CHAPTER I.
MY BIRTHPLACE AND PARENTAGE.
Dolce sentier, Colle, che mi piacesti, Ov'ancor per usanza amor mi mena! PETRARCH.
Sweet, secluded, shady Saxonholme! I doubt if our whole England contains another hamlet so quaint, so picturesquely irregular, so thoroughly national in all its rustic characteristics.

It lies in a warm hollow environed by hills.

Woods, parks and young plantations clothe every height and slope for miles around, whilst here and there, peeping down through green vistas, or towering above undulating seas of summer foliage, stands many a fine old country mansion, turreted and gabled, and built of that warm red brick that seems to hold the light of the sunset long after it has faded from the rest of the landscape.

A silver thread of streamlet, swift but shallow, runs noisily through the meadows beside the town and loses itself in the Chad, about a mile and a half farther eastward.

Many a picturesque old wooden bridge, many a foaming weir and ruinous water-mill with weedy wheel, may be found scattered up and down the wooded banks of this little river Chad; while to the brook, which we call the Gipstream, attaches a vague tradition of trout.
The hamlet itself is clean and old-fashioned, consisting of one long, straggling street, and a few tributary lanes and passages.