particulars than a river and "salmons," he need not stand in much fear of being charged by his own neighbours with libelling their sayings and doings: but should his scene of action be laid in any well known and remarkable spot, he must, if he desires to prevent its being recognized, exercise some considerable ingenuity before he can hope to mystify an inquisitive reader. Now, upon the possession of such ingenuity we rather pique ourselves, and are not afraid to challenge the entire mass of acuteness,― male and female,—which shall peruse this volume, to detect the exact situation in which our actors played their parts.

And yet for all this, we intend, as the reader will ere long discover, to be exceedingly communicative, and to enter into such minute particulars, as will, to say the least of them, be tantalizing to anybody who has the slightest share of inquisitiveness in his disposition.

We are too prudent, then, to specify our county, but have no hesitation in admitting that the village of Berkingholt (as we choose to designate it) is situated within a very short distance of the Southern coast, and that it lies midway between two muchfrequented watering-places.

Three or four hundred years ago it was a town of some importance; but like Reculver, Romney, Win

chelsea, Pevensey, and other places which might be named on the shores of Kent, Sussex, and Hants, it seems to have had its day, and to belong rather to a past than to the present generation: commerce has departed from its narrow streets; the houses of greatest pretension now look the most old and dilapidated; the shops are few and far between, dusty without, and ill-furnished within; the people seem ill-clothed, and poor; a gradual, sleepy decay seems to have taken hold of every thing except the Red Lion, and two or three beer-houses; nay, as if the elements themselves were conspiring to its downfall, the sea has made such inroads in its immediate vicinity during the last century, that some acres of land which were under tillage in the reign of Queen Anne, are now wholly submerged at high water.

Still, in the summer months, Berkingholt shakes off that drowsy stillness and unbroken monotony to which it yields itself during the remainder of the year: the rubicund monarch of the forest refreshes his shaggy mane with a coat of paint; the hostler is allowed a lad to help him; there is an extra hand in the kitchen,the chambermaid wears a more tawdry print, and smarter ribbons in a cleaner cap,-the waiter sports a white jacket; and there is a frequent brewing of ginger-beer and such like nectar.

The cause of this partial change in the aspect of affairs, is to be found in the fact that our village being situated midway between B— and His a pleasant and easy drive for the visitors at either place, and it possesses a lion metaphorically, as well as literally. The hasty traveller through the main street will see nothing more worthy of notice than the Cage, a substantial building, of modern erection, surmounted with a statue of Justice holding in her hand a pair of gilt scales, (an intimation, perhaps, of the venal disposition of the parish constable)-a structure reared by the late Clerk of the Peace in munificent acknowledgment of his attachment to his birth-place but he who journeys more leisurely, and takes time to inquire and look about him, will find that (although a very little indeed is sufficient to constitute a sight with the felicity-hunters of a wateringplace,) there really is a good deal worth seeing at Berkingholt; at least, to those for whom the associations of antiquity have any charm. At the outskirts of the town stands the Hospital of St. Swithun; and between that and the sea, the park and grounds of Beaulieu, the seat of the Flemyngs since the days of Edward the Fourth.

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Perhaps, reader, it has been at some period of your life your good fortune to visit Winchester, that

City of the Saints,* that strong-hold of Christian faith and self-devotion, whose noble institutions have not merely vested it with awful sanctity through past ages of the Church, but have preserved for it, even in this perverse and crooked generation, that instinctive reverence, which involuntarily, or in despite of themselves, men are found to accord to those hallowed scenes in which the spirit of ancient days still lingers. You have admired its glorious Cathedral, where Alfred was taught to pray, and Edward the Confessor received his crown, and a long course of his successors bowed their heads and worshipped;—where unhappy Mary made her ill-starred marriage with Philip of Spain, and where, (in order that the world's treatment of the Church should be the same here as elsewhere, and that the Church should be justified of her children), Cromwell's sacrilegious host rifled, and pillaged, and wantonly mutilated the dwelling of the Most High; and where, faithful among the faithless, one was found who remembered his boyhood's vow of loyalty to his Holy Mother, and rescued his College, and its founder's monument from desecration. You have studied, it may be, with the eyes of a lover of Church Architecture the wonders of an edifice

* The Hagiologists connect with Winchester the names of S. S. Birinus, Agilbert, Eleutherius, Hedda, Swithun, Frithstan, Brinstan, Elphege the Bald, Ethelwold, and Elphege the Martyr,

which four whole centuries scarce saw completed,the admirable labours of Walkelin, and De Lacy, and Edyngton, and Wykeham, and Fox; you have gazed in astonishment at those miracles of art the tombs and chantries of Beaufort, and Waynflete, and Wykeham; the stall-work of the choir, the half-mutilated frescoes, the profusion of arms and ornaments, (rich with gilding, and azure, and vermilion,) have bewildered you with their intricacy and beauty, and made you feel, perhaps, more acutely than you have hitherto done, the difference between our father's offerings to God and our own: how they gave in the spirit of Abel, and how we have inherited the temper of Cain.

And then passing from the Cathedral, with heavy, over-burdened feelings, as you have reflected on the guilt of our selfish, money-loving age, you have wandered on towards the precincts of the College, and so doing, have drawn a happy augury for the future, and cheered your heart with the comfortable thought, that there spirits akin to Wykeham's still preside; and that there, at least, if any where, the generation which will succeed us, is being trained to spend and be spent, to live and, if need be, to die, in behalf of Christ's Holy Catholic Church, under the kind and careful teaching of one, whom to know is to look to, and venerate, and love.

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But amid all these scenes of interest, perhaps you