398 MAN OF SCIENCE. 



road, I passed by the "peasant's nest," and after 

 making the old woman happy with half-a-crown, parted 

 from her and struck down to the Ouse, a sluggish, 

 sullen stream fringed with reeds and rushes, that winds 

 through flat dank meadows, on which a rich country 

 looks down on either side. I saw the broad leaves of 

 the water-lilies bobbing up and down in the current, 

 but the lilies themselves were gone. By the way, my 

 old guide knew not only the squire and the two ladies, 

 Mrs Unwin and the Lady Hesketh, but also the little 

 dog Beau, and a pretty little dog he was, with a good 

 deal of red about him. 



' This part of the country lies on the Oolite, and we 

 find fragments of Oolitic fossils in almost every heap of 

 rubbish by the wayside. Directly opposite Cowper's 

 house in Weston Underwood I picked up a fossil pecten 

 and terebratula, and bethought me of his denunciations 

 of the geologists, who, to be sure, in his days were a 

 sad infidel pack. His Olney house, a tall brick build- 

 ing not very perpendicular in the walls, is now an infant 

 school. I entered what had been his parlour, and was 

 almost stunned by the gabble of infant voices. There 

 have been alterations made in the interior of the building 

 to suit its altered circumstances, but the small port-hole 

 in the partition through which his tame hares used to 

 come bounding out to their evening play on the carpet 

 still exists in statu quo. I saw, too, in the garden an 

 apple-tree of his planting, a Ribs tone pippin, if you 

 wish to be particular, and the little lath and plaster 

 summer-house in which he wrote so many of his poems 

 and letters. The latter has been preserved with good 

 taste, which one would wish to see more general, in 

 exactly its original condition, nothing has been changed 

 except that, like the book in the Revelations, it is now 



