perfect order, but there was nothing about it which seemed in keeping with the old farm-house. When, four miles on, I stopped to feed my horses, the landlord, looking in my carriage, exclaimed, "Hello, did you buy Jake's pewter pitcher?" and then said Jake had bought it at another sale years ago, on speculation, and had carried it afterwards to every "vandue," trying to find a purchaser.

In the autumn of that year I drove again through the same country, sometimes on the same, mostly on other roads. The aspect of the hills and valleys was now very different. October is a golden month for carriage travel; on some accounts more pleasant than any other month in the year, both for horses and travelers.

The road passed through a forest, unbroken for half a mile. On the right a stream wandered over rocks, and under little bluffs of moss, bright green miniature copies of mountain bluffs along the courses of mighty rivers. Now and then, where the stream fell into a pool, the lower end of the pool was dammed with autumn leaves, yellow and red and brown, and in the whirl of the pool you could see the same colored leaves going around and around, and the water looked as if it were clearer and colder for their presence. The road was covered over with leaves, a yellow carpet, and every few minutes the light breeze would freshen up a little and shake the higher branches of the trees, and send down a shower of leaves, which flitted and darted to and fro, flashing in the sunshine, and falling on our laps and all around us.

At length the road, which going up a gentle ascent left the brook away in the woods, emerged into open country, and we found ourselves on the top of a hill. Before us spread one of those beautiful landscapes in which New England is richer than any other part of the world that I know of. The road descended into an oval basin, some three miles long and a mile broad, the bottom and sides of which were, or had been, cultivated farm lands, except where a small lake slept motionless. It was surrounded by low hills, up the sides of which the fields extended, here and there one of them glowing with the buff and gold of corn stubble and scattered pumpkins. Along the ridges, where the fields did not go over them, were groves of maple and birch whose autumn colors were intensely bright, while down. the slopes lay many abandoned fields gone to brush,-mauve,

maroon, crimson, and purple-colored with their dense growth of bushes, scarlet-lined along the fences by rows of sumac.

If you can show me anywhere in the world landscapes which are as rich and varied in color as our northern landscapes in America, or which are more beautiful in the form and contrast of valley and hill, I will go far with you to see them. Autumnal foliage with many is thought to be the changed color of the forest leaves, and few have observed the wonderful painting of landscapes in the autumnal colors of the low bushes. Many of our New England rivers, in October, flow between banks and around low gravel islands which are unbroken masses of crimson, from a plant not a foot high, covering every inch for acres. And the shades are even more beautiful than the intense colors, -soft, rich, and delicate as old embroideries.

There was no village in the valley. As I drove along the road which led nearly through the middle of it, I came, at a cross-road, to a grave-yard of an old church. That it was once a church, the remains of a tower or spire indicated, and its location,— a hundred feet from both roads, in the grave-yard,-demonstrated. There had never been any fence around the lot except the rough-laid loose stone wall which serves for fence in all parts of our country where stone is plenty. And no better or more picturesque fencing can be, especially if people will plant along such walls any of the many beautiful vines which abound everywhere, and thrive luxuriantly in just such places. But no vines had ever been planted here. Not a solitary bush or tree grew in the grave-yard. Even grass seemed to have run out from lonesomeness and neglect, so that the ground looked like an old worn-out pasture lot; the only break in the desolate aspect being a stunted sprig of golden-rod which gleamed in front of the church door.

I passed it, careful not to tread on it, and tried the door, found it open, and went in. The interior was a sad ruin, through which the breeze was free to blow; for there was no glass in any window, nor indeed now any need of glass, since it was plain enough that there had not been for long time any assembling of people here to worship. The pulpit, nearly round and high up, backed by a large window, had once been reached by a winding stairway, now broken down. The pews, which were built of pine without paint, were in fair preservation. The plaster on the walls and flat ceiling had mostly fallen off,

and lay in the pews and on the floor of the aisles. I could see the blue sky through one great rift overhead, where the roof timber had fallen in and crushed down the ceiling.

No places are filled with such profound interest to thoughtful men as those spots in which their fellow-men of former generations were accustomed to assemble for the worship of God. And places of Christian worship are more deeply interesting, because of the characteristics of that worship which distinguish it from all others. In no other have men approached Deity with the sense of personal unworthiness which only their God can remove, and with faith in his fatherhood and brotherhood, his personal presence among them, and his love for them. From the early ages of the Christian Church this immediate and close relationship between God and man has been a distinguishing characteristic of old Christian art; whose earliest representations of his personality are as the Good Shepherd, carrying home a lost and found lamb of his flock. If that faith which directs their prayers be indeed the substance of the things hoped for, then the place where men meet their God is so truly the house of God that one is at a loss to understand those who deny any special sanctity in it. But however irreverent be their regard for the church which they themselves frequent, I think there are very few who can without some serious emotion enter an old church, in which generations of men and women and children have worshiped, who are now lying in silent graves around it.

I don't think you, my friend, whatever your creed or your sympathies, could have sat with me in one of those plain pine pews, seeing the sunshine of that autumn falling through the shattered building on the ruined interior, and have failed to appreciate something of the sanctity of the old place of prayer. It was early noon. Through the broken roof one broad stream of golden light fell on the open place between the front pew and the pulpit. There the table used to stand which they called their Lord's Table, and from which they received, as their catechism expressed it, "by faith, "- that is, by the highest assurance men can have,-unhesitating belief, the body and blood of Him they worshiped. There one by one, when the work and worry, the sorrow and sin, of this life were ended, they were laid with closed eyes and calm faces, and thence carried out to the gathering-place of the dead. Where are they now, strong men and matrons, young men and maidens, little children and patriarchs? As I asked myself the question, I walked across the floor

to a window and looked out. Yes, they were all lying there, as so many millions of the Christian dead all over the world lie, in circles that sweep over the surface of the globe, ever-widening circles as their faith has extended among men, all with their faces heavenward and their feet towards Jerusalem.

We spent more than a half-hour in the old church. I climbed by the wrecked stairway into the pulpit. Its interior casing was falling to pieces, and in a recess within were some scraps of paper, which had slipped between the boards from the shelf under the desk. On one was a memorandum of the minister for notices to be given of the weekly prayer-meeting at Mr.'s house, and a Thursday night lecture at the school-house on the mountain. On another was a funeral notice. There was nothing else legible, except a torn scrap, the lower part of a leaf of a hymn-book, and on this was a stanza not unfitting the associations of the place. So, for the moment, I assumed the position of the erstwhile minister, and said from the pulpit, "Let us sing:

"Oh, what amazing joys they feel,

While to their golden harps they sing,

And sit on every heavenly hill

And spread the triumphs of their King!'”

There were only three of us, but one was leader of a choir in an up-country church; and we sang a good old tune, which perhaps they who were now silent around the church used to sing to the same words-and perhaps will some day sing again.

And while we were singing I saw a vision; not supernatural, but as lovely for the moment as any imagination. In the open doorway, at the other end of the church, was standing a little child, a girl of five years old, dressed in white, with masses of red-gold hair, which the wind, coming in from behind her, was waving and shaking. Her great blue eyes were looking with wonderment while she listened. As the sound ceased she vanished. We might have thought it an apparition, but that, going to the door, we saw her running down the road as fast as her little feet would carry her, towards a large farm-house nearly a half-mile off. Her story told at the house might have been the foundation of a midday ghost story for the neighborhood,— the coming back of old-time people to sing an old hymn in the ruined church. But they could hardly suppose that ghosts would come in a traveling carriage drawn by a very solid pair of gray horses.

MATTHEW PRIOR

(1664-1721)

O ONE is better qualified to speak of Matthew Prior than the accomplished writer of vers de société (and work of a higher order), Austin Dobson, who brought out in 1889 an edition of 'Prior's Selected Poems,' with an introduction containing several corrections of generally accepted data. He concludes his introductory essay with the words: "Prior has left behind him not a few pieces which have never yet been equaled for grace, ease, goodhumor, and spontaneity; and which are certain of immortality so long as there is any saving virtue in 'fame's great antiseptic-Style.»»

MATTHEW PRIOR

There is doubt regarding the place of Prior's birth, on July 21st, 1664; but the evidence points to Wimborne Minster in East Dorset, England. His father is thought to have been a joiner, who removed to London, and sent his son to Westminster. After his parents' early death, young Matt was adopted by his uncle, a vintner, who lived in Channel (now Cannon) Row; and it was here behind the bar that he attracted the attention of the Earl of Dorset, who found him reading Horace and Ovid. Aided by this rich patron, he returned to Westminster school, forming a friendship with Charles and James Montagu (the former afterwards founder of the Bank of England, and Earl of Halifax,- dubitably Pope's "Bufo" in the 'Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot'), and going with them to Cambridge, where he took his bachelor's degree in 1686. His first piece of clever writing, a parody of Dryden's poem The Hind and the Panther,' was executed at this period in collaboration with Charles Montagu, who, like Prior, was freshly wearing his college honors. The greater part was Prior's, and the jeu d'esprit was published as 'The Hind and the Panther Transvers'd to the Story of the Country Mouse and the City Mouse' (London, 1687), and bore such mottoes as "Much Malice mingled with a little Wit." It has no great merit aside from boyish animal spirits, but may be accepted as a prophecy of better work now that we know the better