Chapter II: Part 2

As a rule, however, the smugglers depended on hoodwinking and eluding the preventive men, and endless were their devices to gain their ends. Sometimes a vessel appeared off the coast behaving in a suspicious manner and leading the officers to believe she carried a cargo of contraband goods. At nightfall she exchanged signals with the shore, but when she was boarded, nothing wrong could be discovered. She was merely a decoy, and while the preventive men had been kept busy with her movements, another vessel had landed a cargo at some other point along the coast.

Along the shore are still to be seen many old houses, where devices have been arranged to aid smugglers. There may be a secret cellar entered by a hidden door, where casks were placed till the officers were out of the way, or a sliding panel in the wainscot, worked by a spring, is the door of a cupboard where bundles of lace could be concealed. Then there are secret hiding-places for the smugglers themselves when pursued by their enemies. In one house there is a stone wall which looks perfectly solid. But if a particular stone be pressed, a piece of the wall swings aside and gives entrance to a tiny closet built in the thickness of the wall. Here is just room for a man to hide, and when the door is closed on him, no one who does not understand the secret could discover where he is.

But the smugglers would soon have been suppressed had they not had many friends in the countryside. Many a farmer took care to turn a blind eye when he suspected that the smugglers were using one of his barns or sheds as a hiding-place. He knew very well that when they went he would find a cask left behind, and he took it, and nothing was said. The preventive officers made capture of contraband goods in the strangest of places--in the cellars of squires, who were justices of the peace and supposed to aid them, and more than once in a church, where a parish clerk or sexton, in league with the smugglers, had stowed away the forbidden casks and bales.

As for the smugglers themselves, they practised a thousand tricks to outwit their enemies of the law: they shod their horses backwards to throw their pursuers off the scent, they gave false information to draw the officers astray, they tried every device known to outwit them. One day a very active and zealous officer, much dreaded by the smugglers of his neighbourhood, made his appearance in a small fishing village at a very awkward time. In a cove below the cliff there was a string of loaded horses waiting for the darkness to come up the cliff road and gallop inland with their burdens. The preventive officer rode up to the inn, where the landlord, secretly quaking, for he was one of the smugglers, made a great show of welcoming him.

In a short time there was an uproar in the village street; one of the fishermen appeared to be beating his wife severely, and there was a great hubbub for a time. Before long the ill-treated woman came into the room where the officer was making a meal, and, apparently in a state of anger and agitation, accused her husband of being a smuggler, and offered to post the officer in a spot where he should have ample evidence of the guilt of the villagers.

"I'll put ye within a yard of 'em as they pass by," said the woman, "and then ye can get all their names and know where they are."

The officer, feeling sure that she was inspired by a spirit of revenge, agreed to follow her directions, and, as dusk began to settle down, he crept quietly to the back of her house, a spot which overlooked the cliff road.

The woman met him, and cautioned him not to make a sound. "For," said she, "if they get to know of ye, they'll take your life; they be such terrible smugglers hereabouts."

She bade him get into a large cask beside the back-door, and pointed out that he could see all who passed through the bung-hole. Eager to discover the smugglers and the way they would take, he did so. But no sooner was the unlucky man in the cask than a cover was popped on it by the woman's husband, hidden near at hand, and the cover was held down until it was firmly secured by hammer and nails. Then a spigot was driven into the bung-hole, and a voice shouted, "Come on, boys! We've boxed him up."

At the next moment the preventive officer heard the tramp of hoofs as the horses filed past the cask where he was shut up in utter darkness. The whole thing had been a trick from beginning to end. The quarrel between husband and wife had been a sham one, intended to lure the officer into the trap, and there he was fast in the cask; nor was he released until the smugglers were far beyond reach of pursuit.

THROUGH WESSEX--III.

Wessex has many beautiful and peaceful country towns, and of these an admirable example may be seen in Dorchester, the county town of Dorsetshire, a place often called the capital of Wessex. This very ancient town has seen the whole of the history of Wessex, the land of the West Saxons. Before a Saxon settled in the country it was a splendid city, the home of Roman nobles and the camp of Roman soldiery. The Romans knew it as Durnovaria, and they filled it with houses and adorned it with temples and theatres. To this day Roman remains are being discovered. An old house is pulled down and the foundations cleared away, and in the work the diggers come upon pavements which were laid down by Roman hands and trodden by Roman feet. Very often pottery and ornaments are discovered, and now and again a more striking relic still--the pick strikes into a Roman grave and lays bare a manly form which once marched with the legions, or the figure of a Roman maiden, whose ornaments still lie among her mortal remains.

After the Romans came the Saxons, and Dorchester was still a place of much importance. In 1003, Sweyn of Denmark plundered and burned the place and overthrew the walls in revenge for the massacre of Danes on St. Brice's Day in the previous year. But the town was soon rebuilt, and its history runs on through the centuries with outbreaks of fire and plague and records of martyrdoms, until war visited it again during the great Civil War. Dorchester stood against Charles, and saw some severe skirmishing in its neighbourhood, but no fighting of any great importance. But the reign of Charles's second son, James II., saw Dorchester leap into terrible prominence, for here, on September 3, 1685, was opened the "Bloody Assize." Sedgemoor had been fought, the rebellion of Monmouth had been broken, and the infamous Judge Jeffreys had come down to the West to strike terror into the hearts of all who had wished well to Monmouth.

More than 300 people had been crammed into Dorchester Gaol, and nearly all of them were condemned to death. Of these, some forty or fifty were executed, and others condemned to be whipped in terribly severe fashion, and to suffer long terms of imprisonment and heavy fines.

After the Monmouth Rebellion, Dorchester sank back into the peaceful history of a quiet country town--a history unbroken, save for local events of fire and storm, until to-day. The town still preserves much of its ancient character, and is a most interesting and picturesque place, and, on market-days, is thronged by people of typical Wessex appearance--dealers, farmers, carters, labourers, and pedlars.

To the south of the town stands a great amphitheatre, which is said to have been built by the Romans about the time of Agricola. It is called Maumbury Rings, and is a series of raised mounds enclosing an open space. It is calculated that some 12,000 spectators could have been seated round the amphitheatre, each enjoying an excellent view of the combats of gladiators or wild beasts in the arena below.

But a still more wonderful relic of former days is to be seen two miles south of Dorchester--the huge British earthwork, now known as Maiden Castle. It is an immense camp or hill-fort, built on the flat summit of a natural hill, and it must have cost the Britons who built it an immense amount of labour. It is the greatest British camp in existence, stretching 1,000 yards from east to west, and 500 from north to south, and enclosing an area of 45 acres. The whole is surrounded, in some places with two, and in others with three, ramparts nearly 60 feet high, and very steep. When these ramparts were manned by the warriors of the British tribe gathered within the fort, it was no easy place to storm.

Wessex has not many rivers, and most of them are not of any great size, but they are famous among fishermen for the splendid trout which they breed. These streams, running through the chalk, are marvellously clear; in many cases the stones may be counted at the bottom of a pool 10 or 12 feet deep, and this clearness makes the catching of the trout and grayling which live in them no easy affair.

The largest Wessex river is the Avon, which flows past Salisbury Plain, with its wonderful monument of Stonehenge; passes through Salisbury, whose beautiful cathedral spire is a famous landmark, and runs into the English Channel.

Stonehenge is the most ancient of all the ancient monuments of Wessex. We say that this camp was the work of the Britons; that pavement was laid by the Romans; but no one knows what manner of men raised the mighty standing-stones at Stonehenge. Nor do we really know why they were raised. We believe it was for the purpose of worship--that the stones form an ancient temple--but of this we cannot be quite sure.

Stonehenge consists of two circles of great stones, set upright in the ground. Across some of these stones others are placed to form arches, and though many have been broken or thrown down, there are still enough of them in position to show us the original shape of Stonehenge. The outer circle is about 100 yards round, and was formed by huge monoliths or single blocks of stone, each 15 feet high and 7 feet broad. The inner circle is 8 feet from the outer, and is composed of smaller stones about 6 feet high. There are two ovals, formed of large stones, and the inner oval contains a huge slab of rock, which is thought to have been an altar.

The question at once springs to our lips, Who raised these enormous blocks of stone, and set them up in so exact a fashion? It is one which learned men are unable to answer. The general opinion is that Stonehenge was formed as a temple for the worship led by the Druids, the priests of the ancient Britons, but of this one cannot be certain. The men who built Stonehenge have left no other record of their mighty labours save the vast stones they raised, and the secret of this most ancient monument is lost in the darkness of prehistoric days.

ROUND THE TORS.

If we journey on south-west beyond the chalk ranges of Wessex we come to a very different country indeed: we enter on a land of granite hills. The granite rocks are as different as possible from the chalk heights. Instead of rounded slopes, we see sharp, jagged peaks and broken, rocky ridges. The smooth, open stretches of turf are exchanged for wild, heathery moorland, broken by deep dells, and the waterless chalk slopes are replaced by glens, through which leap foaming torrents.

The granite hills rise to their wildest at Dartmoor, in the centre of the county of Devon. Dartmoor is a great tableland, from which spring granite heights rising to nearly 1,800 feet above the sea. For the most part Dartmoor is uncultivated, a wilderness of barren moorland, with lofty hills and jagged tors on every hand, here and there scored by narrow valleys, which are often strewn with huge boulders of granite.

The tors are huge knobs or humps of granite, and the word has the same meaning as "tower." The most famous of them all is Yes Tor. Round these tors stretch great sweeps of moor and morass. Nothing lives here save the moorland sheep, who crop the rough grass between the tufts of heather, and the hardy moor ponies--nimble, shaggy, little creatures, with long manes and tails, quick as deer and surefooted as goats.

In the midst of this desolate country stands a great prison--Dartmoor Convict Prison. The place was chosen so that no convict could hope to escape. Many of the prisoners go out by day to work in the fields around the prison. They are closely watched by warders armed with rifles. But for all that, now and again a convict makes an attempt to escape; yet, though he sometimes gets away from the warders and is free for a few hours, he is almost certain to be recaptured. He finds that he has only got into a larger prison--the prison of the moorland. There are no woods, so he cannot hide himself, and he cannot strike which way he pleases, for there are the bogs to think of.

In many places there are deep morasses in which a man would sink and be swallowed up by the soft mud. So the escaped prisoner dare not move by night lest he should run into a bog; then by day, if he attempts to traverse the country, he is soon seen; so that it is almost impossible to escape from Dartmoor.

Another stretch of country dotted with tors and covered with moorland is Exmoor, in the north of Devon. The hills of Exmoor are famous for their ponies and for being the haunts of the wild red-deer, which are sometimes hunted with staghounds.

But not all the countryside consists of rocky table-lands, strewed with craggy masses of granite. Far from it. Round these tors lies some of the most beautiful and fertile land in all England. North and south of Dartmoor are sweeps of country which yield the richest farm and dairy produce to be found anywhere. Famous breeds of cattle and sheep graze in the pastures. Devonshire "cream" is known and loved wherever it goes, and luscious cider is made from the apples of its splendid orchards.

Great numbers of visitors every year are drawn to this fair county to behold its beauties and to stroll through the Devonshire lanes. A Devonshire lane in the cultivated portion of the countryside has hardly its like elsewhere. The land is red, the earth of the soft red sandstone, and through this land the lanes run in deep, hollow ways, often so deep that a carriage is quite hidden from the view of one standing in the fields on either hand. One writer speaks of driving in a dogcart along one of these deep lanes on a day in late autumn, when he heard the cry of hounds. The hunt was coming his way, and he drew rein. Presently the hunt went whirling by, literally over his head. Horsemen and horsewomen cleared the lane, one after the other, in flying leaps, the big hunters taking the huge trench with tremendous bounds.

These trench-like lanes have been formed by the wear and tear of ages of traffic. In the soft red soil the crunch of wheels and the stamp of hoofs have worn the surface down and down, and rain has washed away the loose soil, until the lane itself has become, as it were, one vast rut.

"As lovely as a Devonshire lane" is a proverb; the rich red soil and the soft warm air of this southern county work together to form a scene of wonderful charm. The steep banks are one glorious mass of ferns, wild-flowers, and shrubs during spring and summer; in autumn they burn with the fires of the fading leaves; in winter they are bright with berries.

The coast-line of this region is very beautiful, whether it faces north or south, to the Atlantic Ocean or the English Channel. On the north there are great beetling cliffs, with lovely valleys, called "combes," running down to the sea between them. In describing the port of Bideford, Kingsley gives us an admirable idea of North Devon scenery on the first page of "Westward Ho!": "All who have travelled through the delicious scenery of North Devon must needs know the little white town of Bideford, which slopes upwards from its broad tide-river paved with yellow sands, and many-arched old bridge, where salmon wait for autumn's floods, toward the pleasant upland on the west. Above the town the hills close in, cushioned with deep oak woods, through which juts here and there a crag of fern-fringed slate; below they lower, and open more and more in softly-rounded knolls and fertile squares of red and green, till they sink into the wide expanse of hazy flats, rich salt marshes, and rolling sand-hills, where Torridge joins her sister Taw, and both together flow quietly toward the broad surges of the bay and the everlasting thunder of the long Atlantic swell. Pleasantly the old town stands there, beneath its soft Italian sky, fanned day and night by the fresh ocean breeze, which forbids alike the keen winter frosts and the fierce thunder heats of the midland."

A little to the west of Bideford lies the fishing village of Clovelly, famous for its striking position and the great beauty of its surroundings. Clovelly lies in the cleft of a tall cliff, and its single street straggles up and down the steep rock, upon which the houses are perched in every nook and corner where room to set a building could be found. All about the place are wooded cliffs, and for quaint old-world beauty this village is declared to be unmatched along the whole English coast-line.

Near Torquay, a well-known watering-place of South Devon, is a very remarkable cave called Kent's Cavern. You gain it by a hole in the rock, 7 feet wide and only 5 feet high; but inside you find a great cavern, 600 feet long, with many smaller caves and corridors branching away through the limestone rock.

This cavern was once the home of cave-men, those long-vanished inhabitants of our land. This has been proved by searching the floor of the cave. Deep down were discovered human bones and the remains of tools and weapons. Mingled with these were the bones of the elephant and the rhinoceros, the hyena, the bear, and the wolf. The tools and weapons were of stone, and it is plain that the men who once lived in the cave brought thither the wild animals they had slain with their arrows and spears, headed with flint. All this happened a long, long time ago, for some of the animal remains belong to creatures who have long since become extinct.

Torquay is but one of many lovely places lying along a splendid stretch of coast, for the beauties of South Devon are as striking as those of the north. Cliffs of bright red sandstone stand above the bright blue sea, and where the cliffs are absent the land falls easily to the water, warm and fruitful to the edge of the tide in that mild, genial climate.

"The rounded hills slope gently to the sea, spotted with squares of emerald grass, and rich red fallow fields, and parks full of stately timber trees. Long lines of tall elms, just flashing green in the spring hedges, run down to the very water's edge, their boughs unwarped by any blast; and here and there apple orchards are just bursting into flower in the soft sunshine, and narrow strips of water-meadows line the glens, where the red cattle are already lounging knee-deep in rich grass within two yards of the rocky, pebbly beach. The shore is silent now, the tide far out, but six hours hence it will be hurling columns of rosy foam high into the sunlight, and sprinkling passengers, and cattle, and trim gardens which hardly know what frost and snow may be, but see the flowers of autumn meet the flowers of spring, and the old year linger smilingly to twine a garland for the new."

THE LAND OF SAINTS.

Cornwall, that craggy promontory which England thrusts out into the Atlantic as a man might thrust out his leg, is often called the "Land of Saints." It gains this name because every other village is named after a saint, and for the most part they are saints unknown to the calendar, and never heard of in other parts of the country. There are St. Cuby and St. Tudy, St. Piran and St. Ewe, St. Blazey and St. Eve, St. Merryn and St. Buryan, St. Gennys and St. Issey, and scores of other strangely-named saints.

The names of these saints take us back to a time when England was a heathen country, and our Saxon forefathers still followed the worship of Odin and Thor. Cornwall, then, was filled with British Christians, driven west before the Saxon inroads, and the land abounded with Celtic saints, many of them from Ireland, Wales, and Brittany.

Every saint founded a church, bearing his name, and in time the village which grew up around the church took the name, and often bears it to this day. The process of founding was in this fashion: When the saint, during his wanderings through the land, came to a place where he thought a church was needed, he begged a small piece of land from the chief of the tribe living in that spot. Upon this patch of territory the saint abode, fasting and praying for forty days and nights, and at the end of that period the patch of land was sacred to him for ever, and bore his name. Then he and his disciples built a church there, and sometimes a monastery gathered about it. When the saint had placed all in order at one spot, he often moved on to another, and founded a fresh church there.

The old saints were much loved by the people, for they were always using their influence with the chiefs and great men on the side of mercy and kindness towards the poor and helpless. Many stories were told of them, and are still remembered. One day St. Columba was walking along the road, when he saw a poor widow gathering stinging-nettles. He asked her why she did it, and she replied that she was too poor to buy other food, and that she gathered nettles for the pot.

"Then," said Columba, "while my people are so poor, I will eat no better food."

He went back to the monastery and said to the disciple who prepared his food: "From this day I will eat nothing but nettles."

But, after a time, the disciple saw that the good old man was getting very thin and weak, and it troubled him. So he took a hollow elder-stalk, filled it with butter, and stirred the butter into the nettle-broth.

"The nettles have a new taste," said St. Columba; "they are rich and sweet. I must see what you have put into them;" and he came to see them cooked.

"You see, master dear," said his disciple, "I do not put anything into the pot save this stick, with which I stir them."

In a rough and cruel age the saints taught people to be kind to children and to poor dumb beasts and birds. Here is a story of a saint and a child.

There was a saint whose name was St. Maccarthen, and the ruler of his countryside was King Eochaid. One day the king sent his little son with a message to the saint. The little boy's mother gave him a red, round apple to eat on the way. The boy played with his pretty apple as he went, tossing it up and catching it. As it happened, it rolled from him and was lost. The child hunted here and there until he was tired out, and as the sun was setting he laid himself down in the middle of the way and went to sleep. As he slept, St. Maccarthen came along the road. The saint at once wrapped his mantle round the sleeping child, and sat beside him all night to guard his slumber. Many people passed along the way, but the saint turned them aside, for he would neither break the child's slumber nor permit an accident to befall him.

Many a saint had not only a church named after him, but a well also. Cornwall is full of "holy wells." In former days these wells were held to possess miraculous powers, and people came from great distances to drink the sacred water and make vows to the saint in whose honour the well was named. One of the best-known of these wells is the Well of St. Keyne. It was believed that, in the case of a newly-married couple, the first to drink of the water of this well would hold the mastery of the household. Southey has a ballad on this subject, describing how a bridegroom hurried from the church to the well. But all in vain: his wife had taken a bottle of the water to church with her!

Cornwall is a land of bleak, rugged granite heights and desolate moors, with lovely dells nestling amid the wilderness, combes filled with trees, and fields whose grass is green the winter through. Its coast is for the most part very dangerous, with immense cliffs, broken but by few openings. It is a coast to which the sailor gives a wide berth, especially in stormy weather, and if he fails to do so, he will almost certainly pay the penalty with his life. Many terrible shipwrecks have taken place off the shores of Cornwall, especially upon the deadly Manacles, the great reef near the Lizard, and the churchyards in the neighbourhood are full of the graves of many and many a drowned man or woman tossed up on the beach near at hand.

If you should go for a stroll on the cliffs about the Lizard some fine morning in July, you would see fishermen there, smoking and staring out to sea in, as it would seem to you, an idle fashion. But, suddenly, one of them, who has been sitting on the turf, springs to his feet. He begins to leap and yell as if he had gone mad. He points out to sea, and begins to roar over the edge of the cliff to his friends below. His companions on the watch now show an equal excitement, and you wonder what it is all about. You look long at the place to which they are pointing, and at length you make out that there is a darkish patch of water over which a number of sea-birds are hovering. It is a vast shoal of pilchards coming in-shore, and the apparent idlers on the cliff were watching for it.

The men on the cliff are called "huers"--shouters (from the French _huer_, to shout)--and their cries and signals direct their friends in the boats which way to pull to surround the shoal. From the surface the shoal cannot be seen, but the "huers" aloft can make out every movement of the vast mass offish, and guide the fishermen below.

A pilchard is a fish which looks much like a herring, but it is smaller, though it has larger scales. The shoals appear at the end of June, but at that time they are in deep water, and the fishing-smacks sail out in search of them and put down drift-nets. These nets are hung in the water like walls of hemp set across the drift of the tide. The pilchards swim into the nets, thrust their heads through the meshes, and are caught by the gills. This kind of fishing can only be carried on by night, for the pilchards are too keen-sighted to swim into the meshes by day.

As the season advances, the pilchards come nearer in-shore, and now the great season of the pilchard-fishery arrives. A great shoal of pilchards is a marvellous sight. The sea appears to be literally packed solid with them. The surface boils with their movement, and numbers are seen leaping out of the water like trout in a stream. Now the fishermen get out their mighty seine-nets and prepare to wall up the multitude of pilchards.

Guided by the "huers," they shoot the great nets around the shoal till it is enclosed. Then smaller nets are shot into the great net, and in these the fish are drawn to the surface beside the waiting boats. It is a wonderful sight to see the net come up. It is filled with one quivering mass of silver, and into this mass the fishermen dip baskets and toss the fish into the boats by scores and hundreds. When a boat is filled, it heads at once for the shore, and a waiting boat takes its place; and so it goes on till the great seine-net is empty.

On shore the scene is every whit as busy as on sea. Every living soul in the fishing village swarms down to the beach to lend a hand. The boats are rapidly emptied, and sail or pull back to the shoal; the workers ashore carry the fish to the cellars, where the women take them in hand. Anything and everything that will carry fish is pressed into service. The pilchards are piled on donkey-carts, wheelbarrows, and hand-carts; two boys have a clothes-basket between them, and small children carry a dozen or two in little baskets. Into the cellars go the fish as swiftly as possible.

A fish-cellar for pilchards is usually cut out of the rock, and the floor is covered with a layer of salt. Upon this salt the women engaged in the task of curing the fish spread a complete layer of pilchards. Salt is spread again till the fish are covered, and then comes another layer of pilchards; and in this way, by alternate layers of salt and fish, the cellar is filled. On top of all are placed weighted boards to press out the water and oil from the mass below, and the cellar is left for some weeks for the fish to cure. Then it is opened, and the salted fish are packed in barrels and sent away to market.

IN SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY.

England's greatest poet was born in the heart of the land, in "leafy Warwickshire." His early home, Stratford-on-Avon, lies beside a pleasant stream, flowing gently through a pleasant country. Warwickshire has no scenes of wild and striking grandeur to offer to the traveller; it can boast of no craggy rocks or rushing torrents, but it is full of quiet loveliness. It is a county of rich meadow-land, watered by slow-flowing streams and brooks, broken and diversified by most picturesque woodland scenery, and its highways and byways wend by splendid parks, and past castles and mansions rich in tradition, quaint and beautiful in architecture.

Stratford-on-Avon stands to-day, as it stood of old, in "a sweet and pleasant place of good pasturage and watering." Beside it flows the clear Avon, and around it spread lovely meadows and fertile corn-lands, while many a leafy byway or field-path leads to the quaint old-world villages which lie in the neighbourhood, and with which Shakespeare was familiar.

In the town itself, the chief centre of interest is the house in which he was born. It stands in Henley Street--a quaint, half-timbered, two-storied building, with dormer windows and a wooden porch. The house has been much altered since Shakespeare's day, for it was used for more than 200 years as a dwelling-house, and finally came down to being a butcher's shop. At last, towards the middle of the nineteenth century, the house was purchased by the nation, and restored as nearly as possible to the appearance it must have presented when Shakespeare's home.

After the birthplace comes the burial-place, and this is in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church, whose tall spire rises so beautifully beside the placid Avon. The church stands on a terrace beside the river, almost embosomed in trees, and approached by a pleasant avenue of limes. Everyone visits it to see the monument and grave of Shakespeare. A bust of the great poet is placed on the north wall of the chancel, and his grave lies below, and within the altar-rails. Here we may read the well-known lines:

"GOOD FREND FOR JESUS SAKE FORBEARE
TO DIGG THE DUST ENCLOASED HEARE
BLESTE BE Y^E MAN Y^T SPARES THES STONES;
AND CURST BE HE Y^E MOVES^S MY BONES.

Why did Shakespeare write these lines? Because in those days graves were very often disturbed, and he wished his remains to lie at peace in the grave which, very likely, he had chosen for himself.

A most interesting place is the Guild Hall, a fine old half-timbered building erected in 1296, and used for hundreds of years as a Town Hall. With this building Shakespeare was very familiar, and it is probable that here he became acquainted with plays and players, for performances were given in it during Shakespeare's boyhood by travelling companies.

Above the Guild Hall is the famous Grammar School, where Shakespeare learned the "small Latin and less Greek" of which Ben Jonson spoke. The desk which he is said to have used now stands in the Museum formed at the birthplace.

When Shakespeare returned from London to spend his last years in his native town, he bought a fine house called New Place, and in the garden he planted a mulberry-tree. Nearly 150 years after the death of Shakespeare the property came into the hands of a clergyman named Gastrell, a man of violent and selfish temper. First he became angry because visitors to the town often asked permission to view the famous mulberry-tree which the great poet had planted, and he cut the tree down. But much worse was to follow.

After a time a quarrel arose between Gastrell and the authorities of Stratford over the payment of rates for New Place. In his anger, the furious clergyman actually pulled down to the ground Shakespeare's own home and sold the materials. Now nothing remains but the site and a few traces of the foundations.

When the visitor has seen the memorials of Shakespeare, he will take a pleasant walk of about a mile from Stratford to Shottery, to see Anne Hathaway's cottage there. It is a picturesque, half-timbered, thatched cottage, in which it is supposed that Shakespeare's wife spent her maiden days, but the theory is by no means certain. It is known that in Shakespeare's time the cottage was tenanted by one Richard Hathaway, who had a daughter Anne or Agnes, and there is some evidence to connect this Anne with the Anne Hathaway whom the poet married, but of distinct proof there is none. Still, tradition is in favour of the belief, and the cottage has now been acquired by the trustees of Shakespeare's birthplace.

Many days may easily and pleasantly be spent in excursions around Stratford, visiting one after another of the pretty villages which the poet knew, and the places with which his name is connected. The best time of all is in spring or early summer, when

"Daisies pied, and violets blue,
And lady-smocks all silver-white,
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue,
Do paint the meadows with delight."

Then the way is shaded by the tender foliage of the noble elms, which flourish so mightily in this deep, strong soil that the elm is sometimes called the "Warwickshire weed."

About four miles from Stratford stands a fine old Elizabethan manor-house, Charlecote, in whose deer-park tradition says that Shakespeare went poaching. Many old accounts of the poet's life state that he left Stratford and went to London in fear of Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote, whose deer he had stolen from the park. It is not at all certain that this happened, but that Shakespeare did not like Sir Thomas Lucy is very plain from his works. In "The Merry Wives of Windsor" there is a "Mr. Justice Shallow," of whom the poet makes great fun, and draws in a very ridiculous light. It is clear from many little touches that Shakespeare had Sir Thomas Lucy in his mind when he drew this portrait of a pompous country squire.

The mansion of Charlecote is of great interest in itself as a perfect specimen of an Elizabethan manor-house. Save for a couple of rooms added to the structure, it stands exactly as Sir Thomas Lucy built it in 1558. It was built originally with a front and two projecting wings, and it was visited by Queen Elizabeth in 1572. In honour of this visit Sir Thomas added a porch and adorned it with the Queen's arms and monogram. By this addition the plan of the house was made to exactly resemble a capital E, and thus commemorate the royal visit.

Charlecote is approached from the road through an ancient gatehouse, a most beautiful and picturesque building which opens upon a courtyard or walled flower-garden, and the whole place is in most perfect order and preservation. It is an Elizabethan home lasting unchanged until the twentieth century.

AN OLD ENGLISH HOUSE.

England is full of castles, abbeys, and manor-houses, which are still occupied by the descendants of those who built them or by those into whose hands they have passed in later days, and among these stately piles it is hard to pick one as a type of a fine old English house. But, putting aside the great castles, like Warwick, whose frowning walls and grim battlements tell of an age when defence was the first thought in the mind of a builder, let us take a mansion erected at a more peaceful time. Such a mansion is to be found in Compton Wynyates, a fine old Warwickshire house, built in 1509.

Compton Wynyates stands in a very secluded spot, some twelve miles from Stratford, hidden away in a thickly-wooded dell. You approach the house along a mere byway, and do not see it until you are close upon it. Then a picturesque medley of gables, turrets, battlements and chimneys, springs to view, and you stand to wonder at so splendid a house being built in so hidden and solitary a place.

Compton Wynyates was built at a time when the bare lofty walls of a castle-keep were being deserted for the brighter, more cheerful rooms of a mansion whose walls were pierced by many windows. But at the same time it was not wise to live entirely without protection, so a moat was dug round the house and entrance could only be gained by a drawbridge. In our quiet days a bridge of stone has replaced the wooden bridge which rose and fell, but the old oak doors which once barred the archway leading to the house are still in position, and we can see upon them the marks of musket-balls fired at the defenders of the place in troublous times.

Let us go into the great hall, the chief room of an old house--the room where once the whole family dined together at a long table, the master and his friends above the salt, the servants and humbler guests below. The hall rises the full height of the house, and has a fine timbered roof, and at one end is the minstrels' gallery, a picturesque half-timbered structure, the place where minstrels made merry music at some feast or on the visit of some great personage.

In the hall stands a huge slab of elm more than 23 feet long and some 30 inches wide. It was once used for playing "shovel-board," a favourite game with our ancestors, and when in use was set up on trestles.

In this hall Sir William Compton received Henry VIII., whom Sir William had accompanied to the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Sir William, too, had won much distinction at the Battle of Spurs, and was a great favourite with bluff King Hal, to whom the knight owed much of his great fortune.

Next to the hall is the great parlour, the private room of the family when they withdrew from the hall. It is finely panelled in oak, and has a plaster ceiling, bearing the arms of the owners of the place. Beyond the parlour is the chapel, decorated with very ancient carved wooden panels. These carvings are very much older than the house, and it is believed they were brought from an old castle which Sir William Compton pulled down in order to obtain materials for his house.

But it will be impossible for us to go from room to room of this wonderful old house, for there are more than eighty of them--drawing-rooms, dining-rooms, bedrooms, great kitchens with vast old fireplaces, and gained by seventeen separate staircases, which wind and twist their way through the building. It is said there are 275 windows in the house, though an old story goes that no one knows exactly how many there are, for he who tries to count is baffled by a mysterious secret window, which he sees and counts on the first occasion, and can never find again. Its chimneys, too, rise in a veritable forest of quaintly-shaped stacks, and form as puzzling a labyrinth as the windows.

There was a meaning in this tangle of windows and chimneys, for Compton Wynyates is full of secret hiding-places. Hundreds of years ago there was need of them. To-day no man needs to hide himself unless he has done wrong. Then, an innocent man might stand in great danger of a powerful enemy or of an unjust law. So the old houses were furnished with places where men could hide from their foes until an opportunity came for escape.

Again, Compton Wynyates was a Catholic house, and in those times Roman Catholics were punished if they were found attending a Roman Catholic service, and the priest who performed the service stood in danger of imprisonment or, possibly, of death. So places were carefully constructed to which the priest could fly to hide himself when officers of the law came to the house in search of him. Many such secret chambers are found in old mansions, and are known as "priests' holes."

It was a common thing to form a secret chamber in the thickness of a wall, and the first thing required was air, the second light. Air was often given to a secret chamber by a chimney. But such a chimney remained unblackened by smoke, and would soon be detected as not doing its proper work, so it was often built in the centre of a stack of real chimneys, and thus remained hidden. So, too, amid a great number of other windows, it was not easy to detect that which gave light to a hidden room. At Compton Wynyates such is the tangle of windows and chimneys that a person may have pointed out to him the chimney and the window belonging to a secret room, and yet fail to discover the place when he searches inside.

One of the secret rooms at Compton Wynyates was discovered by a child of the house, Lady Frances Compton, in 1770. She was playing in a turret room, and fell against some plaster-work, which rang hollow. Search was made, and a concealed door was found beneath the plaster. The hidden chamber was opened, and tradition says that the skeletons of a woman and two children were found within. No one knows how they came there, but it is believed that at some time of danger they had been concealed there and forgotten.

In the roof of this great building is the famous priests' room or chapel. Here the Roman Catholics of the neighbourhood used to meet to worship in secret. A safer and better hidden place could not be devised. To this day the proof that it was a Roman Catholic chapel remains to be seen. "On an elm shelf below the south-west window are, rudely carved, five consecration crosses, showing that it had been used for the purpose of an altar, and was consecrated according to the rites of the Romish Church. The slab of wood is unique, in that it forms the only known instance of a wooden altar in England."

There was another huge room in the roof, 130 feet long, which was known as the Barracks, a place where soldiers were quartered. Here may be seen blood-stains, caused by fighting during the Great Civil War. The house was held for the King, but the Roundhead soldiery broke in, and there was desperate fighting in the Barracks, and many were slain. Cromwell's men took the house, and held it for the rest of the war.

In one of the drawing-rooms may be seen, carved beautifully in the panelling, the arms of the Comptons and the arms of the Spencers, and this carving bears witness to a very romantic marriage. In the days of Queen Elizabeth there was a Lord Mayor of London whose name was Sir John Spencer. Sir John was a very rich man, and he had an only daughter named Elizabeth. Now, the Lord Compton of that day fell in love with Elizabeth Spencer, but the wealthy merchant did not look with any favour on Compton, and forbade him to come near the house. But the young lady herself did not share her father's feelings with regard to the young courtier, and soon a clever ruse was planned.

One day a young man, dressed as a baker, came to the house with a huge basket of loaves of bread. As he was going away again, with the great basket on his shoulders, he met Sir John himself. The wealthy merchant thought that here was a hard-working young fellow going heartily about his business. He praised him, gave him sixpence, and told him that he was on the high-road to make his fortune. So he was, but not quite as Sir John thought. The disguised baker was Lord Compton, and in the basket he was carrying off the young heiress, Elizabeth Spencer.

When Sir John learned of the trick that had been played on him he was furious, and vowed that he would never see his daughter again. But Queen Elizabeth took an interest in the affair, and finally brought about a reconciliation, and the arms of the two families were placed in the drawing-room to show that peace was restored between Sir John and the young people.

BY FEN AND BROAD.

From hills and slopes, dales and uplands, we will take our departure and look at the flattest land of England, the wide, level stretches of country around the Wash, the Fens. A fen is a marsh, and once these immense stretches of flat land were marshes pure and simple. There is plenty of water about them now, but it is penned up by dikes and embankments, and run off by drains as big as rivers.

It is often said that those who care for Dutch landscape have no need to leave our own country to enjoy it, for the Fenland is Holland in miniature. There may be seen the same long flat stretches of country, cut by long, straight canals bordered by willow and alder; the same kind of dikes making the same fight against the encroaching sea, the windmills pumping water into drains and out of some pool which is being reclaimed; the green fields deep in grass, and the dark peat-cuttings whence the peasantry obtain their fuel.

It is nearly 300 years since a beginning was made of draining the Fens. Before that time the whole country was one great marsh, through which slow-moving streams crept to the sea. Very often vast tracts were completely under water. Perhaps there was heavy rain and a flood ran down the rivers; it might be met by a high tide sweeping far up the low, flat river-beds. The flood and the tide met, and the water rose high above the shallow banks, and converted the land into a huge morass.

It is significant that the earliest drainers of the Fens were Dutchmen, who directed Dutch labourers. These men knew what had been done in their native Holland in the way of reclaiming land, and they saw that good land could be made in the Fens if the water could only be kept in its proper place. So they began to raise embankments, to scour out the channels of rivers, to build sluices, and to pump the water out of standing pools.

The drainers had to make a great struggle with the forces of Nature; they had almost a severer and sterner fight still with the Fen-folk. The latter had been born and bred amid their wild watery wilderness, and loved it. Their cottages were raised here and there wherever a patch of dry earth showed itself above the bog, and they traversed the Fens far and wide in their boats or on foot. When afoot, each man carried his long leaping-pole over his shoulder. With its aid he would skim like a bird over a stream or pool, and so make his way where another man would have found his path hopelessly blocked.

The Fen-men made a living by catching the fish which swarmed in the countless waterways, and by snaring the birds which haunted the wide reed-beds in vast flocks. They felt great anger at the thought of their marshes being turned to dry land, and one of their ballads gives their opinion very clearly:

"Come, Brethren of the water, and let us all assemble
To treat upon this Matter which makes us quake and tremble;
For we shall Rue, if it be true that Fens be undertaken;
And where we feed in Fen and reed, they'll feed both Beef and Bacon.

"They'll sow both Bean and Oats, where never man yet thought it;
Where men did row in Boats ere Undertakers bought it;
But, Ceres, thou behold us now, let wild oats be their venture,
Oh, let the Frogs and miry Bogs destroy where they do enter."

The Fen-men fought hard against the improvements, and broke down dikes and burst open sluices, but in the end the drainers outlived these attacks, and the works were built.

Generation after generation has drained and diked and embanked until, at the present day, we may cross vast stretches of fruitful country bearing splendid crops of corn and potatoes, which were once wild marsh-land and impassable morass. And so it soon would be again if the utmost care was not taken. The sea--the hungry sea--is always ready to break in; the rivers are always ready to break their bounds; but the former is held at bay by dikes, and the latter are kept in bounds by strong embankments, and every defence is closely watched.

It is strange to find here and there places in the Fens called islands--as, for instance, the Isle of Ely--places far from the sea. But once they were real islands rising from the waters of the vast marsh. Perhaps the dry, firm land of which they consisted only rose a few feet above the level of the water, but it enabled the Fen-men to build their cottages, to pasture their sheep and cattle, to grow their corn, and to plant fruit-trees.

The most famous of these islands was the Isle of Ely, a patch of dry land seven miles long and four miles broad, well remembered as one of the last strongholds of the Saxons against William the Conqueror. But the vast morass which once surrounded Ely has long been drained and converted into fruitful soil, forming the immense flat amidst which rises in stately and majestic fashion the noble cathedral of Ely.

Yet the sea is not altogether the loser in the battle with man along this coast. Much land has been won from it, much land has been lost to it, and is being lost to this day. The low shores of Norfolk and Suffolk, south of the Wash, are being steadily worn away in places by the attacks of the sea, and year by year the low cliffs fall before the waves of some great storm, and the sea makes a fresh inroad upon the land.

At Cromer, the well-known watering-place, the old town is under water. The present town is quite new, and out to sea lie the houses of the Cromer of past days, covered with seaweed, and with the fish swimming up and down the streets where once the Cromer folk went about their business. At low tides the ancient dwellings and ways can still be clearly traced.

Still farther out to sea lie the remains of a yet older village, called Shipden. Five hundred years ago Shipden was a port on the seaward side of Cromer, but harbour, village, and church were swallowed up by the waves. The church tower was built of flint, as is the custom of the East Country, and so well had the old masons done their work that a piece of the tower is at times seen by the fishermen about 400 yards out to sea, and they call it "the Church Rock."