“Fair fields were ours, touched with a mellow glow From gorgeous clouds at rise, at set of sun, And shadowing trees, but no glad spring had run Beside our homes, to bless the day and night. But see! the water flows with gentle might, In metal highway thro’ green pastures led; And o’er the sculptured basin see it shed A silver stream, a fall of sparkling light! Thus with wise heart a gentle fancy wed, Long summer morns, hath for our solace wrought; So noble work succeeds to noble thought, So the hand justifies the heart and head, So the child’s play to earnest close is brought So piety to poetry is wed.” By W. M. W. CALL. Eleanor is now the inmate of another home in a distant county, but her name is still cherished and remembered, in connection with that of the husband she mourns, among the survivors of the rural population of Marston Bigot. The poet in question was a near neighbour, and became a constant visitor both at the Rectory and Millard’s Hill. On the marriage of my brother Charles, and the prolonged absence of Cavendish and his wife in the West Indies, this friend, whom we named “Alastor,” on account of his predilection for solitude, became the almost daily companion in my long walks. In the summer time we would usually take a volume of some favourite author with us, Shelley, Goethe, or Jean Paul being often selected; of the latter we were both ardent admirers. Then, choosing some grassy knoll in one of the pretty fields which surrounded us, or some tempting shade in one of our numerous wayside woods, we would rest and read awhile. We had tastes and thoughts in common, and many were the pleasant hours thus beguiled, which are, I am well assured, forgotten by neither of us. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XIX WHITTLEBURY In passing in review before my mind the different country houses which I have frequented at different periods of my life, I am forcibly struck by the difference in the characteristics of each. I will devote this chapter to Whittlebury Lodge in Northamptonshire, situated on the skirts of the beautiful forest of the same name, where, for many months at a time, I was the guest of kind friends to whom I have alluded in an earlier chapter. Lord Southampton[42] was the Master of the Hounds, in which capacity he had succeeded his aged kinsman, the Duke of Grafton. Sport, therefore, was the chief characteristic and the ruling passion at Whittlebury, and I, in my small way, was one of its most zealous votaries. Footnote 42: Charles, third Lord Southampton; born 1804; married, 1826, Harriet, daughter of Hon. Henry Fitzroy Stanhope.