Whatever Staines Moor may once have been, it no longer resembles those inimical wilds. It is, in fact, a corner of Middlesex endued with much beauty of a quiet, pastoral kind. In midst of it and its pleasant grasslands and fine trees with brooks and glancing waters everywhere, and here and there a water-mill, is Stanwell. At Stanwell the many noble elms of these parts are more closely grouped together and grow to a greater nobility, and at the very outskirts of the village is a finely-wooded park—that of Stanwell Place. The especially fine water-bearing quality of those surroundings is notable in the scenery of that park, and has led of late years to the building of an immense reservoir, now controlled by the Water Board. It is unfortunate that it should have been thought necessary to form this reservoir on a higher level than that of the surrounding country, and thus to hide it behind a huge embankment like that of a railway, for the artificial lake so constructed is rather much of an eyesore. It might, if built upon the level, have proved an additional beauty in the landscape. Stanwell is situated in the Hundred of Spelthorne, an ancient Anglo-Saxon division of Middlesex. It is still a Petty Sessional division, but no man knows where the ancient thorn-tree stood that marked the meeting-place of our remote forefathers—that “Spele-Thorn,” or Speech Thorn, where the open-air folk-moot was held. It is a pleasant village, with a very large church, whose tall, shingled spire rises amid luxuriant elms. Near by is a seventeenth-century schoolhouse with a tablet inscribed: This House and this Free Schoole were founded at the charge of the Right Honourable Thomas, Lord Kynvett, Baron of Escricke, and the Lady Elizabeth his wife. Endowed with a perpetuall revennew of Twenty Pound Land. By the yeare. 1624. A stately monument in the singular taste of that time to Knyvett and his lady is found in the church. Against black marble columns are drawn back stony curtains, disclosing the worthy couple kneeling and facing one another across a prayer-desk, with the steadfast glare of two strange cats on a debatable roof-top. At the same time, although the taste is not that in favour to-day, the workmanship is very fine. It is the work of the famous sculptor, Nicholas Stone, who, it is recorded, received £215 for it. In the churchyard is a very elaborate tomb, all scroll, boldly-flung volutes, and cherubs gazing stolidly into infinity, recording the extraordinarily many virtues of a person whose name one promptly forgets. It is melancholy to reflect that only in the centuries that are past was it possible to write such epitaphs, and that such supermen in goodness no longer exist. Or is it not rather that we have in our times a better sense of proportion in these mortuary praises?