one way, you skirt it for a long distance; if you come the other, you see it as you pass through the narrow streets every now and then at the end of them, closing the prospect and overtopping the lesser houses.  By railway it is conspicuous from the windows; and if you walk about the place, you continually come upon it.  It towers up perpendicular and inaccessible, like the curtain wall of an old fortification:  here and there the upper branches of some great cedar or tall pine just show above it.  One or more streets for a space run conterminous with it—­the wall on one side, the low cottage-houses on the other, and their chimneys are below the coping.  It does not really encircle the town, yet it seems everywhere, and is the great fact of the place.

If you wander about examining this wall, and wondering where it begins and where it ends, and what is inside, you may perchance come upon a gateway of noble proportions.  It is open, but one hesitates to pass through, despite the pleasant vista of trees and green sward beyond.  There is a watchman’s wooden hut, and the aged sentinel is reading his newspaper in the shadow, his breast decorated with medal and clasp, that tell of honourable service.  A scarlet-coated soldier may, too, be strolling thereabout, and the castellated top of a barrack-like building near at hand is suggestive of military force.  You hesitate, but the warden invites you to walk at your leisure under the old trees, and along the endless glades.  If you enter, you pass under the metal scrollwork of the iron gates, and, above, the gilded circle of a coronet glistens in the sunshine.  These are the private demesnes of a prince and ruler of Hodge—­the very highest and most powerful of his masters in that part of the country.  The vast wall encloses his pleasure-grounds and mansion; the broad iron gates give access to mile after mile of park and wood, and the decorated warden or pensioner has but to open them for the free entry of all Fleeceborough and her citizens.  Of course the position of the barrack is a mere accident, yet it gives an air of power and authority—­the place is really as open, the beautiful park as common and accessible as the hill-top under the sky.  A peer only at Westminster, here he is a prince, whose dominions are almost co-extensive with the horizon; and this, the capital city, is for the most part his.

Far away stretches that little kingdom, with its minor towns of villages, hamlets, and farms.  Broad green meadows, where the cattle graze beside the streams and in the plains; rolling uplands, ploughed and sown, where the barley nourishes; deep rich wheatlands; high hills and shadowy woods; grey church towers; new glaring schools; quiet wayside inns, and ancient farmhouses tenanted for generations by the same families.