the country and the town. It is, as another has sympathetically described it: "Grey! why, it is grey, or grey and gold, or grey and gold and blue, or grey and gold and blue and green, or grey and gold and blue and green and purple, according as the heaven pleases and you choose your ground! But take it when it is most sombrely grey, where is another such grey city?"

And who, having once seen the glory of the wild Scotch hills when the purple heather bloom transfigures them, can ever forget the transcending beauty of the scene. A little unsigned poem which appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette about the time of our visit to Scotland suggests the spirit of the landscape so faithfully, its color and subtle charm, that I conclude this letter by repeating the stanzas. They are entitled

THE HEATHER HILLS.

Oh, the sheen of the heather hills, in lovely splendor lying
Against the far blue skyline, long slopes of amethyst,
Oh, the sweep of the bracken fells where lonely curlew's crying
O'er dusky green and amber, and heather's purple mist.

Oh, the light on the heather hills, the long rays softly falling,
Where whin and whortleberry are tangled gold and blue,
Oh, the gray and silver plovers by gray boulders calling, calling,
And the thyme in purple tussocks with its breath of honeydew.

Oh, the peace of the heather hills, like stairs to Heaven leading,
With naught between but God's blue sky, God's mighty rushing wind,
Oh, who could climb those purple heights and go their way unheeding,
Without a thought of new glad life, old sorrows left behind?

THROUGH VIRGINIA WITH A CAMERA.

BY T. D. PENDLETON CUMMINS.

[STORY'S footprints are over all Virginia. From the "Eastern Shore" country-which was really the first landing place of the Virginia colonists-to the mountains of Albemarle county, the birthplace of the author of the Declaration of Independence, scenes of historic significance appeal to the camerist.

If the traveler happens upon the Eastern Shore in October, he will wonder why John Smith and Company thought it necessary to go up the James in further search for the promised land. Surely this part of the Old Dominion seems a goodly place to pitch one's tent.

In this country the devotee of the lens meets the ancient until anything with less than two hundred years to its credit ceases to thrill. Here is the oldest courthouse in the new world. It stands in Accomac county and has descended sadly from its onetime high estate, the sign of a famous brewer on its wall advertising to the world that it now shelters a bar of a different sort from the one before which offenders against the law used to tremble. One sees in Accomac too the oldest jail, dating back to the days when debt was a crime. The portion of the building known as the "debtors gaol" is still extant.

SITE OF SHADWELL, BIRTHPLACE OF JEFFERSON.

Not far from the County Seat is Kendall Grove, the family seat of the Costins. Long and low, the old mansion suggests hospitality in every line. It has a pretty history, too, having come into possession of the Costins because of the loyalty of a Kendall lover to a Costin maiden long ago. About to die, and unable to bestow hand and heart upon the lady of his choice, this ideal lover endowed his beautiful fiancée with his superb estate. The portraits of the lovers yet hang on the walls of the old house.

But the distinction of the Costin place does not come entirely from its age or its fascinating romance; it has the honor of producing the finest bivalves in the world. Its beds have been chosen to supply the most exclusive club in Baltimore, that paradise of the gourmet. If you are fortunate as to be invited by the master of the Hall to sample his product, he will take you in a flat-bottomed boat to the "creek" where his pet bed lies and have one of his men tong you a peck or so. Deftly he opens them with his own hands and offers them to you sans lemon, sans horseradish. You will eat one, and you will also eat others, and others still, until you thank the gods that be you have lived unto this red-letter day. You never knew before what the real oyster flavor was like.

Just outside of Eastville, they show you a church that is (next to "Old Bruton"), the oldest protestant church in America that has been in continuous use since its erection. Really it is the oldest Protestant church, for it has been changed in no wise from its original form as has "Old Bruton." Of course the tower at Jamestown is the oldest Protestant church architecture in America, but there are some others in Virginia that are by no means modern. For instance, the one near Smithfield was built in the days when brick was brought over in ships, and those who know say that its massive hand-hewn timbers are of a sort of oak that does not grow in the new world. "Old Blandford," of Petersburg has been restored, but the original walls remain. In "Old Bruton," at Williamsburg, one sees the "font used at the baptism of Pocahontas," and the silver "given by Queen Anne," but "Old Bruton" labors under the disadvantage of being within an hour or two's ride of Jamestown.

When one sees that solitary tower keeping watch over the graves of those who gave their lives that we might live untrammelled of ermine or other panoply of kings, it makes one forget dear "Old Bruton."

The "Monumental Church," at Richmond, is an edifice, the germ of whose history is a tragedy. In the middle of the last century one night when filled with a gay laughing audience, it was consumed by a sudden and fierce fire, resulting in a fearful loss of life. The lesson of the Chicago theatre fire resulted in the building of fireproof buildings for the protection of our bodies,

but the people of the last century being likewise appalled by the great loss of life, went a step further-they resolved to fireproof their souls; they erected on the site of the theatre a "memorial" church to the dead who perished therein. This theatre was the one where the mother of Edgar Allan Poe played her last. engagement, and the same one in which, later, the "benefit" was given for the poor little woman while she lay dying in a hovel in lower Main street.