—such as are met with in the Kennet, and such streams as you will find some pleasant as well as instructive talk about in Mr. Kingsley's delightful paper called "Chalk Stream Studies." The family, whose possession of this estate, however, was by no means ancient, had a house here once; which they occasionally visited. At such times no doubt the village bore a very different aspect from that which it wears now:—
"A merry place, 'tis said, in days of yore.
But something ails it now—the place is curst."
The stream still runs on, but no longer through a park. For the house is gone, not a trace of it remaining; the park ploughed up, though round the edge of it might still be seen the traces of the drive, in the circling avenue marked out by the trees still standing. The far older and stronger castle of the older and mightier lords of the place, has left some relics of its huge and frowning walls, which, if they seem to tell some broken tale of feudal tyranny in days long past, can hardly be suggestive of the picture of a more miserable population than that which now clusters round them, while they are suggestive of that high-spirited and warlike race who had set their seals to the Great Charter, and in securing their own
