Shakspeare celebrates in his Merry Wives, and had a most overflowing,
merry time of it. The fact is, we had not seen each other for so long
that to be in each other's company for a whole day was quite a
stimulant.

After dinner we had a beautiful drive, passing the colleges at Eton,
and seeing the boys out playing cricket; had an excellent opportunity
to think how true Gray's poem on the Prospect of Eton is to boy-nature
then, now, and forever. We were bent upon looking up the church which
gave rise to his Elegy in a Country Churchyard, intending, when we got
there, to have a little scene over it; Mr. S., in all the conscious
importance of having been there before, assuring us that he knew
exactly where it was. So, after some difficulty with our coachman, and
being stopped at one church which would not answer our purpose in any
respect, we were at last set down by one which looked authentic;
embowered in mossy elms, with a most ancient and goblin yew tree, an
ivy-mantled tower, all perfect as could be.

There had been a sprinkle of rain,--an ornament which few English days
want,--and the westering beams of the sun twinkled through innumerable
drops. In fact, it was a pretty place; and I felt such "dispositions
to melancholies," as Sir Hugh Evans would have it, that I half
resented Mr. S.'s suggestion that the cars were waiting. However, as
he was engaged to speak at a peace meeting in London, it was agreed he
should leave us there to stroll, while he took the cars. So away he
went; and we, leaning on the old fence, repeated the Elegy, which
certainly applies here as beautifully as language could apply.

What a calm, shady, poetical nature is expressed in these lines! Gray
seems to have been sent into the world for nothing but to be a poem,