host of landscape painters. The eye has a radius
of enjoyment here two hundred miles in
circumference. Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire,
Berkshire, Bucks, Herts, Middlesex, Kent, Essex,
and Wiltshire are visible in miniature. That
little misty spot of firs is Nettlebed, in Oxfordshire;
that glimmer through a blue dimple of
the horizon is the sea glittering through
Shoreham Gap, a cleft in the South Downs,
thirty miles distant.

The time to catch the glimpse of the sea is
about eleven A.M. of a clear but not too hot a
morning, when no mist rises from the
intervening valleys. Then the sea sparkles for a
moment or two as the sun passes Shoreham
gap, and, with a glass, you can even catch a
white glimpse of a passing sail.

One of the greatest finds ever made of Anglo-
Saxon coins was in 1817, at Winterfield Farm,
near Dorking. Seven hundred coins in a
wooden box were turned up by the plough in
a field near an old Roman road, not far from
Hanstiebury camp, which is generally thought
to have been Danish. The coins, caked together
by coppery alloys, which had decomposed since
the owner had buried them here with fear and
doubt, were lying twelve inches below the
surface, in a patch of dark earth, always observed
to be specially fertile. There was money of
many kings, but chiefly of Ethelwolf (265) and
Ethelbert (249). It is supposed they were not
buried here before 870, the year Athelstan
began to reign. Mr. Barclay, of Bury Hill, a
descendant of the Apologist for the Quakers,
and of that Mr. David Barclay, the wealthy
London merchant, who feasted three successive
Georges at his house in Cheapside, bought
most of this great find, and generously gave
it to the British Museum.

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF JOHN ACKLAND.

A TRUE STORY.

IN THIRTEEN CHAPTERS. CHAPTER I.

In the following extraordinary narrative
nothing is fictitious but the names of the
persons.

ABOUT thirty- five or forty years ago,
before the border territory of Texas had
become a state of the great American
Union, a Virginian gentleman, living near
Richmond, received from a gentleman of
Massachusetts, living near Boston, a letter
pressing for punctual payment of a debt
owing to the writer of it by the person to
whom it was addressed. The debt was a
heavy one. It was a loan for a limited
period, contracted partly on mortgage and
partly on other less valid securities. The
period for which it was originally
contracted had been frequently renewed at
increasing rates of interest. The whole
capital would shortly be due; and renewal
of the loan (which seems to have been
asked for) was firmly declined, on the
ground that the writer of the letter was
now winding up his business at Boston
preparatory to the undertaking of an
entirely new business at Charleston; whither
it was his intention to proceed very
shortly. Such was the general purport
of this letter. The tone of it was
courteous, but peremptory. The name of the
gentleman who received it we shall
suppose to have been Cartwright, and that of
the gentleman who wrote it to have been
Ackland. Mr. Cartwright was the owner
of an estate, not a very large one (which,
with the reader's permission, we will call
Glenoak), on the banks of the James
River. The Cartwrights were an old
Virginian family, much esteemed for their
antiquity. Three generations of male
Cartwright babies had been christened Stuart
(because, sir, the Cartwrights had always
fought for the Stuarts, sir, in the old
country), and in Virginia a very moderate
amount of family antiquity has always
commanded for the representative of it as
much consideration as is accorded in
England to the lineage of a Beaufort or a
Howard. The personal reputation of this
present Philip Stuart Cartwright, however,
was not altogether satisfactory. It was
regretted that a man of his parts and
property should have contributed nothing to
the strength and dignity of the territorial
aristocracy of old Virginia in the legislature
of his state—a legislature of which
the Virginians were justly proud. The
estate of Glenoak, if well managed, would
have doubtless yielded more than the
income which was spent, not very reputably,
by the owner of it, whenever he had a
run of luck at faro. But the estate was
not well managed, and, between occasional
but extravagant hospitalities on this estate,
and equally extravagant indulgence in the
stimulant of high stakes and strong liquors
at the hells and bars about Richmond, Mr.
Philip Cartwright passed his time unprofitably
enough; for pulling the devil by the
tail is a fatiguing exercise, even to a strong
man. Mr. Cartwright was a strong man,
however, and a handsome man, and a tall.
"Quite a fine man, sir," said his friends.
"You may have seen Philip S. Cartwright
as drunk as a hag, sir, but you will have
always found him quite the cavalier." And,
in truth, he had grand manners, and pleasant
manners, too, this hard-living, devil-
may-care gentleman, which embellished
the impression of his vices. And he was a