I cannot allow a summer to go by without referring to that dear old classic, Gilbert White's 'Natural History of Selborne.' Even now I do not quite know why I am so fond of these letters, except that they show strongly the observant eye and the genuine love of Nature which are so sympathetic to me. When I was young my mother gave me the book to read, and it bored me considerably. I thought the long speculations about the hibernating of birds-Swifts, Swallows, and others-so tiresome; especially as I knew for sure that they migrated. I, almost a child, knew that. In those days I just panted for what was coming; the saying 'old days 'to me meant the present, which was older than the past and growing each day, as I grew myself, to greater maturity. I did not understand what people meant by referring to the days which were behind as 'the old days,'for they represented to me the youth of time. I longed to live the day after to-morrow before it came, if only that were possible. Everything new interested me; I thought the world was moving so fast; and now that my life is nearly over, it is as if nothing had happened. Progress is indeed like the old Greek pattern, a continuous unbroken line, but curling back and inwards for long periods before it starts a new development. Just now even the enthusiastic and the young are trying to live in the past-a whole generation conservative in its youth. I suppose it is all right, but it seems to lack the generous impulses of the generation nourished on the teachings of Mill and Bright. How true it is that Liberalism is not a principle, but an attitude of mind! And the old Greek pattern will start its long line forward again some day.

Now that hope is over for me; the old times, with their edifying lessons, interest me most; and so I try to understand the evolution of the present as taught through knowledge of the past, rather than breathlessly to grasp the future. My mother was so kind and sensible with me. So many parents are apt to be irritated by daughters who bound forward in life as children pick flowers in a field, always thinking there are many more and much finer ones just a little further on.

Though it is now little over a hundred years since Gilbert White died, his pictures of the change within his memory in the general condition of the poor, and of the improvement in agriculture, gardens and health, seem most strange. Leprosy still existed in Selborne, though it was much on the decline. He attributes this partly to improved food and partly to wearing clean linen instead of dirty woollen garments. As to the produce of a garden, he adds, 'Every middle-aged person of observation may perceive, within his own memory, both in town and country, how vastly the consumption of vegetables is increased. Green stalls in cities now support multitudes in a comfortable state, while gardeners get fortunes. Potatoes have prevailed in this district, by means of premiums, within these twenty years only, and are much esteemed here now by the poor, who would scarce have ventured to taste them in the last reign.

* Our Saxon ancestors certainly had some sort of Cabbage, because they call the month of February "Sprout-caie"; but long after their days the cultivation of gardens was little attended to. The religious, being men of leisure, and keeping up a constant correspondence with Italy, were the first people among us who had gardens and fruit trees in any perfection, within the walls of their abbeys and priories. The barons neglected every pursuit that did not lead to war or tend to the pleasure of the chase.'

It seems to me from this exceedingly probable that gardens declined very much in England after the Befor-mation, and no doubt the eating of vegetables, like the eating of fish, may have been considered Popish. Even in my childhood I can remember that salad was rarely seen at any but the tables of the very wealthy, who had foreign cooks, and then it was covered with a rich cream sauce, full of mustard, which was supposed to make it digestible. This superstition of the day was pointedly brought forward in some letters I found of my grandmother's to my father at Oxford, strongly recommending him to take mustard-seeds before his meals as very helpful to digestion.

I am far from suggesting that the Reformation had, on the whole, an injurious effect on England, but indirectly in many ways it seems to have led to curious and even pernicious results. Among the most peculiar of these was the increase of piracy in Elizabeth's reign. The following account, given in Froude's 'English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century,'will explain what I mean:- 'In harbour there were still a score of large ships, but they were dismantled and rotting; of artillery fit for sea work there was none. The men were not to be had, and, as Sir William Cecil said, to fit out ships without men was to set armour on stakes on the seashore. The mariners of England were otherwise engaged and in a way that did not please Cecil. He was the ablest Minister that Elizabeth had. He saw at once that on the Navy the prosperity and even the liberty of England must eventually depend. If England were to remain Protestant, it was not by Articles of religion or Acts of Uniformity that she could be saved, without a fleet at the back of them. But he was old-fashioned. He believed in law and order, and he has left a curious paper of reflections on the situation. The ships'companies in Henry VIII.'s days were recruited from the fishing smacks, but the Reformation itself had destroyed the fishing trade. In old times, Cecil said, no flesh was eaten on fish days. The King himself could not have license. Now to eat beef or mutton on fish days was the test of a true believer. . . . The fishermen had taken to privateering because the fasts of the Church were neglected. He saw it was so. He recorded his own opinion that piracy, as he called it, was detestable, and could not last. He was to find that it could last, that it was to form the special discipline of the generation whose business it would be to fight the Spaniards. But he struggled hard against the unwelcome conclusion. He tried to revive lawful trade by a Navigation Act. He tried to restore the fisheries by Act of Parliament. He introduced a Bill recommending godly abstinence as a means to virtue, making the eating of meat on Fridays and Saturdays a misdemeanour, and adding Wednesday as a half fish day. The House of Commons laughed at him as bringing back Popish mummeries. To please the Protestants he inserted a clause that the statute was politically meant for the increase of fishermen and mariners, not for any superstition inthe choice of meats; but it was no use. The Act was called in mockery "Cecil's Fast," and the recovery of the fisheries had to wait till the natural inclination of human stomachs for fresh whiting and salt cod should revive in itself.'