put down the burden of life, a hundred and
twenty years ago. The house is unfortunately largely modernized, but
many of the out-buildings remain unchanged; and not a man thereabout, or
in any other quarter, could tell me where the former occupant, who
fought so bravely his fierce battle of the drill, lies buried.

About the middle of the last century, there lived in the south of
Leicestershire, in the parish of Church-Langton, an eccentric and
benevolent clergyman by the name of William Hanbury, who conceived the
idea of establishing a great charity which was to be supported by a vast
plantation of trees. To this end, he imported a great variety of seeds
and plants from the Continent and America, established a nursery of
fifty acres in extent, and published "An Essay on Planting, and a Scheme
to make it Conducive to the Glory of God and the Advantage of Society."

But the Reverend Hanbury was beset by aggressive and cold-hearted
neighbors, among them two strange old "gentlewomen," Mistress Pickering
and Mistress Byrd, who malevolently ordered their cattle to be turned
loose into his first plantation of twenty thousand young and thrifty
trees. And not content with this, they served twenty-seven different
copies of writs upon him in one day, for trespass. Of all this he gives
detailed account in his curious history of the "Charitable Foundations
at Church-Langton." He tells us that the "venomous rage" of these old
ladies (who died shortly after, worth a million of dollars) did not even
spare his dogs; but that his pet spaniel and greyhound were cruelly
killed by a table-fork thrust into their entrails. Nay, their
game-keeper even buried two dogs alive, which belonged to his neighbor,
Mr. Wade, a substantial grazier. His story of it is very Defoe-like and
pitiful:--"I myself heard them," he says, "_ten days_ after they had
been buried, and, seeing some people at a distance, inquired what dogs
they were. '_They are some dogs that are lost, Sir_,' said they; '_they
have been lost some time_.' I concluded only some poachers had been
there early in the morning, and by a precipitate flight had left their
dogs behind them. In short, the howling and barking of these dogs was
heard for near three weeks, when it ceased. Mr. Wade's dogs were
missing, but he could not suspect those dogs to be his; and the noise
ceasing, the thoughts, wonder, and talking about them soon also ceased.
Some time after, a person, being amongst the bushes