loveliness, and endowing the spectator with. organs of a more spiritual vision, so that in looking, one felt as if the golden thoughts of the genius who once dwelt among those trees were still living and shedding an ethereal light on every feature of the scene where they first found expression. One's soul would fain have taken wing at once, gently to glide down into the leafy retirement where Donne used to have those strange minglings of happy thought and plaintive feeling. I was soon down the hillside and through the pretty embowered lanes which led to the banks of the Wandle, and along by the old ivy-covered wall which remains to tell of Merton Priory.

Merton or Meretun, the town by the pond, is divided from Mitcham by an old bridge on which the pilgrim is tempted to linger and look into the quiet waters until they reflect visions of the successive generations which have lived and passed away from their flowery margin. There would be the death-scene of Cynewulf of Wessex, followed by the bloody struggles between Ethelred, Alfred, and their Danish foes. Then would pass the foundation ceremonies of the old Priory in 1117, with Ethelbert the sheriff figuring as the founder of the first wooden church, and its outstanding parish sanctuary still showing its ancient flint walls. Then would come the royal pomp of Henry the Third's Parliament and its issue of the famous 66 Statutes of Merton;" and then the rise of Merton College in 1264, under Walter de Merton, Bishop of Roch

ester.

But such visions were not the only enticements to linger. I would have sauntered in the nursery grounds hard by, which now cover the site of Nelson's dwelling during the intervals of his life ashore; especially by the side of the fishpond, the only thing left upon which he used to look; and there I would be regaled once more by the talk of the good though quaint old gardener, who moralized on the changes of times and seasons, and helped me by his native logic and the light of his own transparent simplicity of character, to distinguish between the common notions of greatness as attached to human titles, achievements, and fame, and that Christian childlikeness which the Divine mind esteems as the highest standard of greatness. That old man's homely remarks about looking away from self to Christ in order to be great in His kingdom or fit for His service, reminded me of a striking passage which once fell from the lips of

"But," says he, "as a thoughtful man, a pensive, a considerative man, that stands still for awhile, with his eyes fixed upon the ground before his feet, when he casts up his head, hath presently, instantly, the sun or the heavens for his object; he sees not a tree, nor a house, nor a steeple by the way; but as soon as his eye is departed from the earth, where it was long fixed, the next thing he sees is the sun or the heavens:-so when Moses had fixed himself long upon the consideration of his own insufficiency for this service, when he took his eye from that low piece of ground, himself, considered as he was then, he fell upon no tree, no house, no steeple, no such consideration as this-God may endow me, improve me, exalt me, enable me, qualify me with faculties fit for this service,—but his first object was that which presented an infallibility with it, Christ Jesus Himself, the Messiah Himself."

Now, however, I must needs hasten to Donne's village retreat. Another half-hour, and there is the village green. Who could wonder that finely framed spirits should have chosen a home in that old Surrey village?

There were but few tokens of antiquity in the architecture of either cottages or mansions; but there were still the broad, free, fresh-looking "greens," the "upper" and the “lower" green, the latter still graced with some rows of noble old elms, the venerable relics of that leafy border which once beautified the village "folk-land," and afforded shade to the old and the young who used to sport or doze in the open air of summer-tide. The church, of course, was to be visited first of all. It was a comparatively modern building, of pleasant proportions and appearance, covering the site on which several earlier sanctuaries had echoed to the prayers of former generations. The one in which Donne had often worshipped was destroyed by lightning about six years after he had joined "the Church of the First-born, written in Heaven."

I found an old woman in the church, who remembered the building which followed that of Donne's time, and which was taken down to make way for the present erection.

"I have been here over fifty years," she said, "and since my time all the old families have gone; here are some of their tombs along the aisles. One of the oldest you see is that of the Crowleys; here they lie." And, lifting the matting, she showed me an old slab in the floor,

suspension of the soul, which doth then communicate itself to two bodies; and as I would every day provide for my soul's last convoy, though I know not when I shall die, and perchance I shall never die, so for these ecstasies in letters, I oftentimes deliver myself over in writing when I know not when those letters shall be sent to you, and many times they never are, for I have a little satisfaction in seeing a letter written to you upon my table, though I meet no opportunity of sending it."

"Which is the best inn in Mitcham ?" I inquired of a lad who was passing just as I finished my first ramble through the village.

"Why the King's Head, of course."

"Of course! Why 'of course'?" was my question to myself, as at a first glance I compared the "King's Head" with a stuccoed, pretentious, modernized "public" on the other side. The lad, however, was right. The King's Head was the old original," a venerable brick building, with its shadowy elms in

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front, and its antique sitting-room upstairs. That lad had good sense and fine taste-at least I think so; he loved antiquity, and like a good fellow, stuck to old friends. The "King's Head" was my inn, "of course;" and there I found a cheerful welcome, and entertainment that was really worthy of an old English inn.

Mitcham will always live among my trea sures of memory; while it must ever have a special charm for those who lovingly study Donne's character and life while he sojourned in it. To Donne's experiences in that peaceful old Surrey village we probably owe a sentence, which, by the light and influence of its just thought and graceful expression, has often helped those whose life's discipline has been like his to "sing of mercy and judgment":

"This is the difference between God's mercy and His judgments, that sometimes His judg ments may be plural, complicated, enwrapped in one another, but His mercies are always so, and cannot be otherwise."

At my boots were set out at night to be blacked. In the morning no boots were there, though all the neighbouring rooms had been served. I rang. I rang twice.

"A pretty hotel!-nearly eight o'clock, going out at nine, breakfast to be eaten, and no boots yet."

The waiter came, took my somewhat emphatic order, and left. Every minute was an hour. It always is when you are out of temper. A man in his stocking-feet, in the third story of a hotel, finds himself restricted in locomotion. I went to the door, looked up and down the hall, saw chamber-maids; saw, afar off, the master of the coal-scuttle; saw gentlemen walking in bright boots, unconscious of the privileges which they enjoyed, but did not see any one coming with my boots. A servant at length came, round and ruddy-faced, very kind and good-natured, honest and stupid. He informed me that a gentleman had already taken

boots No. 78 (my number). He would hunt him up; thought he was breakfasting. Here was new vexation. Who was the man that had taken my number and gone for my boots? Somebody had them on, warm and nice, and was enjoying his coffee, while I walked up and down, with less and less patience, who had none too much at first. No servant returned. I rang again, and sent energetic messages to the office. Some water had been spilled on the floor. I stepped in it, of course. In winter cold water feels as if it burned you. Unpacked my portmanteau for new stockings.

Time was speeding. It was quarter past eight: train at nine, no boots and no breakfast. I slipped on a pair of sandal-rubbers, too large by inches for my foot, and while I shuffled along the hall, they played up and down on my feet. First, one shot off; that secured, the other dropped on the stairs. It was very annoying.

Reached the office, and expressed my mind. First the clerk rang the bell three times furiously, then ran forth himself, met the boots, who had boots 79 in hand, narrow and long, thinking perhaps I could wear them. Who

knows but 79 had my boots? Some curiosity was beginning to be felt among bystanders. It was likely that I should have half the hotel inquiring after my boots. I abhor a scene. Retreated to my room. On the way thought that I would look at room 77's boots. Behold, they were mine! There was the broken pullstraps; the patch on the right side, and the very shape of my toe,-infallible signs! The fellow had marked them 77 and not 78. And all this hour's tumult arose from just the difference between 7 and 8.

I lost my boots, lost the train, lost my temper, and, of course, lost my good manners. Everybody does that loses temper. But, boots once on, breakfast served, a cup of coffee brought peace and good-will. The whole matter took a ludicrous aspect. I moralised

upon that infirmity that puts a man's peace at the mercy of a chalk line.

Are not most of the pets and rubs of life as undignified as this? Few men could afford to-morrow to review the things that vexed them yesterday. They boast of being free, yet permit the most arrant trifles to rule and ride them. A man that is vexed and angry turns the worst part of himself out to sight, and exhibits himself to the pity and contempt of spectators. Who would put on a buffoon's coat and fool's cap and walk forth to be jeered ? And yet one's temper does worse by him than that. And men submit to it, not once, but often, and sometimes every day!

I wonder whether these sage reflections will make me patient and quiet the next time my boots are misplaced?

HEN a thing is flagrant, there seems to be a tendency to think it frequent. Thus one gross breach of trust by one member of a class or profession, shakes our confidence, even against our judgment and our will, in all. A single exorbitant lawyer's bill, for instance, gives us for life a horror of the law, and we submit to injustice or extortion from any other quarter rather than from that in future. Or, again, the evil life of one minister of a congregation is remembered in his own neighbourhood long after he has passed away; and, be his successor never so earnest, and of never so good report, there remains still in the hearts of many an unacknowledged distrust of all religion. Evil, though we all lift up our voices loudly enough against it, finds congenial soil in our hearts; and where it cannot bear its natural fruit of like evil living, it produces too often an unreasoning but all-distrusting cynicism; and thus, more widely than we think, "the evil that men do lives after them."

been what they are; they are knaves, but here is one who is fool as well as knave, and what can be worse than that ?" The thing is unnatural and unseemly, even to those whose standard is the very lowest; and to those whose hand and whose hopes are on the side of the good in the world's battle, it is painful as treason or desertion.

And the single instances which thus by the very power of evil which they possess fasten themselves in our memories-the boy who sat beside us at school, whose wickedness was a very byword, or that one "unfortunate" family with which we were at one time brought into contact-lead us, even before we are aware of it, to think that all are alike, until we find ourselves questioning whether a child "brought up in the way he should go," will not certainly "depart from it when he is old."

The numerous instances where the training of youth has been in good and manifestly for good also, where the hopes of Christian parents have been fulfilled in the lives of Christian children, and the good seed has remained and borne fruit to the third and fourth generation, are forgotten. They are not noticed, because they do not put themselves forward; and the very sense that "this is just as it should be" leads us to overlook them in our general estimate of the value of religious education, just as we set down a garden as "full of weeds " when there is fruit in it also.