'I suppose it would have been easier to tell a while ago,' I said. 'There is something so worn about his face, I should think even the other early abbots would find a difficulty in recognising him now. Nothing Druidical, I suppose?' 'Certainly not. If you are going to be disrespectful,' said Miss Corke, 'I shall take you home at once.' Whereat I protested that I did not dream disrespect--that he looked to me quite as much like a Druid as anything else. I even ventured to say that, if she had not told me he was an early abbot, I might have taken him for something purely and entirely geological. The whole of this discussion took place at what stood for the early abbot's feet, and occupied some little time; so that, finally, Miss Corke was obliged to tell me that, if there was one thing she couldn't bear, it was dawdling, and would I be pleased to look at the monumental tablet to Mr. Thomas Thynne, of which she would relate to me the history. So we paused in front of it, while Miss Corke told me how the gentleman in the basrelief chariot was Mr. Thomas Thynne, and the gentleman on horseback, shooting at him with a blunderbuss, was Kônigsmark, accompanied by his brother; and Kônigsmark was in the act of killing Mr. Thomas Thynne, with the horses getting unmanageable, and the two powdered footmen behind in a state of great agitation, because both Mr. Thomas Thynne and Kônigsmark were attached to the same lady--a young widow lady with a great deal of money--and she liked Mr. Thomas Thynne best, which was more than Mr. Kônigsmark could bear. So Mr. Königsmark first swore properly that he would do it, and then did it--all in Pall Mall, when Mr. Thomas was in the very act of driving home from paying a visit to the widow. It was a most affecting story, as Peter Corke told it, especially in the presence of the memorial with a white marble Cupid pointing to it, erected by Mr. Thynne's bereaved relatives; and I was glad to hear that the widow had nothing to do with Mr. Kônigsmark afterwards, in spite of the simplicity and skill of his tactics with regard to his rival. I thought the history of the event quite interesting enough in itself, but Miss Corke insisted that the point about it really worthy of attention was the fact that the younger Mr. Kônigsmark was the gentleman who afterwards went back to Hanover, and there flirted so disgracefully with Sophia Dorothea of Zell that King George said he wouldn't have it, and shut her up in Ahlden Tower for thirty-two years. Miss Corke explained it all in a delightful kindergarten way, mentioning volumes for my reference if I wanted to know more about the incident. 'Although this,' she said, 'is the sort of thing you ought to have been improving your mind with ever since you learned to read. I don't know what you mean by it, coming over here with a vast unbroken field of ignorance about our celebrities. Do you think time began in 1776?' At which I retaliated, and said that far from being