nce the rampart of an ancient British
town; though, save in the tangled copse hard by, where the plough has
never been at work, it is fast disappearing. Many a stone lying about
the camp bears unmistakable marks of fire.

A glance of the eye westwards, and your thoughts are carried back to the
Roman invasion; for scarce five miles off lies the ancient Roman villa
of Chedworth. Then, again, tradition has it that a mile away from this
spot, and close to the old manor house, skirmishes were fought in later
days, at the time the Civil Wars were raging, when many a chivalrous
cavalier and many a stern, unbending Puritan lay dead on yonder field,
or, maybe, was carried into the old house to linger and to die in the
very room in which you slept last night. Everywhere in England are
battlefields; but they are, in the words of De Quincey, "battlefields
that nature has long ago reconciled to herself with the sweet oblivion
of flowers."

This very mound on which you are standing, is it not the burying-place
of a race which dwelt on the Cotswolds full three thousand years ago?
And were not human remains found here a few years back, when this, in
common with many other barrows hard by, was opened, and an underground
chamber discovered therein--the earthly resting-place of the bones of
the unknown dead?

"The silence of deep eternities, of worlds from beyond the morning
stars--does it not speak to thee? The unborn ages,--the old graves, with
their long-mouldering dust,--the very tears that wetted it, now all
dry,--do not these speak to thee what ear hath not heard?"

"Solemn before us
Veiled the dark Portal--
Goal of all mortal.
Stars silent rest o'er us,
Graves under us silent."

Well has Carlyle translated the great German poet. And the old barrows
that lie scattered over these wide-stretching downs are not dumb; they
are continually speaking to us of those things "which ear hath not
heard"; and at no time have they more to tell than at the close of a
mild, peaceful day in October, when all else, save for the faint
tinkling of the distant sheep-bells, is silent as death, and the sun,
ere once more disappearing, is shedding a solemn glow over the deserted,
mysterious uplands of the Cotswold Hills.

But the partridges are "calling" all around, and a covey actually
passes over your head. Your sporting instincts begin to revive, and you
take up your gun and proceed to stalk that covey, stealing rou