short time the money required was raised, indeed about £100 more than was absolutely asked for was received. Of course the great and deserved popularity of the Vicar had much to do with the success of the undertaking; the congregation loved and trusted and believed in their minister, and so helped enthusiastically in the good work to the best of their power, both one and all. I know that all clergymen cannot be like Charles Marson-would there were more like him-but at least his plan may be tried, his example followed. Money can be raised for sacred purposes in a religious and dignified manner, and without resorting to those wretched, paltry means, now so commonly employed by impecunious committees of all sects and denominations to raise the wind, called by the name of-Bazaars.

W. H. T.

FLY LEAVES FROM MY DIARY.

III. ARCHEOLOGY IN EXCELSIS.

I REALLY do not know how long I had been a member of the Archæological Section of the Midland Institute, without receiving from it any benefit beyond the occasional presentation of a volume of transactions, of a magnitude so altogether disproportionate to the very modest subscription, as to lead to the supposition that the Section must have succeeded in finding printers, as well as authors, willing to work for love instead of money. A constant succession of circulars had met, I fear, with that minute attention which "Printed Matter, per Book Post," so universally commands; and one half of the meetings had as regularly escaped my memory, as the other half had evaded my leisure. Some two or three years ago, however, I managed to attend one of the annual meetings, and, to my horror, I had not even had time to sit down before I was called upon by the worthy, and only too energetic secretary, to move a vote of thanks to the officers. I obeyed, of course; in fact I have long since made it an invariable rule to render instant obedience to secretaries. One reason is, that I know them to be a longsuffering and much-enduring race, whose remuneration is often honorary, but whose labours are very real. But apart from all considerations of pure sentiment, during a long and somewhat extensive experience, I have found them so sure to have their own way in the long run, that the only real choice open to their victims would seem to lie between the misery of a protracted, but always futile, struggle, and the short agony of an unconditional and immediate surrender. The latter is much the least trouble, and is also by far the more graceful course to adopt, while the ultimate result is, in any case, identically the same. Still, it seemed an instance of the "irony of fortune" that I, who had never once profited by the unselfish labours of the officers, should be the luckless individual

pitched upon to thank them; and I inwardly determined that the gratitude I was called upon to express should at least take the form of a lively expectancy of favours to come. Suffice it to say that the experience I have since gained of the advantages of membership, has provided me with a large accumulation of unavailing regrets for my previous negligence, and has left me more than ever convinced, that next to its marvellous propensity for crying after what is not within its reach, the most striking characteristic of poor human nature is its aptitude for neglecting the pleasures which lie ready to its hand.

It will not be expected that I should enter into any very detailed account of those excursions in which a fair share of the "utile" is so dexterously mingled with the unmistakeably "dulce," as fairly to deserve the title of Archæology in excelsis. This, could I do justice to the theme, would be much too tantalising; while, on the other hand, the slenderness of my ability would be more likely to render it wearisome. A few brief jottings will be all for which my editor is likely to find space, or my readers patience; and if these should be successful in inducing others to try for themselves, my humble object will be more than attained.

Perhaps not the least charm of the excursions in question is the blissful feeling that, beyond paying one's share of the expenses, there is absolutely nothing to do except to enjoy oneself. The secretaries have arranged all the proceedings with mathematical precision; have provided the conveyances and surveyed the route; have judiciously mingled fieldpaths with more or less archæological stiles, and easy highroads, in fit proportion; have arranged for refreshments at due intervals, and in agreeable profusion; have systematised everything, and forgotten nothing. I am really aware of nothing, excepting the weather, which does not bow to their will, and even the rain does not seem to wet one so much while under their auspices as under ordinary conditions; certainly I never knew it wet enough to damp the spirits of the excursionists who had placed themselves under their wings; and yet I have been out with them under circumstances which would have dissolved any ordinary pic-nic into one unlovely mass of mingled tears and recriminations. Perhaps the company may be entitled to some share in this happy state of things, but at any rate it is not the company which succeeds in unlocking, beforehand, doors at which the unauthenticated tourist might very vainly knock till he was weary. There is indeed a mystery in this portion of the proceedings, which I confess myself unable entirely to unravel, and I am as much in the dark as ever as to the precise nature of the "open sesame" which forms the secretarial charm; but the fact remains, not less agreeable than inexplicable. The least archæologically-disposed of farmers, who has settled himself in a sixteenth century homestead, welcomes us with effusion; the most exclusive of aristocrats views the march of forty pairs of pedestrian boots across his unsullied carpets and polished floors with equanimity, only provided they encase the privileged feet of members of the Archæological Section. The most elaborate refinements of modern luxury in the art of decoration, and the cobwebbed relics of monastic carving, which may have ridden out the storm of ages as corbels on a

tithebarn, are alike freely open to our inspection. Family dinners are good-humouredly deferred that we may inspect at our leisure an interesting dining-room; solid bucolic teas are interrupted while we satisfy ourselves as to the Elizabethan-looking legs of the table; and unlimited hospitality is proffered with a bland indifference to the fact that our sublunary appetites have already been more than amply catered for. Now and then a Birmingham magnate, in the enjoyment of his rural ease, catches sight of our cavalcade, and before we are well aware that we have diverged from our promised programme, we are enjoying his favourite view, to an accompaniment of brimming claret-cup and foaming October. The week-day solitude of country churches is suddenly disturbed by the influx of our unaccustomed congregation; and urbane rectors are at hand to prevent the possibility of our overlooking a noteworthy monument; while obliging young men are ready in the belfry to show us how the bells are rung, or to assist the ladies of the party to try their hands upon the worsted-covered ropes. Antiquaries, with beautiful old-world. courtesy, fling open to us the treasures of their collections, and of their wine bins; bright-eyed school boys eagerly marshal us about, and stately ladies are carefully solicitous as to our comfort. Each excursion, in fine, forms a pleasant, and only too rare an instance of what life might be were mutual trust and mutual courtesy the rule, instead of the exception.

Another point to which it is scarcely possible to render due justice, is the apparent omniscience of the gentlemen upon whom devolves the arduous task of conducting the proceedings, which are made to run so smoothly, for the behoof of the uninitiated who place themselves beneath their care. Their names, indeed, are a sufficient guarantee that they may be relied upon with perfect confidence, in all matters artistic or architectural; but much more than general knowledge, however profound, is involved in the arrangement of a well-ordered archæological excursion. The district has to be traversed beforehand; and patient care and quick observation must both be taxed in no small degree. The labours of our leaders are not, perhaps, quite so easy as the smoothness of the results attained might seem to typify; on the contrary, they are such as would probably never be undertaken were they not labours of love. From the consultation of a ponderous county history, to the consideration of the most eligible hostelry at which to refresh what Xavier de Maistre rudely called his "bête," there is a wide range; yet both extremes, and all of an archæological nature that lies between them, must have attention. And thanks, partly to their own keen interest in the work, and partly to their conscientious determination that their friends should see everything, the result approaches absolute perfection.

So often indeed have I been amazed at the hidden treasures which have been brought to light, that I should now be beyond measure surprised were I to find that anything had by any chance been overlooked. Now it is some old carved oak chest, or marriage coffer, which is mouldering away the last few years of its existence as a corn-bin, in

the uttermost recesses of a dark stable. Its obscurity shall not hide it. Once, perhaps, the depository of the bride's treasured stores of home-spun linen, and one of the most significant and valued items among the worldly goods of the new household, again, in its old age, it becomes for a few moments an object of interest; bright eyes glance on it once more, and Hodge, perchance, in his not rare intervals of meditative leisure, may for the future regard it with a somewhat bewildered reverence. Now some fragment of grotesque diablerie in stone, built into a cottage wall, recalls for a moment the picture of the medieval artist, chipping away at his work, in the service of my lord Abbot, with a sardonic smile now and then on his lips, as he thinks some thought which he will confide-half, perhaps, to the stone, but not at all to his father confessor. Here, in this window, whose uncleaned panes admit a dim, if not a religious, light, is a solitary fragment of painted glass. You would never have seen it, would you? and yet, when you have once looked at this frail little relic of antiquity, how hard it is to forget it. It bears the old allegory of the spider and the fly, cunningly devised so as to serve as a transparent sun dial, and above, only the brief, sad motto, "Sic fugit atas." And every day, for some three or four centuries, this little six inch square of brittleness has been quietly preaching its little sermon. Generations have come and gone; empires have risen from nothing and gone back to it; all manner of little human dramas have been, and are being, acted under the very shadow of those few eloquent, silent words : and their lesson has been always the same, always the same calm, terrible commentary on love, and sorrow, and anger, and fear, and peace, and all the rest that goes to make up life-" Sic fugit atas."

Sometimes we are piloted across some country churchyard, billowy with the green mounds which are the last marks the insignificant of human kind make on earth, to see some tomb-stone more eccentric, or more illiterate than usual; knee deep in rank grass, and huddled in the midst of a stony forest of similar slabs, bowing at all imaginable angles their respect for Time: but not yet so hidden as to elude our leader's eye. Sometimes an old coaching inn, left all desolate, and stranded on an unfrequented highway, by the changing current of traffic, is made to disclose the relics of its former greatness in polished wainscots, or in stately, carven mantels. Sometimes a spring, once held sacred, but now deserted save by the cattle which have trampled its margin into an apparently bottomless sea of mud, sees a troop of pilgrims once again, while bright eyes glance back for a moment from its surface, and white hands splash its clear waters as of yore. Down this rough cart road, across which the unkempt hedges fling their odorous sprays of hawthorn, or of briar-rose, as if to hide it from the prying world; to see a quaint half-timbered house, in yonder bay window of which a poet is said to have written songs, bright with the imperishable gold of immortality. Now across a stile, into a strange, uneven pasture-field, the hilly centre of which hides beneath its rounded mounds of turf all that is left of some proud, vanished castle; while the hollow round it forms the last vestige of a moat, once filled, perhaps, with all the passion and anguish of mortal combat. But I should never

end were I to endeavour to call back all my pleasant reminiscences of our rambles. Let it suffice to say, that nothing is forgotten, nothing overlooked, nothing left without intelligent and willing comment.

And now, let me confess that I see, without regret, how little space I have left for the last, and, in one sense, the principal part of my subject -the company. I suppose it is never very difficult to say ill-natured things; at least, if there be a difficulty, it is one which seems very frequently to be mastered. But to express what we feel, when censure is impossible and praise is impertinent; to tell the truth, when the modesty of those concerned and the ignorance of those unconcerned will alike regard it as flattery, this is certainly not easy. Names, it would clearly be out of the question for me to mention, and so well known, and, I may add, so universally beloved are the gentlemen who are most prominent among our Archeologists, that the disguise which would hide them from their townsfolk must be sufficient to make them unrecognisable even to themselves. Let me content myself then with asking my readers to imagine the charms of a holiday, spent in the best of company, arranged to perfection, full of interest, and destitute alike of responsibility and of formality. Let them imagine the delicate fingers of beauty condescending to the service of the tea-urn at some homely road-side inn; the eloquent lips of learning busily puffing the cloud of care-dispelling smoke; the dexterous hands of art rapidly transferring to paper some view which may find its honoured restingplace upon the walls of our future Art Gallery. Let them imagine all, confident in each other's courtesy, conversing without restraint, teaching without arrogance, or learning without diffidence. Let them suppose this happy company received everywhere with kindly welcome and unbounded trust, garnering up from the pursuit of intelligent pleasure a harvest of sunny memories, knowing no restraints save those of good feeling, and incurring no debts save those of gratitude. And, should the picture which they form seem more like some idyllic scene from a better and a simpler age than any phase of life possible in busy and unromantic Birmingham, let them remember how unostentatious and unselfish is the groundwork of it all, and cease to wonder. After all, this is the sole secret of the success. Our lives are, for the most part, one long struggle for power, for position, or for reward in one form or another; and all these incentives to action are good in their places, for the man who has no ambition is more often a simpleton than a saint. But the pleasantest things are not those which consent to be made the subjects of competition, and our best-paid labour is sometimes that which earns only thanks. So I have always found it in these gatherings, which seem to come so seldom and to pass so quickly. And as I look back at what I have written, my only regret is, that I should only have been able to depict so faintly the enjoyment I have myself experienced, and to express so feebly the gratitude which I and others feel to the genial officers whose ungrudging zeal made such enjoyment possible.

ACHESPE.