end of the kitchen.

Mary went into the porch, and the peaceful landscape before her seemed to
quiet her troubled spirit. She was so keenly alive to all that was
beautiful in nature; her education had been imperfect, but she was open to
receive all impressions, and, during her short married life, she had been
brought into contact with the people who were attached to the Earl of
Leicester's household, and had read books which had quickened her poetic
taste and given a colour to her life.

It is difficult for those who live in these times to realise the fervour
with which the few books then brought within the reach of the people were
received by those who were hungry for self-culture. The Queen was an
accomplished scholar, and did her best to encourage the spread of
literature in the country. But though the tide had set in with an
ever-increasing flow, the flood had not as yet reached the women in Mary
Forrester's position. Thus, when she married Ambrose Gifford, a new world
was opened to her by such books as Surrey's _Translation of the AEneid_, and
Painter's _Tales from Boccaccio_. She had an excellent memory, and had
learned by heart Wyatt's _Translation of the Psalms_, and many parts of
Spenser's _Shepherd's Calendar_. This evening she took from the folds of
her gown a small book in a brown cover, which had been a gift to her that
very day from Mary, Countess of Pembroke.

It was the Psalms in English verse, which the brother and sister had
produced together in the preceding year when Philip Sidney, weary of the
Court, and burdened with the weight of his love for Stella, had soothed his
spirit by this joint work with his sister as they walked together in the
wide domain of Wilton, the home to which Mary Sidney went from her native
Penshurst, and which was scarcely less fair and beautiful than that which
she left to become the wife of the Earl of Pembroke.

It was at Wilton that _The Arcadia_ had its birth, and the description of
the fair country where Sir Philip Sidney and his sister placed the heroes
and heroines of the story may well answer as a description of both places,
as they write of proud heights, garnished with stately trees; and humble
valleys comforted with the refreshing of silver rivers; the meadows
enamelled with all sorts of flowers; the fields garnished with roses, which
made the earth blush as bashful at its own beauty--with other imagery
which, after the lapse of more than three hundred years, sh