proached it was met by a jolly, sun-burnt sportsman, whose weight might have been one hundred and fifty pounds avoirdupois. The stranger started in perceptible surprise.

66

the spring where old Calkins came down to drink, that he might know the war was over and Grant elected President. It visited Grave's Lodge on Big Tupper Lake, where it found all the little nick-nacks of civilization. It caught 'Well, now, I swear to thunder," said he, big trout at the foot of Bog River Falls, fight- "if this ain't cute! Who'd 'a expected to have ing flies meanwhile, whose voracity and persist-seen you here? Don't you know me? Why, ency not all the smudges and tar-and-oil pre- I'm the thin, consumptive cuss that you said ventives could diminish or disperse. It ex- was going to come out of the little eend of the amined the traces of the old military bridge of horn! "Twould take a pretty good sized horn Revolutionary days, which was thrown across now, I guess. But come in. Here's our old the Raquette near the head of Long Lake-friend, the katydid."

Long Lake, magnificent in its broad expanse There, indeed, stood the fair little correof water and the ever-changing outline of its spondent of the Lively Midge, with her dear shores. It visited the picturesque camps of little arms up to the elbows in flour. ardent sportsmen, whose snowy canvas tents at times relieved the solitude of the wilderness retreats. It partook of the famous pancakes which Mother Johnson prepares at Raquette Falls for the delectation of her guests, and took "plane board" in the carpenter shop of Uncle Palmer. Not a single place recommended by "Murray" or suggested by its attentive guides was omitted.

At Raquette Lake the Club found numerous camps. One, more pretentious than the rest, attracted its attention. It was built of boards, and thatched with split shingles. It wore an air of domestic comfort not usually found in bachelor quarters. Besides, there were certain nondescript garments of flimsy texture hung on the neighboring bushes, that betokened the indubitable presence of females. Bouquets and wreaths of flowers adorned the gables of the shanty. When the Club ap

"You are just the person I wish to see," she said to Tipstaff, when she had saluted the rest of the party. "All of our company have gone off after berries for my pies; and just as soon as I have mixed this dough I shall want you to go with me to gather pond-lilies-for we are to have a little spree to-night. Now you will, won't you? That's a good ducky!"

Tipsy was embarrassed. He had seen very little female company for the last three weeks, and the sensation was altogether novel. However, he held himself in readiness; and presently a lithe little figure, in short frock and Bloomer trowsers, with a soft felt hat thrust jauntily over her tresses, and a tin cup strapped around her waist, tripped down to the cockleshell of a boat that waited for them.

"Now, Mr. Tipstaff, I want you to pull me right across to yonder little cove that you see by that big rock. We ought to go over in two

minutes." And the sylph seated herself grace-ciate at one first-class funeral than catch all

BE

CANTERBURY.-I.

cient house connected with it; and the Tabard
proper is divided up into dismal chambers con-

EFORE making a modern pilgrimage to
Canterbury, the pilgrim will do well to vis-taining beds, which are let out to drovers and

it the old Tabard inn, two minutes' walk from
the Southwark end of London Bridge, where
Chaucer and his jolly comrades gathered for a
similar expedition five hundred years ago. But
he who has read that gem of American humor,
Hawthorne's "Celestial Railway," will be im-
pressed by the fact that Mr. Smooth-it-away
and his fellow-directors, who bridged the Slough
of Despond, and tunneled the Hill Difficulty,
have been hard at work in providing swift trains
to take one in an hour or two along the road
over which the Canterbury pilgrims once jogged
on their two days' journey. Just across the
river he will see the grand arch of the Cannon
Street Station, he will pass by that of London
Bridge, and under one of the viaducts that bear
the trains over the house-tops, and, when he
turns in from High Street to see the ancient
Tabard, he will find nearly all of it transformed
into a railway office. The old inn is still, how-
ever, partly an inn. The tap-room is in an an-

[NOTE.-The writer of "South-Coast Saunterings in England" regrets that he has been misled, by a very circumstantial account with which he met, into

stating, in a former article, that Mr. Carlyle is in receipt of a pension from the English government. Such, he

is now assured, is not the case.]

marketers at one shilling per night. A great fire which occurred in the neighborhood in 1676, only stayed by blowing up six hundred houses, destroyed, some say, the inn of Chaucer's time; other authorities maintain that it kindly spared this one hostelry, so that we have it about as it was in Chaucer's time. I can not decide; the antiquity of the present building is certainly very great. The large tap-room in which the pilgrims, if the last-named opinion be true, enjoyed their "'alf-and-'alf" of ale and piety, is now divided by a partition, making two bedrooms, in which the hard-worked rustics sleep, no doubt without many dreams of the queer old stories haunting every niche around them. The ancient host, the immortal "Harry Bailly," is at present succeeded by an affable young man, William Stevens by name, who is very proud of the antiquity of his place, and has even, I believe, ventured to disturb the minds of his present customers by restoring the name "Tabard," in place of "Talbot," the name by which it has been known these two centuries. The original Tabard signified the stately, sleeveless coat of that name worn by noblemen in early days, afterward by heralds as a kind of livery, and which has now disap

peared.

Talbot is a dog.

healed at the shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury, must, if they haunt the Tabard, think of the discussions which have taken the place of their pious tales. Yet I could not help thinking that there was a logical thread running through the centuries, and connecting those who went in those days

Until about twenty | the old inn, thinking what the ghosts of the old years ago there was an old sign on the house pilgrims, who journeyed to have their aches inscribed, "This is the Inne where Sir Jeffry Chaucer and the nine-and-twenty pilgrims lay in their journey to Canterbury, anno 1383." There is still over it all that remains of a large sign-board which once bore a painting of the pilgrims setting out on their journey, the work of Blake. There is an old etching on copper of this painting, which I have seen. It is full of spirit and character. On the board strong imaginations still trace out some of the figures. I could only see the head of a horse, a big tankard tilted up to a mouth, and the head and part of the décolleté bust of the Wife of Bath, who, after her five husbands, was evidently regarded by Blake as ready to take the sixth.

"The holy blissful martyr for to seek

That them hath holpen when that they were sick," and that terribly large number of the poor in England who refuse to believe in a God who, after the petitions of centuries, still leaves them in their wretchedness. They who dogmatized about that whereof they knew nothing, and persuaded-as some would now persuade-suffering men and women that the course of Nature is arbitrary, and may be altered by human genuflexions and prostrations, planted those seeds of atheism, whose dreary fruits can wither and fall only under the purer faith which is depend

upon the Infinite through the pin-hole of self, but cries-as no doubt many a poor sufferer in these hovels does, voicelessly-"Though He freeze, though He starve me, yet will I trust in Him!"

In the tap-room, where I stopped a while, there was a collection of eight or ten men and one woman, all of the rough and poor kind, who were engaged in eating their mid-day cheese and drinking beer. The woman had a bruised eye, probably received from the low-browed fel-ent on no private interests, which does not look low by whose side she sat silently as he devoured some sausages. The interest of the company seemed more or less absorbed in a hot disputation going on between a low, thick-set, grayhaired fellow in his shirt-sleeves and a vehement, black-bearded working-man, on the existence of a God. "Men may go on, and go on," exclaimed the latter, "saying what they please 'bout blievin' this an' blievin' thet; but wat's the fust thing a man says wen 'e gets flat 'n 'is back 'ith illness 'n pain? Wat's 'e call out then?" "Lord 'eve mussy upon me!" chimed in a sympathizer. "You may well say thet," continued the speaker, pointing the statement by cramming his mouth full of a dark-looking substance which he seemed to enjoy. "But," returned the atheist, seizing on one of the few opportunities allowed him by the occasional spiking of his antagonist's mouth with food-" but wut I'd like to know is why, ef ther's a God, why does he let a feller fall flat of 'is back 'ith all sorts of pains ?" "Thet's wut none ov us knows nothin' 't all about. But wen a man is taken down a-groanin' 'e's sure to call on God to help him."

"Yes, an' he may call an' call," sneered the old infidel, walking over to the fire, and squaring his back to it; "but 'is rheumatiz will go on fur all that, least the doctor kin cure 'im." "Hi don't blieve," retorted the other, "as 'ow Godamity sends all the hevil things a-goin' on in this 'ere hearth. Hi don't blieve 'e sends a man 'ere to commit murder an' get 'anged furt." "Must be a bad lot ef 'e does!" called out a youth from the further end of the room. "And yet," rejoined the remorseless skeptic, "doesn't the Bible say God hardened Pharaoh's heart?" The theist was somewhat staggered by this, having, I inferred, originally taken his stand on the Bible. He fought shy of the question raised, and returned to his allegation that all men called on God when they were in trouble. I left him fighting it out on that line, and went to explore

Though living in an age when the purer spirit of Christianity was hopelessly imprisoned in the ritual, with which it had become invested—when priests carefully selected the ore instead of its metal for the building of their shrines-it is wonderful how far old Chaucer saw beyond these things. Even while he used the dross for the frame of his picture, the picture itself has many tints of the reformed faith which was to appear six generations later. The old Oxonian heretic, and author of the "Book of Martyrs," John Fox, wrote a remarkable passage about this.

"I marvel," he says, "to consider this, how that the bishops, condemning and abolishing all manner of English books and treatises which might bring the people to any light of knowledge, did yet authorize the works of Chaucer to remain still, and to be occupied, who, no doubt, saw in religion as much almost as we do now, and uttereth in his works no less, and seemeth to be a right Wicklivian, or else there was never any; and that all his works almost, if they be thoroughly advised, will testify (albeit it be done in mirth and covertly)."

He also knew of certain persons who, "by reading Chaucer's works, were brought to the true knowledge of religion." A spiritual descendant of this sixteenth-century worthy, who bore his name, the late W. J. Fox, wrote a beautiful paraphrase of Chaucer's last composition, written on his death-bed, "when he was in great anguish," which was set to music by Miss Flower, and is now a favorite hymn in several London chapels. I yield to the temptation to quote it here, as it will probably be new to nearly all my readers: