she wooed him to better work than reporting the debates of the archangels or calling the roll of Tophet. Had he confined himself to this tenderer field, the world would have been the gainer. He might not have "made the word Miltonic mean sublime," but we can spare a little of the sublime to get some more of the beautiful.
To reach Milton, however, we have run off of the track badly. His Eden is no station on the Great Western. We shall balance this southward divergence with a corresponding one to the north from Slough, the last station ere reaching Windsor. We may give a go-by for the moment to the halls of kings, do homage to him who treated them similarly, and point, in preference, to where,
in many a mouldering heap,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
They show Gray's tomb in Stoke Pogis church, and his house, West End Cottage, half a mile distant. The ingredients of his Elegy—actually the greatest, but in his judgment among the least, of his few works—exist all around. "The rugged elm," "the ivy-mantled tower," and "the yew tree's shade," the most specific among the simple "properties" of his little spectacle, are common to so many places that there are several competitors for the honor of having furnished them. The cocks, ploughmen, herds and owls cannot, of course, at this late day be identified. Gray could not have done it himself. He drew from general memory, in his closet, and not bit by bit on his thumb-nail from chance-met objects as he went along. Had his conception and rendering of the theme been due to the direct impression upon his mind of its several aspects and constituents, he would have more thoroughly appreciated his work. He could not understand its popularity, any more than Campbell could that of Ye Mariners of England, which he pronounced "d——d drum-and-trumpet verses." Gray used to say, "with a good deal of acrimony," that the Elegy "owed its popularity entirely to the subject, and the public would have received it as well had it been written entirely in prose." Had it been written in prose or in the inventory style of poetry, it would have been forgotten long ago, like so much else of that kind.
Not far hence is Beaconsfield, which gave a home to Burke and a title to the wife of Disraeli, the nearest approach to a peerage that the haughty Israelite, soured by a life of struggle against peers and their prejudices, would deign to accept. We know it will be objected to this remark that Disraeli is, and has been for most of his career, associated with Toryism. But that was part of his game. A man of culture, thought and fastidious taste, he would, had he been of the sangre azul, have been the steadiest and sincerest of Conservatives. Privilege would have been his gospel. As it is, it has only been his weapon, to use in fighting for himself. "The time will come when you shall listen to me," were his words when he was first coughed down. The time has come. The most cynical of premiers, he governs England, and he scorns to take a place among those who ruled her before him.
Extending our divergence farther west toward "Cliefden's proud alcove, the bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love," we find ourselves in a luxuriant rolling country, rural and slumberous. Cookham parish, which we should traverse, claims quite loudly American kinship on the strength of its including an estate once the property of Henry Washington, who is alleged, without sufficient ground, to have been a relative of the general. But we are within the purlieus of Windsor. The round tower has been looking down upon us these many miles, and we cannot but yield to its magnetism.
Eton, on the north bank, opposite Windsor, and really a continuous town with that which nestles close to the castle walls, is on our way from Slough. The red-brick buildings of the school, forming a fine foil to the lighter-colored and more elegantly designed chapel, are on our left, the principal front looking over a garden toward the river and Windsor Home Park beyond. We become aware of a populace of boys, the file-closers of England's nineteenth century worthies, and her coming veterans of the twentieth. We may contemplatively view them in that light, but it has little place in their reflections. Their ruddy faces and somewhat cumbrous forms belong to the animal period of life that links together boyhood, colthood and calfhood. Education of the physique, consisting chiefly in the indulgence and employment of it in the mere demonstration of its superabundant vitality, is a large part of the curriculum at English schools. The playground and the study-room form no unequal alliance. Rigid as, in some respects, the discipline proper of the school may be, it does not compare with the severity of that maintained by the older boys over the younger ones. The code of the lesser, and almost independent, republic of the dormitory and the green is as clear in its terms as that of the unlimited monarchy of the school-room, and more potent in shaping the character. The lads train themselves for the battle of the world, with some help from the masters. It is a sound system on the whole, if based, to appearance, rather too much on the principle of the weaker to the wall. The tendency of the weaker inevitably is to the wall, and if he is to contend against it effectively, it will be by finding out his weakness and being made to feel it at the earliest possible moment.