back and ask the Dragon to direct us. Men
in smock-frocks sit in the bar of the Dragon,
one of whom comes out to us. We ask our
question. "Dr. Blose's?" he inquires, and
we assent. He points to a white house by the
church, and bids us journey to the right of
that; so we retrace our steps. The chemist,
with a plaster man and horse struggling
together in his window, seems himself to have
got the fore-horse by the head. The
bookseller and stationer maintains a good shop;
but finds that he thrives better by combining
toys and china with his other articles of
trade. There is, of course, the local slop-
seller, with a gigantic red hat, of a very rural
pattern, hung out as his sign. The ironmonger
has a very well-stocked shop, and there's a
carriage stopping at the door of it. The
milliners inhabit little houses, with their
names hung upon labels in the windows.
There are multitudes of little houses, and the
road between them is familiar with hobnailed
shoes, that kiss its face with lingering caresses.
Nothing seems to be done rapidly in Thistledown.
We saunter in our pace, lest people
throw their windows up and think that we
are walking for a wager. Here is the white
house by the church again; there is a taste
in this churchyard for deal planks adown the
whole length of the graves, recording briefly
who is set beneath. There are a few little
headstones, of the common garden-label pattern,
indicating what seed has been sown below, for
immortality.

The school. An old wall, pierced with two
doors side by side; "Dr. L. Blose" painted
on one of them, assures us that, at length, we
have found the object of our search. Behind
the wall an antiquated little building of plain
brick, with a round tower on each side of it,
and queer little windows, the whole
luxuriantly overgrown with ivy, is the Free
School as it was built in the days of Queen
Elizabeth.

We open the door glorified by the Doctor's
name, and enter a small court-yard. The two
doors, side by side, lead into the same court:
perhaps one is consecrated to the silver fork,
the other to the Free School. The door closes
behind us, and, as it shuts out even the little
world of Thistledown, and leaves us in the
quiet court alone, before the ivied walls of
the old school-house, the sad October spirit
seems to have led us back among the ghosts
of things belonging to a former century. A
handsome greyhound issues from an outhouse,
and oifers us his nose in a most friendly
manner. There is not a breath of air stirring
the ivy. While we still stand, patting the
greyhound's head, and looking at the worn
face of the quiet little building, our eyes are
attracted by the movement of a child, who
glides in at the school-house door. It must
be the dull sky, and the dead leaves, and the
old ivied walls, into whose inner life the
figure passes, that have made the little child
appear so ghostly. It had perhaps come out
to drink, but we had not heard its quiet
movement until it was near the door—a little
pale child passing in with a worn look, and
not one glance of curiosity towards a strange
face in the court-yard. There is another
door which, probably, is that pertaining to
the house; the figure of the little child—
perhaps it was hallucination, or a guiding
wraith, for children do not often glide so
silently- at any rate, the figure—has informed
us where to seek the school-room door. We
go to it, and in a minute we are standing in
the midst of the assembled school.

Down drop all preconceived ideas founded
on the silver fork. A powerful surprise
arrests our progress; we stand still,
endeavouring to shake off the dreaminess of
our impressions. A school-room, built in
the old days of Queen Elizabeth, not at all
large, but tolerably lofty, with little windows
high up, and bare whitened walls, and twice
as many beings in it as it ought to hold.
Against the walls, a few maps; the desks
and forms at which the children swarm—or
seem to swarm, so narrow is the compass of
the school-room—are undoubtedly the very
desks with which that Royal Free Grammar-School
was furnished when it was first built
for the uses of the poor. Worm-eaten they
look, and more than worm-eaten—child-
eaten—bitten about with large holes, and
covered with a network of infantile carvings.
Pale as maggots, in unwholesome-looking
clothes, the children swarm, heavily busy at
their work; no look of joyous curiosity, no
wide bright eye of wonder rests upon us;
we have interrupted nothing; we have fallen
on another dream. A tall, dirty youth, or
man, dressed seedily, and garnished with
moustaches, bends over a form covered with
small weary-looking children; our entrance
does not cause him to lift up his head. There
is a loud voice of a man busy somewhere; but
the little place grows large before us in the
mist of sickliness which its rough walls
enclose; our eyes can rest on no detail. We
have yet to recover from the shock of an
unexpected and oppressive picture.

And as it is in some dreams where the
grotesque scene works itself out before us, and all
the actors seem unconscious of our presence, so
here, for a brief space, the work of school goes
on. The pale young man in the moustache is
the French master. We move as if we would
address him, and that breaks the spell. He
dives into a group of children, and produces
out of it a large man with a pasty face, who
comes, still silently, towards us. We do not
hear the big voice now, but the puny hum,
a spectral imitation of the hum of school,
continues.

"Doctor Blose?" we say, and look this
latest portion of our vision in the face. That
face has almost the complexion of an apple-
pudding; black hair mats over it untidily.
This is Thursday—not to him, or to the boys
apparently, a clean-shirt day—he still wears