The present village of Butler's Marston,--a little group of cottages clustered upon the margin of a tiny stream and almost hidden in a wooded dell,--is comparatively new; for it has arisen since the time of the Puritan civil war. The old village was swept away by the Roundheads, when Essex and Hampden came down to fight King Charles at Edgehill, in 1642. That fierce strife raged all along the country-side, and you may still perceive there, in the inequalities of the land, the sites on which houses formerly stood. It is a sweet and peaceful place now, smiling with flowers and musical with the rustle of the leaves of giant elms. The clergyman farms his own glebe, and he has expended more than a thousand pounds in the renovation of his manse. The church "living" is not worth much more than a hundred pounds a year, and when he leaves the dwelling, if he should ever leave it, he loses the value of all the improvements that he has made. This he mentioned with a contented smile. The place, in fact, is a little paradise, and as I looked across the green and golden fields, and saw the herds at rest and the wheat waving in sun and shadow, and thought of the simple life of the handful of people congregated here, the words of Gray came murmuring into my mind: "Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife Their sober wishes never learned to stray; Along the cool, sequestered vale of life They kept the noiseless tenor of their way." [Illustration: _The Grammar School, Stratford._]