And yet, when we were arrived at the place, there was nothing to be seen; nay, worse than that indeed: there is a church at Micheldever whose architectural enormities would make any sane ecclesiologist flee the neighbourhood on the instant. Of the scenery, I will remark only that the village is overhung with funereal pines and firs, a setting that depresses beyond the power of words to express. We retraced our steps toward the high road to Winchester, with anathemas upon those sign-posts, varied by a consideration of Hampshire as a county prolific in what Mr. Gilbert calls, “that curious anomaly”--the lady novelist. For, look you, at Micheldever resides Mrs. Mona Caird, the heroine of the “Marriage a Failure” correspondence, and the authoress of the “Wing of Azrael”; and Sparkford, Haslemere, and the New Forest shelter respectively, Miss Yonge, Mrs. Humphry Ward, and Miss Braddon; others, doubtless, there be within these gates who help to swell the output of the familiar three volumes, for almost every woman of leisure and scribbling propensities writes romances nowadays. Hampshire, indeed, seems decidedly a literary county, for Tennyson and Tyndall and Kingsley (Keble, too) have lived and worked within its borders. For the next five miles we passed, I think, but one house, Lunways Inn, and then came upon modified civilisation in the shape of the village of King’s Worthy. There is quite a cluster of villages here with the generic name of Worthy, with prefixes by which we can generally identify the old-time lords of the respective manors. There are beside King’s Worthy, Abbot’s Worthy, Martyr Worthy, and Headbourne Worthy, “Headbourne,” conjecturally from the brook that rises by the village churchyard. This village lies on the road to Winchester, directly after King’s Worthy is passed, and is about a mile and a half from the city. The church is interesting for itself, but it contains a charming little monumental brass to a Winchester scholar that alone is worth journeying to see, both from its unique character and by reason of its technical excellence. It was formerly let into the flooring of the chancel, and was in danger of being trampled out of recognition, until the vicar caused it to be fixed on the north wall of the church, where it now remains.