little and rickety dark foreign man, cheerful and old, carrying a thick satchel on his back and looking neither to the right nor to the left. Instead of going on into Akeman Street and then turning at right angles along it for a mile, I took a path half a mile on this side of it which led towards Buckland Church. Where the path crossed the first hedge, a narrow, low embankment went off to the left along the hedge, followed by the path to the church and entering at last an elmy and nettly lane. Buckland village has many elm trees, plain little houses, twisting lanes, and a “Buck’s Head” in a dim corner of them. Its church is of alternating flints and freestone, but the tower all of stone. It was a very cool place with a slow, muffled, beating clock and a carpet of sun lying across the floor from the netted open door. One of the tablets on the wall was to Judith ----. High on the wall under the tower was an inscription saying:-- “Near this place, together with those of an infant daughter, lie the earthly remains of Frances Russell, relict of William Russell of Great Missenden, daughter of Edward and Frances Horwood of this place. She died October 8, 1793, aged 73 years. “The fleeting moments of Prosperity, the tedious hours of Adversity, and the lingering illness which Providence allotted, she bore with equanimity and Christian resignation. “Reader! Go and do likewise.” It was a rusty and dusty inscription read mostly by the bellringers standing under the tower, and one of the most dismal certificates of life, marriage, motherhood, religion, death and the philosophy of relatives that I have seen. It was cheerful afterwards to read the name of Peter Parrot on a tombstone out in the sun. [Illustration: Aston Clinton.]