class="smcap">As I was walking with him last night, he asked me how I liked the good man whom I have just now mentioned? and without staying for my answer told me, that he was afraid of being insulted with Latin and Greek at his own table; for which reason he desired a particular friend of his at the university to find him out a clergyman rather of plain sense than much learning, of a good aspect, a clear voice, a sociable temper, and, if possible, a man that understood a little of backgammon. "My friend," says Sir Roger, found me out this gentleman, who, besides the endowments required of him, is, they tell me, a good scholar, though he does not show it. I have given him the parsonage of the parish; and because I know his value, have settled on him a good annuity for life....

At his first settling with me, I made him a present of all the good sermons which have been printed in English, and only begged of him that every Sunday he would pronounce one of them in the pulpit. Accordingly he has digested them into such a series, that they follow one another naturally, and make a continued system of practical divinity.

As Sir Roger was going on in his story, the gentleman we were talking of came up to us, and upon the Knight's asking him who preached to-morrow, for it was Saturday night, told us, the bishop of St. Asaph in the morning, and Dr. South in the afternoon. He then showed us his list of preachers for the whole year, where I saw with a great deal of pleasure, Archbishop Tillotson, Bishop Saunderson, Dr. Barrow, Dr. Calamy, with several living authors who have published discourses of practical divinity.

Last night I lay at the Swan Inn in Lathbury town. A sad night I had of it! My chamber was warmed fair enough by a fire of sea coal. There was a sweet smell of lavender in the sheets which a hot warming pan had also made comfortable. All this promised well, but Polly had forgot to put my silk night cap into my saddlebags! That vexed me sore! All night I felt I was taking a rheum. Some clodhoppers roystering in the tap room forbade sleep at first and as I am not wont to hear the quarters stricken the Abbey bells roused me at frequent intervals and made me swear roundly. About midnight the Royal Mail rolled over the bridge with a noise fit to wake the Seven Sleepers! The hoof beats of its cattle echoed on the stone walls of the houses like a salute by His Majesty's Footguards! How I ached for my quiet chambers in the Temple. At length I fell to sleep and so sound that when I waked the sun had long been shining through my lattice. I was late in meeting the Squire and the Vicar, and that too after making express this arduous ride. Indeed I was vexed—and I showed it.

The Swan is a venerable and rambling building, stretching itself lazily with outspread arms; one of those inns (long may they be preserved from the rebuilders!) on which one stumbles up or down into every room, and where eggs and bacon have an appropriateness that make them a more desirable food than ambrosia. The little parlor is wainscotted with the votive paintings—a village Diploma Gallery—of artists who have made the Swan their home.

III

UPTHORPE-CUM-REGIS

The Village

One almost expects to see a fine green moss all over an inhabitant of Steyning. One day as I passed through the town I saw a man painting a new sign over a shop, a proceeding that so aroused my curiosity that I stood for a minute or two to look on. The painter filled in one letter, gave a huge yawn, looked up and down two or three times as if he had lost something, and finally descended from his perch and disappeared. Five weeks later I passed that way again, and it is a fact that the same man was at work on the same sign. Perhaps when the reader takes the walk I am about to recommend to his attention—a walk which comprises some of the finest scenery in Sussex—that sign will be finished, and the accomplished artist will have begun another; but I doubt it. There is plenty of time for everything in Steyning.

If our old English folk could not get an arched roof, then they loved to have it pointed, with polished timber beams on which the eye rested as on looking upwards through a tree. Their rooms they liked of many shapes, and not at right angles on the corners, nor all on the same dead level of flooring. You had to go up a step into one, and down a step into another, and along a winding passage into a third, so that each part of the house had its individuality. To these houses life fitted itself and grew to them; they were not mere walls, but became part of existence. A man's house was not only his castle, a man's house was himself. He could not tear himself away from his house, it was like tearing up the shrieking mandrake by the root, almost death itself.... Dark beams inlaid in the walls support the gables; the slight curve of the great beam adds, I think, to the interest of the old place, for it is a curve that has grown and was not premeditated; it has grown like the bough of a tree, not from any set human design. This too is the character of the house. It is not large, not overburdened with gables, not ornamented, not what is called striking, in any way, but simply an old English house, genuine and true. The warm sunlight falls on the old red tiles, the dark beams look the darker for the glow of light, the shapely cone of the hop-oust rises at the end; there are swallows and flowers and ricks and horses, and so it is beautiful because it is natural and honest. It is the simplicity that makes it so touching, like the words of an old ballad ... why even a tall chanticleer makes a home look homely. I do like to see a tall proud chanticleer strutting in the yard and barely giving way as I advance, almost ready to do battle with a stranger like a mastiff.

IV

UPTHORPE-CUM-REGIS

The Hall

There he lies, Fundator Noster, in his ruff and gown, awaiting the great Examination Day.... Yonder sit some threescore old gentlemen pensioners of the hospital, listening to the prayers and the psalms. You hear them coughing feebly in the twilight,—the old reverend blackgowns.... How solemn the well-remembered prayers are, here uttered again in the place where in childhood we used to hear them! How beautiful, and decorous the rite; how noble the ancient words of the supplications which the priest utters, and to which generations of fresh children and troops of bygone seniors have cried Amen! under those arches!