Wenn ich so auf mein Leben schau,
Erwägend, wie's doch sei gekommen,
Das Waldesgrün und Himmelsblau,
Und Morgenroth und Abendthau

Mir mehr als Rang und Mammon frommen.

FR. KIND.

SIXTH DAY.

A Green Lane leading to the meadows. SENEX, JULIAN. SIMON PARADICE following.

Senex. I HAVE brought you a roundabout way this morning for the purpose of calling on the worthy people we have just left; but it is a pleasant walk, and you will not find it irksome.

Julian. Nay, I am delighted both with the neighbourhood and with your friends, who appear to be superior to the majority of their class.

S. Their class, like many others in human society, is marked by various shades of difference. With many educated people

the farmer is considered a boor; and so, indeed, he often is, but there are some, and

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not a few, singular exceptions. I am sometimes reminded of the shrewd remark of Fuller-"The good yeoman is a gentleman in ore whom the next generation may see refined; and is the wax, capable of a gentle impression when the prince shall stamp it." Many of these men have better and less dubious pedigrees than thousands of those who affect to despise them. You may test this at the College of Arms, any day you please, by examining the genealogy of a respectable yeoman family. In such men we have the Saxon blood with the least possible alloy; and it is no uncommon thing to find them occupying the soil which their forefathers have tilled from the days of the Confessor. Good breeding is not always inherent, while it may be found among some in the humblest walks of life.

J. Yes, I can readily believe that good

breeding has existed in all ages, even when manners were rude, and coarse and grossly obscene jests won favour at the Courts of Kings;-and yet I am puzzled to know how Modesty veiled her head, or stopped her ears, when within sight or hearing of the filthy buffooneries of the Middle Ages. The bare recital of the terms of some of our ancient tenures would be an outrage upon common decency now-a-days.

S. To the pure all things are pure." In later times, when the royal palace of Whitehall was a sty of impurity, men, and women too, passed in and out without contamination,―shocked at what they saw and heard, abhorring and pitying, but unpolluted. That good breeding and gentle deportment were not unknown in the Middle Ages we learn from that faithful chronicler of manners Geoffrey Chaucer: his Knight had led the hard and stormy life of a soldier, had fought in fifteen pitched battles, and had

M

thrice overthrown his enemy in the lists,

yet

66 though that he was worthy he was wise, And of his port as meke as is a mayde."

Then what a charming picture of a true gentlewoman of those days is his Prioress:

"At mete was she wel ytaught withalle
She lette no morsel from hire lippes falle,
Ne wette hire fingres in hire sauce depe
Wel coude she carie a morsel, and wel kepe,
Thatte no droppe ne fell upon hire brest.
In curtesie was set ful muche hire lest.
Hire over lippe wiped she so clene,

That in hire cuppe was no ferthing sene

Of grese, when she dronken hadde hire draught."

This delicacy at meals is the more conspicuous when it is remembered that in those days the ladies had to convey their food to their mouths on the points of their knives!

The morning I fear, though dense, is too calm for fishing: we require a breeze for that part of the stream to which we are going.

J. Never mind, I am enjoying this delightful walk: the last night's rain has