line was marked only by a hedge between grass and arable, and even that gave out for the last fifty yards before entering the Mongewell road. Over this road a gap in the hedge might have been used when the road had dwindled to a footpath going to Glebe Farm, which is on a road now largely used to connect Brazier’s Park with Goring. I thought I saw the ghost of it coming down to Glebe Farm, though amidst corn. This road to Goring is henceforward along the course of the Icknield Way. It is a hard and hedgeless road, winding and undulating through corn that rises on either hand to crested ridges. It passed Icknield Farm, crossed the South Stoke and Woodcote road, and went up as Catsbrain Hill to where I saw below me the red roofs and walls of suburban Cleeve and the Berkshire downs, their woods and pastures, beyond. The road dipped, and at the cross-road below was lost in streets and building land. Therefore I turned west along the cross-road, and then south again to Goring, the ford, and Streatley. Goring and Streatley railway station, and the cutting and the new houses have probably covered up where they have not destroyed all traces of the Icknield Way. But there is a Ferry Lane leading down to the towing-path and river, to where there was a ferry before the bridge, and a “Roman” ford over the gravelly bottom before that. On the opposite side Streatley Vicarage and its lawn lie across the probable way, but beyond them a path continuing the line of Ferry Lane goes straight up to the Reading road a quarter mile south of the “Bull.” I went into Goring Church and churchyard, and was pleased with the names of “John Lammas” and of “James, Ann, and Ruth Thresher” on tombstones. What clear visages of men and women these call up, each perfect in its way, shorn of the uncertain, vague, or incongruous elements of the living! By a kind of art the mere names in the churchyard sketch the characters. I have seen mere names that suggested as much as those two beautiful verses express which Mr. Walter de la Mare, the author, calls “An Epitaph”:-- Here lies the most beautiful lady, Light of step and heart was she; I think she was the most beautiful lady That ever dwelt in the West Countrie. But beauty vanishes; beauty passes; However rare--rare it be; And when I crumble who will remember This lady of the West Countrie? [Illustration: Near Cleeve.] I have seen some that had in them no touch of death except the word, and that did no more than make a rustle and a shadow in the beauty as death does in the same poet’s “Three Cherry Trees”:-- There were three cherry trees once Grew in a garden all shady; And there for delight of so gladsome a sight Walked a most beautiful lady, Dreamed a most beautiful lady.