sensations, much less to ponder on their origin or to investigate their causes. The morning was such as we have described—the scene a spot of singular beauty within the precincts of the then royal forest of Charnwood, in Leicestershire. A deep, but narrow stream, wound in a hundred graceful turns through the rich meadow-land that formed the bottom of a small sloping vale, which had been partially reclaimed, even at that day, from the waste, though many a willow bush fringing its margin, and many a waving ash, fluttering its delicate tresses in the air, betrayed the woodland origin of the soft meadow. A narrow road swept down the hill, with a course little less serpentine than that of the river below, and crossed it by a small one-arched stone bridge, overshadowed by a gigantic oak tree, and scaled the opposite acclivity in two or three sharp sandy zigzags. Both the hill sides were clothed with forest, but still the nature of the soil or some accidental causes had rendered the wood as different as possible, for on the further side of the stream, the ground was everywhere visible covered by a short mossy turf, softer and more elastic to the foot than the most exquisite carpet that ever issued from the looms of Persia, and overshadowed by huge and scattered oaks, growing so far apart that the eye could range far between their shadowy vistas; while on the nearer slope—the foreground, as it might be called, of the picture—all was a dense and confused mass of tangled shrubbery and verdure. Thickets of old gnarled thorn-bushes, completely overrun and matted with woodbines; coppices of young ash, with hazel interspersed, and eglantine and dog-roses thick set between; clumps of the prickly gorse and plume-like broom, all starry with their golden flowrets, and fern so wildly luxuriant that in many places it would have concealed the head of the tallest man, covered the ground for many a mile through which the narrow road meandered. There was one object more in view—one which spoke of man even in that solitude, and man in his better aspect—it was the slated roof and belfry, all overgrown with moss and stonecrop, of a small wayside chapel, in the old Saxon architecture, peering out from the shadows of the tall oaks which overhung it in the far distance. It was, as we have said, very small, in the old Saxon architecture, consisting, in fact, merely of a vaulted roof supported upon four squat massy columns, whence sprung the four groined ribs which met in the centre of the arch. Three sides alone of this primitive place of worship, which would have contained with difficulty forty persons, were walled in, the front presenting one wide open arch, richly and quaintly sculptured with the indented wolf’s teeth of the first Saxon style. Small as it was, however, the little chapel had its high altar, with the crucifix and candle, its reading desk of old black oak, its font and pix and chalices, and all the adjuncts of the Roman ritual. A little way to the