pected from
such a step in the fields of rural archaeology. Her very presence at the
meeting throws an air of gentle absurdity over the whole affair. It is
difficult for the driest of antiquaries to read a paper on Roman roads
in the teeth of a charming being who sleeps to the close, and then
awakes only to assure him it was "very romantic." But it must be
confessed that the charming being has very little trouble with the
antiquaries. Half the fun of the thing lies in the ease and grace of her
taming of Dryasdust; the learned Professor dies at her touch into "a
dear delightful old thing," and fetches and carries all day with a
perfect obedience. It is a delightful change from town, a sort of
glorified afternoon in a pastoral Zoological, this junketing among the
queer unclubbable animals of science and history. There is a noble
disdain of rheumatism in the ardor with which they plunge into the dark
and mysterious vaults where their willful student insists, with Mr.
Froude, that those poor monks snatched their damp and difficult slumber;
and there is a noble disdain of truth in their suppression of the
treacherous and unsentimental "beer-cellar" which trembles on their
lips.

Woman, in fact, carries her atmosphere of romantic credulity into the
gray and arid scepticism of a groping archaeology. She frowns down any
suggestion of the improbability of a pretty story, she believes in the
poison-sucking devotion of Queen Eleanor, she shrugs her shoulders
impatiently at a whisper of Queen Mary's wig. Every kitchen becomes a
torture-chamber, every drain a subterranean passage. But resolute as she
is on this point of the poetry of the past, on all other questions she
is the most docile of pupils. Her interest, her listening power, her
curiosity, is inexhaustible. If she has a passion, indeed, it is for
Early English. But she has a proper awe for Romanesque, and a singular
interest in Third Pointed. She is ruthless in insisting on her victim's
spelling out every word of a brass in Latin that she cannot understand,
and which he cannot translate. She collects little fragments of Roman
brick, and wraps them up in tissue-paper for preservation at home like
bride-cake. She is severe on restoration, and merciless on whitewash.
She plunges, in fact, gallantly into the spirit of the thing, but she
gracefully denudes it of its bareness and pedantry. Her bugle sings
truce at midday for luncheon. She couches in the deep grass of the abbey
r