1861.]

Even without missing our tabled'hôte dinner, the variety of enjoyment offered to us is immense. Even to the feeble and the aged, who have made a supreme effort to accompany perhaps some more able to roam, there is abundant delight. One who could only sit by the shore of the Lake of Lucerne or Geneva, who could only drive from Interlaken to Grindelwald or to Thun, who could only gaze from a window at Chamouny when sunset spreads its hues of unearthly glory over Mont Blanc,-one, we repeat, who could do this, and no more, would carry away undying impressions of wonder and delight. At the moment we write, recollections of some who so enjoyed those scenes rise up before us. They had no strength for lengthened excursions, no power of encountering exertion; for one was aged, the other stricken in her youth, and even then enjoying the last vivid pleasures a pale and blighted life had to give. But in each the spirit was bright to enjoy, and what was within their feeble powers was a source of heartfelt delight. In the one, the wasted frame seemed almost transformed with the energy that so new an excitement created; in the other, eyes still bright in age, eyes in which the light of the soul had kept a brilliancy that years might otherwise have dimmed, were fixed with silent emotion on scene after scene of those glorious landscapes, and the mind was storing up new images for memory to dwell upon with delight, so long as any thoughts of earth have power to stir.

Some minds are naturally alive

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to the beauties of nature, and feel it keenly even amid the home scenery of England, where there has perhaps been no opportunity of studying its wilder forms; but let us consider how many minds are first awakened to it by the facility now afforded to travelling. In these a new sense is unfolded which henceforth may lead to the love of the beautiful in its other manifestations. Whatever poetry lurked unknown in the soul is thus stirred up, and a new life given to all the ears may hear or the eyes gaze upon. When so much stress is laid upon the cultivation of some artistic taste, and painting and music are prized as civilizers of society, it is as well to remember what is due in this manner to the cheap travelling which educates the senses of thousands amid the beauties of nature. Nor is this the only beneficial form of mental excitement afforded by travelling.

Whether we spend our holiday among the charms of natural scenery, or wander among the relics of past ages,-whether we linger amid the wonders of art, study human nature in foreign cities or in wilder states of society, or give ourselves up to historical associations, and ponder the great mysteries of existence upon the graves of departed nations,-wherever we go, with eyes and hearts open, the real benefits of travelling will be ours. Everywhere thought is stirred, imagination kindled, poetic feeling awakened, and the whole mind thus braced and refreshed, to return with new energy to the ordinary toil and responsibilities of life.

before we could decide it: and see the immediate results of these things-firstly, in that thriving and influential burgher, our 'shoemaker, Mr. Moxin, often mayor, generally churchwarden, always alderman; whose efforts got up the literary institution, whose speech decided the last borough election; can you not see the words 'I am well to do' written in his shop front; in the seven-league boots, beautiful upon the mountains, the glittering tops, the cricket-shoes, the knapsacks, which it displays, disdaining not the highlow of rural humility; in the very wooden model, large and highly-polished the αὐτο-κόθορνος, as Plato might call it-suspended over his respectable doorway? Then for the second result, turn to our doctor, whose feats on the ice amused you so much the other day; see him shabby, insignificant, the proprietor of a small gig and a smaller pony, with his business lying mainly among the old women, and his general powers and character fitting him admirably for their companionship. No, rely upon it that if you are a good customer to the doctor, accidents and infections apart, you are not doing your duty by your shoemaker; and never grudge to pay a long bill to Mr. Moxin, certain that it represents many times the value therein written in health and heartiness, both mental and bodily.

Did it never strike you how much character there lies in boots; yea, how many an inner trait of the mind peeps out at the lower end of the trousers? Who does not know the Balmoral effeminate,' a young boot; lazy, high-heeled, conceited; French in its polish, Chinese in its tightness; calculated for stepping from drawing-room to smoking-room, or at most from club to park :-'the Wellington defiant,' a middle-aged boot; squaretoed, stiff, tree-polished, creaking; with a penchant for treading upon somebody's most cherished corn, or kicking somebody else from the apartment:-'the Blucher churlish,' loose-fitting, awkward, muddy; delighting in wiping itself against you as it passes, and in leaving its

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exact measurement nature-printed on your carpet:-'the Albert snobbish,' seedy, mis-shapen, readymade; with heel down-trodden and vain attempts to conceal slits in the side; bearing an unmistakeable look of outcasthood and imposture? Who does not also know the Oxford-shoe acrobatic,' light, springy, cheerful; with laughter in its footfall, and the invisible wings of leaping, airy-footed boyhood attached, Hermes-like, to its heel :the honest Laced boot of goodfellowship;' strong itself, and speaking of a strong form above it; which could tell many tales (were its tongue endowed with speech) of mountains ascended, Alpine or Caledonian, of streams leapt or forded, of leagues of road or heath trodden at wondrous pace, of hearty and tried companionship in feats of activity, daring, and endurance ;the very type of vigorous, earnest, self-reliant manhood? And last, who knows not, and loves not, 'the Cloth-boot benevolent,' the genuine successor to the latter two, the dear old comfortable supporter of healthy, hearty age; the life of the fireside circle, as it rests cosily on its own corner of the fender; on which grandchildren ride to the Cross of Banbury, at which they sit for the oft-repeated fairy-tale; inclining to totter, but guiltless of gout; its sound well-known in the aisle of the village church, and to the ears of the sick and destitute; itself the pedestal to how great a weight of experience and good sense, of thoughtful kindness and hospitality? Who shall say there is no character in boots? And these are but the broader divisions, the genera, capable of subdivision into their many species, each distinguished by its separate traits most easily to be recognised. Describe to me a man's habits, and I will fit his foot to a nicety. Tell me how your friends are shod, and I will tell you their characters almost to a gesture. By their boots shall you know them.

But here we are at the Hall, and did you ever see a finer old house? Look at its wonderful irregular front, jutting out into all sorts of

unexpected promontories and peninsulas of masonry, and its multitude of buttresses and corners and dark nooks, seeming to have been designed with special view to hideand-seek and 'I-spy' for prospective generations of children. Look at its roof, a perfect forest of turrets and pointed gables and twisted. chimneys, grouping upwards in fantastic ascent to the clock-tower enthroned like their king in the middle. Look at those windowshigh, broad, and bountiful-forming at least half of the superficies of the house, with deep recesses and massive stone mullions: no need to take window-tax into his plans had the architect who designed those, nor had legislation then stepped in to spoil outward taste and inward comfort at one stroke. How grandly the low winter-morning sun lights them up into warm dazzling sheets of gold, and how finely they contrast with the cold grey walls in which they are set, row under row, like the jewels in Aaron's breastplate. See their borrowed light thrown back upon those stately yews under the terrace, where it meets and mingles with its parent light, as though sun and moon were shining together. Old as the house is, those yews must be older: they must have thrown as sombre an arch over that road in days when squires led thereon horses for knights, as they throw now over these grooms leading horses for squires; and have dipped their branches as now into that dyke in which the moorhens are flapping vigorously about, glad at the departed frost or scared at the tramp of many steeds, when it was a real serviceable moat, to be crossed only by a drawbridge, guarded with a frowning gate and portcullis. And equally old must be these gnarled and wrinkled oaks, under which we are standing, and fellows to which we have been passing all the way across the park, up to their knees in the red dry fern, or standing out in bold relief on little knolls of primæval turf, the straggling remains of the old Royal forest; for this country-side has been famous as a hunting

ground from the day when a Norman king fenced it round with the most stringent of all possible gamelaws, and falconry and venery held the throne which has come down uninterruptedly to their lineal descendants, pheasant-shooting and fox-hunting.

But we mustn't linger; let us go in to breakfast. We must wade up to the front-door knee-deep in a sea of waving tails, and hanging ears, and sedate-looking noses eager for the scent; for here is Jim Tops and his pack disposed on the open flat before the house, levelled formerly for a courtyard or a bowlinggreen, or some other absurd enclosure, in days when our sires lived more for the gratification of the mouth than the eyes, and did their best with trees and brick walls to shut out air and scenery from their dwellings. Good morning, Jim; fine day for scent; yes, coming out on the wooden horse again. I know that Jim nurses in his heart a lofty contempt for me apropos of my pedestrian appearances with his hounds, and associates me with poor old half-brained Tallyho Jack, who, in a ragged and soiled hunting coat-once red, now purple with age (and very little other clothing to add to the inventory) has run with them for these thirty years, and picked up many a hard-earned sixpence by opening the opportune gate or retrieving the riderless horse. But Jim loves his joke, thinking indeed a great deal of a very small one, and invariably reproduces an old comparison of my walking-stick to a horse once made by me, which has done duty in tickling his fancy and keeping him civil ever since. He once expressed his opinion of me very succinctly to a mutual friend, 'Yes, sir, he be a pleasant-spoken gen'lman, but Law bless you!'

In we go, and find the glorious old entrance-hall spread orthodoxly as a refectory, with a double line of table down its length and a third crossways on the daïs, and the grim old figures portrayed above the wainscot staring down from their regions of armour and escutcheons, of antlers and other

trophies of the cotemporary chase, on their successors in field and feast, who, let us hope, are about to do as much justice to their memory in the former as they certainly are now doing in the latter. And there is the Squire, ready like the rest for the fray, with his coat in its war-paint, moving about with a word of welcome for everybody, and looking like a chief as he is. And there at the top of one table, presiding at an enormous urn, and surrounded by heroes in red, green, and black, entering into their topics of turnips and horses and magistrates' meetings, as if these had long been the special subjects of her own attention-evidently rather proud of the gentle air to which these rough natures tame themselves while in her presence, but quiet and dignified and self-possessed-sits Edith, his niece, enthroned the queen of the feast, the tea-pot her orb, and the sugartongs her sceptre. It is only possible to achieve a few hurried words with her over a coffee-cup, such is the throng of courtiers demanding audience, and we must content ourselves with breakfast down here below the salt as a penalty for our late arrival.

I

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should recommend you, as you value your condition, to take just as little coffee as may prevent positive drought, and to remember that Kedgeree, though a viand admirable to the palate, is scarcely so well suited for the wind. If we were training selon les règles, we should quench our thirst with a dry biscuit, and stop up our hunger with a nearly raw beefsteak; but perhaps it is rather too late to begin such asceticisms a few minutes only before the start, and the benefit to be derived might be scarcely worth the excitement which such an order would create among the Squire's servants.

But everybody is turning out, and we must leave breakfast, whether scientific or purely sensual, for more exciting scenes. Isn't it a great sight to see that fine old fellow, Sir Melton, riding off at the head of his pack?-his grey hair streaming out from under his hat, but his figure as erect and firm in the saddle, and his nerve as unshaken, as when in a great county crisis he first took these hounds-a date beyond the memory of any one now following him, except perhaps that of Tallyho Jack aforesaid. The Squire, too, is as conspicuous among the troop as Saul