and there be tyed to twelve great Oaks, till
that he dy'd of Hunger. Well, the thing
was in part executed, but the Virtue of
the Relicks having somewhat evaporated,
and the Monster having broken divers of
Chains—he roamed about for some
days in the Wood, knocking down the
Trees like Reeds and Rushes with his Tayle
—and it was then— and so— that worthy
St. George Fought him as we do see in the
Pictures.

He marched out from Silene, with all the
brave Youth of the City in a goodly Procession;
and, having found the Monster, he
brandished his Lance against him so furiously,
that he slew and utterly discomfited him without
Remedy. I shall only add, that the English
took this Holy Gentleman for their Patron,
Because that two of the above-mentioned
Virgins, who were English Women, or rather,
the Daughters of two English Merchants of
much substance and worth [named Edward
Smith of Cockermouth in Cumberland, and
also Richard Tomson of Canesham in
Somersetshire] did consecrate themselves to him
after their deliverance, and he promised that
he would always protect them, and all the
People of their Nation—which indeed he
hath done ever since.

Thus ends the abridged Chronicle. The
facete compiler's exactitude with regard
to the names and counties of the fathers
of young lady converts, is only paralleled
by the punctilious minuteness of
date, as to the particular day in the year
"two hundred and ninety-nine [under the
Emperor Dioclesian " ] when "The Lord
Mayor and Aldermen of the City of Silene"
determined to consult the oracle.

The exaggerations of this abridgment
are not violent departures from the text of
the Monkish legend of St. George, upon
which our affection for him is after all founded.
There is little doubt that the author
intended to satirise Dr. Heylin, and the other
romantic historians—or rather rhapsodists,
who followed in his wake, and who about
that time, were severely handled by the
critics.

A FLAT WALK.

IT is something to say that I have walked
from Calais to Guines; if only from the
moral certainty that no English professor of
literature—having the slightest pretensions to
sanity—can possibly have performed the
pilgrimage before me, or is at all likely to undertake
it after me.

And yet I enjoyed myself, as I usually do
when I find myself, in tolerable health and in
decent weather, walking in a strange country,
without the slightest idea where I am going
to. There is one thing—amongst a few others
within the range of human capacity—that I
never could do. That is to return, willingly
from any pedestrian excursion whatsoever
by the same route as that by which I set
out.

Therefore, when I found myself the other
morning, at a distance of two miles from
Calais (which is quite near enough to be to
that by no means entertaining city at any
time), walking along the bank of a canal
which I had not known was in existence ten
minutes previously; and when I descried,
from the aspect of the country, that my only
chance of speedy return to my ill-chosen city
of temporary refuge would be by retracing
my steps, I mentally resolved that I would
see Calais still farther first. Rather than
recover a single foot of the ground I had
gone over, I would follow that canal to
Jericho.

I had no occasion to go to Jericho, as the
canal stops at Guines. So do I on this
memorable occasion. But, not until I have met
with the following adventures, and made the
following observations.

The country is perfectly flat; and, as a
rule, I object to pollard poplars as the sole
accidents in a landscape. I am not sufficiently
a man of business to be consoled by a
reflection as to the great facilities the canal
company must have enjoyed for their
engineering operations. I find myself, on the
whole, regretting that they had not a few
mountains to cut through on their way to
bankruptcy. But, I do not dwell upon the
subject as my attention is suddenly arrested
by something that interests me.

To my left (the canal is on my right), I see
a dyke, traversed by a bridge, surmounted
by a wooden realisation of my youthful
conceptions of a gallows (I have never had the
courage to go and look at a real one, though
I have often wanted to). On the transverse
beam, painted in bold Roman capitals, I read
the following inscription:—

II est défendu de se baigner dans ce Watter-gand.

The Watter-gand itself is a mere ditch,
wherein no self-respecting frog would care
about bathing, even with legal impunity.
But, the Flemish word—familiarly read,
excites a strange thrill in my system. It is the
first indication of approach to an unknown
country. I am getting among the Flemings,
whom I have never seen, or spoken to. I
experience something of that feeling which
must assert itself at New Orleans, at sight
of the first Mexican poncho; at Perth when
you meet the first kilt; at Smyrna when
turbans cease to be conspicuous; at middle life
when the first wrinkle, or the first grey hair
insists upon prominence in the looking-glass.
I walk on, musing on the mutability of human
affairs, and the fallacy of things in general,
I hear somebody speaking bad English.
It is not foreign English; but the genuine
native article as I have been accustomed to
hear it corrupted from my youth. There are