Then returning the book to Leonhard, he looked at his watch.  “It is time I went to dinner,” he said.  “Come with me.  Loretz knows you are with me, and will expect you to be my guest to-day.”  So they walked across the field, but did not descend by the path along which they had ascended.  They went farther to the east, and Spener led the way down the rough hillside until he came to a point whence the descent was less steep and difficult.  There he paused.  A beautiful view was spread before them.  Little Spenersberg lay on the slope opposite:  between ran the stream, which widened farther toward the east and narrowed toward the west, where it emptied into the river.  Eastward the valley also widened, and there the willows grew, and looked like a great garden, beautiful in every shade of green.

“I should not have the river from this point,” said Spener, “but I should have a great deal more, and be nearer the people:  I do not think it would be the thing to appear even to separate myself from them.  I have done a great deal not so agreeable to me, I assure you, in order to bring myself near to them.  One must make sacrifices to obtain his ends:  it is only to count the cost and then be ready to put down the money.  Suppose you plant a house just here.”

“How could it be done?”

“You an architect and ask me!”

“Things can be planted anywhere,” answered Leonhard, “but whether the cost of production will not be greater than the fruit is worth, is the question.  You can have a platform built here as broad as that the temple stood on if you are willing to pay for the foundations.”

“That is the talk!” said Spener.  “Take a square look, and let me know what you can do toward a house on the hillside.  You see there is no end of raw material for building, and it is a perfect prospect.  But come now to dinner.”

CAROLINE CHESEBRO.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

COUNTRY-HOUSE LIFE IN ENGLAND.

The love for country life is, if possible, stronger in England now than at any previous period in her history.  There is no other country where this taste has prevailed to the same extent.  It arose originally from causes mainly political.  In France a similar condition of things existed down to the sixteenth century, and was mainly brought to an end by the policy of ministers, who dreaded the increasing power of petty princes in remote provinces becoming in combination formidable to the central power.  It was specially the object of Richelieu and Mazarin to check this sort of baronial imperium in imperio, and it became in the time of Louis XIV the keystone of that monarch’s domestic policy.  This tended to encourage the “hanging on” of grands seigneurs about the court, where many of the chief of them, after having exhausted their resources in gambling or riotous living, became dependent for place or pension on the Crown, and were in fact the creatures of the king and his minister.  Of course this did not apply to all.  Here and there in the broad area of France were to be found magnificent chateaux—­a few of which, especially in Central France, still survive—­where the marquis or count reigned over his people an almost absolute monarch.