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green behind the castle walls the villagers throw bowls, in another the farmers' sons and daughters toss the tennis ball, while the unknown public are admitted inside the locked doors once a week, as if the ruinous walls and garden flowers would be pierced by daily gazing eyes. But one is forced to revere and admire the dense trail of clinging ivy from the rocky foundation to the uneven tower, the product of centuries of unnoticed perseverance, and the spots of lichen, time's best colourist of old stones. Nature loves beauty and variety, and with all the lavish skill of a rich soil casts green veils upon putrid walls. In a stride one can place one foot on old England, and the other on modern England. Here one's changing moods find ample companionship in the round of outer world changes in the parish; and he may keep his heart as green as an ivy-leaved toad-flax. It is given to most men to love something dearer than others; sooner or later this heart assertion is felt; love and death have their fatalities, and strike home one way or other.' To this one cannot, like an old judge, say cogitandum. Even against one's judgment this castle has, like most things one has seen since he could babble on a mother's knee, a place in the heart; but the villagers, whose long inheritance of the tract of common lands has been by successive and successful lords of the manor taken out of their poor grasps, until now they only have trifling plots of the indifferent soil; and the patient hinds, who have by the farmers been deprived of keeping their family supporters, a cow or a pig-have the strongest hold on my fancy and my best feelings. They have the tender attachment to one because their laborious lives have changed with the change of the soil, and taken the closest touch from the land they live on next to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field. They make the loudest patriot dumb; their love for land comes not with imagination or politics, but with hard resolute work. The beat of the drum and the music of the fife charm them from the fields, but not beyond the bounds of the parish. To them the castle is a landmark, but their hearts are where their feet lead them-on the soil they have been born, the soil which they and their fathers have ploughed and sown and reaped.

In the early spring, before the trees bud and grow green, the farmlands teem with activity, and love for the pastoral scenery of arable fields is satiated to the full. Every day discloses new beauties, and unexpected likings in one's heart are discovered. The grey track of spring runs over the dark red loam with the sober tints of the ever old spring story; and the Celts have a proverb that the dawn of a dull spring morning is like a lean cow coming to a farm. A day's ramble in a circle of a few miles around the village makes one's heart sound like pipes with fresh gladness. Alongside the hedges, the byways, the plantations, and the rivulet, is heard again the voice of joy in the air, the sound of millstones, the cry of mirth in the hind's lips as he whistles to his ploughing team. The restoring breath of spring is the very queen of heaven, and fairly overmasters one's pent-up spirits. Every field we knew before familiarly is to

day as a new picture, and walking about old fields in the dawning spring adds another pleasure to life. One's heart is quickly in tone with the delicate grey tints which the season harmonises so exquisitely on the red loam laud, and soon rushes rapidly in sympathy with the sober-clad peasants dragging their steps over the uneven fields. Then one recognises the powerful tenderness of Jean François Millet's paintings, and appreciates his closeness of touch with the peasant's life. I find every day numbers of such pictures ready composed. On the downs near the sea a group of labourers sweat at turf cutting; their easy postures, various coloured dress, and tawny arms and faces run picturesquely into the surroundings. One measures the turf, and with a spade only sharpened by usage cuts it square alongside the twine; the second loosens the square bits of turf from the soil; and the third dexterously pares off the undergrowth to a standard equality with one or two movements of an old scythe on a rudely erected three-legged box. The turf trimmed and untrimmed lies scattered around in heaps, and the fresh smelling earth gives the workman vigour; a few yards off at the corner of the wood stand two red-tiled cottages lichen- and ivy-clad, while overhead the larks proclaim the hours in the clouded sky, and the lapwing in flitting circles sadly calls. Further afield, and at no distance from the roadway, are frequently to be seen groups of women selecting potatoes for the market from the straw and earth covered pits around which they sit, or preparing the potatoes for planting. Their straw hats and sunshades of pale yellow, pale pink, or pale blue, are delightful head-gears, and fit in with grey or bright coloured shawls, white aprons, and striped honest-wearing petticoats, along with their easy working positions, and a wooden hurdle or two, having some brown corn-bags flung over to shield them from the wind or the rain, form a grouping for effect I know nothing equal to it in field work. An empty one-horse cart is on end with its shafts in the air, a handy weighing machine is close by, and the loose straw is blown about by the wind. This is no dull scene when a story is being told, a piece of gossip passed round, or a country song is sung. A group of such women, who in lusty leas at liberty' walk, is enraged at trifles. A very gentle man by merely looking from the roadway at them through an opera glass has had the effect of bringing them angrily to their feet and producing roars of indignant questions across the hedge accompanied with flashing eyes and threatening arms waving over head. Some of these women trudge to their work every morning miles as long as a Sunday's journey, and as they return afoot in the grey evening alongside the bare hedges in the fens, you can hear afar off the chattering voices of the elder, and the daffing and laughing of the younger women. And the women are good walkers, the men are not. Hinds are no pedestrians; walking they deem extra labour, and trailing after the harrows for a day on uneven broken soil will tear the love of walking out of any man. So long as they can ride on the trams of the carts with one hand resting on the

horse's harness, they won't stride a foot, though they be benumbed and stiff-jointed in the frostiest day. It is only when the market carts rattle on the outskirts of the stony streets of the market town that they jump down from their perch on the grain bags, walk beside their horses with the rope reins in one hand, and with the other make their market long whip-lashes play crack about the leading horse's ears and head. Then they walk apace. In the soft light of the early spring evening no pastoral scene harmonises so naturally with the sky effects as a field of sheep feeding on turnips. It is out of sight the finest evening pastoral. The hedges are as naked as the squares of the sheep-netting, the rich red soil is beaten hard and spotted with husks of eaten turnips, a rick of straw or hay is in the centre around which the sheep gather, fleecy bits of wool flutter in the breeze on the net and hedge, and on the roadway that oily odour of wool comes running up one's nostrils. The net's small squares, the barked wooden stakes, and the growing turnips for the foreground, are a telling relief for the sheep thriving on turnips, disturbed as they are to-night by the shepherd skilfully counting them with his trained. dog; they run wildly past his eyeline, when all by turns wheel back and gaze as keenly on him as if he were a perfect stranger. They remained flocked together with their staring eyes, till the shepherd, after a shrill whistle and a quick cry to the dog, clambers over the fence and goes out of sight. One may see eight team of horses ploughing and steaming alongside the furrows. Ploughing is the test of a good hind. He must have as keen an eye as a sportsman, and a hand as sensitive as a fly-fisher, at once to plough straight and deep and to guide his team. Hinds enjoy Hinds enjoy a pride in ploughing which no other field labour gives. The horses' manes and tails are decked with bits of ribbons, often the willing present of the country lass; they guide and man their teams with skill, as a jockey does a thoroughbred in a race; and their thick voices continually wag in their horses' ears with pet words and old phrases tender with encouragement. It is their belief that the horses would not work so well did they not hear the driver's voice at the plough shafts. Even high-spirited horses have been known to come to a stand in the plough field when driven by a silent, still-minded ploughman. Farm horses and farm servants are never seen to better advantage than when ploughing. It is a lesson in anatomy to watch the head and forequarters of the furrow-horse: the action is the most graceful in animal life when it proudly and gladly bends its knees and grasps the soil with its hoof, the neck, glossy with action, gracefully curved. A good ploughman counts no other part of his work so enjoyable as walking in the furrow holding the plough shafts behind a couple of strong-limbed horses. It is, in truth, his field day. To plough well, he has a pride in saying, is the reason of his calling. In that quietness which accompanies a long day's work on fresh opened soil they leave the ploughs at the furrow end turned on their sides, and, with easy lolling movements peculiar to ploughmen on their bare-backed

horses, troop back to the stables, their strong booted feet dangling at the side, and the plough chains merrily clanking. In the dusky spring evening, when the sun's slanting rays set quickly against the bare-leaved plantation, these ploughmen, assisted by their wives and daughters with kilted petticoats, are seen back bending in delving their small garden plots, and planting the seed for their own support. Wearied with ten hours' ploughing, they delve and plant with the quickest, urged on by the swift approach of spring night. Behind the row of their own cottages the whole farmstead gathers, either in working or criticising; so anxious are their diggings with the sharp spade, and quiet are all who work, that one requires no telling that it is for themselves they toil. The members of each family, even to the lad at school, have here a common interest; and on the success of their stipulated yards of potatoes they know, with that staggering conviction of experience, they are dependent for their weal or woe in winter. The growing darkness makes the still active delvers, backbending in grey sleeved waistcoats and the coloured shawls and petticoats of their helpers, scarcely distinguishable at a slight distance; but it is their own bit of soil, and they can only till it at dusk when their horses are stalled and crunching their corn. Now and again one raises himself, straightens his back, knocks the ashes out of his pipe, and with the back of his hand wipes the sweat from his forehead. last the most anxious hind has ceased in darkness turning over the soil and levelling it with quick cuttings and pattings of the spade, and the pipe with a spark left burning in the tobacco is thrust into his waistcoat pocket; he fast becomes drowsy beside the warm hearth and lighted lamp. They talk of their work, and many are the on dits and old coined proverbs which then circulate for conversation in the cottages. Walking back to the village, I hear in the growing darkness a lark singing on high, the flight of a brace of partridges with a chirr-ch-chchir across the road to unploughed turnip land, and afar off there comes with the sound of the moaning sea the melancholy whistle-like call of a sea-bird, as if calling on its lost love. Night, the great shepherd, is calling every creature home. And as I saunter towards the village, strong violin notes are heard from a horny-fisted hind's cottage, and nearer still I wait, always beside the hedge, for the welcome sweet strains of an old love ballad simply sung by two lasses-field workers-as they knit or sew near the warm light of the hearth. In the strong light of the spring moon I notice from the downs a fleet of sails of fishing boats tipping the horizon, going out to sea; and as the sails wave and bend with the wind, they are glorious as an army of banners.

At

Our native place is as warm to our hearts as our mother's breath. For our native soil the coldest of us have an everlasting childlike attachment. There we are at home, our empty heart is filled with mother's love. Early recollections of childhood leap back to memory: such as on toddling alongside an old wall to meet a brother returning from school; of making our first acquaintance with deadly fear at

sight of a weasel; and on being turned homewards at the stile by father, who walked towards the tolling bell of the church lying on the slope amid clusters of trees, of experiencing the vague awe and dread which the recurrence of Sundays and sights of churches maintained for long. We are all more or less influenced by the soil we have been nourished on, as mothers give character to their children. I know of no more disappointing scenery than this parish to one who expects in every half-hour's drive bits of striking views, or the originals of pastoral pictures exhibited in the Academy. It is coy, and one must start with a receptive eye to catch the tender beauty of the scenery and its characteristic bits of field effects. Well tilled soil, clean fields, new cut hedges, and all the clear marks of intelligent farming, with level turnpikes along which are no useless broad strips of grass for donkeys or cows to graze on, but thick hawthorn hedges betimes intermixed with beech, delved and cleaned at the roots, may raise no emotion in a stranger making a mental note that it is good land, well farmed. Perhaps this soil of my affections is half visionary, a cherished dream of young days, a dream associated with the memories of father's and mother's land. As seen by my eyes,. this parish of big farms, where the great bulk of the population are hinds or labourers of land, with old manners, old dialect, old names, who travel from home only on the day they can call their own, Sunday, in an open cart with a few sheaves of straw spread on the bottom, to visit a near one in sickness or trouble-who have all our noble Saxon qualities, quiet manliness, uncomplaining of work, keen feelings beneath a blunt face, and genuine love for all life on the farm, whether of masters or servants-is simply the development of the Saxon English in its purity, the brief epitome of our forefathers before the fens were drained and peace settled down within sight of the castle ruins. An old letter by a farmer's newly wed wife has the charm of an old picture of exquisite colouring. We look yet with her eyes as she drove in the fen lands in the summer evening to her future home, fragrant with jessamine, with damask and china roses clustering round the old walls, approached by a wide gravel drive, and surrounded with bits of shrubbery. The broad fields, the hedges interlaced with pieces of paling, the low outstretching plain, and the quiet farms, giving the impression of space and air, gave her the true farmer's wife feeling of being room there for the fruits of the earth to grow to perfection. The straggling rows of trees give little point to distance, and between the far-off sea bay at the west and the uplands on the south, lights and shadows of the day ever change of no ordinary richness. Time-hallowed associations soften the hardest thoughts for this red land, this rich land, for the red-tiled cottages, and for the simple churchyard sacred by generations of kith and kin. In summer and winter the farmers drive weekly in their gigs across the uplands to the market town in the valley, using their eyes to advantage on their neighbours' fields, and carrying to market their old grievances about enclosing and foreshores, cropping