verse wakes no responsive echo in my
heart, O tender Transatlantic Poet, for my heart is light and
glad--recklessly glad--heedless of to-morrow--forgetful of
yesterday--full to the very brim with the dear delight of to-day.

And now to business. I descend from the supernal realms of fancy to the
dry record of commonplace fact. This day week I arrived at Hidling,
after a tedious journey, which, with stoppages at Derby and Normanton,
and small delays at obscurer stations, had occupied the greater part of
the day. It was dusk when I took my place in the hybrid vehicle, half
coach, half omnibus, which was to convey me from Hidling to Huxter's
Cross. A transient glimpse at Hidling showed me one long straggling
street and a square church-tower. Our road branched off from the
straggling street, and in the autumn dusk I could just discover the dim
outlines of distant hills encircling a broad waste of moor.

I have been so steeped in London that this wild barren scene had a
charm for me which it could scarcely possess for others. Even the gloom
of that dark waste of common land was pleasant to me. I shared the
public vehicle with one old woman, who snored peacefully in the
remotest corner, while I looked out at the little open window and
watched the darkening landscape.

Our drive occupied some hours. We passed two or three little clusters
of cottages and homesteads, where the geese screamed and the cocks
crowed at our approach, and where a few twinkling tapers in upper
windows proclaimed the hour of bed-time. At one of these clusters of
habitation, a little island of humanity in the waste of wold and moor,
we changed horses, with more yo-oh-ing and come-up-ing than would have
attended the operation in a civilised country. At this village I heard
the native tongue for the first time in all its purity; and for any
meaning which it conveyed to my ear I might as well have been listening
to the _patois_ of agricultural Carthage.

After changing horses, we went up hill, with perpetual groanings, and
grumblings, and grindings, and whip-smacking and come-up-ing, for an
indefinite period; and then we came to a cluster of cottages, suspended
high up in the sharp autumn atmosphere as it seemed to me; and the
driver of the vehicle came to my little peephole of a window, and told
me with some slight modification of the Carthaginian _patois_ that I
was "theer."

I alighted, and found myself at the door of a village inn, with the red
l