ity of
Montpellier, were, at the request of a brother-in-law of Mrs.
Robinson, and through the good offices of Mr. Locke, subsequently
exhumed and despatched to Pewsey, where they rest under a suitable
inscription, locally attributed to the pen of Mr. Locke. His
admirers will recognize in the concluding lines that conscientious
exactitude which ever distinguished the philosopher. They run--

"'And to the Memory of one
FRITZ (? Sempach)
a Humble Native of Alsace
whose remains, by Destiny commingled
with the foregoing,
are for convenience here deposited.
II. Kings iv. 39.'

"But the extraordinary part of my story, gentlemen, remains to be
told. Some six weeks ago, happening, in search of a theatrical
engagement, to find myself in the neighbourhood of Stonehenge, I fell
in with a pedestrian whose affability of accost invited me to a
closer acquaintance. He introduced himself as the Reverend Josias
Micklethwaite, a student of Nature, and more particularly of the
mosses and lichens of Wilts. Our liking (I have reason to believe)
was mutual, and we spent a delightful ten days in tracking up
together the course of the Wiltshire Avon, and afterwards in
perambulating the famous forest of Savernake. Here, I regret to say,
a trifling request--for the loan of five shillings, a temporary
accommodation--led to a misunderstanding, and put a period to our
companionship, and I remain his debtor but for some hours of
profitable intercourse.

"Coming at the close of a day's ramble to Pewsey, a small town near
the source of the Avon, we visited its parish churchyard and happened
upon the memorial to the unfortunate Robinsons. An old man was
stooping over the turf beside it, engaged in gathering mushrooms,
numbers of which grew in the grass around this stone, _but nowhere
else in the whole enclosure_. The old man, who proved to be the
sexton, assured us not only of this, but also that previous to the
interment of the Robinsons no mushrooms had grown within a mile of
the spot. He added that, albeit regarded with abhorrence by the more
superstitious inhabitants of Pewsey, the fungi were edible, and gave
no trouble to ordinary digestions (his own, for example); nor upon
close examination could Mr. Micklethwaite detect that they differed
at all from the common _agaricus campestris_. So, sirs, concludes my
tale.