Passing through a hamlet whose name I have forgotten, I reach Hambleden, a pleasant village, at which I should have been tempted to delay, only that I am in Berkshire now, and that I mean to get home to supper. The church is a handsome one; and quaint old Quarles has adorned it with an epitaph upon his sister, Sir Cope D'Oyley's wife, who, according to her poetic relation,

"Was in spirit a Jael,

Rebecca in grace, in heart an Abigail;

In works a Dorcas, to the church a Hannah,

And to her spouse Susannah;

Prudently simple, providently wary,

To the world a Martha, and to heaven a Mary."

Now comes Medmenham, a secluded village under the hill, and my way lies to the right to meet old Thames again. The bargees of Thames are often chaffed with the question, "Who ate puppy-pie under Marlow Bridge?" For the landlord of the inn at Medmenham Ferry, hearing that a raid on his larder was planned, baked a litter of young puppies in a pie, which the unlucky bargemen devoured with much gusto under Marlow Bridge. Puppy-pie" makes a bargee furious to this day. They are a humorous race at Medmenham, evidently; even as they were when they frightened Lord le Despencer and his Franciscans amid their orgies, by lowering a great monkey down the chimney in some grotesque costume. Mr. Scott Murray, to my thinking, has not improved the old abbey by his recent alterations. I one day asked his head workman what they were doing, and received for answer: “We're a renowating the old place, sir-making it look more ancient-like."

Here, again, I find festival. The pretty little inn is crammed with drinkers. What a pity that the workingman's holiday is so completely an affair of beer and pipes! Imagine a holiday in Italy or Southern France, with light wine in graceful flasks, and dancers equally graceful under the great chestnut-trees! Would the English labourer like his tobacco as well if it were of higher quality, or his beer as well if it were freed from stupefying drugs, and served in something more elegant than those hideous pintpots? I don't see why not. Ale and cider, well made and pure, are as wholesome and refreshing as the weak wines of the Continent; but it is too frequently the object of brewer and beer-retailer to produce a liquid which shall excite instead of quenching thirst. Of course, greater cheapness is the financier's affair; but greater purity lies with the producer. Equally, of course, so long as beer looks like thick broth, no vendor will put it in a clear, bright glass. So the luckless lout drinks liquid dirt from an opaque vessel, until his head would ache horribly, if a long course of such dissipation had not deprived his brain of all sensitiveness.

A charmed sunset paints the west as I cross the ferry. Distance improves the spectacle: from the farther side there seems some beauty in the groups dancing to a cracked fiddle on the lawn-in the remoter and gayer group, who are noisily playing the immortal game of kissin-the-ring. Down beyond the Danesfield Woods a white cloud of steam marks the approach of a boat, chartered to carry home the holiday-keepers. I sit on the green bank and lave my somewhat weary feet. The scene of gaiety

looks pleasant enough beyond that shining river and beneath the mellow light of that softening sunset. I remember a certain song:

Sing, maiden, sing, as we slowly glide
Over the ferry at even-tide!"

But for me there is no music here. So, rising to pass homeward, I become suddenly aware of a balloon high above me, sprung I know not whence, silently voyaging I know not whither. That floating spheroid, traversing the pathless and unmapped air, adds strange beauty to the scene by the mystery of its isolation. I watch it gliding swiftly away above the wooded hills, till it fades into the depths of the dim grey eastern sky.

VOL. I.

G

A WALK THROUGH BUCKS.

CARE may sit behind the horseman, but the pedestrian ought certainly to escape such unpleasant companionship. At any rate, when I am walking across country, I bid entire defiance to care. My worst troubles are when a boot unexpectedly splits, or when the rustic innkeeper makes difficulties about a bath, or when the rain comes on pertinaciously. The rain has done its best to baffle my Buckinghamshire exploration. Starting as heretofore from Berkshire, I ascend Ashley Hill on a fine August morning. Before plunging into the beech-wood I look backwards, and see royal Windsor stately in the sunlight, and the Crystal Palace burning like a fantastic meteor on the horizon. Soon I am in the park of Hall Place, populous with deer, and pass the square brick mansion of Sir Gilbert East Gilbert East. I don't admire the exterior of the house, though doubtless it is spacious and luxurious within; but I do admire the turfen terrace in its rear, and the noble avenue of limes, and the square old-fashioned walled garden, where brilliant spots of calceolaria and geranium, petunia and verbena, lie amid the grassy walks. What a delicious spot for an evening

stroll, in the pauses of quadrille and waltz, with a lovely maiden hanging on one's arm, and the moonlight air filled with magnolia fragrance!

I cross a yellow cornfield into the Marlow Road, just where a fragment of forest seems to have wandered into the highway. Thence it is a pleasant walk to Marlow. Were I given to coveting my neighbour's house, Mr. Vansittart's residence, Bisham Abbey, is the place I should select to covet. Here the picturesque and the comfortable meet. It is a house to admire, and it is a house to live in. Its ancient tower, and oriel windows, and noble trees, and velvet lawns, and water-lilied moat-its traditions of Knights Templars, and Earls of Salisbury and Warwick— its connection with the Princess Elizabeth-its veritable ghost story, and authentic portrait of the ghost, a negative ghost of the female sex, who flogged one of her children to death for bad writing, and who is always trying to wash her hands in a basin that will not be overtaken,-its strange secret room and great monastic barn of Spanish chestnut, all these things add a charm to a residence whose interior arrangements are the perfection of modern luxury. And it is girdled by the winding Thames, as in the days of its first foundation, some seven centuries ago.

Great Marlow is evidently in a state of excitement, as I cross its suspension-bridge. First I encounter half a dozen young ladies, in the appropriate muslin of August ; next half a dozen volunteers. There is a wicked drizzling of rain, however, which becomes a sharp shower very soon; and the young ladies take flight, and I see them sitting bonneted and shawled at the windows all the way