There is an aroma of the Norman Conquest and of Domesday Book about the old town. Research will soon find out, if she looks sharp, that there is nothing Norman in the place except the old arch in the amorphous church-tower, and a castle at a distance on the flats. But the flavour of the past is stronger in the scattered memories of bygone sea-battles not a century ago, and the names of streets that do not antedate the Georges, than in these mere scraps that are always open to the reproach of mediaevalism, and are separated from us by a great gulf. And it doesn't much matter to us whether the memories are of victory or defeat, or the names those of sweeps or heroes. All's one to us--we glow; perhaps rashly, for, you see, we really know very little about them. And he who has read no history to speak of, if he glows about the past on the strength of his imperfect data, may easily break his molasses-jug. So, whether our blood is stirred by Nelson and Trafalgar, whereof we have read, or by the Duke of York and Walcheren, whereof we haven't--or mighty little--we feel in touch with both these heroes, for they are modern. Both have columns, anyhow; and we can dwell upon their triumph or defeat almost as if it wasn't history at all, but something that really happened, without running any risk of being accused of archaism or of deciphering musty tomes. And we can enjoy our expedition all the same to the ruined keep in the level pastures, where the long-horned black cattle stand and think and flap their tails still, just as they did in the days when the basement dungeons, now choked up, held real prisoners with real broken hearts. But there is modern life, too, at St. Sennans--institutions that keep abreast of the century. Half the previous century ago, when we went there first, the Circulating Library consisted, so far as we can recollect it, of a net containing bright leather balls, a collection of wooden spades and wheelbarrows, a glass jar with powder-puffs, another with tooth-brushes, a rocking-horse--rashly stocked in the first heated impulse of an over-confident founder--a few other trifles, and, most important of all, a book-case that supplied the title-role to the performance. That book-case contained (we are confident) _editiones principes_ of Mrs. Ratcliff, Sir Walter Scott, Bulwer Lytton, Currer Bell ... well, even Fanny Burney, if you come to that. There certainly was a copy of "Frankenstein," and fifty years ago our flesh was so compliant as to creep during its perusal. It wouldn't now.