finally, travelling westward, to keep the coast line through Llanwnda and round Strumble Head to St. David's, and thence to St. Bride's, St. Ann's Head, and Milford. Unfortunately for me I was prevented from taking this latter route myself, and had to be content with a visit on wheels to St. David's and St. Bride's.

A glance at the map will show that the extreme west of Pembrokeshire is broken into two great headlands or peninsulas. Of these the southernmost is St. Bride's, and the northern one Dewisland or St. David's. Both headlands in their ceaseless warfare with the Atlantic have been forced to cede some of their territory to the enemy, and the sea now surges triumphantly round Ramsay Island, and the islets known as "The Bishop and his Clerks," which it has plundered from St. David, as further southward it has wrenched Skomar Island and Stockholm Island from the gentle St. Brigida. Between the two promontories stretches the magnificent bay, which the waves have hollowed out of rocks whose carboniferous strata have proved too soft to resist them. There is a very interesting passage in Gerald de Barri,1 writing in the twelfth century, where he says of this coast:-"We then passed over Niwegal (Newgale) sands, at which place a very remarkable circumstance occurred. The sandy shores of South Wales being laid bare by the extraordinary violence of a storm, the surface of the earth which had been covered for many ages then appeared, and discovered the trunks of trees cut off, standing in the sea itself, the strokes of the hatchet appearing as if only made yesterday; the soil was very black, and the wood like ebony ; by a wonderful revolution the road for ships became impassable, and looked not like a shore, but like a grove, cut down perhaps at the time of the deluge, or not long after, being by

1 'The Itinerary of Archbishop Baldwin through Wales,' by Giraldus de Barri (translated by Sir Richard Colt Hoare).

degrees consumed and swallowed up by the violence and encroachments of the sea."

Nothing could have prevented a similar gradual submergence of this whole coast, had not an invincible ally, in the shape of the primeval igneous rocks, come to the rescue and saved the remnant from annihilation. At Roch Castle and all around we may see them, these splendid cliffs and crags, towering up majestically in proud defiance of sea and storm and wind, while eastward over the plain they rear their lichened pinnacles, and spread abroad their serrated ridges, gaunt and grim against the sky, kindling the imagination and inspiring the fancy with something of a religious awe as though they were old tutelary gods keeping silent but sleepless watch over a threatened land. Indeed the whole stretch of country about St. David's is wild and desolate in the extreme. What with Dane and Saxon and Norman it has had a stormy history. Times without number it has been swept by the hurricane once at least we know it to have been rocked by an earthquake. Nature would seem to have conspired with man to do it violence. And yet, for all this, here in the far-off wilderness the torch of Christianity has burned on unextinguished for more than a thousand years, and amid a loneliness where it would occasion us no surprise to find not even the ruins of a church, the astonished eye is greeted with the spectacle of one of the most imposing cathedrals in the world.

It is difficult, no doubt, to define in words the witchery of St. David's Close. All beauty has in it an element of mystery. Its appeal is to the heart rather than to the understanding. We feel it, but we know no grammar for it, no ready way in which we can parse and decline it. And true as this is of beauty generally, it is pre-eminently true of this view of the cathedral buildings and of the exquisite ruins of the bishop's palace. To describe these

architecturally would be quite beyond my powers, and happily such descriptions already abound. Moreover it is not only, it is not even primarily, with the architectural beauties that the visitor here is wont to be impressed. It is with the atmosphere, the spell, the fascination of the place as a whole, and with the spirit that seems to breathe in it. There are many churches, many medieval buildings, which measured by any ordinary standard might fairly be considered superior to St. David's, but I cannot recall any which, in its own special way, can be compared with it. The surprise and unexpectedness of the vista on which one lights so abruptly, the weirdness of the scene, its solitude and seclusion, its bleak background of rock and sea, the deep pathos that clings to a monument so venerable, so majestic, so broken, so alone these among other things help to give this matchless Close a character that can be claimed by no other, and to invest it with a chastened grandeur and melancholy beauty that dwell in the imagination long after one has ceased to see them.

The sense of contrast is vivid as the traveller makes the circuit of the bay and approaches St. Bride's Hill on the southern side. Whether it was due to the influence of the gentle saint, or whether to favourable atmospheric conditions, I will not venture to conjecture, but one felt as if one had stepped out of the shadows into the warm sunlight, and had exchanged the contemplative mind for a mood more like Tito's on a bright marketday in Florence. The country round about here is in its main features not unlike the plain of Dewisland. One notices, for instance, the same general absence of green hedge

rows and of woods and trees; and the fields, where they are not under cultivation, have that same wild moorland look that tells so eloquently of Atlantic gales. The private drive up to St. Bride's Hill is a pleasant exception, running as it does between

a perfect luxuriance of hartstongue fern, which forms the border of a thriving plantation of elm and sycamore and plane and chestnut and other trees, I know not what. Out of

this little wood it emerges into the pasture meadows that lie between the house and the cliffs, passing finally through a charming foreground of lawn and flower garden, sheltered by shrubberies and by trees which themselves do not disdain to accept the protection of the flanking hill.

One last word, before I lay down my pen, as to a subject from which no tourist I suppose can wholly keep away-the subject of cromlechs. In Wales, as Mr. Matthew Arnold reminds us, "every place has its tradition, every name its poetry, every stone its story." Most emphatically is this true of the stones; and I am free to confess that they occasionally become stones of offence and even of stumbling. They seem to crop up remorselessly at every turn. There is no escaping them. Cromlechs, that is to say, sloping stones; meini-hirion, that is to say, stones that do not slope; relics sacrificial, relics bardical, tumuli, camps, are scattered broadcast over the whole face of the country in richest profusion. Hence the imminent risk that one encounters of being over-cromleched and stoned to death. We cannot all be archæologists, and for my own part—since ascertaining from Professor Freeman that in point of fact the British were never true relations of us English folk at all, and since I have realised that there are adequate available survivals, such as the yule-log and the mistletoe, to which one can at any time, under the stimulus of a sudden archæological seizure, turn for appropriate refreshment I have been unable to muster up more than a languid emotion over antiquities which have rarely any beauty in them of their own, and whose history has long been lost in obscurity.

H. W. HOARE.

CHAPTER XIX.

INSTEAD of resuming his investigation of South's brain (which perhaps was not so interesting under the microscope as might have been expected from the importance of that organ in life) Fitzpiers reclined and ruminated on the interview. Grace's curious susceptibility to his presence, though it was as if the currents of her life were disturbed rather than attracted by him, added a special interest to her general charm. Fitzpiers was in a distinct degree scientific, being ready and zealous to interrogate all physical manifestations, but primarily he was an idealist. He believed that behind the imperfect lay the perfect; that rare things were to be discovered amidst a bulk of commonplace; that results in a new and untried case might be different from those in other cases where the conditions had been precisely similar. Regarding his own personality as one of unbounded possibilities, because it was his own (notwithstanding that the factors of his life had worked out a sorry product for thousands), he saw nothing but what was regular in his discovery at Hintock of an altogether exceptional being of the other sex, who for nobody else would have had any existence.

One habit of Fitzpiers's, commoner in dreamers of more advanced age than in men of his years, was that of talking to himself. He paced round his room with a selective tread upon the more prominent blooms of the carpet, and murmured: "This phenomenal girl will be the light of my life while I am at Hintock; and the pecial beauty of the situation is that No. 323.-VOL. LIV.

our attitude and relations to each other will be purely spiritual. Socially we can never be intimate. Anything like matrimonial intentions towards her, charming as she is, would be absurd. They would spoil the ethereal character of my regard And, indeed, I have other aims on the practical side of my life."

Fitzpiers bestowed a regulation thought on the advantageous marriage he was bound to make with a woman of family as good as his own, and of purse much longer. But as an object of contemplation for the present, as objective spirit rather than corporeal presence, Grace Melbury would serve to keep his soul alive, and to relieve the monotony of his days.

His first notion (acquired from the mere sight of her without converse) that of an idle and vulgar flirtation with a timber-merchant's pretty daughter, grated painfully upon him now that he had found what Grace intrinsically was. Personal intercourse with such as she could take no lower form than intellectual communion, and mutual explorations of the world of thought. Since he could not call at her father's, having no practical views, cursory encounters in the lane, in the wood, coming and going to and from church, or in passing her dwelling, were what the acquaintance would have to feed on.

Such anticipated glimpses of her now and then realised themselves in the event. Rencounters of not more than a minute's duration, frequently repeated, will build up mutual interest even an intimacy, in a lonely place. Theirs grew as imperceptibly as the twigs budded on the trees. There never was a particular moment at which it

C C

could be said they became friends ; yet a delicate understanding now existed between two who in the winter had

been strangers.

Spring weather came on rather suddenly, the unsealing of buds that had long been swollen accomplishing itself in the space of one warm night. The rush of sap in the veins of the trees could almost be heard. The flowers of late April took up a position unseen, and looked as if they had been blooming a long while, though there had been no trace of them the day before yesterday; birds began not to mind getting wet. In-door people said they had heard the nightingale, to which out-door people replied contemptuously that they had heard him a fortnight before.

The young doctor's practice being scarcely so large as a London surgeon's, he frequently walked in the wood. Indeed such practice as he had he did not follow up with the assiduity that would have been necessary for developing it to exceptional proportions. One day, book in hand, he walked in a part of the wood where the trees were mainly oaks. It was a calm afternoon, and there was everywhere around that sign of great undertakings on the part of vegetable nature which is apt to fill reflective human beings who are not undertaking much themselves with a sudden uneasiness at the contrast. He heard in the distance a curious sound, something like the quack of a duck, which, though it was common enough here about this time, was not common to him.

Looking through the trees Fitzpiers soon perceived the origin of the noise. The barking season had just commenced, and what he had heard was the tear of the ripping-tool as it ploughed its way along the sticky parting between the trunk and the rind. Melbury did a large business in bark, and as he was Grace's father, and possibly might be found on the spot, Fitzpiers was attracted to the scene even more than he might have

been by its intrinsic interest. When he got nearer he recognised among the workmen the two Timothys, and Robert Creedle, who probably had been "lent" by Winterborne; Marty South also assisted.

Each tree doomed to this flaying process was first attacked by Creedle. With a small bill-hook he carefully freed the collar of the tree from twigs and patches of moss which encrusted it to a height of a foot or two above the ground, an operation comparable to the "little toilette" of the executioner's victim. After this it was barked in its erect position to a point as high as a man could reach. If a fine product of vegetable nature could ever be said to look ridiculous it was the case now, when the oak stood naked-legged, and as if ashamed, till the axe-man came and cut a ring round it, and the two Timothys finished the work with the cross-cut saw.

As soon as it had fallen the barkers attacked it like locusts, and in a short time not a particle of rind was left on the trunk and larger limbs. Marty South was an adept at peeling the upper parts; and there she stood encaged amid the mass of twigs and buds like a great bird, running her tool into the smallest branches, beyond the furthest points to which the skill and patience of the men enabled them to proceed branches which, in their lifetime, had swayed high above the bulk of the wood, and caught the latest and earliest rays of the sun and moon while the lower part of the forest was still in darkness.

"You seem to have a better instrument than they, Marty," said Fitzpiers.

"No, sir," she said, holding up the tool, a horse's leg-bone fitted into a handle and filed to an edge; "'tis only that they've less patience with the twigs, because their time is worth more than mine."

A little shed had been constructed on the spot, of thatched hurdles and boughs, and in front of it was a fire, over which a kettle sang. Fitzpiers

sat down inside the shelter, and went on with his reading, except when he looked up to observe the scene and the actors. The thought that he might settle here and become welded in with this sylvan life by marrying Grace Melbury crossed his mind for a moment. Why should he go further into the world than where he was? The secret of quiet happiness lay in limiting the ideas and aspirations; these men's thoughts were conterminous with the margin of the Hintock woodlands, and why should not his be likewise limited-a small practice among the people around him being the bound of his desires?

Presently Marty South discontinued her operations upon the quivering boughs, came out from the reclining oak, and prepared tea. When it was ready the men were called; and Fitzpiers, being in a mood to join, sat down with them.

The latent reason of his lingering here so long revealed itself when the faint creaking of the joints of a vehicle became audible, and one of the men said, "Here's he." Turning their heads they saw Melbury's gig approaching, the wheels muffled by the yielding

moss.

The timber-merchant was on foot leading the horse, looking back at every few steps to caution his daughter, who kept her seat, where and how to duck her head so as to avoid the overhanging branches. They stopped at the spot where the bark-ripping had been temporarily suspended; Melbury cursorily examined the heaps of bark, and drawing near to where the workmen were sitting down, accepted their shouted invitation to have a dish of tea, for which purpose he hitched the horse to a bough. Grace declined to take any of their beverage, and remained in her place in the vehicle, looking dreamily at the sunlight that came in thin threads through the hollies with which the oaks were interspersed.

When Melbury stepped up close to the shelter, he for the first time per

ceived that the doctor was present, and warmly appreciated Fitzpiers's invitation to sit down on the log beside him.

"Bless my heart, who would have thought of finding you here," he said, obviously much pleased at the circumstance. "I wonder now if my daughter knows you are so nigh at hand. don't expect she do."

I

He looked out towards the gig wherein Grace sat, her face still turned in the opposite direction. "She doesn't see us. Well, never mind: let her be."

Grace was indeed quite unconscious of Fitzpiers's propinquity. She was thinking of something which had little connection with the scene before her -thinking of her friend, lost as soon as found, Mrs. Charmond; of her capricious conduct, and of the contrasting scenes she was possibly enjoying at that very moment in other climes, to which Grace herself had hoped to be introduced by her friend's means. She wondered if this patronising lady would return to Hintock during the summer, and whether the acquaintance which had been nipped on the last occasion of her residence there would develop on the next.

Melbury told ancient timber-stories as he sat, relating them directly to Fitzpiers, and obliquely to the men, who had heard them often before. Marty, who poured out tea, was just saying, "I think I'll take out a cup to Miss Grace," when they heard a clashing of the gig-harness, and turning round Melbury saw that the horse had become restless, and was jerking about the vehicle in a way which alarmed its occupant, though she refrained from screaming. Melbury jumped up immediately, but not more quickly than Fitzpiers; and while her father ran to the horse's head and speedily began to control him, Fitzpiers was alongside the gig assisting Grace to descend. Her surprise at his appearance was so great that, far from making a calm and independent descent, she was very nearly lifted down in his arms. He