I have changed my Belvern, and there are so many others left to
choose from that I might live in a different Belvern each week.
North, South, East, and West Belvern, New Belvern, Old Belvern,
Great Belvern, Little Belvern, Belvern Link, Belvern Common, and
Belvern Wells. They are all nestled together in the velvet hollows
or on the wooded crowns of the matchless Belvern Hills, from which
they look down upon the fairest plains that ever blessed the eye.
One can see from their heights a score of market towns and villages,
three splendid cathedrals, each in a different county, the queenly
Severn winding like a silver thread among the trees, with soft-
flowing Avon and gentle Teme watering the verdant meadows through
which they pass. All these hills and dales were once the Royal
Forest, and afterwards the Royal Chase, of Belvern, covering nearly
seven thousand acres in three counties; and from the lonely height
of the Beacon no less than

'Twelve fair counties saw the blaze'

of signals, when the country was threatened by a Spanish invasion.
As for me, I mourn the decay of Romance with a great R; we have it
still among us, but we spell it with a smaller letter. It must be
so much more interesting to be threatened with an invasion,
especially a Spanish invasion, than with a strike, for instance.
The clashing of swords and the flashing of spears in the sunshine
are so much more dazzling and inspiring than a line of policemen
with clubs! Yes, I wish it were the age of chivalry again, and that
I were looking down from these hills into the Royal Chase. Of
course I know that there were wicked and selfish tyrants in those
days, before the free press, the jury system, and the folding-bed
had wrought their beneficent influences upon the common mind and