I remember such a path, which connects Leamington with the small village of Lillington.  The village consists chiefly of one row of dwellings, growing together like the cells of a honeycomb, without intervening gardens, grass-plots, orchards, or shade trees.  Beyond the first row there was another block of small, old cottages with thatched roofs.  I never saw a prettier rural scene.  In front of the whole row was a luxuriant hawthorne hedge, and belonging to each cottage was a little square of garden ground.  The gardens were chock-full of familiar, bright-coloured flowers.  The cottagers evidently loved their little nests, and kindly nature helped their humble efforts with its flowers, moss, and lichens.

Not far from these cottages a green lane turned aside to an ideal country church and churchyard.  The tower was low, massive, and crowned with battlements.  We looked into the windows and beheld the dim and quiet interior, a narrow space, but venerable with the consecration of many centuries.  A well-trodden path led across the churchyard.  Time gnaws an English gravestone with wonderful appetite.  And yet this, same ungenial climate has a lovely way of dealing with certain horizontal monuments.  The unseen seeds of mosses find their way into the lettered furrows, and are made to germinate by the watery sunshine of the English sky; and by-and-bye, behold, the complete inscription beautifully embossed in velvet moss on the marble slab!  I found an almost illegible stone very close to the church, and made out this forlorn verse.

    Poorly lived,
    And poorly died;
    Poorly buried,
    And no one cried.

From Leamington, the road to Warwick is straight and level till it brings you to an arched bridge over the Avon.  Casting our eyes along the quiet stream through a vista of willows, we behold the grey magnificence of Warwick Castle.  From the bridge the road passes in front of the Castle Gate, and enters the principal street of Warwick.

Proceeding westward through the town, we find ourselves confronted by a huge mass of rock, penetrated by a vaulted passage, which may well have been one of King Cymbeline’s gateways; and on the top of the rock sits a small, old church, communicating with an ancient edifice that looks down on the street.  It presents a venerable specimen of the timber-and-plaster style of building; the front rises into many gables, the windows mostly open on hinges; the whole affair looks very old, but the state of repair is perfect.

On a bench, enjoying the sunshine, and looking into the street, a few old men are generally to be seen, wrapped in old-fashioned cloaks and wearing the identical silver badges which the Earl of Leicester gave to the twelve original Brethren of Leicester’s Hospital—­a community which exists to-day under the modes established for it in the reign of Queen Elizabeth.  This sudden cropping-up of an apparently dead and buried state of society produces a picturesque effect.