the first years of the Restoration for some purpose which does not at first appear; but which Frederic Uvedale, with whom I, the present writer, became acquainted during my first year at Oxford, has believed, in spite of all seeming improbability, to have been built for a symbol or sign of peace with all those neighbours and friends who, as he was wont to say, through some mistake or misfortune happened to be on the other side.

The house was large, suitable to those hospitable times, and so sweetly environed with venerable woods and delicious streams as to be an unique resting-place for this family, which, if we are to believe Frederic Uvedale, was so fond of peace and the sentiment of home.

They lie side by side, most of them, in a little chapel higher up in the woods than the house, and farther from the sea; some with their effigies in marble or brass-work in relief, with hands pointed in prayer; all facing east and south, for some reason, for which Frederic also found an explanation when he grew up.

It was during the Restoration that an Uvedale had made himself famous for the taste with which he had expended the greater part of a fortune his father had made in the Americas. He was known as Hawk" Uvedale, from a peculiarity of his features that was wont to recur in the family about twice in a century, giving a peculiarly keen expression to the face, not altogether unbecoming, it would seem, for Hawk Uvedale had been a handsome man, as the great portrait by Sir Peter Lely at Farley Court testified. It was he who had built the place as you may now see it, the additions of later years being entirely insignificant. The garden, part of which was built in terraces after the Italian fashion, was also his work, for he had brought the stone from the quarries at Tintagel many miles away, gradually building and pulling down, so that the house lay, as it were, at the

head of a long, gradually sloping garden, which seemed more suitable for vines than for just English flowers.

He had been a great beau in his day, but it was not till long afterwards that another Uvedale had discovered the secret of his life, and found therein something that had made his own character clear to himself.

Climbing one day, it would seem, over the flat roofs to see to the placing of a great telescope (he was devoted to the science of astronomy), by chance he slipped on a small tile of thick glass set flat in the roof, and on examination found it gave light to a room, the existence of which he had never guessed at. After diligent search and much time spent in measuring and sounding, this room was at last discovered over the great bedroom of the house, between it and the roof, and entered through a panel in the wall of the room below, whence a spiral staircase led to this little apartment, whose only light was from the window, about two feet square, in the flooring of the roof.

When this Uvedale had entered the little room a hundred years after it had last been used, he had discovered both much and little. Much that led him to conjecture, to be certain practically, of a flaw in his ancestor's character; little, in that scarcely anything remained, but these hints, finger - posts to something that he had already half suspected.

It seemed, however, that the damp had got in through a crack in the glass, and what little there was, was mouldy and mildewed, rotten with dirt and old age and the dimness of years.

But the little that remained had convinced him as to the substantial truth of the rumours of his ancestor's licentious life-a life of exceptional freedom even in an age as free and untrammelled as that of the Restoration. Here a book, there an old print, here a love-letter, there

a song, and the contents of the drawers and old bookcases that lined the room. He himself was known as Gay" Uvedale, and it would appear that this discovery had had some influence upon him; for he had become very religious, and some years before his death, which happened early, he had embraced the Romish Faith, and gone to his ancestors from the cold corridors and plank bed of a monastery in Flanders.

His portrait hangs in the dining-room at Farley Court; a portrait that always creates interest beyond any of the others, save one, and that is modern and but lately hung there. The face is long and thin, and the "Hawk" look of that ancestor who seems to have influenced him so deeply is not wanting-indeed, in comparison with many of the faces that look down on one from those walls, is very pronounced. But there is an expression that one rarely and, I think, never finds in the faces of all those others, unless it be in old "Hawk" Uvedale's face itself, an expression of imagination, almost of ideality, as though this man had indeed dreamed dreams and seen visions as he went along the road of life that led him to so strange a hostelry in the end.

After him no Uvedale seems to have any legend or memory connected with his name until one comes to the end of the eighteenth century, when a certain Julia Uvedale had no little notoriety as one of the figures in that revival of classicism which swept over the Court of England.

Fascinated, it would seem, by the lives of some of the earlier men of the Italian Renaissance (for Vasari had just been discovered in England), she had made herself famous throughout Devon as a kind of female St Francis.

In a land so ready to supply a superstition, wherever one is possible, cleaving to the invisible, wherever the visible will permit it, Julia Uvedale soon became a kind of hero, not always too well loved.

At the age of eighteen she had been left an orphan, to the care of an old uncle who was devoted to the study of the classics, and under his guidance she had become a proficient scholar.

Possessed by an intense devotion for animals, she had at the age of twenty-three gone over the country for thirty miles round, accompanied by dogs, cats, squirrels, and various creatures,-one old authority in local history says even foxes,-and had preached a kind of revivalist creed, beseeching the rich to repent and the poor to be strong and patient, for the kingdom of heaven was at hand. For two years she had continued to wander round the country with her strange companions, when one day she happened upon a "wise woman" who had found her sitting by the wayside, "thinking of the world," as she

had said.

The "wise woman" had cared for her-at any rate they lived together for some time; nor does there seem to have been any attempt on the part of guardian and friends to bring Julia home. She had probably so scandalised and estranged all the family friends and neighbours by her preaching that they had ceased to care whether she lived or died. But this "wise woman" would seem to have had a great influence on Julia's life, for when she returned home it was noticed that she was without her pets, and the idea grew among the common sort of people that she had been bewitched. Whether, indeed, this was the case, or, as seems more likely, the "wise woman" had shown her a more excellent way, one can never be quite sure; but it is certain that at the age of twenty-six she too had entered into the fold of the Romish Church, trying curiously enough the same antidote for the poison of restlessness as her great-grandfather had found so perfect a remedy. And yet the Uvedales had always been a distinctly wayward race, finding all ties, even family relation

ship at times, unbearable. Perhaps it was their very strength that made them yield themselves at the last to the most uncompromising master.

However that may be, Julia Uvedale entered the Romish Church, and a year later had resolved to forsake the world. The rest is unfortunately all darkness, until we find her ten years afterwards, after many adventures both by sea and land, a fugitive in Spain flying from the Jesuits, whom she seems in some way particularly to have offended. An enemy it would seem to both Republicans and Aristocrats in France, and at last a political refugee, she is said to have found a safe resting-place in her own land, where she married a curious foreign-looking person with no name, for he took hers, and settled down in her brother's house, Farley Court, at Monksmead.

Of the foreigner, various legends still remain up and down the country-side. It was said that he was a Jesuit priest who, fleeing from his superiors to escape punishment for some sin which the gossips only whispered at, landed in England with Julia Uvedale. It was even rumoured that before they had come home and been married, he had shared all her adventures; had twice saved her life, and more than once whatever honour remained to her; she in the end rewarding him with her name and fortune. It is true this rumour was not credited by the better class of people, and it would seem that the foreigner was indeed a Frenchman rather than a Spaniard, and a devout Catholic to the end of his life. And some idea of the character of this curious impulsive race may be gathered from the fact that after twice deserting the Romish Church, Julia Uvedale died in her sixty-first year, three days after her third conversion.

With the Uvedales religion had always been a thing for the individual temper. They were neither Catholic nor