met on the day of our
visit to Wilton,--daughters or granddaughters of a famous inventor and
engineer,--still lingered as vague and pleasing visions, so lovely had
they seemed among the daisies and primroses. The primroses and daisies
were as fresh in the spring of 1886 as they were in the spring of 1833,
but I hardly dared to ask after the blooming maidens of that early
period.

One memory predominates over all others, in walking through the halls,
or still more in wandering through the grounds, of Wilton House. Here
Sir Philip Sidney wrote his "Arcadia," and the ever youthful presence of
the man himself rather than the recollection of his writings takes
possession of us. There are three young men in history whose names
always present themselves to me in a special companionship: Pico della
Mirandola, "the Phoenix of the Age" for his contemporaries; "the
Admirable Crichton," accepting as true the accounts which have come down
to us of his wonderful accomplishments; and Sidney, the Bayard of
England, "that glorious star, that lively pattern of virtue and the
lovely joy of all the learned sort, ... born into the world to show unto
our age a sample of ancient virtue." The English paragon of excellence
was but thirty-two years old when he was slain at Zutphen, the Italian
Phoenix but thirty-one when he was carried off by a fever, and the
Scotch prodigy of gifts and attainments was only twenty-two when he was
assassinated by his worthless pupil. Sir Philip Sidney is better
remembered by the draught of water he gave the dying soldier than by all
the waters he ever drew from the fountain of the Muses, considerable as
are the merits of his prose and verse. But here, where he came to cool
his fiery spirit after the bitter insult he had received from the Earl
of Leicester; here, where he mused and wrote, and shaped his lofty plans
for a glorious future, he lives once more in our imagination, as if his
spirit haunted the English Arcadia he loved so dearly.

The name of Herbert, which we have met with in the cathedral, and which
belongs to the Earls of Pembroke, presents itself to us once more in a
very different and very beautiful aspect. Between Salisbury and Wilton,
three miles and a half distant, is the little village of Bemerton, where
"holy George Herbert" lived and died, and where he lies buried. Many
Americans who know little else of him recall the lines borrowed from him
by Irving in the "Sketch-Book" and by Emerson in "N