The Gondolier had his own way; and, while the sparrows were still twittering and the housemaids were taking in the milk and the Sunday paper, I was well on my road to Rosebank. This much I will concede to the curiosity of readers—that my road led me out of London in a south-easterly direction, by the Horseferry, where James II. dropped the Great Seal into the Thames, along the Old Kent Road, of which a modern minstrel sang; past Kennington Common, now a "Park," where the gallant Jacobites of '45 underwent the hideous doom of Treason, where the iron-shuttered windows still commemorate the Chartist rising of '48, and where Sackville Maine took his Sunday walk with Mrs. Sackville and old Mrs. Chuff. On past the "Hamlet of Dulwich," where Mr. Pickwick spent the last years of his honoured life, to Chislehurst, where Napoleon III. hid his exiled head, and North Cray, where the tragedy of Lord Londonderry's death is not yet forgotten, and Shooters' Hill, where Jerry Cruncher stopped the coach with the terrifying message of "Recalled to Life." Now, as readers are sometimes unduly literal, and as I would not willingly involve any one in an hour's fruitless puzzling over a map, let me say that this itinerary is rather general than particular, and that, although the Gondolier pursued an extremely devious course and murmured when I suggested straighter paths, we did not touch all the above-mentioned places in our morning's drive. But evermore we tended south-eastwards, and evermore the houses grew imperceptibly less dignified. Stone and stucco we had left behind us on the northern side of the river, and now it was a boundless contiguity of brick—yellow brick, rather grimy,—small houses with porticos, slips of dusty garden between the front door and the road, and here and there a row of wayside trees. But everywhere gas, and everywhere omnibi (as the classical lady said,) and everywhere electric trams. Churches of every confession and every architecture lined the way, varied with Public-houses of many signs, Municipal Buildings of startling splendour (for Borough Councils have a flamboyant taste), and Swimming Baths and Public Libraries, and here and there a private Lunatic Asylum frowning behind suggestively solemn gates.

Now we are in a long and featureless street, with semi-detached houses on either hand, and a malodorous cab-stand and a four-faced clock. "Which way for Rosebank?" shouts the Gondolier. "The first to your left and then turn sharp to the right," bellows a responsive policeman. We follow the direction given, and suddenly we are there—not at Rosebank, but quite out of even Greater London. The street ends abruptly. Trams and trains and gas and shops are left behind, and all at once we are in the country. The road is lined with hedgerows, dusty indeed, but still alive. Elms of respectable dimensions look down upon big fields, with here and there an oak, and cows resting under it. At one turn of the road there is a recognizable odour of late-cut hay, and in the middle distance I distinctly perceive a turnip-field, out of which a covey of partridges might rise without surprising any one. We pull up and gaze around. Look where I will, I cannot see a house, nor even a cottage. Surely my friends have not played a practical joke on me and asked me to spend a day in an imaginary Paradise. The Gondolier looks at his perspiring horse, and mops his own brow, and gazes contemptuously on the landscape. "I should call this the world's end if I was arst," he says. "Blow'd if they've even got a Public 'Ouse." Suddenly the sound of a shrill bell bursts on the ear. The Gondolier, who is a humorist, says "Muffins."

I jump out of the gondola, and pursue the welcome tinkle round a sharp angle in the road. There I see, perched on the brow of a sandy knoll, a small tin building, which a belfry and a cross proclaim to be a church. Inside I discover the Oldest Inhabitant pulling the muffin-bell with cheerful assiduity. He is more than ready to talk, and his whole discourse is as countrified as if he lived a hundred miles from Charing Cross. "Yes, this is a main lonely place. There ain't many people lives about 'ere. Why, ten years ago it was all fields. Now there are some houses—not many. He lives in one himself. How far off? Well, a matter of a mile or so. He was born on the Squire's land; his father worked on the farm. Yes, he's lived here all his life. Remembers it before there was a Crystal Palace, and when there was no railways or nothing. He hasn't often been in the train, and has only been up to London two or three times. Who goes to the church? Well—not many, except the Squire's family and the school-children. Why was it built? Oh, the Squire wants to get some rich folks to live round about. He's ready to part with his land for building; and there's going to be a row of houses built just in front of the church. He reckons the people will be more likely to come now that there's a church for them to go to." And now the "ten-minutes" bell begins with livelier measure; the Oldest Inhabitant shows me to a seat; and, on the stroke of eleven, a shrill "Amen" is heard in the vestry, and there enters a modest procession of surpliced schoolboys and a clergyman in a green stole. His sons and daughters, the wife of the Oldest Inhabitant, and the sisters of the choristers, from the congregation, eked out by myself and my friends from Rosebank, who arrive a little flushed and complain that they have been waiting for me. The "service is fully choral," as they say in accounts of fashionable weddings; the clergyman preaches against the Education Bill, and a collection (of copper) is made to defray the expenses of a meeting at the Albert Hall. It is pleasant to see that, even in these secluded districts, the watch-dogs of the Church are on the alert.

XX

WINE AND WATER

The second and third words are added to the title in deference to the weather. One must be a hardened toper if, with the thermometer at 93 in the shade, one can find comfort in the thought of undiluted wine. Rather I would take pattern from Thackeray's friend the Bishop, with his "rounded episcopal apron." "He put water into his wine. Let us respect the moderation of the Established Church." But water is an after-thought, incidental and ephemeral. It was on wine that I was meditating when the mercury rushed up and put more temperate thoughts into my head, and it was Sir Victor Horsley who set me on thinking about wine. Sir Victor has been discoursing at Ontario about the mischiefs of Alcohol, and the perennial controversy has revived in all its accustomed vigour. Once every five years some leading light of the medical profession declares with much solemnity that Alcohol is a poison, that Wine is the foundation of death, and that Gingerbeer or Toast-and-Water or Zoedone or Kopps or some kindred potion is the true and the sole elixir of life. Sir Oracle always chooses August or September for the delivery of his dogma, and immediately there ensues a correspondence which suitably replaces "Ought Women to Propose?" "Do We Believe?" and "What is Wrong?" Enthusiastic teetotallers fill the columns of the press with letters which in their dimensions rival the Enormous Gooseberry and in their demands on our credulity exceed the Sea Serpent. To these reply the advocates of Alcohol, with statistical accounts of patriarchs who always breakfasted on half-and-half, and near and dear relations who were rescued from the jaws of death by a timely exhibition of gin and bitters. And so the game goes merrily on till October recalls us to common sense.