smug rectors of Queen Anne's time, with rosy
gills and cauliflower wigs, upholding Doctor
Sacheverell; portly Georgian vicars thundering
at the squire (slumbering peacefully in
his pew) on a question of doctrine and tithes.
He might have wandered into the churchyard
again, and listened through the half-
opened porch to the organ, tenderly handled
by the amateur organist (a worthy man, and a
shoemaker, mundanely speaking), or watched
the sun-dial, whose hands nor Papist nor
Calvinist, stout Episcopalian nor fierce Nonjuror,
had been able to tamper with, and gazed at
the boats rippling the silver surface of the
river, and the purple haze from the fields
gradually arising to meet a blue descending
veil from heaven, till the shadows were
indefinitely prolonged, and the stars began to
shine.

But I have no call to do this; for my name is
not Gray, and I am no poet. I promised myself
and you, reader, a walk; and behold, I have
been telling you where we are not to go, without
instructing you as to where our promenade is
really to be. Shall it be to Abbey wood,
whose name is all that now remains to recall
the once renowned Abbey of Pippinham?
But I should have my Dugdale with me to
enjoy properly a walk thither. Sitting by
this ruined but yet sturdy oak tree, which
perchance has sheltered beneath its gnarled
branches many a cowled and shaven monk in
the old time, sitting thus with the Monasticon
Anglicanum before me, there would be voices
of the past for me in Pippinham Wood. I
should live again in the time when there were
monks and abbeys; for all that distressingly
modern public-house yonder, with its flourishes
about "fine ale," and "Poppins's ginger-beer,"
in lieu of the ancient hostelry, the black jack,
and the stoup of Canary; for all the brutal
Vandalism of that brazen bill-sticker who has
posted a placard of somebody's weekly
newspaper, price threepence, on a charmingly
antique wall, all shingle, round pebbles, and
moss, a fragment perchance of the old abbey:
nay, which might have been a borough, God
wot, returning its burgess to Parliament before
the Reform Bill.

And, while I yet hesitate as to where I
shall walk, I see "looming in the distance,"
as Mr. Disraeli would say, a wreath of white
smoke; and know that in a very few minutes
the up train will be due at Whistleby. The
bell rings; I hasten to the platform;
Bodlingford, Crabapple Heath, Pippinham Wood,
and all the cross country are nothing to me
now, for my time is up, and I am bound for
Babylon Bridge.

So, also, at a larger station, and on a longer
line do we stand, often forgetful that the sands
are running through the glass. Now proposing
to walk, now to ride; now irresolutely
balancing between a jaunt in yon sleepy-
looking one horse fly, and a ride on one of that
string of mettlesome hobbyhorses, till another
bell rings; and, gliding slowly into the station,
comes another train, hung with black, whose
stoker carries a scythe and hour glass, and
whose guard a mattock and a spade.

THE FLYING BRIDGE.

Quand J'étais Jeune, " When I was Young;
Recollections of an Old Man," by Paul L.
Jacob, who styles himself Bibliophile, Book-
lover, and Member of all the Academies, is
an amusing collection of anecdotes; the
writer of which might not have liked to be
compelled to raise his hand and swear that
every incident contained in it is matter of
fact, chronicled as it actually occurred.
Nevertheless, sketches of what might come
under the eye of a French printer, journalist,
novelist, and theatrical critic during the
ominous period between 1762 and '82
would be interesting, if they had only
probability and general truthfulness (though not
literal truth) to recommend them. That is
as much as can be expected when any man
sits down to write fragments of his own life,
and is perhaps quite as much as we usually
get, in many narratives and descriptions
which profess to maintain the most complete
accuracy.

The author, in his first very extraordinary
chapter, L'Imprimeur, "The Printer," tells us,
"My name is Jacob, which would announce
me to be a Jew; but I am a Frenchman of a
good bourgeoisie and of a learned stock; for
my great uncle, le père Louis Jacob, who
lived in 1648, published a treatise on the best
libraries, public and private, which have been
and at present are, in the world; and my
great grandfather Jacob, who did not
discover the philosopher's stone in the hermetic
science, published in 1647, 'The Clavicle, or
the science of Raymond Lulle; ' these are
authentic titles of nobility, and I do not intend
to degenerate."

His second chapter is Le Pont Volant,
"The Flying Bridge," which now follows:--

In the year 1764, memorable in history
for the definitive expulsion of the Jesuits, who
were banished from France on the occasion
of the outrage of Damiens against Louis the
Fifteenth -- as they had already been by Henry
the Fourth, as a punishment of the crime of
Jean Chatel -- I had only just finished my
philosophy at the Collége de Montagu,
although I had a beard on my chin; for
collegiate education being more extended
than in our days, it was not unusual to see
grown men on the benches of the schools:
such instances are now only to be found in
the German Universities. I must confess,
however, that we were all over barded,
cuirassed, and caparisoned with Greek and
Latin.

At that time, I inhabited a small apartment
suited to my modest income, and situated
in the fifth story of a six-storied house in the
Rue d'Ecosse, in order to be within easy reach