his grandfather, or some scarcely more remote ancestor, was a man of the land. He followed the plough, or tended the cattle, and his children went forth to earn higher wages in the town. For the hamlet and the outlying cottage are the springs whence the sinew and muscle of populous cities are derived. The land is the fountainhead from which the spring of life flows, widening into a river. The river at its broad mouth disdains the spring; the city in its immensity disdains the hamlet and the ploughman. Yet if the spring ceased, the ships could not frequent the river; if the hamlet and the ploughman were wiped out by degrees, the city must run dry of life. Therefore the South Wood and the park, the hamlet and the fields, had a value no one can tell how many times above the actual money rental, and the money earned by the operatives in factory and workshop could not have been better expended than in supporting it. But it had another value still—which they too helped to sustain—the value of beauty. Parliament has several times intervened to save the Lake district from the desecrating intrusion of useless railways. So too, the beauty of these woods, and grain-grown hills, of the very common, is worth preservation at the hands and votes of the operatives in factory and mill. If a man loves the brick walls of his narrow dwelling in a close-built city, and the flowers which he has trained with care in the window; how much more would he love the hundred living pictures like those round about Thardover House. After any artificer had once seen such an oak and rested under it, if any threatened to cut it down, he would feel as if a blow had been delivered at his heart. His efforts, therefore, should be not to destroy these pictures but to preserve them. All the help that they can give is needed to assist a King of Acres in his struggle, and the struggle of the farmers and labourers—equally involved—against the adverse influences which press so heavily on English agriculture. MRS SHAW: THE LATE PRINCE IMPERIAL’S NURSE. Visitors to Paris during the meretricious glories of the Second Empire may possibly recall to mind that amidst the glare and glitter of that feverish epoch, one wholesome and interesting sight was constantly to be seen in the Tuileries gardens when the court was in residence at the palace—a bright-looking child playing with his English nurse; and the spectators were particularly attracted by the devoted attachment that appeared to exist between them. The child was the Prince Imperial of France; and his attendant, the pleasant-looking Yorkshire woman, was known in Paris as Mrs Shaw. A curious history is connected with her entrance into the imperial household, the story of which the writer obtained from what she believes to be a well-authenticated source.