chivalrous pride, of the noble lords and fair ladies before whom he
has ridden in the good old times gone by--even, so he darkly hints,
before 'His Royal Highness the Prince' himself. Poor old fellow, he
recollects not, and he need not recollect, that these great posting-
houses were centres of corruption, from whence the newest vices of
the metropolis were poured into the too-willing ears of village lads
and lasses; and that not even the New Poor Law itself has done more
for the morality of the South of England than the substitution of the
rail for coaches.

Now we will walk down through the meadows some half mile,


While all the land in flowery squares,
Beneath a broad and equal-blowing wind
Smells of the coming summer,'


to a scene which, as we may find its antitype anywhere for miles
round, we may boldly invent for ourselves.

A red brick mill (not new red brick, of course) shall hum for ever
below giant poplar-spires, which bend and shiver in the steady
breeze. On its lawn laburnums shall feather down like dropping wells
of gold, and from under them the stream shall hurry leaping and
laughing into the light, and spread at our feet into a broad bright
shallow, in which the kine are standing knee-deep already: a hint,
alas! that the day means heat. And there, to the initiated eye, is
another and a darker hint of glaring skies, perspiring limbs, and
empty creels. Small fish are dimpling in the central eddies: but