“Weston-Turville,”—where the cottages are shaded by noble trees, or peep, like toy-houses, out of bouquets of monthly roses and holyoaks, and wildernesses of clematis. We strongly desired to spend an hour in the beautiful church of Kimble, which formerly belonged to the Hampdens; for those village churches are full of interest; brasses and time-worn tombs are to be met with in their sanctuaries; an old morion above a tattered flag, or some hallowed name stamping a blue slate with immortality; and Kimble tempted us, looking so full of conscious glory, upon its steep, above the treetops; but we had a long day's work before us at Great Hampden. We passed The Chequers,' in heroic self-denial-for the present; and while we admired the tinted woods and uprisings of the Chiltern Hills, we became grievously perplexed by the net-work of lanes and drives that, as we got deeper into the country, cross and recross, and seem to diverge everywhere, and in all directions; the crows evidently considering their right to the shorn harvest field indisputable. Our driver was in happy ignorance of Hampden, either the patriot or the house, yet affirmed it was somewhere hereabout; and but for a pretty cheerful girl, a miracle of intelligence, at a place we believe called 'Brockwell Farm,' we might have wandered vainly among the hills, and valleys, and paths, until the day was done. We had not heard that the fine red brick Elizabethan house of the Hampdens had been stuccoed into whiteness, and we passed it without recognition; for the church, which we knew almost joined the dwelling, is concealed by trees. We drove on, however, to what an honest-looking smith, who wielded his iron as lightly as if it were a quarter-staff, told us was the 'Patriot's village, and that the clerk of the church resided there. Hampden village consists of an irregular line of very primitive cottages, straggling along one side of a small common, from which their gardens have been taken, bit by bit; it is backed by rising and well-wooded ground. An old and ragged tree, nearly opposite the gate that separates the road from the common,

our English counties, and striking peculiarities, indicative of remote antiquity, frequently arrest attention. While Cornwall tells of early British location, Kent speaks of Saxon rule in such names of persons as Fordred, which appears on the coinage of that people; or of places, as Offham (the house of Offa), Wodensborough (the hill of Oden), &c. The names above quoted are equally indicative of Norman rule, and the settlements awarded to the followers of William the Conqueror.

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attracted our attention; and a peasant, whose appearance bespoke little of what we term comfort,' seemed much astonished at our visit to so poor a place.' He shook his head gravely, and told us- The people dead and

gone said that tree stood there in the "Patriot's" time, but the clerk of the church knew it all; he could tell all about the "Patriot," and everything: he would call him in a minute; when gentry did come to see so poor a place, they ought to know everything.' The clerk soon came-a tall thin man who stooped rather, and looked perhaps older than his years. His calm intelligent face lit up, when Hampden's name was mentioned, and he knew the nature of our errand. 'Ay,' he said, 'that tree had heard the blast of Hampden's trumpet, sure enough!' No doubt it was there, under the woody brows of his own Chilterns, he first issued the command to gather the militia of his own country, which had, long before, caught the spirit of its great leader. We imagined the parishes and hundreds with their preachers at their heads, marshaling up a defile to the right, to meet him who had so bravely struggled for their liberty! Not only the tree,' resumed the worthy clerk, but the cottage in which I live, was standing then,' and he invited us to look at the beams, they were so thick.' When we entered, he pressed upon us pears and plums, the fruit of his garden; and

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his wife selected the largest from her store, and took no little pride in the thickness of the low oak beams. She regarded us with respect when she found we had come from London to see and hear all about The Patriot,' which no one, she assured us, could tell better than her husband; 'we must have great curiosity!' She had heard that Tring was twelve miles off; she had lived in this cottage forty years, but had never been so far. She confessed, with a quiet smile,' she was no great traveller.' This Dorcas had bright eyes beneath her white hair, and was withal kindly, courteous, and intelligent, with abundant health, and was well learned in simple garden and house craft, and better still, in that lore which renders wise unto salvation; yet, from the time of her youth, she had never been twelve miles from that most lonely and primitive village in which she was born!

Yes; nothing is more likely than that Hampden mustered his men upon that common; for the broad and beautiful table-land, spread in front of the house, which now commands so glorious a view of the surrounding country, was then intersected by quaint hedges and garden fantasies, suited to the taste of the period; no place, therefore, could have been more fitted or appropriate, as a muster-ground for the Hampden men, than Hampden Common, which almost adjoins the house. We turned back; leaving the common, and passing again through the green lanes, and by the forge, we came to the gate opening to a winding drive that leads through the park to the entrance of both church and dwelling-separated only by a narrow road, over-arched by stately trees and almost as stately evergreens on the right, a small garden gate admits, by a back path, to the house, flower-garden, and lawn, where the Patriot spent his happiest days on the left, is the entrance to the sacred church, where his remains repose. It is very rarely that thus, within, as it were, the compass of a ring, a great man's FIRST and LAST are gathered together. It is impossible to imagine anything more still than this hallowed spot, hid away at the back of that chalky range, the Chilterns, which bound on one side the rich vale of Aylesbury, The flower-garden, through which we passed, seemed as if called into existence by the wand of an enchanter; the lingering roses, the heavy-headed dahlias, the bright-toned autumn flowers, looked so lonely in their beauty, We almost feared to speak in such deep solitude. A human footstep, the bark of a dog, the song of a bird, the tinkle of a

sheep-bell, would have been a relief-until we had drunk deeply of the spirit of the place, and then, as thoughts and memories crowded around us, we felt the luxury of its solemn quiet, and that sound here would be as sacrilege. Passing a low sort of postern entrance we walked beneath an arch, starred over by jessamine, and stood in front of the extensive mansion, added to

and enlarged by various proprietors, and at one time displaying some goodly architecture of the age of Elizabeth; the stucco, as if ashamed of its usurpation, beginning to drop away from the red brick, of which the house is built. Save the natural decay' which must progress in all uninhabited dwellings, we saw nothing that told of the ruin' which comes of carelessness or neglect. The Hall is of that gloomy character, once considered necessary for

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grandeur of effect; the suite of rooms consists of a library, two dining-rooms, a drawing-room, a sort of small presence-chamber, and a bed-room, that enjoys the reputation of having been especially furnished for Elizabeth by Griffith Hampden, when her gracious Majesty visited this favoured spot; the gallant high sheriff paid his Queen right royal homage, cutting a passage through the woods, which is still called 'the Queen's gap.' The furniture, however, of her Majesty's bed-room, has nothing about it of the Elizabethan era; it is no older than the time of the second Charles. In the library

is a curious bible, once the property of Philip, uncle of Oliver Cromwell; it contains detailed entries of the births of many of the Cromwell family.

There is a very celebrated portrait of the Protector on the stair-case, and another of one of the family of Hampden,-we believe the 'Patriot's' son, -who, wearied of the world he knew, rushed unbidden to that which he knew not. All memory of the sleeping-chamber of John Hampden is lost; but that of the tragedy is well-known ;—what house is there without its skeleton yet what dwelling in all England more sacred than this lonely one, to the hearts of Englishmen? In one of the reception-rooms is an interesting portrait, believed to be of the Patriot; it hung unnoticed on the stairs, until Lord Nugent undertook to exhume the remains of Hampden, with a view to ascertain whether he had died by the effect of the bursting of his own pistol, or from the shot of the carabine, which, according to other historians, shattered the shoulder of the hero on Chalgrove field. The body, of which the grave was despoiled in a ruder manner and for a longer period than appears to have been at all necessary, was found perfect, except that a shattered hand was rolled in a separate cerement beside it : the features, when discovered, bore so strong a resemblance to this hitherto neglected portrait, that it was taken down and cleaned, and in a corner, the name was discovered *; '—it has since been placed in a worthier position. It is deplorable that this noble mansion, honoured by

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* Such, at least, is the motive assigned for its removal, by the household; but upon very unsatisfactory grounds. It is much to be lamented, and certainly not to be accounted for, that Lord Nugent in his "Life of Hampden," published some time after the exhumation, takes no notice whatever of the circumstance; not attempting to account for the fact that in the "rummage" to which the grave was subjected no body was found exhibiting wounds on the shoulder, while that which his lordship and his friends disinterred was without the hand, which, wrapped in a separate cerement, was by its side. Lord Nugent quotes the state