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comparable playing-fields shaded by their immemorial elms, and kissed by 'the silver-winding' river, will still stand undimmed and unforgotten, when the memory of many a more famous, many a more splendid scene has passed away. No son of Eton need be shamed to record, though never so poorly, his love for that beautiful and kindly mother. To her then I dedicate this little offering, to her and to those whom now she holds under her gentle charge; hoping only that they may receive it with the spirit in which it is made, not as one more contribution to the eternal tale of lessons, not as an unbidden intruder on the lawful pleasures of their play-time, but as a companion and a friend anxious and, I hope, able to stir them

Not only with the sense

Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food

For future years.

Cricket and football, the river, the fives-court, and the running-ground, are, in their own degrees, a necessary and a wholesome part of education; the hours passed in the playing-fields should go hand in hand with those of pupil-room and class-time if our schools are to be all that they should and can be. Yet sometimes a relaxation from the more tumultuous pleasures of boyhood is not disdained. A rainy holiday, a sprained ankle, or some other of those lesser ills that boy's flesh is heir to, may paint the solitude of his own little room, the warm precincts' of a cheerful fire and a Windsor chair in no ungracious colours. Then, if haply curiosity, or a love of change, may turn him for a moment from

the more stirring society of Walter Scott or Marryatt or some other favourite of the hour, to the sober little volume I now offer him, and if some kindlier and deeper feeling may keep it for awhile in his hands, may bring it back to them once and again, my task will be done-it will be done if, in the school that still among its traditions keeps green the memory of Poet's Walk, it has encouraged in one boy a fondness for poetry, and led him to gain some wisdom from this, the best kind of reading.

It is impossible for me to record by name all those to whose courtesy I am indebted for the composition of my fourth book. But to my friends the Messrs. Macmillan I must acknowledge my particular debt, for without their kindness this new, and, I trust, improved edition of my little volume had never seen the light.

1898.

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