ment; his own imaginative faculty was rooted in
common-sense, and he knew the value of the latter in curbing undue
excursions into the fanciful and transcendental.

In Eastham, on the village green, stood an old yew-tree which, six
centuries before, had been traditionally called The Old Yew of Eastham,
and was probably at least coeval with the village itself, which was one
of the oldest in England. It was of enormous girth, and was still in
leaf; but nothing but the bark was left of the great trunk; all the wood
had decayed away so long ago that the memory of man held no record of
it. There was a great conical gap in one side, like an open door, and it
was my custom--as it had doubtless been that of innumerable children of
ages gone--to enter this door and "play house" in the spacious interior.
Meanwhile my father would seat himself on the twisted roots without, and
let his thoughts drift back to the time when this huge hulk had first
cast a slender shadow over the greensward of primitive, Saxon England.
It was a massive tree before the Domesday Book was begun; Chaucer
would not be heard of for four hundred years to come; and where was
Shakespeare? What was suspected of America? Yet here was this venerable
vegetable, still with life enough left in it, perhaps, to see the end of
English monarchy. The yew was a fact; but the ghosts were the reality,
after all.

These obscure village antiquities, which had no special history
attaching to them, were in a way more impressive than the great ruins of
England, which had formed the scene and background of famous events. The
latter had become conventional sights, which the tourist felt bound to
inspect under the voluble and exasperating guidance of a professional
showman; and this malice-prepense sort of interest and picturesqueness
always tried Hawthorne's patience and sympathy a little. It is the
unknown past that is most fascinating, that comes home closest to the
heart. The things told of in history books are hackneyed, and they
partake of the unreality inherent in the descriptions of the writers.
But the unrecorded things are virgin, and enter into our most private
sympathies and realization. My father viewed and duly admired the
great castles, palaces, and cathedrals of England; but he loved the old
villages and their appurtenances, and could dream dreams more moving
under the shadow of Eastham Yew than in Westminster Abbey itself.

The historic houses and country-seats w