recounting, suggesting, growing upon you every hour, gaining in life
and presence, and then, while still under its influence, to find
oneself suddenly transported into the very scene of that life, to
stand among its familiar impressions and experiences, realising
another distinct existence by some odd metempsychosis, and what may-
-or rather, what MUST have been. It is existing a book rather than
reading it when this happens to one.

The house in Swallowfield Park is an old English country home, a
fastness still piled up against time; whose stately walls and halls
within, and beautiful century-old trees in the park without, record
great times and striking figures. The manor was a part of the dowry
of Henry the VIII.'s luckless queens. The modern house was built by
Clarendon, and the old church among the elms dates from 1200, with
carved signs and symbols and brasses of knights and burgesses, and
names of strange sound and bygone fashion.

Lady Russell, who had sent the phaeton with the fast-stepping horse
to meet us, was walking in the park as we drove up, and instead of
taking us back to the house, she first led the way across the grass
and by the stream to the old church, standing in its trim sweet
garden, where Death itself seems smiling and fearless; where kind
Mary Mitford's warm heart rests quiet, and 'her busy hand,' as she
says herself, 'is lying in peace there, where the sun glances
through the great elm trees in the beautiful churchyard of
Swallowfield.'

The last baronet, Sir Charles, who fought in the Crimea, and who
succeeded his father, Sir Henry, moved the dividing rail so that his
old friend should be well within the shadow of these elm trees.