I set to cropping the bat's ears and slitting the owl's beak because its vision is not the same with mine? Or, Dr. Morley, short of corporeal infliction, shall I even say the bats and owls are damned?"

For Chillingworth, no man more than he, was all for settlement by reason, and though he could fling a hard word at each sect which must bring its salvat mundum of a credo sealed upon its forehead like the great beast in the Apocalypse, I never saw him more hopeful of settlement in that way. But my lord Falkland, I wist not how, took it more to heart, though as much wishful of that happy end, and the discussion, I saw, was darkening over him, when lady Falkland entered after a playful knock (as sometimes was her wont),-a fair blue-eyed lady, you will remember her, I think, her beauty only less engaging than her manners, a little taller than my lord Falkland and set in a happy medium betwixt sportive and demure, as full of airiness as she was of kindness. She wore a white gown and held in her hand her bonnet by the ribbon and a fresh bud of a rose, with her fair hair blown somewhat about her brow, looking herself like a blending of fresh roses white and red blooming in holy health.

"O, gentlemen! you do wrong yourselves cooped up in this cloister when you might be in the Grove and feel the living hospitable wind in your hair. What! have you left Oxford and London for this better air and come to breathe the air of a library? Nay, you were as well in the Bodleian in that case. You sit like Patience, Sir Edmund."

SIR EDMUND WALLER: "I have seen Dr. Chillingworth reason his way into the heart of the Great Pyramid, and I wait for him to issue forth again."

LADY FALKLAND: "Then let him bring no mummies with him. I will see you out. The Grove waits for you; and see you forget not the good motto on the dial-plate about the flight of time."

So we made adjournment to the park, which nothing pleased my lord Falkland more than to hear spoken of as the Grove of the Academia, there being a measure of likeness to the Dialogues of Plato in the conversations we had many times held there. And often I have seen we would sit there or walk up and down in the mild air of evening debating some point of interest, till the sun had gone down, and the shadows gathered, and the bats began to flitter about among the branches over our heads-entering it now for the last, last time, and the bats henceforth to have it all their own.

I remember, as we entered under a patriarch oak, the boughs of just greening laced themselves into the surrounding limes,

ind Waller giving siutation, as he said, to the goddess of the

Grove and breaking out in admiration of the place,-"Socrates himself might have here stepped a coranto with Dame Philosophy."

MR. EARLE: “What, what, Sir Edmund; does divine Philosophy move to the light measure of a coranto?"

SIR E. WALLER: "Ah, well! to the measures the gods tread, and the music that of the spheres, if you will."

Dr. Sheldon: “And therein Dame Philosophy led Socrates a sorrowful enough dance at the last, old man."

DR. CHILLINGWORTH: "Not the safest music to dance to, that of the gods, if one will have scrip and comfort."

Whereupon MR. HYDE: "For my share I had rather hear of the fairies dancing among us again. I doubt if the world has ever been happy since they left us. Ah, what a glade, this, for those imps to revel in! Many a May-day gathering they have had, I wis, under these same boughs. Cannot you conjure them back, Sir Edmund, with your poet's wand?"

SIR E. WALLER "We : poor versers have lost the spell since Ben died, Mr. Hyde; the Sad Shepherd saw no one to give his magic wand to and so he took it with him."

MR. HYDE: "Wo's me for the fairies without a laureat !

SIR E. WALLER: "Alas, poor imps! they have been persuaded to join the malcontents and keep Sabbath, I think."

MR. EARLE: "Yes, yes, we passed some of them on our way, with docked hair and mortified looks and much turning up of eyes at sight of your doublet and feathers, Sir Knight: alack, that fair imps should become run-a-gate hobgoblins."

SIR E. WALLER: "The fair of them I thought looked as they would rather be back in elf-land with slips of moonbeam in their hair."

DR. SHELDON: "Only frightened with the fire, they had flown up the Puritan chimney."

DR. MORLEY: "Or perhaps my lord Archbishop had disturbed them with his chanticleer declaration to sport, good Dr. Sheldon, for I have heard it said they are wont to take alarm when the cock

crows."

Dr. Sheldon laughing with the rest of us at this back-handed stroke, Dr. Chillingworth made reply:-

"Ah, yes! merry England has lost her fairies and can show nothing now but publicans and sinners on the one side and scribes and pharisees on the other." As he said this he sat down with the look of one dolefully resigned upon some matter.

SIR E. WALLER: "Then in lieu of Plato and the fairies, I will

lay myself at Dr. Chillingworth's feet and learn his medicament for the scribes and the publicans." This he did regardless of his doublet

Dr. Chillingworth: "I have long ago written out my prescriptio, Sir Edmund, but 'tis a bolus they will not swallow. I have piped my best to them, but they will not dance, neither pharisees nor sinners of them."

MR. GODOLPHIN: "Wait till the wind goes down, Chillingworth, then they will hear your piping better."

LORD FALKLAND: "The harpstrings of the Grove will be broken by then, Sidney. This wind will rise first before it falls, and the peace we shall have will be the peace that follows the hurricane, all strewn with wrecks." Then he iterated very low and sadly, "Peace, peace! yes, but if it should be the peace of the tombs!"

Then DR. HAMMOND spoke: "But for our own part we have much cause for tranquil thankfulness." Dr. Hammond was always deeply listened to, there being something so sweetly persuasive in his low-modulated and clear voice, and sometimes a kind of look upon his face the saints might be thought to wear. "We have made shift to catch a strain or two of the divine harmonies which Plato heard and to intune our lives to something of the harmonious peace he felt. Not unsuccessfully, I trust, for our lives have been moving to a rich music these three years gone."

MR. GODOLPHIN (who had great briskness with him despite his weak health): "Most true, Dr. Hammond; and though we may scatter from here and little accomplished to look to, yet the spirit of reason we are sure will prevail, even as the spirit of Socrates could not be drowned in the hemlock-potion."

DR. HAMMOND: "Something such I was about to say, Mr. Godolphin; for deeper than the unreasonable and harsh noise of strife that is abroad, I sometimes think I hear the sound of a great harmony swelling over England, the present discord being only a music of preparation."

But I saw that my lord Falkland had little heart whether for mirth or hope, though he had tried cheerfully to dispel the misty nimbus, and now he spoke with a voice and look that discovered the passionate sorrow at his heart.

"Even hopeful and courageous, Sidney, we have too few of your mettle but you hear the news from Scotland, and you see how the King and the Archbishop will drive to extremes. And so, Dr. Hammond, instead of the harmony of the spheres, I doubt me there will be clashing of swords both there and here before long."

Then we held some converse about the state of affairs, wherewith

it is needless I should trouble you unless it were to show how wisely and exactly my lord F. had forejudged the issue. For he saw all positions and he did not mistake his own. Some one of us protested that he wished the clergy on both sides could be chained up; when my lord at risk of being thought disloyal said the chain had needs be long enough to reach a leg of his majesty likewise. Of this he seemed sure that it would come to hot strife, and if we would not be altogether empty of influence we would be forced to take a side: yet this, he saw, was just wherein our failure lay, in being forced to take a side, for in that case, we were in a measure fighting against ourselves.

"Reason will never do it," he said, "for King, bishops and recusants have closed their ears against that: and Chillingworth who might reconcile them all if they would but listen to him, is told that he preaches the divinity taught in hell. His pharisees and sinners will fight it out between them in their own way, and we shall be forced to take part with one or other of these,-which side, we must wait and see."

He seemed as he felt that this going of his and the breaking up of our company was an end of reason and now that it must come to force, and this was partly what saddened him, but partly also something else which I can only call a kind of Nemesis that haunted him from the day of his receiving the King's letter.

We spoke long together, until the evening drew in, and now we were sitting, not speaking, but only as enjoying one another's company for the last time, it might be, and loth to leave the place: to that same company it was the last time. Then Mr. Godolphin with that brisk and hopeful fancy of his :

"See, my lord, where the heavens give augury of a fair morrow. Can you mistrust it, prophet of bright weather and welcome harbinger of the coming good? Accept the omen, good my lord, and believe that fair weather is yet in store for England."

LORD FALKLAND: "Do you hear the wind moaning in the trees, Sidney?"

water makes upon the And we have been like

MR. GODOLPHIN "Tis only wind and trees lamenting together that we are all to forsake them for a while." LORD FALKLAND: "Tis the sound the sea-shore, Sidney; you know how sad it is. children building houses of shells there. The tide comes up, dark and troubled; we bid it be still, but we are driven back before it and our little shell-houses washed away."

As we sate, a sound of music came stealing upon us through the

mes, low and fulcer tones resting with light wings upon the air, singing of peace and 1 varid of happiness. It was lady Falkland's voice companied with forks of a man: yet whether it was our mood or something in the sin itself or the stance, or the suspense titut flows preet and the song fed away into sadness and its last tones had in tam a trib as of soft weering Presently lady F. appeared her light cova gimmering among the trees, the cittern in ber hand. In red rose to meet her:

e vere on are to bid the Grove along good bye, lady Falkland, wh the scrood of nd chained us like a siren

LADY FALKLAND : “I would it could chain you all longer at Tev. Dn. Chillingworth. But 'tis only for a season, and the limes and caks will keep me another good silent company till your return. Ah: these limes and naks, if they had the gift of tongues, what secrets might they not rehearse

DR. CHILLIN IT: AD innocent sccrcts, be sure, though some of them tangled enough”

MR. EARTE: They could speak some werds of innocent wisdom-wisdom crying cut in the woods and no man regarding

her."

LORD FALKLAND: They might speak of hopes born like a brave summer morning, and a night closing like this in troubled anticipations."

LADY FALKLAND: "And I am sure they would have a word to say of many happy hours between. Eut will you give them a formal farewell, gentlemen? Will you sing them a partirg chansonette, Sir Edmund?"

SIR E. WALLER: "With great pleasure, my lady: if I did but know how to suit the occasion."

The occasion being voted to suit itself, Sir Edmund took the cittern and with a few prelusive chords sung a ditty which as he said was a pinch erotical.

"And now ye oaks, farewell, and farewell, ye limes! Sacred spot, adieu, until we meet again.”

But we never met again.

My lord Falkland rode off in the morning, we accompanying him as far as Oxford, where we parted with him, bidding him Godspeed.

He was a little heartened when the Parliament met in the spring of 1640, thinking that here might be occasion to settle the troubles of the time in reasonable fashion. He took much part in this Parlia