It was a delicious day, and the glimpses of sky and country, which we gained through the portals and windows, were additional inspirers of gratitude to God. After service, the Bishop led me round the Church, and showed me the grave where one of his predecessors had laid a beloved child. A stone lay upon it, containing the exquisite lament of Bishop Lowth for his daughter, which I remembered to have seen before, but which never seemed half so touching and pathetic as now, while Bishop Wilberforce repeated it from the chiseled inscription:— “Cara Maria, Vale; at veniet felicius ævum Quando iterum tecum, sim modo dignus, ero: Cara redi, læta tum dicam voce, paternos Eja age in amplexus, cara Maria, redi!” That evening, as we sat at the Bishop’s table, the bells of Cuddesdon pealed forth a curfew chime. Oh, how sweet! A lady then reminded me that Cuddesdon was one of the “upland hamlets,” alluded to in _L’Allegro_,— “Where the merry bells ring round, And the jocund rebecks sound.” And so happily closed my day, that, but for some reverting thoughts to the dear home I had left behind me, I must say I went as sweetly to sleep, in the spell of its delights, as did poor Pilgrim in that chamber of his Progress, from whence he was sure of a view of the Delectable Mountains as soon as he should awake in the morning. CHAPTER VII. _Miltonian ramble—Forest-hill, etc._ Horton, in Buckinghamshire, is supposed to have supplied to Milton the imagery of the _Allegro_ and _Penseroso_, chiefly because he there composed those delightful poems, in which the very essence of what is most poetical in the scenery and rural life of England is so admirably condensed. But if it could be shown that, so early in the maiden life of Mary Powell as when these poems appeared, she had become the cynosure of Milton’s eyes, and had attracted him to Forest-Hill as a visitor, it might, one would suppose, be very fairly maintained, that this place alone answers, in all respects, to the demands of the poetry in question. It may at least be said with justice, that when the poet visited Forest-Hill with his bride, he realized more perfectly there than anywhere else, the rural delights which he has so exquisitely detailed; and which he has invested at one time with the sprightly aspect in which Nature reveals herself to youth and health, and, at another, with the more sentimental beauties which she wears before the eye of refined and meditative maturity. However, it was not for me to settle such nice questions. Forest-Hill lies not far from Milton, where the poet’s grandfather lived, and from which comes his name; and Shotover-Forest, of which the grandfather was ranger, is part of the same vicinage. It is very probable that the Powells were early friends of the poet, and that his youthful imagination was wont to haunt the