never forget.  It takes your thoughts away into the great unknown—­the infinite,—­that mysterious world which is ever around us, and which seems nearer when we are looking at a beautiful sunset or a beautiful view than at any other time in this life, save, for ought we know, during the last few moments of our earthly existence.  And although no human habitation is anywhere to be seen, the air is full of the spirits of bygone generations and of bygone races of men.  There are traces of humanity in all directions, wherever your eye may gaze, but they are the traces of a forgotten people.

Yonder semicircular ridge was once the rampart of an ancient British town; though, save in the tangled copse hard by, where the plough has never been at work, it is fast disappearing.  Many a stone lying about the camp bears unmistakable marks of fire.

A glance of the eye westwards, and your thoughts are carried back to the Roman invasion; for scarce five miles off lies the ancient Roman villa of Chedworth.  Then, again, tradition has it that a mile away from this spot, and close to the old manor house, skirmishes were fought in later days, at the time the Civil Wars were raging, when many a chivalrous cavalier and many a stern, unbending Puritan lay dead on yonder field, or, maybe, was carried into the old house to linger and to die in the very room in which you slept last night.  Everywhere in England are battlefields; but they are, in the words of De Quincey, “battlefields that nature has long ago reconciled to herself with the sweet oblivion of flowers.”

This very mound on which you are standing, is it not the burying-place of a race which dwelt on the Cotswolds full three thousand years ago?  And were not human remains found here a few years back, when this, in common with many other barrows hard by, was opened, and an underground chamber discovered therein—­the earthly resting-place of the bones of the unknown dead?

“The silence of deep eternities, of worlds from beyond the morning stars—­does it not speak to thee?  The unborn ages,—­the old graves, with their long-mouldering dust,—­the very tears that wetted it, now all dry,—­do not these speak to thee what ear hath not heard?”

     “Solemn before us
      Veiled the dark Portal—­
      Goal of all mortal. 
      Stars silent rest o’er us,
      Graves under us silent.”

Well has Carlyle translated the great German poet.  And the old barrows that lie scattered over these wide-stretching downs are not dumb; they are continually speaking to us of those things “which ear hath not heard”; and at no time have they more to tell than at the close of a mild, peaceful day in October, when all else, save for the faint tinkling of the distant sheep-bells, is silent as death, and the sun, ere once more disappearing, is shedding a solemn glow over the deserted, mysterious uplands of the Cotswold Hills.