e
And early one morn from their pallets they rose,
And met in their tunnel with lights to survey
If they'd scooped a free passage right under the Wey.

But alas for their fate! As they smirked and they smiled.
To think how completely the world was beguiled,
The river broke in, and it grieves me to say
It drowned all the frolicksome monks of the Wey.

* * * * *

O churchmen beware of the lures of the flesh,
The net of the devil has many a mesh!
And remember whenever you're tempted to stray,
The fate that befell the poor monks of the Wey.

It was all long ago, and now there are neither monks nor nuns; the
convent has been converted, little by little, age by age, into cottages,
even as the friars and nuns themselves may have been organically changed
possibly into violets, but more probably into the festive sparrows which
flit and hop and flirt about the ruins with abrupt startles, like
pheasants sudden bursting on the wing. There is a pretty little Latin
epigram, written by a gay monk, of a pretty little lady, who, being very
amorous, and observing that sparrows were like her as to love, hoped that
she might be turned into one after death; and it is not difficult for a
dreamer in an old abbey, of a golden day to fancy that these merry, saucy
birdies, who dart and dip in and out of the sunshine or shadow, chirping
their shameless ditties _pro et con_, were once the human dwellers in the
spot, who sang their gaudrioles to pleasant strains.

I became familiar with many such scenes for many miles about Oatlands,
not merely during solitary walks, but by availing myself of the kind
invitations of many friends, and by hunting afoot with the beagles. In
this fashion one has hare and hound, but no horse. It is not needed, for
while going over crisp stubble and velvet turf, climbing fences and
jumping ditches, a man has a keen sense of being his own horse, and when
he accomplishes a good leap of being intrinsically well worth 200 pounds.
And indeed, so long as anybody can walk day in and out a greater distance
than would tire a horse, he may well believe he is really worth one. It
may be a good thing for us to reflect on the fact that if slavery
prevailed at the present day as it did among the polished Greeks the
average price of young gentlemen, and even of young ladies, would not be
more than what is paid for a good hunter. Divested of diamon