unknown. Ever since I remember, not a single stone has been laid on
the top of another. The castle, inhabited now by jackdaws and
starlings, is old; the chapel which adjoins it is older still; and the
lake behind both, and in which their shadows sleep, is, I suppose, as
old as Adam. A fountain in the market-place, all mouths and faces and
curious arabesques,--as dry, however, as the castle moat,--has a
tradition connected with it; and a great noble riding through the
street one day several hundred years ago, was shot from a window by a
man whom he had injured. The death of this noble is the chief link
which connects the place with authentic history. The houses are old,
and remote dates may yet be deciphered on the stones above the doors;
the apple-trees are mossed and ancient; countless generations of
sparrows have bred in the thatched roofs, and thereon have chirped out
their lives. In every room of the place men have been born, men have
died. On Dreamthorp centuries have fallen, and have left no more trace
than have last winter's snowflakes. This commonplace sequence and
flowing on of life is immeasurably affecting. That winter morning when
Charles lost his head in front of the banqueting-hall of his own
palace, the icicles hung from the eaves of the houses here, and the
clown kicked the snowballs from his clouted shoon, and thought but of
his supper when, at three o'clock, the red sun set in the purple mist.
On that Sunday in June while Waterloo was going on, the gossips, after
morning service, stood on the country roads discussing agricultural
prospects, without the slightest suspicion that the day passing over
their heads would be a famous one in the calendar. Battles have been
fought, kings have died, history has transacted itself; but, all
unheeding and untouched, Dreamthorp has watched apple-trees redden, and
wheat ripen, and smoked its pipe, and quaffed its mug of beer, and
rejoiced over its new-born children, and with proper solemnity carried
its dead to the churchyard. As I gaze on the village of my adoption I