thickly planted, with the gray tower of the mediæval church rising in the midst against the rich perspective of the moor. All this seemed crowded into our first impression of the village, to be renewed, with many added details, later; and we made this rapid survey as the coach rolled up to the inn porch, and we sat waiting for the luggage and parcels to be taken down from the roof. How much Americans owe to Dickens for their impressions of English inns! Our own, being of such nature, were somewhat dashed by the tranquillity of this old inn in the midst of its mediæval surroundings. The courtyard was too far in the rear to have its clatter reach us. A few loungers, it is true, stood about, talking together in shrill tones; but the arrival of the coach produced a momentary lull rather than any excitement. A tall thin boy, in very low shoes and tight-fitting corduroys, came out for our luggage, while a rosy-cheeked genuine "Devon maiden" stood ready to show us to our rooms. Not many tourists had ever staid a week in the little village. A few commercial travellers; my lord and lady having luncheon and changing horses, or stopping a moment on a hunting morning; a sprinkling of Londoners in the sporting season; various classes of pedestrians-these kept the landlord tolerably busy. But we had the choice of sev 44 MINE EASE IN MINE INN." eral rooms, and engaged a long low sitting-room, with deep window-seats and latticed casements, and sleeping-rooms in which the beds stood like great canopied thrones, heavy with red hangings and carved oak posts. Our sitting-room was on the ground-floor, and near by the staircases wandered to the upper rooms with delightful irregularity. The floors and walls were built chiefly of stone, the doors and wood-work were of solid oak, and in all the rooms the ancient windows remained unchanged. On the lower staircase the sides of a dozen steps were bordered with boots of various sizes and degrees of newness. As the days passed on, and these boots and shoes seemed never to find occupants, we began to wonder as to their purpose, and one of our party suggested that the owners walked out of them in procession in the morning, and into them at night. We never solved the problem; but there they stood, day after day, well cleaned, ready for instant service, two by two, in orderly perspective. Up stairs one of our rooms was a sort of turret chamber, with narrow convex windows high up in the wall, whence monks and, later, in its castle days, armed retainers may have gazed. The stone ledges below were slightly worn, the casements swinging with a creak that suggested ghostly visitants from a vanished world. From the upper windows queer angles of the village came in view. There was a small butcher's shop just below one casement; another overlooked the village school, with its morning sounds of shrill young voices; a third took in the courtyard of the inn, where hostlers were constantly employed, and whence the liquid Devon tones reached our ears now and then. "Yeu be goin' to Lunnon a' Michaelmas, bean't ye?" was one of the first sentences wafted up. The inn was tidily kept. The maids were flitting, busy young women, upon whom nearly all the work of the house devolved; the landlady and her eldest daughter presided over the tap-room, which was quite the place of one's fancy, with a perspective of cozy parlor, to which a fire-lit tea table gave a home-like air. The taproom seemed to be the general lounge toward night-fall of villagers who had opinions to give or ask, and some privileged visitors were invited into the landlady's sanctum, where her husband was fond of sitting with a rustling provincial newspaper and glass of steaming grog. The inn quite absorbed us for a day or two, so that we had grown somewhat familiar with Devon voices and ways before "Ay, oi be a-goin' teu deu summat o' we wandered about the streets, and vilthe soart." "Ay, yeu bean't te fule some o' the place thinks 'ee, John Morgan." This dialect was always spoken in a clear, cheerful voice, with no stammer, but a deliberate utterance, which made the words quite impressive. lage life and customs were unfolded to our view. Some previous experiences helped us greatly to understand it all. There is this about English country life: frank and open as it appears at first view, a gradual process of absorption is necessary before the mainsprings of its existence can be understood. One must live among the The leading trades-people wore an air people, observing even the trifling part of of great respectability; their shops were their life, before the social creed is appre- trim and fine, and their customers usually ciated. It is hard to reach the traditional deferential. This attitude of superiority influences of an English community, and was the great difference between London yet from these grow all the governing shop-keepers and themselves; except when facts, and a study of English country life some one obviously belonging to the under its various aspects is most interest-"gentry" appeared, the shop-keeper's tone ing to Americans, who see results at first without feeling the cause or meaning. The village streets entertained us greatly from the outset with their perpetual though tranquil animation: the moving figures of men, women, and children; the ever open doorways and bright tiresides; the flowers in every window; the silent, sunny spaces by the road-side; and the coming and going of wagons, carriers' vans, and coaches. The principal shops were the butcher's, the "tea-grocer's," the "green-grocer and poulterer's," the baker's, the dairyman's," and the "draper and mercer's." Around these prominent trades-people circled a few lesser lights: a cobbler, who worked most laboriously in his doorway, flanked by two grimy apprentices, and with a perpetual background of tall wife and clamorous children; the tailor, who occupied a neighboring house, and stitched in a fine old kitchen furnish ed with Chippen dales; he sat upon a table in a deep old window fairly overhung with flowers, and being a very old man, brought his eyes perilously near the needle at every stitch. Sometimes passers-by would tap on the window-pane, and then bring their heads in at the always open door. "How art 'ee, John Timbs?" we would hear them saying. was lofty; his wife and daughters, usually serving in the shop, would address the customers with various degrees of familiarity: "Well, now, Mrs. Bunting, what for you to-day?" or, "Well, Jane, what 'ee been sent for, my gell ?" or, "How do you do, Elizabeth Wills? Have 'ee come for something warm this weather?" These remarks would be accompanied by a good-humored condescension, which occasionally encouraged the customer to sit down and rest awhile between purchases, and possibly enter into family details. It is hard to characterize all this. Differing subtly from the intercourse in American country stores, it lacked our heartiness of question and response; our never-failing interest-called by the satirical curiosity; our readiness to be aston THE CHURCH. ished or amused. The English country man or woman possesses but slight faculty for any such expression or emotion: grave facts are received with an unruffled calm, and grief and joy alike seem robbed of all excitement; but there is a certain intensity in their brevity and quiet utterances not without its dramatic force, and critical moments are sometimes pathetic from their very silence. The shops were ranged in the two principal streets hard by the market-place. The butcher's, as is customary throughout England, was a very open-looking building, the butcher "On the go," from the tailor, who nev- | himself usually visible on the door-step, er turned a muscle toward them. We wondered often, seeing his intense application, whether the demand was greater than the supply; but all over the village his stitching was famous, and a good pile of corduroys and waistcoats was always waiting to be distributed. and all the best meats hung without, exactly as in the shops of Chaucer's day, or that chaotic period before the exchange was established to give system to trades-people and purchasers; the draper's had one bulging window, and a loud bell over the door; and the baker's win dow was principally filled with sweet cakes and buns, which formed so grievous a lure for the children of the neighborhood that there was always a row of little marks on the panes above the dangerous confections, and one never approached the baker's without sending a flock of juveniles flying in various directions. The shops were interspersed with houses and inns, nearly all of which were whitewashed and thatched. Many of the buildings were mediæval; some had curious old porches, with seats on either side, and a bit of flagged court; here and there appeared the peaked roofs and tiny windows of Henry the Seventh's day, and the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had furnished many models. In the humbler district every door stood open, morning, noon, and night, so that, going up and down the street, one could catch glimpses of a succession of interiors, all arranged much after the same fashion, all characterized by deep window-seats with high narrow casements, giving the prettiest background to the stone-flagged kitchens, with a bit of muslin curtain, and always the added grace of flowers. We used to think we had never seen in any part of the world so many flowers and children; both seemed to grow equally carelessly; every doorway overflowed with little people, bare-armed and bare-necked, but never barefooted; and every window was blooming with flowers and green with ferns. Away up at the end of the village street was the forge, always open, busy, and cheerful, its shadows giving a Rembrandt effect to the angle of the road in which it stood, and its luminous centre casting out lurid gleams in which the dusky farriers could be seen at their work, while outside was sure to be a group of idlers about the horses waiting to be shod: old men, in smock-frocks and broad-brimmed hats, leaning upon sticks; boys of every age from three to twelve; one or two shy, rosy-cheeked girls in holland pinafores, with bare red arms and enormous hobnailed shoes. Above this scattered group was the dense foliage of an old tree whose branches sheltered the roof and wide portal of the forge. It was a very pleasing road-side picture, characteristic of the village work and people, and formed one of the half-dozen centres for color and effect. One visitor after another, lounging up to the spot, would always address a very formal greeting to the smith and his men, deliberateness seeming to be the first principle among the villagers, and a certain sarcastic element occasionally lending zest to the conversation. "Thomas Endicott be whoam again: hast heerd, smith?" "Ay; bad news flies, Maister Jones." "Hast seen un?" 66 'Noa; but oi zeen un's wife, an' her showed her'd 'ad a onpleasant zurprize. These remarks, being uttered oracularly one morning in the group about the smithy, seemed to attract no special attention or resentment. Into this calmly conversing company came the prim figure of the curate, at sight of whom all voices fell, leaving the clang of the anvil suddenly predominant; and while the horses were being shod, the holy man entered upon a mild and genial conversation with the old man nearest him. The curate's was the most familiar ecclesiastical figure in the village. I often wondered if he appreciated the monotony of his life, the perpetual going about among schools and cottages and lanes. We used to see him, now and then, walking between two tall young women who were active parishioners, and seemed to enjoy "cottage visiting" intensely. Opinions, theories, tales of woe, questions of relief-all these seemed to float in and out of their talk as the restless philanthropists passed us. Socially the curate of a village is considered a dangerous sort of person, imbued with a marvellous deal of fascination for younger daughters and unguarded heiresses. He has a salary of from three hundred to eight hundred dollars a year, and on this not unfrequently he marries, looking forward, it may be through years of toil, to some "living" which a relation, friend, or patron holds. COTTAGE VISITING. The rector of the parish was rather an exclusive gentleman, elderly, refined, scholarly, comfortably off in this world's goods, and on intimate terms with all the leading county families. We used to see him occasionally, with his wife, in the church-yard, while the restoration of the old Norman church was going on, stopping for a word with some little "Mary Jane" of the village, and looking after the welfare of passing souls in a general and kindly fashion. As for the church itself, it became speedily the central attraction of the place for us. was a fine old building, gray-towered, and full of lustrous glass of the fifteenth century; the high, old-fashioned pews were rapidly giving place to new ones, yet enough remained to give the church that It |