door opens into a green churchyard, with
tombstone hundreds of years old; a little
dame, who, though a Catholic herself, has,
in her little library on the hanging shelf
beside her missal and Thomas A'Kempis, a
copy of Fuller's Worthies, and George
Fox's History of the Quakers. Oh! for a
mug of brown beer at the sign of the
Travellers' Joy. Oh! for the sanded
floor, the long clean pipe, the Kendal
Mercury three weeks old, the "Worthies,"'
the "Quakers!" Beer and happiness? Why
not? There are times when a mug of ale,
a pipe, and an old newspaper may be the
summum bonum of mundane felicity. Get
away, you luxurious Persians. I hate your
epicurean splendours; and, little boy, bind my
brow with simple myrtle, and bring me some
more beer.

I did not turn off towards Cockerham,
however, because I was ashamed. When I
am on fire, however, and my stomach so
full of hot dust, I throw shame to the
winds, and say to resolution, get thee behind
me. (I am always leaving that tiresome
resolution behind.) In this strait I meet a tinker.
He is black, but friendly. He is a humourist,
as most tinkers are, and sells prayer books
besides tin-pots, which most tinkers do.
Straightway he knows of the whereabouts of
beer, and proposes a libation. I accept. More
than this, he insists upon " standing a pot."
Am I to insult this tinker by refusing to accept
his proffered hospitality? No! He and I dive
down a cunning lane, which none but a tinker
could discover, and the foaming felicity is
poured out to us. The tinker drinks first: I
insist upon his doing so. When he hands me
the pot he points to the side of the vessel on
which he has himself druuk,and suggests that
I should apply my lips to the opposite side.
"My mouth it may be sawdery," he says.
Could Lord Chesterfield, in all his wiggishness
and priggishness, have been politer than
this? When we get into the high road again
the tinker sings me a Cumberland song, in
which there are about nineteen verses, and of
which I can understand about four lines. I
can only make out that "th' Deil's i' th' lasses
o' Pearith" (probably Penrith), and that
"Sukey th' prood mantymecker tu luik at a
navvy thowt sin,'' which is gratifying to know:
looking at the society of navvies (excellent
persons as they may be in their way) from a
genteel point of view. I am dimly given to
understand, however, in a subsequent stanza,
that the haughty Sukey so far changed her
opinion of navvies as to elope with one; and
while I ponder over this sad decadence, and
instance of how the mighty are fallen, the
tinker bids me good day and leaves me. He
is a worthy man.

There is a lull just now in the heat.
General Phœbus has sheathed his sword for
the moment, and is refreshing himself in his
golden tent. The sky is almost colourless;
the trees are dark and ominous; broad gray-
green shadows are cast across the landscape.
Perhaps, it is going to rain. How glad I am
that I have not got an umbrella! But the
hope is fallacious. All at once the sudden sun
darts out again, General Phoebus is on horseback
giving the word to fire and reload, and
I begin to fry again.

Five miles and a half to Garstaing. Four
miles and a half to Garstaing—two—three—
one mile to Garstaing. The milestones are
obliging, and run on manfully before me. It
is just one o'clock in the afternoon when I
enter Garstaing itself; much to my own
satisfaction, having attained my half-way house,
and accomplished ten of my appointed twenty
miles. I think I am entitled to bread and
cheese at Garstaing, likewise to the pipe of
peace, which I take on a gate leading into a
field, solacing myself meanwhile with a view
of a pas-de-deux between a young peasant
woman in a jacket, and a lively mottled calf,
which will not submit to be caught and bound
with cords to the horns of a cart, on any
terms; frisking, and dodging, and scampering
about, either with an instinctive prescience
of the existence of such a thing as roast fillet
of veal with mild stuffing, or rioting in that
ignorance of the possibility of the shambles
which is bliss to butcher's meat. I find
Garstaing a little market town—a big village
rather, with many public-houses, and an
amazing juvenile population. The children
positively swarm; and, musing, I am
compelled to dissent from the moralist who
asserts that poor men are not fond of children.
It is not only the rich Numenius who glories
in multiplying his offspring; and though the
days are gone when "a family could drive
their herds, and set their children upon
camels, and lead them till they saw a fat soil
watered with rivers, and there sit them down
without paying rent, till their own relations
might swell up into a patriarchate, and their
children be enough to possess all the regions
that they saw, and their grandchildren become
princes, and themselves build cities and call
them by the name of a child and become the
fountain of a nation;"—though these happy
patriarchal days are fled, I can never find any
disinclination among the veriest poor to have
great families. Bread is hard to get, God
knows; but the humble meal never seems
scantier for a child the more or less. I have
heard of men who thanked Heaven they had
no children, and prayed that they might not
have any; but I never knew one. Far
more frequently have I met the father
mourning and refusing to be comforted for
the loss of one of his twelve children though
that twelfth were the youngest, and an idiot.

So, farewell Garstaing, and farewell temptation;
for Garstaing, though small, though
rural, though apparently innocent, has its
temptations. It possesses a railway station;
and when I have finished my pipe, the train
bound for Preston has pulled up, and is ready
to start again. I am sorely moved to abandon