y one of Hallett's wheat ears might displace the old cornucopia
in that picture of happy abundance so familiar to old and young.
Here are twenty ears from one seed, containing probably a thousand
grains. The increase of a thousand-fold, or half that ratio, is
prodigious, having nothing to equal it in the vegetable world that
we know of. If one bushel of seed wheat could be so distributed by
a drill as to produce 500 or 250 bushels at the harvest, certainly
the staff of life would be greatly cheapened to the millions who
lean upon it alone for subsistence.

From Oundle I walked the next day to Stamford, a good, solid, old
English town, sitting on the corners of three counties, and on three
layers of history, Saxon, Dane and Norman. The first object of
interest was a stone bridge over the Nen at Oundle. It is a grand
structure to span such a little river. It must have cost three
times as much as "The Great Bridge" over the Connecticut at
Hartford; and yet the stream it crosses is a mere rivulet compared
with our New England river. "The bridge with wooden piers" is a
fabric of fancy to most English people. They have read of such a
thing in Longfellow's poems, but hardly realise that it exists still
in civilised countries. Here bridges are works of art as well as of
utility, and rank next to the grand old cathedrals and parish
churches for solidity and symmetry. Their stone arches are
frequently turned with a grace as fine as any in St. Paul's, and
their balustrades and butments often approach the domain of
sculpture.

Crossing the Nen, I followed it for several miles in a northerly
direction. I soon came to a rather low, level section of the road,
and noticed stones placed at the side of it, at narrow intervals,
for a long distance to the very foot of a village situated on a
rising ground. These stones were evidently taken from some ancient
edifice, for many of them bore the marks of the old cathedral or
castle chisel. They were the foot-tracks of a ruined monument of
dark and painful history. More than this might be said of them.
They were the blood-drops of a monstrosity chased from its den and
hunted down by the people, who shuddered with horror at its
sanguinary record of violence and wrong. As I approached the quiet
village, whose pleasant-faced houses, great and small, looked like a
congregation of old and young sitting reverently around the parish
church and listening to the preaching of the belfry,