there about four o'clock; church locked; ask tall man where verger lives; he finds him. Will gives tall man two shillings; he says, "This will do some good; I have n't had no work since Christmas," this almost with tears. How little we know of the sea of wretchedness about us! The verger took us into the splendid old church; we

were quite alone. All the venerable past came thronging back to me; for under this roof are gathered the echoes of a thousand years. I hear toads on the altar-stone. We drive home, with little talk, through a most beautiful country, under a serene sky radiant with the setting sun. In the abbey is the organ once in Magdalen College, Oxford; Cromwell caused it to be taken to Hampton Court, and on it Milton played for him. At the Restoration it was returned to Oxford, and finally was sent here at the dissolution of the abbey. Henry VIII levied an order of £5,000 on the people of Tewkesbury, with the alternative of having the abbey roof stripped of its lead. The abbot's home is a beautiful, quiet house, and the large garden where the monastery once stood is now rented for £100 a year. The Avon and the Severn meet here, and the flood sometimes comes almost to the floor of the church, in which is the vault containing the bones of Clarence, spoken of by Shakspere. The bones are collected in a cage and placed on brackets against the walls, above high-water mark. All the other tombs are filled up, and no more interments take place. A comical yokel slips on a livery coat and stands with low-comedy face to open the carriage door. At Severn End, near the old Rhyddorford, Charles II stayed with its Roundhead owner, an un

welcome guest; and, on the Restoration, the host was mulcted £500 and was glad to escape confiscation by consuming much humble pie. This old, rambling house is like a fragment of an earlier and more beautiful time. I look in vain for any house, built now, that in two hundred years will be beautiful like this, or even picturesque. What has become of this sense of beauty which seemed an unconscious quality in the old days?

AUGUST 29. Will and I go to Chipping Norton, and thence we drive to Wycomb to see the old mansions where Will's ancestors lived. The village very old and small; we see the church and statuetomb of Sir John Braskett; the rector's wife, who has to see for both-for he is blind-is not lovely, but he cannot see her. The poor priest is a beautiful, joyous character. We write our names in the little book and leave for Stow-on-the-Wold, passing an old inn with the alluring sign of the "Spotted Pig." Stow is on a high hill and is very old; the houses have no gardens, but are built on the streets, which, like those of all English towns, wind about. The Talbot Inn had ready a mighty meal of roast fowl and a great round of boiled corned beef, with vegetables. The beer made at Chipping Norton is very good, and the tap-rooms are cozy, full of