I recollect another queer, stupid, fat-faced individual, a country shopkeeper from Connecticut, who had come over to England solely to have an interview with the queen.  He had named one of his children for her majesty, and the other for Prince Albert, and had transmitted photographs of them to the illustrious godmother, which had been acknowledged by her secretary.  He also had a fantastic notion that he was rightful heir to a rich English estate.  The cause of this particular insanity lies deep in the Anglo-American heart.  We still have an unspeakable yearning towards England, and I might fill many pages with instances of this diseased American appetite for English soil.  A respectable-looking woman, exceedingly homely, but decidedly New Englandish, came to my office with a great bundle of documents, containing evidences of her indubitable claim to the site on which all the principal business part of Liverpool has long been situated.

All these matters, however, were quite distinct from the real business of that great Consulate, which is now woefully fallen off.  The technical details I left to the treatment of two faithful, competent English subordinates.  An American has never time to make himself thoroughly qualified for a foreign post before the revolution of the political wheel discards him from his office.  For myself, I was not at all the kind of man to grow into an ideal consul.  I never desired to be burdened with public influence, and the official business was irksome.  When my successor arrived, I drew a long, delightful breath.

These English sketches comprise a few of the things that I took note of, in many escapes from my consular servitude.  Liverpool is a most convenient point to get away from.  I hope that I do not compromise my American patriotism by acknowledging that in visiting many famous localities, I was often conscious of a fervent hereditary attachment to the native soil of our forefathers, and felt it to be our Old Home.

II.—­A Sentimental Experience

There is a small nest of a place in Leamington which I remember as one of the cosiest nooks in England.  The ordinary stream of life does not run through this quiet little pool, and few of the inhabitants seem to be troubled with any outside activities.

Its original nucleus lies in the fiction of a chalybeate well.  I know not if its waters are ever tasted nowadays, but it continues to be a resort of transient visitors.  It lies in pleasant Warwickshire at the very midmost point of England, surrounded by country seats and castles, and is the more permanent abode of genteel, unoccupied, not very wealthy people.

My chief enjoyment there lay in rural walks to places of interest in the neighbourhood.  The high-roads are pleasant, but a fresher interest is to be found in the footpaths which go wandering from stile to stile, along hedges and across broad fields, and through wooded parks.  These by-paths admit the wayfarer into the very heart of rural life.  Their antiquity probably exceeds that of the Roman ways; the footsteps of the aboriginal Britons first wore away the grass, and the natural flow of intercourse from village to village has kept the track bare ever since.  An American farmer would plough across any such path.  Old associations are sure to be fragrant herbs in English nostrils, but we pull them up as weeds.