on St. Swithin's Day, in the evening, and especially encouraging to be told that "not a drop of rain has fallen to-day." We may be reasonably sure of good weather, for according to the old rhyme

"St. Swithin's Day, if thou dost rain

For forty days it will remain :

St. Swithin's Day, if thou be faire

For forty days 'twill rain nae maire."

We find it easy to believe that St. Swithin was kept out of his tomb in the Cathedral by forty days of rain. But what we are inclined to doubt is that it will rain "nae maire" for so long a time, St. Swithin's Day being clear.

July 16th.

Oh! my prophetic soul! In the home of the St. Swithin legend, and with all signs in our favor, we awoke this morning to hear the rain pouring in torrents-a rain of the permeating dampness and wetness for which English rains are particularly distinguished. The two men of the party were anxious to go to Stonehenge, stopping over for a couple of hours at Salisbury, and although we women had all been to both places, and though we were longing for another day in Winchester, we had amiably signified our willingness to accompany them. This

downpour was too much for even Walter's antiquarian enthusiasm, and so we all had a morning together in the "Seinte Marie College of Wynchestre," as it is called in the old charter, which we saw in the muniment room; the date is 1382, but there was a Grammar School here under the care of monks of St. Swithin's Priory long before the Norman Conquest where Ethelwulf and Alfred were educated.

Amid all the wealth of antiquities here I do not wonder that you and I missed some of the interesting things, among others the old painting of the "trusty servant" in the college hall. Such an odd old picture! The servant's hands are full of implements of husbandry and housewifery. His head is that of an ass, a padlock on his mouth:

"The padlock shut-no secrets he'll disclose,

Patient the ass-his master's wrath to bear,
Swiftness in errand-the stag's feet declare."

Altogether a most delicious conceit, dating back to the fourteenth century, although the figure has been touched up and put into Brunswick uniform as a compliment to George III, who paid a visit to the college in 1778.

By dint of much questioning and infinite patience, Miss Cassandra has unearthed the Dulce

Domum legend, and, as Archie says, demonstrated her prowess in running a quarry to its lair. The story is that an unhappy scholar of Wykeham, kept in college during the long vacation, wrote some Latin verses with the refrain, "Domum, domum, domum, dulce domum."

The boy died just as the holidays were ending, it is said of a broken heart, and the verses were found under his pillow.

Is it not a curious coincidence that almost the same arrangement of words was used by the young Wykehamist so many years before John Howard Payne wrote our own "Home, sweet home"? The date of the writing we cannot find, but the verses were probably set to music by John Reading, who was organist to the college between 1680 and 1692. There is no really good translation of the Latin verses, so I will not inflict any of them upon you.

The sad little story of the boy's death is doubted by the latest historian of Winchester College; but the fact remains that the Latin verses are still sung each year at the close of the summer term, around a great tree that was pointed out to us.

Some other verses, that Walter found, amused us very much. It appears that when

Grocyn, the noted Greek scholar, was still a callow youth in Winchester College, a girl threw a snowball at him, upon which he wrote, in a strain which is a bit suggestive of Waller:

"My Julia smote me with a ball of snow;

I thought that snow was cold; but 'tis not so.
The fire you wakened, Julia, in my frame

Not snow, nor ice can cool; but answering flame."

It was here that the sententious little scholar, when asked by her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, whether he had ever experienced the charms of the "bibling rod," replied in the well-known line, which was sufficiently stately to suit the occasion

"Thou bidst me, Queen, renew a speechless grief."

Archie has discovered a most hideous regulation of the college; the boys actually paid "rod money," and thus contributed to their own "speechless grief," which refinement of cruelty, something akin to buying the rope for your own hanging, was practiced until the beginning of the last century. After a long and profitable morning in the college, which contains a number of portraits, carvings, and tapestries, we returned through College Street, passing by Jane Austen's house, which suggested to us the idea of motoring out to her country home. This

house in Winchester is the one in which she spent the last months of her life, but the Steventon parsonage, in which her girlhood was passed, is over near Basingstoke, about fourteen miles north of Winchester. Miss Cassandra was overjoyed at the thought of this little pilgrimage, and begged me to go with her to the Cathedral to take one more look at the brass tablet in memory of Jane Austen, placed there by her nephew, Austen Leigh. The words are so simple and sweet:

There is a much longer inscription on the ledger stone in the floor nearly opposite the tomb of William of Wykeham; but we like this one best, and as we stood there reading the words Miss Cassandra recalled to me Mrs. Malden's story of the stranger who visited Winchester Cathedral thirty years ago, to whom the verger said, quite apologetically, "Pray, sir, can you tell me whether there is anything particular about that lady, so many people want