"English Note-Books." We must therefore imagine the central figure,
Middleton, who is the American descendant of an old English family, as
having been properly introduced, and then pass at once to the opening
sentences. The rest will explain itself.

G. P. L.

* * * * *

THE ANCESTRAL FOOTSTEP.

OUTLINES OF AN ENGLISH ROMANCE.




I.

April 1, 1858. _Thursday_.--He had now been travelling long in those rich
portions of England where he would most have wished to find the object of
his pursuit; and many had been the scenes which he would willingly have
identified with that mentioned in the ancient, time-yellowed record which
he bore about with him. It is to be observed that, undertaken at first
half as the amusement, the unreal object, of a grown man's play-day, it
had become more and more real to him with every step of the way that he
followed it up; along those green English lanes it seemed as if
everything would bring him close to the mansion that he sought; every
morning he went on with renewed hopes, nor did the evening, though it
brought with it no success, bring with it the gloom and heaviness of a
real disappointment. In all his life, including its earliest and happiest