. It was a walk of about an eighth of a mile to the
'Lodge'--a pleasant cottage surrounded by a beautiful garden.

"Admiral Smyth's family go to a little church seven hundred years old,
standing in the midst of tombstones and surrounded by thatched cottages.
English scenery seems now (September) much like our Southern scenery in
April--rich and lovely, but wanting mountains and water. An English
village could never be mistaken for an American one: the outline against
the sky differs; a thatched cottage makes a very wavy line on the blue
above.

"We find enough in St. John's Lodge, in the admiral's library, and in
the society of the cultivated members of his family to interest us for a
long time.

"The admiral himself is upwards of sixty years of age, noble-looking,
loving a good joke, an antiquarian, and a good astronomer. I picked up
many an anecdote from him, and many curious bits of learning.

"He tells a good story, illustrative of his enthusiasm when looking at a
crater in the moon. He says the night was remarkably fine, and he
applied higher and higher powers to his glass until he seemed to look
down into the abyss, and imagining himself standing on its verge he felt
himself falling in, and drew back with a shudder which lasted even after
the illusion was over.

"In speaking of Stratford-upon-Avon, the admiral told me that the Lucy
family, one of whose ancestors drove Shakspere from his grounds, and who
is caricatured in Justice Shallow, still resides on the same spot as in
Shakspere's time. He says no family ever retained their characteristics
more decidedly.

"Some years ago one of this family was invited to a Shakspere dinner. He
resented the well-meant invitation, saying they must surely have
forgotten how that _person_ treated his ancestor!

"The amateur astronomers of England are numerous, but they are not like
those of America.

"In America a poor schoolmaster, who has some bright boys who ask
questions, buys a glass and becomes a star-gazer, without time and
almost without instruments; or a watchmaker must know the time, and
therefore watches the stars as time-keepers. In almost all cases they
are hard-working men.

"In England it is quite otherwise. A wealthy gentleman buys a telescope
as he would buy a library, as an ornament to his house.

"Admiral Smyth says that no family is quite civilized unless it
possesses a copy of some encyclopaedia and a telescope. The English
gentleman uses both f