The shepherd lingers on the lone hillside, In act to count his faithful flock again, Ere to a stranger’s eye and arm untried He yield the rod of his old pastoral reign. He turns and round him memories throng amain, Thoughts that had seem’d for ever left behind O’ertake him, e’en as by some greenwood lane The summer flies the passing traveller find, Keen, but not half so sharp as now thrill o’er his mind. For indeed every lapse in his parish turned to fill their pastor with self-blame. CHAPTER XI THE GOLDEN DAYS OF HURSLEY THOSE forebodings of Mr. Keble’s mercifully never were realised; many more years were granted in which Hursley saw the Church and the secular power working together in an almost ideal way. To speak of what Sir William Heathcote was as a county gentleman would be difficult. He was for many years Chairman of the Quarter Sessions, and it is worth recording that when King Frederick William IV. of Prussia wished for information on the practical working of the English system of government, and sent over two jurists to enquire into the working of the unpaid magistracy, they were advised to attend the Winchester Quarter Sessions, as one of the best regulated to be found. They were guests at Hursley Park, and, as a domestic matter, their interest in English dishes, and likewise their surprise at the status of an English clergyman, were long remembered. Considerable county undertakings originated in these days—a new and well-managed lunatic asylum at Fareham, a renewed jail on the then approved principles, and the inauguration of county police. In all these undertakings Sir William Heathcote and Mr. Yonge were active movers, and gave constant superintendence while they were carried out. Ill health obliged Sir William to retire from the representation of North Hants in the Conservative interest in 1847, but in 1854, on the recommendation of Sir Robert Harry Inglis, he was elected member for the University of Oxford, and so remained till his final retirement in 1868. What he was in both public and private capacities has nowhere been better expressed than by the late Earl of Carnarvon in a letter to the editor of the _Times_.