to consummate fruit. Learning and leisure, with all the luxurious appliances of a wealthy country house at their command, hampered by no irritating defect of circumstance-mind will commune with mind; and as we prepare to look over his shoulder, we anticipate a real intellectual treat.

Drawing a sheet of exquisite smoothness from the stand, and dipping a new grey-goose quill in a silver fox-head inkstand, the scribe pauses, biting the feather of the pen and gazing with a faroff look out of the window. His eye wanders over the soaked lawn, which was once the cloister garth of an ancient religious house. Even so in olden days may a monk, wearied with the task of illuminating a psalter, have rested his eyes on the same emerald sward. To tell the truth, our friend is puzzled to remember the day of the month, though that happens to be displayed in large black figures in a frame on the mantelpiece. The mental effort seems too much for him, for, laying down his pen, he pulls out a morocco-leather cigar-case; and it is not till he has a fine regalia under way that he begins a letter

To his Sister.

"CAROL PRIORY, SOPPINGHAM, Sunday.

"DEAR POLLY,-Please tell the governor I shall arrive on Tuesday by the 5.15, and will he send a trap for me. Raining like anything. Yours, Bo."

Evidently he reserves the confidence, always so facile and full between brother and sister, for their early meeting.

Before beginning the next let ter, some minutes are devoted to reflection and calculation, aided by the aromatic incense of Havannah. Ah! he is now going to

commit to some intimate friend choice thoughts from that wellshaped, capable head. But no; the letter is

To the Secretary, Army and Navy Co-operative Society, Victoria Street, S. W.

Captain de Crespigny, No. 1,291,065," (shade of the great direct descendant having to ceryou of your tify his identity by a number like a convict's?) "requests that 1000 c. f. E.C. cartridges, No. 6 shot, may be sent to him at Hieover Hall, Huntingfield."

Crusader! what think

be the letter to admit us to the The third and last is going to writer's mind, for it is

To his Friend.

"DEAR OLD MAN,-You wanted to know what we did here. Friday-Cockshot Wood, 5 guns, 720 pheas., 213 hares, 30 rab., 2 woodcock, 18 various; total, 1083. Saturday Bangover Covers, 105 pheasants, 65 part., 19 hares, 573 rabb., 10 woodcock, 2 various; total, 774. Weather blagard [sic], powder straightish. We don't shoot to-morrow; there's a rotten cattle-show or something. I'm off on Tuesday-home. Haven't seen you for an age. I don't suppose we shall meet till about the Derby. Take care of your life.-Yours BO DE CRESPIGNY."

ever,

Alas! it seems as if the cheapness of correspondence has brought upon it the proverbial corollary. Yet this is an age of copious, if not fastidious, reading. It is still recognised as a duty to society to make one's self as agreeable as may be in conversation. It would therefore seem worth the little extra trouble involved to make a letter as attractive as a paragraph

in an evening paper. If it were once realised that it is as much a breach of good manners to write slatternly as to speak curtly, the habit of adequate literary expression would soon be acquired. It is as integral to good breeding to amuse or inform a friend at a distance as to do so to one sitting in the next place at dinner.

It is easily imagined how, in former times, the arrival of the weekly post must have been a vivid incident in the dulness of country life; but

"Born a goddess, Dulness never dies,"

and she seems to have avenged herself for the greater frequency of letters by pouring her spirit upon their pages.

In this country we look back to the latter half of the eighteenth and the first quarter of the nineteenth century, as the last period when men took enough pains to write letters worth reading; but we should be slow to admit that friendship is less prized now than then. Walpole, the prince of correspondents, quarrelled with most of his friends except Sir Horace Mann. Perhaps it was distance alone that prevented disagreement with him; but how full and warm the current of sympathy flows through the letters to the end! and, but for this art, their friendship must have died early of starvation. It may be as cynically true as ever, that although any man can say how many horses or cattle he possesses, none can say how many friends he reckons : still, friendship endures; and, while it does so, it is passing strange that the priceless link of correspondence should be allowed to rust.

At the risk of being wearisome, I must carry inquiry into this matter a little further. It is assumed that, because letters are so cheap

are

and common, they can never be again what they were a hundred and fifty years ago. It is not difficult to imagine what they were then. In a certain Scottish country house there hangs on the wall of the central hall a mighty fabric of appliqué work, originally intended for and used as a carpet. Chairs and sofas covered with the same material. It is the handiwork of a former lady of the house, and dates from 1767-77. The faithful effigies of hyacinths, crown imperials, fritillaries, honeysuckle, hellebore, tigerlilies, moss and other roses - all the lavish heraldry of the seasons that flaunted in the castle parterres in those long-dead years -still attest the industry of this gentle dame and her maidens. One can see them sitting round the plum-coloured fabric, stitching away as weeks, months, years slipped by. The part she had to play in life is known to have been the " patient Grizel business ; there remain her letters in witness of it, the ink more faded than her flowers. Truly to her, left to struggle with the narrow supplies allowed her by her selfish and absent husband, the rare arrival of the post must have been an event much looked forward to and greatly prized. But the point insisted on is this-it was not the rarity of it that gave it value, but the trouble people took to make their letters compensate for their rarity and cost. Obviously, it is the people who meet oftenest and on the easiest terms who most prize each other's company; So the ease of frequent correspondence ought to multiply rather than detract from its value. It is easy to test the truth of this. Does the lover of to-day treasure one whit less fondly, or read over one fraction less frequently, the daily letter from his mistress that

costs him nothing, than the lover of last century, who got a letter but once a-week that cost him eighteenpence ? Does the nineteenth-century mother's heart yearn less achingly over her schoolboy's blotty scrawls, because she receives in a single morning more letters from her friends than her grandmother got in six months? Not a bit. As an avenue of intercourse, a bond of affection, a source of delight, letter-writing has no more lost its virtue than speech has, only by our slipshod ways we let the wine run in the kennel that we used to love to set before our friends.

As with most metaphors, so fault may be found with that of a march to express the increase of civilisation. In some aspects it is like a stream that has ceased to run in its old channels. For the first time in history, from no cause that has ever been explained, we are without living architecture. In every former age, one desiring to build a house or a church instructed his architect as to the scale of the work, but never thought it necessary to specify the style. That was spontaneous: in the eleventh century the windows and doors would have round arches; in the thirteenth century, pointed with capitals on the pilasters; in the fifteenth century the mode dispensed with capitals-and so on. In each age it was assumed that the new building would be in the fashion of the day. Even when that fashion was a renaissance, it was a uniform, welldefined renaissance. Not till Walpole built Strawberry Hill and Scott followed with Abbotsford was it evident that architecture had ceased to live. Henceforward pretty and interesting piles might be reared with the bones of the mighty dead (with becoming respect to comparative

anatomy), but houses could no more be living fabrics.

Modern architects can build excellent houses in any known style: he who pays for them has only to specify his fancy. Hence the bizarre phenomena of justice scowling down Fleet Street from the battlements of a feudal fortress a Venetian Gothic palace trying to smile through the drizzle of the Western Highlands—a timbered, red-tiled, Cheshire manorhouse perched beside a Renfrewshire coal-pit, like a pretty, smartly dressed lady in a dust-cart.

Signs of flickering life survived even Strawberry Hill and Abbotsford; there remained till within the last quarter century a semblance of a style of the day. Cubitt and Haussman may hereafter be remembered as the last architects whose work carries upon it the evidence of its date. After them-chaos: Queen Anne elbows the Abencerrages, King John rubs shoulders with Adelphi Adams, and the niggling confectionery of our native Tudor cringes before

In this, her dark extremity of guilt."

One is led to wonder what kind of sentiment will hang in afterages round the ruins of the nineteenth century. It has been said that, prone as men are to revivals, no one will ever be tempted to revive the eighteen hundreds. It is indeed difficult to imagine any one studiously reconstructing Buckingham Palace (itself a distorted renaissance), nor can one believe that any degree of antiquity can ever invest it with the charm that hangs over the wasted

walls of Holyrood, or even the well-preserved dowagerhood of Hampton Court.

One thing is certain, our architects are preparing a pretty comedy of errors for future generations of antiquaries. Massive Norman keeps that frown over English meadows, hoar peel-towers of the Border, dismal brochs on Highland capes, countless country churches and manor-houses-each has an intelligible story for the traveller; but heaven help him who shall try five hundred years hence to read the tale of nineteenth-century civilisation by means of its buildings!

We do not realise the full absurdity of it now—perhaps it is as well for the tempers of some of us that we do not; but it will reflect little credit on our art hereafter. A spick-and-span house built in the fashion of a medieval baron's stronghold is a common object on a Surrey heath or at a seaside watering-place. As parts of a detached villa, towers with machicolated battlements and loopholed turrets are really nothing but an elaborate practical joke; an eligible seaside residence tricked out with these is about as serious as the men-at-arms in a Lord Mayor's show. The architect displays a creditable acquaintance with archæology, but the effect is not more pleasant than when a grown person affects juvenile airs.

But however absurd some results of the Gothic revival may be, we are bound to be grateful for others. Receiving its main impulse from the skill of Pugin, guided and strengthened by the exquisite feeling and noble language of the author of the 'Stones of Venice,' it has taken such firm hold of the popular imagination that each year sees more intelligent care bestowed on our ancient buildings. In its early fervour it

was the cause of terrible ravages from the hand of the restorer, but even his work is carried on more reverently now; and as for pulling down or wantonly defacingan effectual stop has been put to these. One can hardly imagine a state of public opinion that would allow of such an act being perpetrated as that of which the writer has lately seen mournful traces in a certain ruined Scottish priory. The south doorway of the nave is of late Norman work, enriched with delicately carved mouldings: in adapting the building to the requirements of a modern Scottish kirk (presumably about two hundred years ago), a deep, straight groove has been cut right through the ornament on each side of the arch, in order to support the gable of a porch.

Certainly one of the pleasanter signs of recent civilisation is a new-born respect for relics of the past. It is a sentiment which may not, perhaps, rank as a moral virtue, but is to be prized, if on no other account, for the keen enjoyment it confers. No doubt the present often jars harshly with the past, yet often it falls into unexpected harmony with it. One spring afternoon I strolled into the gardens surrounding the cathedral of Tours. The sun shone brightly on the young leaves; an artillery band was playing; the townsfolk strolled about or sat under the trees, the men, as usual, vying with each other in ugliness of attire-the women, no doubt, displaying travesty of the last but two Parisian fashion; children ran about; nurses wheeled perambulators,-in short, it was just such a gathering as may be witnessed on a fine day in any French garrison town. But what has stamped it as one of the fairest scenes in a life's memory is that high over the delicate greenery

soared the grey cathedral towers, shining softly like columns of dull silver against the blue vault. Eighteen generations or more have been laid in the earth since these stones were reared heavenward; rough fellows we should count the builders if they stood among us now, and we should expect them to be astonished at our progress, nor would they disappoint us yet it was their handiwork that gave peculiar charm to the scene. The band would have played, the sun shone, the trees given as soft a shade, but the whole thing would have been forgotten as a sleepy fête-day but for those cathedral towers, which a modern architect might mimic, but could not design.

With all our accumulated experience we lack discretion in the art of enjoyment - seem indeed to be getting worse rather than better in this respect, more stupid rather than wise. It is only possible within reasonable limits to touch on an instance of this here and there, but a very obvious one may be taken at random. The hue of gold is that from which the eye derives the fullest delight -not yellow, as of a buttercup, but the hue of the metal itself. There is in it a sense of fulness and richness, a blending of glow and coolness, which the old illuminators well understood, and which

alone on the state coach but on the panels of every hackney cab: the trade advertisement, the publican's sign-everything that is common and much that is unclean

borrows the lustre of gilding, till our jaded sight loses the sense of what should be matchless beauty, and we derive less pleasure from it than a negro rightly does from contemplating his glass beads. It is a sound canon of taste that places ormolu under the same ban as stucco.

However, it is idle to repine, for if sumptuary law were ever to be revived, there are perhaps sores for it to deal with deeper than this mere surface irritation.

It may not be too much to hope that the reverence which is beginning to be shown for ancient monuments may be extended to animate and inanimate nature. Hitherto civilisation has dealt harshly with lands and their wild creatures, altering the face of the former and brushing aside the latter to make way for omnivorous, insatiate man. In this country the regret that has long weighed on the minds of the few at the sight of devastated landscapes has at length, almost too late, begun to find expression in the voice of the many. On no question does Parliament show more vigilant jealousy than on those touching encroachment on waste lands; railway engineers may no longer regard a common as a space intended by nature to have a branch line run through it.

But scored

and seared and deeply smirched as is the fair face of our island, a similar process is going on in all parts of this overcrowded globe. Many of us are old enough to remember the publication of Mr Gordon Cumming's work on African adventure and sport, describing how he carried out the purpose defined in his preface-"to