oaks, some riven and laid bare from summit to root with the thunderbolts of past tempests. An immense tree is called the Shamble Oak, being said to be the one in which Robin Hood hung his slaughtered deer, but which was more probably used by the keepers for that purpose. By whomsoever it was so used, however, there still remain the hooks within its vast hollow."

We lay last night
Had a long walk

But it is time to be up and off. in Mr. Tebbet's private meadow. before I could secure a suitable place. But the place was eminently quiet and exceedingly private, near lawns and gardens and giant elms. The elm that grows near the pretty cemetery, in which haymakers were so busy this morning, is, with the exception of the oak at Newstead Abbey gates, the finest ever I have seen; and yet an old man died but recently in Mansfield workhouse who remembered the time he could bend it to the ground.

Warsop, which we reached over rough and stony roads and steepish hills, is a grey stone village, the houses slated or tiled blue or red, a fine church on the hilltop among lordly trees, a graveyard on the brae beneath with a white pathway meandering up through it to the porch.

At the sixth milestone we reached a hilltop, from which we could see into several counties. Such a view as this is worth wandering leagues to look at. We watered the horses here, at the last of the Duke of Portland's lodges.

Then down hill again. How lovely the little village of Cuckney looks down there, its crimson

houses shimmering through the trees! We bought eggs at the inn called the Greendale Oak. There is a story attached to this oak which my reader has doubtless heard or read.

This is the land of oaks, and a smiling land too, a land of wealth and beauty, a great garden-land.

DONCASTER-BRENTLEY-ASKERN-DINNER ON A YORK

SHIRE WOLD.

"Was nought around save images of rest,

Sleep-soothing groves, and quiet lawns between,
And flowery beds, that slumberous influence kest,
From poppies breathed, and beds of pleasant green."

T is the morning of the 4th July, and a bright and beautiful morning it is. The storm clouds that yesterday lowered all around us have cleared away and the sun shines in an Italian sky. We are encamped in a delightful little level

meadow close to the worthy brewer and farmer to whom it belongs. How did we come here? Were we invited? No, reader, we invited ourselves.

Not quite liking the accommodation recommended to us by a villager, I called on Mr. E, and coylyshall I say "coyly?"-stated my case. Though good Mr. E has a wife to please, and the gentle, kindly lady is an invalid, he granted me the desired permission, and when we were fairly on the lawn and

the horses out and away, he made his report, like a dutiful husband, to his better half.

"They are gipsies," was the reply. "Are you aware of what you have done? Fowls or ducks will be missing to-morrow morning, to say nothing of every egg about the place."

"He's not a gipsy, but a gentleman," was the sturdy Yorkshireman's reply; "I've passed my word, and I'll no gang back on it."

But I think before the evening passed away, which it did, as Burns hath it,

"Wi' sangs and clatter,"

Mrs. Efound her husband was right, and this morning no fowls will be found missing, and never an egg.

This village of Brentley is a queer one. Were the houses built before the roads, I wonder, or the roads before the houses? The roads-I cannot call them streets-go up and down, and across and round and round and everywhere. The houses are small stone edifices, red-tiled, some whitewashed, most unpretentious in appearance. Ask a schoolboy of seven to sketch a house on his slate, and it is precisely one like these he will chalk you out. Then the houses stand in all directions, end on or any way you please: thoroughly independent, thoroughly Yorkshire. But thoroughly solid and substantial are these little edifices, like the people who dwell in them. They are not here to-day and away to-morrow, like your more pretentious brick buildings. Like the sturdy oaks in the forests around, they can stand unscathed the

storms of centuries.

The houses in Notts in which

the poorer classes live have quite a different character and style as a rule. Built in rows, and of three

storeys high, the upper row of windows are low and long, and seem to blink and leer at the passer-by in a way that is anything but pleasant to behold.

We stayed the night before last at the straggling village of Carlton-in-Lindrick, in a cherry orchard kindly lent us by its proprietor.

Tickhill is in Yorkshire, and the view from the hill-head about a mile before you enter it is very enchanting. The church at Tickhill stands boldly up on the horizon, and the houses-red-seem to shelter and nestle around it.

The remains of a fine old castle are here, a castle that in 1644 stood sturdily out for the king, but was finally dismantled and destroyed. The market-cross and a curious old house at Tickhill are worth a passing glance.

Doncaster is a delightful old place, though in the gathering gloom of a thunderstorm it did not appear to advantage.

I could pick out a dozen charming villages in this same Riding of Yorkshire that would make excellent health resorts. But travellers, alas! and invalids too, all go on the same old beaten tracks and miss the beauties of their native land. And the greater the loss to them.

Leaving Brentley about ten o'clock, we passed onwards through a country that some might call uninteresting. It is flat, but well treed, though the trees, principally oaks, are of lower growth, more