But we anticipate, as the artless novelist of another generation was used to remark, with a painful frequency. Before Winchester, Basingstoke. This morning, we took an early walk to Sherborne St. John, an outlying village, now suburban to Basingstoke, a village, as it proved, uninteresting. The church, as was to be expected at 8 a.m., was locked: our only reminiscence of the place, then, is this problematic inscription from the doorway. Returning, we made a nearer acquaintance with that ruined chapel--the chapel of the Holy Ghost--familiar to all travellers by the South-Western Railway, standing as it does beside the Station. Here was established the lay Fraternity of the Holy Ghost, founded at that late period when Gothic architecture began to feel the influence of the Renaissance. The mixed details are very interesting, though, unfortunately, much mutilated. Gilbert White, the historian of Selborne, says he was, when a schoolboy, “eye-witness, perhaps a party concerned”--observe the grace of later years that made him ashamed of the occasion, and willing to doubt his participance--“in the undermining a vast portion of that fine old ruin at the north end of Basingstoke town.” The motive for this destruction (he says) does not appear, save that boys love to destroy what men venerate and admire; the more danger the more honour, and the notion of doing some mischief gave a zest to the enterprise. “It looked so like a sin it pleased the more.” The Chapel stands within the cemetery known locally as the Liten. Within its walls are two mutilated effigies on altar-tombs, the sole remains of a building long preceding the present ruin, hacked and carven with many penknives. [Illustration: Holy Ghost Chapel, Basingstoke] Modern Basingstoke--“name of hidden and subtle meaning,” as Mr. Gilbert says in “Ruddigore”--is prosperous, cheerful with the ruddy mellowness of red-brick, and loyal with a lofty Jubilee belfry-tower to its Town Hall; and that is all the spirit moves me to set down here of the town. IX. No more dreary road than that sixteen miles between Basingstoke and Winchester; a road that goes in a remorseless straight line through insignificant scenery, passing never a village for twelve or more weary miles, a road upon which every turning leads to Micheldever. Sign-posts one and all conspire to lead you thither, with an unanimity perfectly surprising. We made certain that something entirely out of the common run was to be found at that place of the peculiar name, and so we were ill enough advised to visit it by turning aside for the matter of a mile.