The church-yard at the summit of Pear-Tree Green, it used to be commonly said, was that in which Gray composed his famous "Elegy," or at all events which partially inspired it. I know not if this be correct; but I remember thinking, as I sat one fine September evening by the side of Ellen Dible upon the flat wooden railing which then inclosed it, that the tradition had great likelihood. The broad and tranquil waters of the Southampton and Itchen rivers--bounded in the far distance by the New Forest, with its wavy masses of varying light and shade, and on the left by the leafy woods, from out of which I often think the gray ruins of the old abbey must in these days look grimly and spectre-like forth upon the teeming, restless life which mocks its hoary solitude--were at the full of a spring tide. It was just, too, the hour of "parting day;" and as the sun-tipped spires of the Southampton churches faded gradually into indistinctness, and the earlier stars looked out, the curfew, mellowed by distance into music, came to us upon the light air which gently stirred fair Ellen's glossy ringlets, as she, with her bonnet in her hand--for our walk had tired her--looked with her dove-innocent, transparent eyes in mine, while I repeated Gray's melodious lines. The Elegy was concluded, and I was rapturizing even more vehemently than was my wont, when, whack! I received a blow on my shoulder, which sent us both off the rail; for Ellen held me by the arm, and it was quite as much as I could do to keep my feet when I reached them. I turned fiercely round, only to encounter the angry and sardonic countenance of my father. "I'll have no more of this nonsense, Bob," he gruffly exclaimed. "Be off home with you, and to-morrow I'll see you safe on board your ship, depend upon it. As for this pretty minx," he continued, addressing Ellen, who so trembled with confusion and dismay that she could scarcely tie her bonnet-strings, "I should think she would be better employed in mending her father's shirts, or darning her brother's stockings, than in gossiping her time away with a brainless young lubber like you." I was, of course, awfully incensed, but present resistance, I knew, was useless; and after contriving to exchange a mute gesture with Ellen of eternal love, constancy, and despair, we took our several ways homeward. Before twelve o'clock the next day I was posting to Gosport, accompanied by my father, but not till after I had obtained, through the agency of my soft-hearted sister, a farewell interview with Ellen, when we of course made fervent vows of mutual fidelity--affirmed and consecrated, at Ellen's suggestion, by the mystical ceremony of breaking a crooked sixpence in halves--a moiety to be worn by each of us about our necks, as an eternal memorial and pendant protest against the flinty hearts of fathers.