muse upon it, was the self-poised, sincere, and lovely exaltation of its contemplative spirit. He was a man whose conduct of life would, first of all, purify, expand, and adorn the temple of his own soul, out of which should afterward flow, in their own free way, those choral harmonies that soothe, guide, and exalt the human race. He lived before he wrote. The soul of the Elegy is the soul of the man. It was his thought--which he has somewhere expressed in better words than these--that human beings are only at their best while such feelings endure as are engendered when death has just taken from us the objects of our love. That was the point of view from which he habitually looked upon the world; and no man who has learned the lessons of experience can doubt that he was right. Gray was twenty-six years old when he wrote the first draft of the Elegy. He began that poem in 1742, at Stoke-Pogis, and he finished and published it in 1751. No visitor to this churchyard can miss either its inspiration or its imagery. The poet has been dead more than a hundred years, but the scene of his rambles and reveries has suffered no material change. One of his yew-trees, indeed, much weakened with age, was some time since blown down, in a storm, and its fragments have been carried away. The picturesque manor house not far distant was once the home of Admiral Penn, father of William Penn the famous Quaker.¹ ¹ William Penn and his children are buried in the little Jordans graveyard, not many miles away. The visitor to Stoke-Pogis should not omit a visit to Upton church, Burnham village, and Binfield. Pope lived at Binfield when he wrote his poem on Windsor Forest. Upton claims to have had a share in the inspiration of the Elegy, but Stoke-Pogis was unquestionably his place of residence when he wrote it. Langley Marish ought to be visited also, and Horton--where Milton wrote "L'Allegro," "II Penseroso," and "Comus." Chalfont St. Peter is accessible, where still is standing the house in which Milton finished _Paradise Lost_ and began _Paradise Regained;_ and from there a short drive will take you to Beaconsfield, where you may see Edmund Burke's tablet, in the church, and the monument to Waller, in the churchyard. All the trees of the region have, of course, waxed and expanded,--not forgetting the neighbouring beeches of Burnham, among which he loved to wander, and where he might often have been found, sitting with his book, at some gnarled wreath of "old fantastic roots." But in its general characteristics, its rustic homeliness and peaceful beauty, this "glimmering landscape," immortalised in his verse, is the same on which his living eyes have looked. There was no need to seek for him in any special spot. The house in which he once lived might, no doubt, be discovered; but every nook and vista, every green lane and upland lawn and ivy-mantled tower of this delicious solitude is haunted with his presence.