Lord and Saviour, ' for theirs is the Kingdom
of Heaven,' and she is in the Kingdom
of Heaven, where I hope to be."

The old man was going to be pathetic,
so I suppose I must have put a sudden
question to him, for he said, rather sharply
for so very mild and meek, and utterly
down-trodden and worn-out a person,
"Have I no dislike in eating the bread of
the parish? Well, I can't say I have. I
would rather eat it at our cottage, and
have an allowance to live with one of my
sons. And the ' skilligalee' is wretched
poor stuff, and I don't like the house rules,
and would like to get out oftener than I
do; but still right is right, and the parish
owes me my bread. I've toiled in it all my
life: and after all, though I'm a pauper, I'm
a man, and not a dog to be turned out to
die in a ditch. And then you see, God is just.
I've had a bad time of it in this world, and
I'll have my good time of it in the next."

The reader will see that there was a
good deal of stolid endurance in Mr.
Plant, but very little pluck, energy, or
spirit. There was good material in him
that had never been worked up to any
good end; material that, under more favourable
circumstances, say in the prairies
of America, where labour is scarce, the soil
fruitful, and farms to be easily obtained by
the poorest of squatters, might have been
so manipulated as to have converted this
patient and hopeless serf into a lively,
active, and prosperous citizen. Though
England may be over-peopled by thoughtless
and improvident labourers of the
lowest class, like poor Plant, the world is
not overpeopled by any means; and how
to bring the Plants to the soil that cannot
come to the Plants is the problem. Before
any satisfactory solution is likely to be
obtained, the Plants are likely to go on
breeding, toiling, and suffering for centuries
to come, as they have done for centuries
past. The more's the pity!

AS THE CROW FLIES.

DUE WEST. ETON TO NEWBURY.

HIGH up in the thin blue air, on black floating
wings, the crow skims over the grey stone cottages
of Berkshire, dropped down, as Tom
Brown truly says, in odd nooks and out-of-the-
way corners, by the sides of shadowy lanes, and
primeval footpaths. The bird skims over snug
thatched roofs and little gardens, ill-made roads,
and great pasture-lands dotted here and there
with clumps of thorns. Passing over the broad
green playing-fields of Eton, where the noble
elm-trees sentinel the river, the crow, regarding
the Eton boys below with benign approval as
the future hope of England, takes the playing-
fields as the text for a pleasant school-boy anecdote
of 1809 still extant. One morning Shelley,
the poet, then an Eton boy, roused to indignation
by an enemy's taunts, tossed his long
angelic locks, and accepted wager of battle from
his foe of the playground: Sir Thomas Styles,
a plucky little urchin, far younger and shorter
than himself. They were to meet at twelve the
same day. The coming battle was the whispered
talk of every one, and as soon as the rush out
of school took place the ring was formed, the
seconds and bottleholders were chosen. The
tall lean poet towered high above the little
thickset baronet. In the first round, Sir Thomas
felt his way by speculative sparring, while
Shelley tossed his long arms in an incoherent
manner. When they rested, the baronet sat
quietly on the knee of his second; but Shelley,
disdainful of such succour, and confident of
victory, stalked round the ring and scowled at
his adversary. Time was called, and the battle
began in earnest. The baronet planted a cautious
blow on Shelley's chest. The poet was
shaken, but went in and knocked his little adversary
down. While he lay there half stunned,
Shelley spouted Homeric defiances, to the delight
of his audience. In the second and last
round Styles, however, began to wake up, and
eventually delivered a settling "slogger" on
Shelley's " bread-basket." It fell on the poet
like a thunderbolt; his nervous sensibilities were
roused; he broke through the ring and flew,
pursued by his seconds and backers, but distanced
them all, and got to earth safely at the
house of his tutor, Mr. Bethell, whom he soon
afterwards nearly blew up with a miniature
steam-engine which a travelling tinker had
manufactured for him.

It was just beyond Datchet Mead, where Falstaff
was quoited into the Thames, " like a horseshoe
hissing hot," that old tradition says Izaak
Walton used to come from his Fleet-street shop
to meet Sir Henry Wotton, the Provost of Eton,
looking for little trout; worthy old men, full of
years, and wise yet kindly knowledge of the
world, they used to sit here, watching their
bobbing floats, baiting hooks, and capping
verses, believing that "angling, after serious
study, was a rest to the mind, a cheerer of the
spirit, a diverter of sadness, a calmer of unquiet
thoughts, a moderator of passions, a procurer of
contentedness, and begetting habits of patience
and peace." Well might Wotton repeat his
own verses here by the river side:
    Welcome pure thoughts, welcome ye silent groves,
    These guests, these courts my soul most dearly loves.
    Now the wing'd people of the sky shall sing
    My cheerful anthems to the gladsome spring.

Years afterwards, swarthy Charles the Second
and his laughing ladies used to fish here. Pope
describes the king,

        Methinks I see our mighty monarch stand,
        The pliant rod now trembling in his hand;

and

        And see, he now doth up from Datchet come
        Laden with spoils of slaughtered gudgeons home.