Nobody knows anything about mutton in these days, for the very sufficient reason that there is no mutton worth knowing anything about. Scientific breeding has improved it off the face of the earth. The immature meat is killed at two years old, and only we few survivors of a former generation know how little like it is to the mutton of former days. The Monmouthshire farmers told me the other day that they could not keep Welsh sheep of pure breed, because nothing under an eight-foot park paling would confine them. Just as if they did not jump in the days when I jumped too! Believe me, my young friends, that George the Third knew what he was talking about (as upon certain other occasions) when he said that very little venison was equal to a haunch of four-year-old mutton. And the gravy!--chocolate-coloured, not pink, my innocent young friends. Ichabod! Ichabod! My uncle, too, Mr. Partington--who married my father's sister, and lived many years chairman of quarter sessions at Offham, among the South Downs, near Lewes--there was a man who understood mutton! A little silver saucepan was placed by his side when the leg of mutton, or sometimes two, about as big as fine fowls, were placed in one dish before him. Then, after the mutton had been cut, the abundantly flowing gravy was transferred to the saucepan, a couple of glasses of tawny old port, and a _quantum suff._ of currant jelly and cayenne were added, the whole was warmed in the dining-room, and then--we ate mutton, as I shall never eat it again in this world! Well! _revenir a nos moutons_ we never, never shall! So we must, alas! do the reverse in returning to my Penrith reminiscences. I remember specially an excellent old fellow and very friendly neighbour, Colonel Macleod, a bachelor, who having fallen in love with a very beautiful spot, in the valley of the Lowther, built an ugly brick house, three stories high, because, as he said, he was so greedy of the view, forgetful apparently that he was providing it mainly for his maid servants. Then there was the old maiden lady, with a name that might have been found in north-country annals at almost any date during the last seven hundred years, who mildly and maternally corrected my sister at table for speaking of _vol-au-vent_, telling her that the correct expression was _voulez-vous!_ My sister always adopted the old lady's correction in future, at least when addressing her.