r peace. The morning song of the birds
is hushed, for the dawn breaks less rosily in the eastern skies, but at
twilight they still come and nestle in the branches that were sunned in
the smile of love and watered with its happy tears. And over the grave
of each buried hope or joy stands an angel with strong comforting hands
and patient smile; and the name of the garden is Life, and the angel is
Memory.'

Chapter XVI. The decay of Romance.

I have changed my Belvern, and there are so many others left to choose
from that I might live in a different Belvern each week. North, South,
East, and West Belvern, New Belvern, Old Belvern, Great Belvern, Little
Belvern, Belvern Link, Belvern Common, and Belvern Wells. They are all
nestled together in the velvet hollows or on the wooded crowns of the
matchless Belvern Hills, from which they look down upon the fairest
plains that ever blessed the eye. One can see from their heights a
score of market towns and villages, three splendid cathedrals, each in a
different county, the queenly Severn winding like a silver thread among
the trees, with soft-flowing Avon and gentle Teme watering the verdant
meadows through which they pass. All these hills and dales were once
the Royal Forest, and afterwards the Royal Chase, of Belvern, covering
nearly seven thousand acres in three counties; and from the lonely
height of the Beacon no less than

'Twelve fair counties saw the blaze'

of signals, when the country was threatened by a Spanish invasion. As
for me, I mourn the decay of Romance with a great R; we have it still
among us, but we spell it with a smaller letter. It must be so much
more interesting to be threatened with an invasion, especially a Spanish
invasion, than with a strike, for instance. The clashing of swords and
the flashing of spears in the sunshine are so much more dazzling and
inspiring than a line of policemen with clubs! Yes, I wish it were the
age of chivalry again, and that I were looking down from these hills
into the Royal Chase. Of course I know that there were wicked and
selfish tyrants in those days, before the free press, the jury system,
and the folding-bed had wrought their beneficent influences upon the
common mind and heart. Of course they would have sneered at Browning
Societies and improved tenements, and of course they did not care
a penny whether woman had the ballot or not, so long as man had the
bottle; but I would that the other moderns wer