"Be this true, my little foot-page,
My lands I'll give to thee;
An be it not, thy day is done,
A dead corse thou shalt be."

IIe called down his head cook man,
The page he bent his knee;
"The supper dress, my lady call
This night to sup with me!"

"What is your will, my own wed lord,
What is your will with me?"
"I'm sick to death, my lady fair,
And would be nursed by thee."

"An you be sick, my own good lord, Who me so young did wed,

It grieveth me full sorely,

Myself will make your bed.

"And at the end of your first sleep,
A hot drink I will make;
And at the waking from your sleep,
Your sorrows will have slake."

He put a silk coat on his back,

Mail of many a fold,

And put a steel cap on his head,
Was gilded with red gold.

He layd a bright sword by his side,
A harvest for to reap ;

And then full well old Robin knew
Whether he'd wake or sleep.

About the middle of the night
Came the Lady's cousens in ;

Sir Gyles he was the foremost knight
To 'gin the bloody din.

Old Robin with his own bright sword
Sir Gyles his head did win;
So did he all his followers,
Who ne'er went out again.

Up, then, came that lady fair,
With torches burning bright;
She thought to give Sir Gyles a drink,
But found her own wed knight.

Straight fell he on that maid of Lyn,
Daughter of the Mayor,

And slew her with his vengeful sword,
That lady young and fair.

Then call'd he forth his own foot-page,
And shook his trembling hand;
He gave him all his worldly wealth,
And sail'd for Holy Land.

My father reads the ballad as I have heard him read it many a time in the days of my youth. It is a notable circumstance that the memory will often go back and count up in detail circumstances and events of years ago, while occurrences of a few hours' date will slip from the present thinking without an apparent trace, to crop up years hence perhaps, bright and fresh as these remembrances of my boyish days are now.

The Dean of Wulstan called occasionally at the Old House of Sidbree; once in three months perhaps. His reverence was a patron of art, and a student of dramatic and ballad literature. My father delighted in these visits, and used to tell me now and then what the Dean said. I have no recollection of my mother, who died when I was an infant. There is a grey tombstone in the churchyard, not far from the old house. I have seen my father look sad when we have passed it on our way to prayers. We used to go to the parish church on Sundays before my name appeared on the books of the Cathedral school.

My father was a grand old man of the grand old school of Tory gentlemen. He was full of chivalric sentiment and loyalty. His hatred of Puritanism was almost a disease. He allowed it to warp his judgment. There was a pamphlet extant describing an interview of the Devil and Cromwell in the wood on the hill near our house. My father believed every word of it. He painted the scene and filled old Noll's face so full of warts and blotches that the Protector in my father's picture looked more sinister than the Devil himself. And so he was in my father's estimation.

VOL. VII., N.S. 1871.

C

Had my father known that I had the audacity to be in love with the Dean of Wulstan's daughter, he would have regarded me as a rebel against honour, duty, and good faith. He might tolerate in a ballad or a picture the aspiring and ambitious love of a page or doughty squire, but he would never have forgiven such wild passion in a schoolboy, and that boy his own son.

It is the nature of love to be ambitious, to aspire. It takes no count of worldly differences in station. Love is unselfish, and knows no ignoble feeling. It is the pure flame of the mystic altar, lighted by the sun. True hearts are above gold and lands. Love laughs at common bonds. It knows no difference between prince and peasant. It sets the peasant in a glorious light of its own. The idol may be rich or poor, lowly born or high in station. Love heeds nought but the object worshipped. It levels all ranks, weds the wandering minstrel to the princess, and gives the beggar maiden to the king. loved the Dean of Wulstan's daughter, and should have loved her all the same had she called the sexton father.

Is it strange that with the sort of education which this chapter indicates, a lonely boy among books and pictures of romance, Border ballads and ancient armour; having that simple-hearted, chivalrous, picturesque artist for my father; and living in an ancient timbered house, full of ghostly shadows; is it, I ask, surprising that I grew up with ideas outside the pale of commonplace—a visionary, a dreamer, a being apart from the crowd, with a liking for studies less suited to the Church than to the stage? Shakespeare, Massinger, Ben Jonson were among my earliest books. My lightest reading was the "Arabian Nights" or such quaint Border ballads as my father found in the Cathedral Library or wrote himself. At school the best prizes were given for translations from the classic poets. I had an honourable place in the list for a rendering of a portion of the first book of the "Iliad," but I was invariably blamed for taking undue liberties with the text. I was nearly flogged once for doing the rage of Achilles against Agamemnon into a loose sort of ballad verse. The head master said I must have got my inspiration from a pot-house and my metre from the market place on Saturdays. He was right as to the latter charge; for I have stood many an hour listening to the ballad-mongers singing and selling their wares in Wulstan market. The influence on the common people of these Saturday songs might be taken as illustrative of the wisdom of Fletcher of Saltoun's friend in saying that if a person had the making of the ballads of a nation, he need not much care who had the making of the laws. Yet this tribute to the teaching, and influence, and truth of the ballad is

rather an unpleasant reflection, when we see that this class of composition is full of doubts concerning the honour of woman and thick with illustrations of her frailty and lack of virtue. It is the same with regard to our proverbs. Woman cuts a sorry figure in the proverbial sayings of every nation under the sun. The sex may

fairly retort that men wrote the songs and had a hand in giving shape and permanence to the proverbs. Woman is what man makes her. She should be judged with leniency and tenderness, with one thought for her sins and a thousand for her temptations.

CHAPTER V.

66 AN UNDYING PERFUME."

WAS it an ancient bard who loaded a half-forgotten verse with metaphorical images of memory?-or came the thought in some forgotten dream? Memory is the Divine link between what is past and what is yet to come. It is soul-thought, the action of the undying mind that lives apart from the body. It will be with us in the grave? Who shall answer? What is soul? Memory. What is memory? Soul. No; memory is not that; for memory is a soft and soothing dream of the past that looks for renewal in the future. What would memory be to the Perpetual Curate of Summerdale if he could not look onwards to meeting again that image of delight at whose feet Memory lays her treasures, and from the shadow of whose presence comes that which makes memory a comfort and a joy for ever. Memory is part of the living soul? Yes! it is an everlasting echo, an undying perfume, a continuing spring, a perpetual ray. In the days to come it will be a memento of the world that is gone. Even as these rose-leaves are a sweet-swelling memorial of those last sad-happy days on the banks of the silvery Thames.

Once a year I slip away to lay a flower upon her grave. Twenty years ago I had to travel half the distance by coach. Times are altered now. The Squire's cob carries me to Wulstan city, and thence to London by the train is but four hours' journey. Before I came to man's estate it was one of my dreams to live on the banks of the Thames, and she, my beloved, in after days, encouraged that ambition. It was a privilege, I thought, to live near the grand centre of the world; to feel the pulse-beat of civilisation's great heart; to be within the atmosphere most influenced by the outcome of Art and Science and Literature. My dreams came true! There is a house

within walking distance of the spot where the Druid tuned his harp and sang

"O Thames!

Large, gentle, deep, majestic, king of floods!"

The grand old elms still spread their branches over the flood, as they did twenty years ago. In truth, there seems less change hereabouts than in any part of London. Boat and barge and tiny yacht float gently by on the bosom of the tide. On Sundays the poor people come upon the Mall in their Sunday clothes to lean over the wall, and watch the traffic on the silent highway. They little think that the gray old man, who basks there also in the sun once a year, loves them for auld lang syne.

I noted one or two faces that were familiar years ago. I seem to see her in their wondering eyes as I slip a token of our relationship into their hands. There is no change in the quiet little house. It is the smallest house on the Mall; we were the only people who did not keep a carriage. "The Cottage" we called it. Next door was "The Retreat," and farther on "The Seasons." A modest house of three stories, The Cottage was built hundreds of years ago. It had looked out upon festive processions going down the Thames. It had seen gilded boat and barge going up and down to Kew, Hampton Court, and Richmond. My love and I often sat in the twilight at an open window, and weaved together tales of lords and ladies who lived in the romantic days before steamboats and telegraphs. Outside our little garden opening on the Mall there was a quaint old water-gate, and moored thereto we had a boat. A creaking wherry now on one day in every year comes near the water-gate, and hovers by the dear old house. The passenger is the Perpetual Curate of Summerdale floating by with his memories of the past.

If my parishioners at Summerdale could see their pastor, on this day set apart solely to her memory, what would they think of the preacher? And on a Sunday, too; for now and then the day comes back indeed, the very Sunday when she departed. In that chamberpoem of my latter days that begins its plaintive, touching wail with an apostrophe to the

"Strong Son of God, immortal Love,"

there is a passage in which my heart has a tender sympathy. The poet's experience goes side by side with mine. When on the gloom he strives to paint the face he knew, the hues are faint, and mix with hollow masks of night. Crowds of puckered faces come between