The new vicar, who is not so good a Conservative as we could wish, is indignant with the government for not allowing the relief to the clergy, who are notoriously "over-rated," on tithe rent charge. At present, he tells me, he pays half as much rates as Tom; and when the act comes into operation he will pay exactly the same amount, for Tom, who farms his own land, will get the reduction. This certainly seems preposterous in regard, for example, to the road-rate, for Tom wears the roads much more with his carriage horses and plough-teams than the vicar with his one pony and "humble vehicle." 4th.-A curious example presented itself this morning of our growing sensitiveness to criticism, and also of our ready invention in the manufacture of scandal. A person who makes mineral water at some distance from here sent in his card and asked to see me, and on being shown into the library began this catechism: "Sir, did you pay a visit to last Friday week? Did you stop to lunch? Did you say at lunch that my soda water was enough to give everybody typhus fever?" I endeavored to persuade the little man that he was misinformed, that I did not so much as know that he existed; still less, if possible, that he made mineral waters; that I could not, therefore, have censured them; and that so far as my memory served the topic did not arise; so that his friend the footman must have confused two people and two occasions. I then warned him that perhaps the circulation of such a report was not the most advantageous form of self-advertisement, because a man's mineral water should be not only pure, but above suspicion. He left in some excitement, generously accepting my disclaimer, but determined to find the truth somehow. I was tempted to suggest that he might find the truth at the bottom of his well, but he would not have understood. Poor lady! No wonder Lucian thought her wan and washed out in complexion; but it would be a pity she should have typhus. 6th. The garden sundial came unriveted from its pedestal some months ago, and has been laid aside ever since, as it seemed to the ladies a pity to lose the opportunity of decorating it with a motto. We are all gone crazy about mottoes in this part of the world. Every new house that is built must have its motto, and the selection gives a good deal of entertainment both to the house-builders and their neighbors. Well, fashion must be followed, so this morning I have been reading through Mrs. Gatty's collection of sundial mottoes, being stimulated to industry by my stop-gap gardener's inquiry whether he might not put a pot of hydrangeas on the pedestål. So I explained its purpose. The best mottoes seem to be the best known, such as "Non nisi cœlesti radio," "Horas non numero nisi serenas," "Pereunt et imputantur," but one cannot use these. A favorite device was to print "we shall," and leave "di(e)—al(1)” to be supplied by the local wits; but that is too macabre. I remember an uncle of mine choosing "Sensim sine sensu" from the "De Senectute," and being very indignant with a friend of his, a fine scholar, who tried to convince him that he had pitched upon an interpolation. On the whole, I doubt if I shall find anything better than my first idea of "Cogitavi dies antiquos" ("I have considered the days of old"), from the 77th Psalm. It is dignified, and to a reflective mind monitory without being impudently didactic, and I am fond of the Vulgate. The seventeenth-century preachers and essayists were fortunate in being able to quote it, "to saffron with their predicacioun," but it should be kept for sober occasions. Matthew Arnold was something too liberal in his use: it became a mere trick of style with him. 7th.-Sir William Harcourt is a joy forever, and his speeches "the triumph of a letter'd heart." At Holloway yesterday the fare was the usual "hashed cabbage"-peers and priests, bishops and bogies-but the cooking was of that sublime order which, as Chaucer says, "can turn substance into accident," or one may add, accident into substance. It was delightful to hear a statesman quote once more from the "Vanity of Human Wishes;" but the quotation interested me for another reason; one saw so clearly how it came to be near the surface of Sir William's mind. It was from the passage about the "Banks of Trent," which must have echoed again and again in his memory, when that tragic collapse befell at Derby, after coquetting with the Drink Bill. . Why lived I not with safer pride content, The wisest Member on the banks of Trent? And then follow the lines he quoted: joyed the sensations of a British chief driving his springless car to the fortress of his tribe." But, more fortunate than this writer, we did not smash our chariot in effecting an entrance into the camp. The vale lies stretched out below in vast and level panorama, "like the garden of the Lord," and there is no such lovely sight, to my thinking, anywhere. It is a little sad, too, for all the towns one sees are slowly decaying, largely through their own folly in refusing the Great Western Railway. Reading had more foresight, and in the halfcentury has more than trebled its population. Perhaps it is not so sad after all, for Wantage remains what it was to Bishop Butler if not quite what it was to King Alfred, and Faringdon has still its memories of Saxon kings (not to mention Pye), while Reading is like a strong ass couching down between the two burdens of Sutton's seeds and Palmer's biscuits. After tea we drove on to Uffington village for the sake of Hughes's memory. (Oh, why did Wolsey) near the steeps of But the church is a splendid specimen fate On weak foundations raise the enormous weight? etc. I notice that one of the papers in a report of the Queen's Review of her Jubilee nurses, says, "The nurses curtsied thrice simultaneously, which had a novel and pleasing effect." 8th.-Made our annual excursion to White Horse Hill. We lunched, as usual, at the "Blowing Stone." Five minutes' practice once a year for half a century has not taught me the trick of blowing it, and Sophia remains the one member of the family who can rouse the fog-horn blast by which Alfred is said to have gathered his forces. It was almost too warm for the climb, but we persisted, and were rewarded at the top by the breeze over the downs. I drove Sophia in the light pony-cart along the Ridgeway to Uffington Castle, and (to quote the words of a recent Spectator) "en of early English architecture, and well worth a visit for its own sake, as our American cousins are sure to find out soon, and make it a shrine of pilgrimage. The vicar should open a subscription list for some memorial, as they are doing at Rugby. The schoolhouse still stands as it did when Tom Brown and Jacob Doodlecalf were caught at the porch by the choleric wheelwright, only the date over the door is not 1671, as you see it in the illustration, but 1617. The inscription just indicated in the picture is as follows: Nil fœdum dictu vitiiq; hæc limina tangat Intra quæ pueri. A.D. 1637. The "pueri" is emphatic, and is explained by one of the rules of the founder on the walls within: "Whereas it is a most common and usual course for many to send their daughters to common schools to be taught together with and amongst all sorts of youths, which course is by many conceived very uncomely and not decent, therefore the said schoolmaster may not admit any of that sex to be taught in the said school." The room is now used as a village reading-hall. Tom Hughes's "Scouring of the White Horse" describes with a wonderful vividness, which was one of his gifts as a writer, the "pastimes" that used to be held on occasion of the scouring, and it remains their memorial. For now the old idol is kept clean by the tenant without ceremony. It is a quaint notion-an ancient idol scoured by a muscular Christian. People who write in the papers are not old enough to remember the hideous Clapham School religion, from which "muscular Christianity" helped to deliver us. There is a good sketch of it in Laurence Oliphant's "Piccadilly.” Its outward symbol was black kid gloves, and its pass-words were many, perhaps the most odious being the word "engage." When a clergyman called, it was quite customary for him to say, "Shall we engage?" and then and there you were expected to let him hale you into the presence of your Maker. Its organ in the press was a paper called the Record, which ruled the religious world with a rod of iron. Any parson caught thinking for himself noted, and was Without reprieve condemned to death the "death" in question being not only professional, the disfavor of Lord Shaftesbury and loss of preferment, but "the second death" as well, with quarters assigned in the disciplinary department of paradise. The persecution of that good man, Frederick Maurice, the prophet of the musculars, the memory of which has been preserved, like a fly in amber, by Tennyson's delightful ode to him, helped to disgust moderate people; and meanwhile the Oxford school was growing in influence. Of course "muscular Chrisnever have become tianity" could really popular with the clergy, as it reduced them to the position of second-rate laymen. 10th.-There was a nut-hatch very busy in one of the limes this morning. The bees are also busy there; but listening to them as they "improved the shining hour" made me less and less inclined for business myself. In fact I fell asleep. A modern poet notes "a hum of bees in the queenly robes of the lime" as one of the most delightful noises in nature, and so it is; though his line, when I quote it, makes Sophia shake her petticoats. On my way to to con sult my lawyer about a boundary dispute with G. P., I met a party of three magpies, which should bode good fortune. Prosit! The hedges are in their full summer glory: lovely to see With mullein, and mallow, and agrimony, With campion, and chicory handsome and tall, And the darling red poppy that's gayest of all, to quote a very old-fashioned poetaster. Indeed, such is summer's pomp and prodigality that many things slip by without being enough enjoyed. That ancient allegory of the pursuit of pleasure, which still eludes the pursuer, is wonderfully true even of such a mild delight as the enjoyment of summer; one cannot really set to work to enjoy it; the enjoyment comes when it wills in chance waves; but I have ever an absurd feeling that, while I am occupied with business indoors, flowers are wasting their sweetness, and birds their melody, and summer is growing old. But to go out is not necessarily to find enjoyment. The visit of the Artillery Company of Massachusetts to their elder brethren in England should help to patch up the sentimental alliance between 15th.-St. Swithin's: just enough rain for the "apple christening." the two countries. But sentiment built new cottages for these people, will not last unless it is supported by others anything but respectable would courtesy and tact. Now it is a curi- be only too glad to come into the ous and unfortunate thing that while empty ones. That is true enough. The individual Americans often excel solution, of course, is for Tom to buy Englishmen in these qualities (one the cottages in question, and either need go no further for an instance reconstruct or pull them down; and than Colonel Walker of the H.A.C., this, if no one suggests it to him, he and that fine phrase of his about her will probably do. But such debates Majesty, "her queenliness as a wo- as last night's will soon bring up the man and her womanliness as a council to the level of interest of Lord queen")—the bulk of those prominent Salisbury's circus. in politics seem singularly destitute of both, and there is no diplomatic tradition. Happily the educated classes are thoroughly alive to the danger of such a state of things; and meanwhile England must remember that America is a young country with a Civil Service improving indeed, but still far from organized, and with the right of the young to be infallible. There is an interesting "Tatler" (No. 41) about the Artillery Company, describing a sham fight in the streets of London on June 29, 1709; which shows that the H.A.C. was to the wits of two centuries ago what the Rifle Volunteers were to Punch in the sixties. 11th.-There seems a chance of the Parish Council meetings becoming more lively. Both Tom and his wife are on the council, Tom being chairman, and they regard it as a highly useful means of registering their benevolent ukases. But the vicar, who has been elected this year, is full of notions and wants to democratize it. As a first step, to insure publicity for the discussions, he has persuaded a few old women to attend the meetings, all the men being too busy in their gardens and not very keenly interested. Last night there was a debate about housing. The vicar maintained that certain cottages (not Tom's) were a disgrace to the village, and that the people who live in them were very respectable people who had a right (ominous word!) to decent houses if they could pay for them. Tom replied that if he or any one else H. M. Inspector paid a "visit without notice" to the school. At least it was without notice SO far as the schoolmaster was concerned; I had known the awful secret for three days past as he had proposed himself for luncheon. So I happened to call at the school and found him there. He is a good inspector, if a trifle "tarrifying," as we say here. Most inspectors are terrifying; so much depends upon their verdict, and it is difficult for them to keep the sense of their importance out of their manner. One inspector. I know exercises a quite extraordinary and basilico-like fascination by virtue of a rather stony blue eye, and a lapis-lazuli in his fingerring of the same tint. These in a remarkable way react upon and reduplicate each other. He, too, is a good fellow, but full of fads, and the worst of these is grammar. I heard him once take a class in grammar. asked, amongst other useless things, the meaning of "intransitive." Happily no child knew, so he proceeded to explain. "Intransitive means not going over; an intransitive verb expresses an action that does not go over to an object. For example, the verb jump is intransitive; if I say, 'the cat jumps,' I describe an action that doesn't 'go over.'" O mad inspector! I fear your teaching proved more intransitive than your cat's jump. At luncheon H. M. Inspector amused us with professional anecdotes. At a re He "I mote village school he had surprised the infant mistress watering the children with a garden rose before the examination began to keep them fresh. Another story was of a child whom he asked to explain the word "pilgrim." "Please, sir, a man who travels about." "But I travel about. Am I a pilgrim?” “Please, sir, a good man. As an example of what is meant by "visualizing" in children (and the want of it in inspectors), he told us of a small boy who could not add nine to seven. The inspector, to make the sum easy, put it thus: "Suppose you had nine apples in one hand and seven in the other, how many would you have altogether?" should have two jolly good handfuls.” 16th. The papers report this morning the unveiling of three monuments: a bust in the Abbey of Thomas Arnold, a statue to Newman at the Brompton Oratory, and a granite column crowned by a bust of Shakespeare in the churchyard of St. Mary, Aldermanbury, to the editors of the first folio, Heminge and Condell. It was interesting to notice as characteristic of our tolerant age that several distinguished persons passed from the first of these celebrations to the second. The names of Heminge and Condell are less répandus; but their service to literature cannot easily be exaggerated, and it is pleasant to think that the great public should recognize who it is they have to thank (under Shakespeare) for eighteen of his thirty-six dramas. "We have but collected them," they say, "and done an office to the dead to procure his orphans guardians, without ambition either of self-profit or fame; only to keep the memory of so worthy a friend and fellow alive as was our Shakespeare. Fellow implies that they were players-Heminge a poor one, "Stuttering Hemmings," he is called; but besides being players, they were the leading proprietors and managers of the Globe and Blackfriars theatres, and so the owners of the plays they allowed to be published. In Shakespeare's will there is an item interlined: "To my fellowes, John Hemynges, Richard Burbage, and Henry Cundell, xxvjs viijd a peece to buy them ringes." The commentator Steevens has some amusing remarks on the greasy condition of most copies of the first folio that have come down: "Of all volumes those of popular entertainment are soonest injured. It would be difficult to name four folios that are oftener found in dirty and mutilated condition, than this first assemblage of Shakespeare's plays. "God's Revenge against Murder,” “The Gentleman's Recreation," and "Johnson's Lives of the Highwaymen." Though Shakespeare was not, like Fox the Martyrologist, deposited in churches to be thumbed by the congregation, he generally took post on our hall tables; and that a multitude of his pages have "their effect of gravy" may be imputed to the various eatables set out every morning on the same boards. It should seem that most of his readers were so chary of their time, that (like Pistol, who gnaws his leek and swears all the while) they fed and studied at the same instant. I have repeatedly met with thin flakes of piecrust between the leaves of our author. These unctuous fragments, remaining long in close confinement, communicated their grease to several pages deep on each side of them. It is easy enough to conceive how such accidents might happen-how Aunt Bridget's mastication might be disordered at the sudden entry of the Ghost into the Queen's closet, and how the halfchewed morsel dropped out of the gaping Squire's mouth when the visionary Banquo seated himself in the chair of Macbeth. Still, it is no small eulogium on Shakespeare that his claims were more forcible than those of hunger. Most of the first folios now extant are known to have be |