fore and round you; trees which there,
being out of sight, were allowed to grow too old to be worth five
shillings a piece, moss-grown, hollow-trunked, some pollarded,--trees
invaluable! Ha, the hare! How she scuds! See, the deer marching down to
the water side. What groves of bulrushes! islands of water-lily! And to
throw a Gothic bridge there, bring a great gravel road over the bridge!
Oh, shame, shame!

So would have said the scholar, for he had a true sentiment for Nature,
if the bridge had not clean gone out of his head. Wandering alone, he
came at last to the most umbrageous and sequestered bank of the wide
water, closed round on every side by brushwood, or still, patriarchal
trees. Suddenly he arrested his steps; an idea struck him,--one of
those old, whimsical, grotesque ideas which often when we are alone come
across us, even in our quietest or most anxious moods. Was his infirmity
really incurable? Elocution masters had said certainly not; but they had
done him no good. Yet had not the greatest orator the world ever knew a
defect in utterance? He, too, Demosthenes, had, no doubt, paid fees to
elocution masters, the best in Athens, where elocution masters must have
studied their art ad unguem, and the defect had baffled them. But did
Demosthenes despair? No, he resolved to cure himself,--how? Was it
not one of his methods to fill his mouth with pebbles, and practise,
manfully to the roaring sea? George Morley had never tried the effect of
pebbles. Was there any virtue in them? Why not try? No sea there, it is
true; but a sea was only useful as representing the noise of a stormy
democratic audience. To represent a peaceful congregation that still
sheet of water would do as well. Pebbles there were in plenty just by
that gravelly cove, near which a young pike lay sunning his green
back. Half in jest, half in earnest, the scholar picked up a handful of
pebbles, wiped them from sand and mould, inserted them between his teeth
cautiously, and, looking round to assure himself that none were by,
began an extempore discourse. So interested did he become in that
classical experiment, that he might have tortured the air and astonished
the magpies (three of whom from a neighbouring thicket listened
perfectly spell-bound) for more than half an hour, when seized with
shame at the ludicrous impotence of his exertions, with despair that so
wretched a barrier should stand between his mind and its expression, he
flung away the p