home to "take charge," as they said, of Maud also came back to Shipley vicar- For two years, Veronica reigned mistress of her father's household. Perhaps the burthen of the song, Veronica being nineteen, had only so far changed as to run thus: "Now that I am grown up, I won't stay at Shipley"? We shall see. CHAPTER IV. AN ACCIDENT. SOME Subtle influence a sight, or sound, or smell-touched the long-drawn links of association in the vicar's mind as he stood at his own door one February afternoon, and made him remember that dreary autumn day on which he had first seen Shipley. His thought flashed back along the past years, as the electric spark thrills through a long chain of clasping hands. "Poor Stella!" he said, half aloud. Mr. Levincourt was apt to spend a good deal of his available store of compassion on himself. But there is no more effectual check to the indulgence of our own failings and weaknesses, than the exaggerated manifestation of the same defect in another. That which in us is only a reasonable and well-grounded dissatisfaction, becomes mere selfish unjustifiable repining in our neighbours. So long as his wife lived, therefore, Mr. Levincourt was shamed by her loud and frivolous complainings from expressing onehalf the distaste he really felt for his life at Shipley-in-the-Wold, although he had secretly deemed his wife far less entitled to pity than he was, whose qualities of mind and refinement of education enabled him to understand much better what he had lost in being thus buried alive at Shipley. But Stella Levincourt, born Barletti, slept in St. Gildas's graveyard, and a white tablet glimmering out of the gloomiest corner in the dark little church bore an inscription to her memory. And since her death he had occasionally felt much retrospective sympathy with his wife. "Poor Stella!" he said again; and, shutting the door behind him, he walked down the gravel pathway, passed through the iron wicket, crossed the paddock, and proceeded thus through St. Gildas's churchyard towards the village. It was not a day to loiter in. It had [Conducted by snowed a good deal the previous night, but thaw had set in. The roads were deep in since ten o'clock that morning, a steady mud, whose chill penetrated the stoutest shoe-leather. An ice-cold dew seemed to sky spread a lead-coloured canopy from exude from everything one touched, and the horizon to zenith. This was a bare lath-and-plaster building, Mr. Levincourt made for the school-house. erected at the cost of the late vicar to serve as a Sunday-school. The present incumbent, while adhering to its founder's first intention, had found an additional use for namely, as a place for the choir of St. Gildas the whitewashed school-room. It served, to practise in. He at divine service in St. Gildas consisted Before Mr. Levincourt's day, the music solely of portions of Tate and Brady, bawled, or snuffled out in monotonous dissonance. suffered many a shock from his congrega Mr. Levincourt's refined and critical ear tion's strenuously uplifted voices. resolved to amend the singing, and flattered encouragement in this undertaking. But himself that he would find support and folks were as loath to be amended in Shipley, as in most other places: and Mr. Levincourt's first attempts to teach them harmony, resulted in discord dire. He had begun with high-flown ideas of By degrees he lowered his pretensions. foreign mass-music adapted to English words. Then, some of the simpler composiattempted. At length he resolved to be tions of our English cathedral writers were satisfied with Martin Luther's Hymn, and Adeste Fideles, sung in parts. Things began to go better. The younger generation, trained to some knowledge of music, became capable of succeeding in such modest attempts as these. Nor was it, indeed, from the younger generation that the great difficulties had arisen. other middle-aged farmers and graziers, Farmer Meggitt, and Farmer Sack, and could not be got to understand that it behoved them to be passive listeners to the music during service. to the praiseWhat do ye mean then, by Let us sing to the praise? Let us," Farmer Meggitt wenches in the organ-loft, sing to the said oos, "sing! Not 'let the little lads and praise'! Parson Levincourt's on a wrong tack altogether. fangled tunes-why they're Popish: that's And as to his newwhat they are: and I don't care who hears me say so!" The implied slight to Farmer Meggitt's Charles Dickens.] VERONICA. vocal abilities made him very Protestant indeed. And the charge of Popery against Mr. Levincourt was supposed to be a very colourable and serious one, seeing that he had a foreign wife. However, Time went on in his task of turning "new-fangled" things into oldfangled. And the congregation of St. Gildas had long grown very proud of their singing. Miss Desmond had a class of village children to whom she taught some of the mysteries contained in the queer black-headed hieroglyphics on the musical staff; and the choir met to practise every And on this one Saturday afternoon. special Saturday afternoon in February, Mr. Levincourt having floundered through the thick mud of the lane, arrived at the school-house door, turned the handle, and walked in, when the practising was just over. The children were making ready to troop out. Some of the little boys, uneasy under the stern glance of Mr. Mugworthy, the parish clerk, still sat on the wooden benches, from which their corduroy-clad legs dangled and swung, as unrestingly as the pendulum of the big white-faced clock that ticked away the hours above the door. At a little deal-cased harmonium sat Herbert Snowe, the son of a rich Danecester banker. This young gentleman had been educated in Germany, where he had caught a taste for music. His dilettanteism was strong enough to induce him to make the journey from Danecester nearly every week, in order to supply, at the Saturday rehearsals, the place of the professional organist, who was only engaged to come to Shipley for the Sunday services. Not far from him, stood Mr. Plew, the village doctor, talking to the vicar's daughter. Mr. Plew had the meekest and weakest of high tenor voices, and gave the choir the benefit of his assistance whenever his professional avocations would permit him to do so. Then, there were Kitty and Cissy Meggitt, with their governess, Miss Turtle. Mrs. Meggitt was of an aspiring nature, and had prevailed on her husband to engage a "real lady" to teach her girls Farmer Meggitt paid the "real lady" five-and-twenty pounds per annum, and he thought in his heart that it was an exorbitantly high price for the article. manners. Then, there were Captain and Mrs. Sheardown, of Lowater House. They did not sing; but they had come to fetch their son, Master Bobby Sheardown, who sat on a high school-bench among the "tre- Lastly, there was Maud Desmond. Immediately there was a shuffling and scraping of feet. Every boy slid down from his bench, and drew each one a hobnailed boot noisily over the bare floor in homage, raising at the same time a bunch of sunburnt knuckles to his forehead. The little girls ducked down convulsively, the smaller ones assisting themselves to rise again with an odd struggling movement of the elbow. 66 of salutation to a This was the ceremony superior among the rustic youth of Shipley. How have you been getting on, Her"How do bert ?" said Mr. Levincourt. you do, Mrs. Sheardown? Captain, when I saw that the West Daneshire were to meet at Hammick, I scarcely expected to have the pleasure of seeing you this evening!" "No; I didn't hunt to-day," answered the captain. Captain Sheardown was a broad-shouldered man of some five-and-fifty years of age. His bluff face was fringed with white whiskers. His eyes were surrounded by a network of fine lines, that looked as though they had been graven on the firm skin by an etching-needle, and he generally stood with his legs somewhat wide apart, as one who is balancing himself on an unsteady surface. The gentlemen gathered together into a knot by themselves while they waited for the ladies to put on their warm shawls and cloaks. "I wonder what sort of a run they had with the West Daneshire ?" said Herbert Snowe. "I heard, sir, as there were a accident on the field," said Mr. Mugworthy, who had edged himself near to the group of gentlemen. "An accident!" repeated the vicar. "What was it? Nothing serious, I trust ?" "No, sir; from what I can reap out of Jemmy Sack, he the rumour of the boy, Sack, it warn't a very serious accident. seen it, sir. It happened close up by his father's farm." "Sack's farm, eh ?" said Captain Sheardown. 'Why that's at Haymoor!" 66 "Well, sir, it is:" rejoined Mr. Mugworthy, after a moment's pause, as though he had been casting about in his mind for some reasonable means of contradicting A the statement, but finding none, was re- 66 Why shouldn't he?" asked Herbert Snowe, whose foreign education had left him lamentably ignorant on certain matters of which Captain Sheardown conceived that an English gentleman ought to know a good deal. 66 Why shouldn't he ?" echoed the captain, screwing up his eyes and mouth into an expression of comical vexation, and thereby deepening the finely-graven lines before mentioned. 66 Why shouldn't he? Bless my soul, Herbert! Because a fox going from Hammick to Haymoor to-day, must have run straight up wind the whole time! That's why. Why shouldn't he? Tshah!" "A dog-fox, sir," put in Mugworthy, solemnly, "will sometimes run up wind at this time of year when he's agoing home, sir." "Well, well," said the vicar, with the slightest possible air of contempt for the whole subject: "we will suppose that this was a Haymoor fox, who had been visiting his relations at Hammick. But about the accident, Mugworthy?" "Jemmy Sack, he seen it, sir. Come up here, Jemmy, and tell his reverence about the gentleman as was precipitated off of his horse alongside of the five-acre field." "You didn't know the gentleman by sight, Jemmy, did you?" Jemmy did not know the gentleman's name; but he knowed that he was a staying at the Crown Inn, Shipley Magna, and that he had four horses in the stables there, and that the people said as he was a friend of Lord George Segrave's, him as had taken Hammick Lodge for the hunting season. And Jemmy, becoming accustomed to the sound of his own voice addressing gentlefolks, and finding himself listened to, began to grow loquacious, and to volunteer his opinion that the gentleman had a-got a oogly spill, for he turned welly green, and seemed all queer in his head like. But he was a good plucked 'un, for he would go on a-horseback again, and he (Jemmy) had run nigh enough to hear him a-cussin' and a-swearin' at the groom like foon. In fact so loquacious and graphic in his narrative did Jemmy become, that Mugworthy peremptorily ordered him to hold his tongue, and begone, with the other lads. The boys shuffled out, glad to be released, and were presently heard whooping down the lane after the manner of their kind. AS THE CROW FLIES. DUE EAST. NORWICH TO CROMER. the adjacent Roman station, and in early ages NORWICH Originally rose out of the decay of became a fishing town of such importance, that in Edward the Confessor's time it boasted one thousand three hundred and twenty burgesses, and twenty-five churches. The place was roughly handled by the Conqueror, who Jemmy Sack, a lank lad of thirteen, hated opposition from Saxon boors who did came and stood before the vicar, and with not know what was good for them. When he many writhings, and in agonies of bashful-ginal churches had grown to fifty-four. In levied his contribution, the twenty-five oriness, delivered himself of his story. The story simply amounted to his having seen a gentleman flung from his horse with a good deal of violence. The others had ridden on, either not seeing or not heeding. After a while the gentleman's servant had galloped up to his assistance. The gentleman had risen and mounted again but not the same horse. : He took the beast that his servant had been riding, and sent the groom away with the animal that had thrown him. The gentleman had then ridden after the rest of the hunt towards Upper Haymoor. "Ah! Well, there was not much harm done, I'm happy to find. If the gentleman went on following the hounds, he could not have been much hurt," said the vicar. 1122, Henry the First kept royal Christmas in the Norfolk capital, and pleased with himself and the world, endowed Norwich with a franchise equal to that of London. About this time Jews began to settle in Norwich; but the wealth and heresy of the bearded alarmed the bigotted monks, and the susmen "of the wandering foot and weary eye," picious citizens, and the populace, roused by the story of a Christian child having been crucified by the Jews, at their Paschal, a horrible massacre ensued. In the same reign a colony of Flemings brought a blessing to the hospitable city that opened its arms to them. They introduced woollen manufactures into the city, and getting their long wool spun at a village called Worsted, about nine miles north of Norwich, drew from the place a name for their goods there prepared. Norwich has ever since remained a great mart for crape, bombazine, and horse-hair cloth. Blomefield, the Norfolk historian, records that in the reign of Henry the Eighth the yearly sale of Norwich stuffs alone amounted to two hundred thousand pounds, and of stockings to sixty thousand pounds. In 1770, Arthur Young (who by-the-by was here burnt in effigy) represents the analogous amount at one million two hundred thousand pounds. Many of our kings and queens visited this city, generally when on their way as pilgrims to Walsingham. There is a Paston letter extant which records some particulars of the visit of Henry the Sixth. William Paston, writing from Sheen, in 1473, writes that the king was just setting out for Norwich. "He will be there," he says, "on Palm Sunday even, and so tarry there all Easter, and then to Walsingham; wherefore ye had need warn William Gognez and his fellows to purvey them of wine enough, for every man beareth me in hand that the town shall be drunk dry as York was when the king was there; and all the best-looking gentlewomen were to be assembled, for my Lord hath made great boast of the fayre and good gentlewomen of the country, and so the king said he would see them sure. 22 An earlier letter of the same collection incidentally mentions that as much victuals could be bought at Norwich for one penny, as at Calais for fifteenpence, and " pye of Wymondham" to boot. a Mousehold Heath, to the east of Norwich, is a practising ground for riflemen now, as it was for archers when Kett, the tanner, sat in royal state under the Gospel Oak. It was here that Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, came out to preach to the fierce insurgents who built on the heath rude huts made of boughs and sods of turf. On the same height dwelt Howard, Earl of Surrey, and Queen Elizabeth, when at Norwich, visited his mansion. In the church of St. Peter, Mancroft, whose lofty tower overhangs the market-place, lies a great Norwich worthy, Sir Thomas Browne, the author of those strange but delightful books, Religio Medici, Urn Burial, and The Garden of Cyrus. His life, written by Dr. Johnson in 1756, first recalled public attention to this learned physician of Charles the Second's time, of whom his editor said: "There is no science in which he does not discover some skill, and scarce any kind of knowledge, profane or sacred, abstruse or elegant, which he does not appear to have cultivated with success." The crow cannot leave Norwich without remembering that Bishop Corbet lies in the cathedral. "Where be his gibes now ?" This jovial, jocular prelate, now so quiet at the upper end of the choir, was chaplain to King James the First, who, in 1627, made him Dean of Christchurch, where he wrote those lines on Great Tom, which end with And though we are grieved to see thee thumpt and banged, We'll all be glad, Great Tom, to see thee hanged. Bishop Corbet (the son of a gardener) was fond of a joke, and never too careful of his own dignity. Once, on a market-day, a ballad singer complaining to him of want of custom, Corbet put on the man's leather jacket, and being a handsome person with a clear, full voice, soon sold off the man's songs. Once, when he was confirming, and the country people pressed on him, he shouted to them, "Bear off there, or I'll confirm you with my staff!" It is said that he and his chaplain, Dr. Lushington, used to sometimes visit the wine-cellar. Then Corbet would throw off his episcopal hood and cry, "Lie there, doctor," then his gown, with "Lie there, bishop." Then the toasts went round: "Here's to thee, Corbet," "Here's to thee, Lushington." At Walsingham the crow, though bound for Cromer, alights for a survey, the quiet town at the foot of the wooded slope having been the great centre of medieval pilgrimages, and more celebrated even than Becket's tomb at Canterbury. Erasmus came here, when he was professor at Cambridge, sneering safely under the shadow of his hood. He calls it, in his Colloquies, "the most celebrated place throughout all England, situated at the extreme coast of England, on the northwest (north-east), at about three miles distance from the sea." He goes on to say that the glitter of gold and jewels at the shrine "made it resemble the seat of the gods." Nor does he forget a gibe or two on the monks in his sly way, when he mentions "the undoubted milk of the Virgin," which had been brought from Constantinople, and looked like chalk, or the dried white of eggs; and the fragments of the true cross, which were so numerous in Europe, that if put together they would load an East India ship. Great, too, was his quiet enjoyment of the fact that the Walsingham monks mistook a Greek inscription for Hebrew. He also listened complacently to his monkish guide, who took him to the old gate-house, still standing, and told him the miracle that had happened there, when, in 1314, Sir Raaf Boutetourt, a Norfolk knight, being hotly pursued by an enemy, prayed Our Lady for deliverance, and was instantly projected, horse, armour, and all, through a wicket only an ell high and three-quarters broad; the best proof of the miracle being that a brass commemorating the event was to be seen nailed to the gate. Many of our kings came to Walsingham with cocked hat and sandled shoon, with wallets at their side, and calibashes hanging from their staves. Henry the Third was there in 1248; Edward the First twice-1280, 1296; Edward the Second and Edward the Third also visited the shrine, and in the reign of the latter monarch David Bruce, King of Scotland, and twenty of his knights, obtained a safe conduct to come hither from the wardens of the marches. Henry the Sixth was the next king to seek the Norfolk shrine; Henry the Seventh, too, after keeping his Christmas at Norwich, visited Our Lady's Church at Walsingham, and made his prayers and vows for help and deliverance. When the ants have to sullenly fall back before the invading waves that here roll in, unimpeded, the whole way from Spitzbergen. Even the lighthouse has had to retreat from its old enemy two hundred and eighty yards, which is a great concession for a lighthouse, which is always of conservative tendencies. Forty years the geologists give Cromer, and the all-devouring German Ocean is to roll over its conquered oppo battle of Stoke ended the wars of the Roses, and Lambert Simnel fell into his hands, the king, after offering supplications and thanksgivings at Lincoln, sent his banner to be offered to Our Lady of Walsingham, who had graciously answered his prayers for victory. He gave also, at the same time, an image of silver gilt. Henry's burly son inherited the respect of his subtle father for the Norfolk shrine, for in the second year of his reign the young kingnent, and the bay of "The Devil's Throat" walked from Barsham, two pebbly miles off, barefoot, to the sacred shrine, and there hung a chain of gold and jewels round the neck of the holy doll, which, years after, was derisively burnt at Chelsea. At the time of the suppression, Cromwell and King Henry's searchers set their faces like flints against this shrine, issuing nineteen articles of inquiry, and pressing cruelly hard these two special bitter questions: "Whether Our Lady hath done so many miracles nowe of late, as it was said she did when there was more offerings made unto her? "Whether Our Lady's milke be liquid or no, and whether the former sexton could not testify that he had renewed the milk when it was like to be dried up?" Fragments of the ancient ecclesiastical grandeur are still strewn about this Norfolk town. Close by the "Common Place" there is an old domed conduit, with bricked-up niches and the stump of a broken cross; and not far from the station, built up among stables and low sheds, there are remains of the stately house of Franciscan or Grey Friars, founded in 1346 by Elizabeth de Burgo, Countess of Clare. One side dart to Lynn, not because of its old flint-chequered town-hall, or its venerable Grey Friars' tower, nor for the Chapel of Our Lady on the Mount, nor for the cup and sword King John gave to the faithful town, dear to his heart, but for the sake of a deeper and a more tragic memory. In one of the finest poems of that gentle lover of his kind, Tom Hood, it will be remembered that Eugene Aram, after the crime in the cave by the river-side at Knaresborough, became usher at a school in Piccadilly, and afterwards at one at Lynn, held in an ancient chapel near St. Margaret's, the site of which is now used as a meat market. Here, while the bright-faced children leaped like "troutlets in a pool," brooded, Apart from all, A melancholy man, till that dreadful day came when Two stern-faced men set out from Lynn, to roar no more threats at the defiant fishermen. In the mean time, let the Cromer fishermen unload their tiles and coals, and smoke their pipes in peace; at all events they have one thing to boast of, and that is, Roger Bacon, the rugged old mariner who discovered Iceland, and took young James of Scotland prisoner off Flamborough Head, was one of them. If Cromer goes under, as crokers threaten, it will only share the fate of those antediluvian forests, full of elephants' teeth and deers' antlers, that are found in the cliffs close by at Welybourne and Mundesley. The soil of the present was ground out of the fossils of the past. And now with one quick glance across the sea, that flashes in the sunlight, the crow turns tail and bears straight, steady, and undeviating for his old perch on the black, gold-tipped mountain dome of St. Paul's, his next flight being to the sea southward. A TRUE STORY OF PRESIDENT DURING the summer of the most disastrous and doubtful year of the late American war, the colonel of a New Hampshire Regiment lay for some weeks extremely ill of camp fever, near Hampton Roads, in Virginia. Hearing of his critical condition, his wife left her northern home, and, after much difficulty, made her way to his bedside. Her cheerful presence and careful nursing so far restored him, that he was in a short time able to be transferred to Washington In the Potomac River, the steamer in which the invalid officer, Colonel Scott, and his wife had taken passage, was sunk, in a collision with a larger vessel, in the night time. The crew and nearly all the soldiers on board were rescued, or saved themselves; but amid the horrible confusion of the scene, Colonel Scott became separated from his wife, and she was lost. The colonel was picked up in the water by the crew of the larger steamer, and under his direction every effort was made to discover his wife, or rather her body, for all hope of finding her alive was soon abandoned. The sad search was fruit The crow, scenting the sea air and sea free-less; it was resumed in the morning, the people dom, strikes now with fleeter wings for Cromer, where the greedy sea is at its old work, its last bite being a mouthful of twelve acres at once, on a January day in 1825. In the present generation twenty houses have given way on these cliffs. The jetty went in 1820, and a second one in 1835; the shore bath-house was washed off in 1836, and every year the inhabit along the shore, humane Confederates, lending their aid. But the grey, sullen river refused to give up its dead, and the young officer, half frantic with grief, was compelled to go on to Washington. Within a week, however, he received word from below that the body of the lady had been washed on shore-that those good country people, generous foes, had se |