the Merry Monarch gave at Whitehall after his restoration.

But of all the portraits in the gallery, the gem, in my eyes, is that of dear Sir Roger himself. I came on it suddenly, and without a hint of whom it represented. For I had asked of the kind owner of the Hall, that I might walk by myself for a little in the long gallery and give myself up, without interruption, to the meditations which the place was fitted to evoke. I was pacing up and down in a fit of musing. It was near sunset, and the light was failing; but suddenly the departing luminary broke through a bank of clouds in the west, and his long level beams, shooting through a lofty oriel, fell full on a portrait which at once riveted my attention. I could not mistake it. The tall, slender, graceful figure-the features of almost feminine delicacy-the frank, honest blue eyes-the pleasant smile-the air of old-world courtesy-all tinged, and, as it were, fused into tenderness by something child-like and appealing, almost pathetic, -it was Sir Roger himself. He is dressed in hunting costume, with his dogs about him and a rather florid landscape in the background. The portrait is youthful; there is a doubt whether it is by Lely or Kneller. I am no great judge of pictures, but it seemed to me to be in the best manner of Lely.

I have slept in the haunted chamber which was shut up when Sir Roger took possession of the Hall, and which he caused to be exorcized by his chaplain. To judge by my experience, the exorcism was effectual; for though I lay long awake, I saw nothing more ghostly than the dance of shadows cast by the firelight on the ceiling (the evening being damp and chilly they had lighted a bright fire on the hearth), and heard nothing more blood-curdling than the tick of a death-watch behind the black wainscot, the

croaking of frogs in the lily-lake under my window, and the hooting of owls in the elms. With these sounds in my ears I fell fast asleep, and slept as sweetly as ever I did in my life, till a sunbeam stealing through a chink in the shutters woke me, and I sat up wondering where I was.

Before I quit the Hall I will only add, that sitting in the great oriel, where the arms of the Coverleys are blazoned on the panes, I chanced to take up an old volume that was lying on the window seat. What was my joy to find it to be Baker's Chronicle, the very copy that Sir Roger was wont to peruse, sitting in his high armchair by the great fireplace of the hall after a hard day's hunting! I almost thought I could recognize the old knight's thumb-marks on some of the yellow dog-eared leaves. I fancy he must have nodded over some of these same pages and wakened with a start, when the ponderous volume fell with a crash to the floor.

Then, too, I have seen the cottage of Moll White, the witch. Her memory survives in the village, and anybody can point out her former abode. It is one of a row of whitewashed cottages, with high thatched roofs, which overlook the common, a long straggling green bounded by tall elms and enclosing in its midst a pool, where children paddle, ducks swim, and on hot summer days the cows stand in the water with the flies buzzing about their heads. Beyond and above the elms, at the far end of the common, appears a line of low hills, which, when I saw them, showed blue and faint through the gathering mists of an autumn evening. Moll's cottage is well kept, and except for a tabby cat, which sat purring on the doorstep and rubbed itself affectionately against my legs, there was nothing about it to suggest that it had ever been the home of a witch. There were pots of flowers in the windows, creepers growing over the

porch, and a linnet singing merrily in a cage above the door.1

The last of the scenes associated with Sir Roger which I visited in the neighbourhood was the Saracen's Head. It is a little wayside inn standing on the brow of a hill, where the road dips down rather steeply into a valley. Before turning to examine the famous signboard I stood for a moment to contemplate the prospect from the height; for the sun was setting behind the line of blue hills I have spoken of, and his last rays spread a soft radiant glory over the woods in the valley, some of them already stripped and bare, others still wrapt in a gorgeous pall of autumnal red and gold. Through their gaps I could catch glimpses of a winding river, its surface here darkened by the evening shadows, there gleaming like fire with reflections of the celestial glory. The signboard dangles from an iron stanchion above the door of the inn. The head of the Saracen, which had lately received a fresh

1 I have described as I saw it what is certainly now shown as Moll White's cottage. But in my capacity of editor I am bound to point out that neither the style nor the situation of the cottage answers well to the Spectator's description of it as a hovel, which stood in a solitary corner under the side of the wood." Perhaps the cottage has been rebuilt and improved since Moll's day, and others may have grown up about it. Or can it be that the identification is an arbitrary one, devised perhaps by some ingenious owner of the cottage for the sake of turning a dishonest penny? Now that I think of it, I did slip a small silver coin into the hand of the smiling old dame who let me peep in at her kitchen, and I daresay others have done so before me. I am sorry to cast any doubt on the accuracy of a picturesque tradition, and nothing but a strict regard for truth could induce me to do so. But throughout these my researches it has been my constant aim to weigh every statement, and to set down none for which there is not either conclusive evidence or at all events a high degree of probability. I could never consent, like some historians, to embellish a plain narrative of facts with a varnish of fiction, or to tickle the imagination of my readers at the expense of their understanding.

coat of paint, is certainly very ferocious, but under the long moustachios and whiskers I fancied I could still trace a faint, a ridiculous resemblance to the kindly features of Sir Roger.

That was the end of my visit to Coverley. Next day I returned to London and resumed my usual duties. I have seldom enjoyed anything so much as this excursion into Worcestershire, and I shall always treasure the memory of it. Curiously enough, though it happened so lately, there is something far away about it in my mind, as if it had taken place many years instead of only a few months ago. Indeed, writing as I now do in the heart of London, with the rumble of its ceaseless traffic in my ears, the thought of the quiet old hall, the tall elms, the cawing rooks, the village church, and the cottages on the green in the evening twilight, comes back on me like a beautiful dream rather than the recollection of a waking reality.

Along with the papers relating to the Spectator Club, which are preserved at Coverley Hall, there is a small but interesting collection of relics. Among them I noted in particular Sir Roger's walking-stick and favourite armchair; the sword which Captain Sentry used at the battle of Steenkirk, and which he wore when he escorted Sir Roger to the theatre; also a hat with two bullet-holes through the crown, which is traditionally said (for I could find no written record on the subject) to have been worn by the captain on the same hard-fought day in Flanders, when he charged with his regiment on a French battery. Then there is a collection of pipes smoked by members of the club, together with a number of tobacco-stoppers, some of which are supposed (though again I could find no good evidence in support of the tradition) to have been made by Will Wimble. But perhaps the most interesting relic of all is the original letter in which Sir Roger's butler

announced his old master's death to the Spectator. The paper is somewhat yellow and the ink faded with time, but the handwriting is still perfectly legible, except in a few places where it has been accidentally blurred, perhaps by the tears of the writer, or by those which Sir Andrew Freeport shed when he read the letter aloud to the club. In my quality of editor I thought it my duty to collate the letter carefully with the copy of it published in the Spectator, and I can vouch for the accuracy of the copy, except for a few trivial points of spelling and punctuation, which I have not thought it worth while to set right. The only other relic I need mention is a phial, containing a dingy-looking liquid and labelled "The Widow Trueby's Water." I had the curiosity to taste this celebrated specific for the gravel, but over the results of the experiment I prefer to draw a veil.

The papers relating to the Spectator Club, which I found at Coverley, consist for the most part simply of the minutes of the meetings. These seem to have been regularly kept, and though there are several gaps in them, notably in the summer of 1711, when the Spectator himself was absent in Worcestershire, it might almost be possible to construct from them a continuous history of the club. I shall not attempt anything so ambitious; indeed the shortness of my stay at Coverley forbade me to collect materials sufficient for such an undertaking. But besides the minutes I was fortunate enough to discover several papers of notes and jottings, some of which have actually been worked up into finished essays in the Spectator. Others apparently refer to essays which were planned but never completed; and amongst these there is one which I have thought it worth while to publish, not for the sake of the literary merit of the piece, which is insignificant, but because it sheds new light on the private life of a prominent