him and that rustic-clad old man by the booking office, he has trouble on his hands. Ducks, I hear him say. The old man sold him a pair and did not remember how long a time had elapsed since they were killed. Poulterers are often forgetful of such matters. No, I cannot say whether that extraordinary-looking lady, with the curls and the sharp nose, is the wife of the clergyman who is holding over her two-thirds of his gingham. He is gray: she has reached that age in which a woman stays the number of her years, not being willing to say one thing one day and another thing a twelvemonth later. Her packages are numerous and heavy; the good man carries them for her and listens as she talks to him, now about her little nephew's whooping cough, and now about somebody's girls she saw at Cheadle fair. Was ever face so funny as hers? She is not his wife. Perpetual virginity is marked in every expression of her countenance and voice. She has no more chance of getting a husband than an English curate after five and thirty years of service has of getting a benefice; and, by the way, if a priest holds a curacy that long, the Church is apt to leave all further care of him to God. And she, the maid I mean, is happysmiling, as the country people say, like a basket of chips-though for the life of me I do not know how chips can be supposed to smile. Now he is telling her a story, the dear soul; but he will spoil it, unless he looks. graver and gets along a little faster. As he laughs, she laughs. I suspect she already sees the point of the story, for these maidens of uncertain years are very knowing. And the rain pours down as though Staffordshire had fallen into the region of the Doldrums. But there is a story about Uttoxeter which the whole world knows, and because the whole world knows it I must tell it, or else receive the greater blame. It is a neat-looking town, this Uttoxeter; healthful and ancient. It was a British settlement before the Romans entered the land. But to the stranger nothing in its history is of greater interest than its connection with Dr. Johnson. Michael, the father of Samuel, was a bookseller living at Lichfield and coming on market days to Uttoxeter, where he had a stall, at which people might buy any publication from a tractate on the Apocalypse up to that most condite work upon the Latin tongue, the Grammatica-Anglo-Romana, or "The Præternatural State of Animal Humours," a book of which I know only the title. Samuel sometimes accompanied his father on these business journeys to Uttoxeter and, like a newly-aproned stationer, helped him with more or less efficiency at his "station," as bookstalls once were called. But on one occasion Samuel refused to go. He has himself told the circumstance and its result. Said he: "Once, indeed, I was disobedient: I refused to attend my father to Uttoxeter market. Pride was the source of that refusal, and the remembrance of it was painful. A few years ago I desired to atone for this fault. I went to Uttoxeter in very bad weather, and stood for a considerable time bareheaded in the rain, on the spot where my father's stall used to stand. In contrition I stood, and I hope the penance was expiatory." There have been those who have taken this as a proof-a painful proof, I think they call it-of the misconception Dr. Johnson had of the nature of the Atonement. I confess I should like to see such folk go where the locusts went after God sent the strong west wind over the land of Egypt, and where till recent years unquiet and unhappy ghosts were also dispatched. Better would the world be had it more men of the conscientiousness and integrity of Dr. Johnson. He may have been uncouth and discourteous-at least so Boswell has represented him, though it would have been more than human always to treat tenderly the buzzing, inquisitive writer of the signet, especially when the latter put to the irritable lexicographer such questions as "What would you do, sir, if you were locked up in a tower with a baby?"—but when he knew wrong had been done, he sought diligently to make amends for it; which is not unseldom an example left alone by many who regard themselves as theologically correct. In the market place there is a replica of a bas-relief on the pedestal of Dr. Johnson's statue at Lichfield representing this event. The story has been embellished in the course of time, so that we are told that the father was sick and unable to go to Uttoxeter on the occasion of Samuel's disobedience, and that while the penance was being performed, the boys hooted the good man as he stood exposed to the inclement weather. There is no evidence for either particular; nor are they necessary to the presentation of the scene. No one will ever forget the gray hairs dishevelled by the wind and rain. 66 Again we move. The rain has ceased, and we lose sight of Uttoxeter spire as we wind along the strath of the Dove. Now the sun comes out. Rocester reminds me that we are not far from Alton Towers, one of the most exquisitely beautiful demesnes in England." They who have seen that stately and interesting mansion, its towers and walls, quaintly irregular and delightfully picturesque, rising from amidst the great trees near the lake, declare it to be "a painter's dream realized in antique stone, a poet's vision rendered permanent forever." Such praise is not exaggerated. The house is not indeed that in which the ancient earls of Shrewsbury dwelt; but it is all that the architectural skill of the nineteenth century, inspired by a just appreciation of masterwork, guided by the finest taste and furthered by almost boundless wealth, could accomplish. It suggests the glory of that past which rests upon the whole neighborhood and upon the name of Talbot. Inside are halls and galleries and chambers where are gathered objects of marvellous interest-pictures, armor, sculpture, portraits and heraldic devices: memories of Talbot, DeValence, Nevile, Bohun and Strongbow, and many another family noble in England and renowned in the annals of chivalry. Nor are evidences wanting of the piety of the founders and maintainers of the place. Not only in the library are well-chosen texts illustrating the worth of wisdom, but around the cornice of the cathedral-like conservatory run the words: "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." In the vestibule of this abode of flowers is the motto, "The speech of flowers exceeds all flowers of speech." The gardens, too, and terraces, lawns, arcades and ponds, with their unfailing charm, dreamlike, lying in a deep valley bordered with woodland of densest foliage, entrance and delight. One never tires of wandering along the labyrinthine and tree-shaded paths, now to come unexpectedly upon some device of cave or waterfall or trellis-work, in which Nature has been outdone by Art, and now to listen in most grateful solitude to the play of fountains, the twittering of birds, or the æolian strains among the cedars and the pines. From these extensive grounds fine views of the house are to be had, of which none is more romantic than that from the Lower Terrace. He who has seen the pinnacles and turrets of Alton rising above the tall elms, in the light of the full moon, and remembers the efforts which were needed to reduce the wilderness to order and to display therein the triumph of ingenious and satisfying art, will readily assent to the truth of the line on the cenotaph of Charles, Earl of Shrewsbury, the noble builder, "He made the desert smile." The village of Ellastone lies a little this side of Alton Towers, and not far to our left. This is the place called Hayslope in "Adam Bede," and here was the carpenter's shop, not of the fictitious Mr. Jonathan Burge, but of George Eliot's own relatives. Indeed, in Adam Bede-who somehow or other always reminds me of John Ridd—may be seen a picture of her father, and in Mrs. Poyser a suggestion of her step-mother. In the Donnithorne Arms you have the Bromley Arms, where for the traveller and his horse good cheer never fails, and where the floor-quarries ring with the steel tips and heels of ale-loving villagers. George Eliot has |