e enjoying the modern
improvements, and that I were gazing into the cool depths of those deep
forests where there were once good lairs for the wolf and wild boar. I
should like to hear the baying of the hounds and the mellow horns of the
huntsman. I should like to see the royal cavalcade emerging from one of
those wooded glades: monarch and baron bold, proud prelate, abbot and
prior, belted knight and ladye fair, sweeping in gorgeous array under
the arcades of the overshadowing trees, silver spurs and jewelled
trappings glittering in the sunlight, princely forms bending low over
the saddles of the court beauties. Why, oh why, is it not possible to
be picturesque and pious in the same epoch? Why may not chivalry and
charity go hand in hand? It amuses me to imagine the amazement of
the barons, bold and belted knights, could they be resuscitated for a
sufficient length of time to gaze upon the hydropathic establishments
which dot their ancient hunting-grounds. It would have been very
difficult to interest the age of chivalry in hydropathy.

Such is the fascination of historic association that I am sure, if
I could drag my beloved but conscientious Salemina from some foreign
soup-kitchen which she is doubtless inspecting, I could make even her
mourn the vanished past with me this morning, on the Beacon's towering
head. For Salemina wearies of the age of charity sometimes, as every one
does who is trying to make it a beautiful possibility.

Chapter XVII. Short stops and long bills.

The manner of my changing from West to North Belvern was this. When I
had been two days at Holly House, I reflected that my sitting-room faced
the wrong way for the view, and that my bedroom was dark and not large
enough to swing a cat in. Not that there was the remotest necessity
of my swinging cats in it, but the figure of speech is always useful.
Neither did I care to occupy myself with the perennial inspection and
purchase of raw edibles, when I wished to live in an ideal world and
paint a great picture. Mrs. Hobbs would come to my bedside in the
morning and ask me if I would like to buy a fowl. When I looked upon the
fowl, limp in death, with its headless neck hanging dejectedly over the
edge of the plate, its giblets and kidneys lying in immodest confusion
on the outside of itself, and its liver 'tucked under its wing, poor
thing,' I never wanted to buy it. But one morning, in taking my walk,
I chanced upon an idyllic spot: the fr