ercourse
from village to village has kept the track bare ever since. An American
farmer would plough across any such path. Old associations are sure to
be fragrant herbs in English nostrils, but we pull them up as weeds.

I remember such a path, which connects Leamington with the small village
of Lillington. The village consists chiefly of one row of dwellings,
growing together like the cells of a honeycomb, without intervening
gardens, grass-plots, orchards, or shade trees. Beyond the first row
there was another block of small, old cottages with thatched roofs. I
never saw a prettier rural scene. In front of the whole row was a
luxuriant hawthorne hedge, and belonging to each cottage was a little
square of garden ground. The gardens were chock-full of familiar,
bright-coloured flowers. The cottagers evidently loved their little
nests, and kindly nature helped their humble efforts with its flowers,
moss, and lichens.

Not far from these cottages a green lane turned aside to an ideal
country church and churchyard. The tower was low, massive, and crowned
with battlements. We looked into the windows and beheld the dim and
quiet interior, a narrow space, but venerable with the consecration of
many centuries. A well-trodden path led across the churchyard. Time
gnaws an English gravestone with wonderful appetite. And yet this, same
ungenial climate has a lovely way of dealing with certain horizontal
monuments. The unseen seeds of mosses find their way into the lettered
furrows, and are made to germinate by the watery sunshine of the English
sky; and by-and-bye, behold, the complete inscription beautifully
embossed in velvet moss on the marble slab! I found an almost illegible
stone very close to the church, and made out this forlorn verse.

Poorly lived,
And poorly died;
Poorly buried,
And no one cried.

From Leamington, the road to Warwick is straight and level till it
brings you to an arched bridge over the Avon. Casting our eyes along the
quiet stream through a vista of willows, we behold the grey magnificence
of Warwick Castle. From the bridge the road passes in front of the
Castle Gate, and enters the principal street of Warwick.

Proceeding westward through the town, we find ourselves confronted by a
huge mass of rock, penetrated by a vaulted passage, which may well have
been one of King Cymbeline's gateways; and on the top of the rock sits a
small, old church, communicating with an ancient edific