essential to mirth. No man should ask another why he laughs, or at what, seeing that he does not always know, and that, if he does, he is not a responsible agent. Laughter is an involuntary action of certain muscles, developed in the human species by the progress of civilization. The savage never

laughs.

THE REV. DR. FOLLIOTT.

No, sir, he has nothing to laugh at. Give him Modern Athens, the "learned friend," and the Steam Intellect Society. They will develope his muscles.

1

CHAP. III.

THE ROMAN CAMP.

He loved her more then seven yere,
Yet was he of her love never the nere;
He was not ryche of golde and fe,
A gentyll man forsoth was he.

The Squyr of Lowe Degre.

THE Reverend Doctor Folliott having promised to return to dinner, walked back to his vicarage, meditating whether he should pass the morning in writing his next sermon, or in angling for trout, and had nearly decided in favor of the latter proposition, repeating to himself, with great unction, the lines of Chaucer:

And as for me, though that I can but lite,
On bokis for to read I me delite,

And to 'hem yeve I faithe and full credence,

And in mine herte have 'hem in reverence,

So hertily, that there is game none,

That fro my bokis makith me to gone,

But it be seldome, on the holie daie;
Save certainly whan that the month of Maie
Is comin, and I here the foulis sing,

And that the flouris ginnin for to spring,

Farwell my boke and my devocion:

when his attention was attracted by a young gentleman who was sitting on a camp stool with a portfolio on his knee, taking a sketch of the Roman Camp, which, as has been already said, was within the enclosed domain

of Mr. Crotchet. The young stranger, who had climbed over the fence, espying the portly divine, rose up, and hoped that he was not trespassing. "By no means, sir,” said the divine, "all the arts and sciences are welcome here; music, painting, and poetry; hydrostatics, and political economy; meteorology,

A

transcendentalism, and fish for break

fast."

THE STRANGER.

A pleasant association, sir, and a liberal and discriminating hospitality. This is an old British camp, I believe, sir.

THE REV. DR. FOLLIOTT.

Roman, sir; Roman: undeniably Roman. The vallum is past controversy. It was not a camp, sir, a castrum, but a castellum, a little camp, or watch-station, to which was attached, on the peak of the adjacent hill, a beacon for transmitting alarms. You will find such here and there, all along the range of chalk hills, which traverses the country from north-east to south-west, and along the base of which runs the ancient Ikenild road, whereof you may descry a portion in that long strait white line.

THE STRANGER.

I beg your pardon, sir: do I understand this place to be your property?

THE REV. DR. FOLLIOTT.

It is not mine, sir: the more is the pity; yet is it so far well, that the owner is my good friend, and a highly respectable gen

tleman.

THE STRANGER.

Good and respectable, sir, I take it, mean

rich?

THE REV. DR. FOLLIOTT.

That is their meaning, sir.

THE STRANGER.

I understand the owner to be a Mr. Crotchet. He has a handsome daughter, I

am told.

THE REV. DR. FOLLIOTT.

He has, sir. Her eyes are like the fish