remember, were a long ballad in which a faithful soldier is informed on his return to his native village that his own true love “lives with her own granny dear,” which he, his mind running in military grooves, takes for “grenadier,” with temporarily distressing results—­though all comes right at last—­and a lyrical description of an upset of his coach, the only one he ever had, written by a gifted hostler.  But on call he could give “The Tight Little Island,” “Rule Britannia” or any one of a dozen other insular melodies.

Then his talk was racy of his beloved road, of which he would recount the glories even in the days of its decline, when the cormorant iron way was already swallowing stage after stage of the best of it.  He would narrate to us the doings and feats of mighty whips—­notably of a never-to-be-forgotten dinner at the Pelican Inn, Newbury, to which were gathered the elite of the Bath-road cracksmen.  At that great repast we heard how “for wittles there was trout, speckled like a dane dog, weal as wite as allablaster, sherry-wite-wine, red-port, and everything in season.  Then for company there was Sir Pay (Sir H. Peyton), Squire Willy boys (Vielbois), Cherry Bob, Long Dick, and I; and where would you go to find five sech along any road out of London?” But his crowning story, which he never missed as he cracked his four bays along on the first stage west out of Reading, was that of the Berkshire Lady, which, alas! my gifted countrywoman has now laid covetous hands on and claimed for that dour Lady Mary Hay, hereditary lord high constable of Scotland,

The “Berkshire Lady” is so bound up in my mind with my early friend of the road, from whom I first heard it, that I have let Memory fairly run away with me.  But now, if your readers will pardon me for this gossip, I will promise to stick to my text.

At the beginning of the last century the fortune of one of the last of the “Great Clothiers of the West,” John Kendrick, was inherited by a young lady, his granddaughter, who thus became the mistress of Calcott Park, past which the Bath road runs, three miles to the west of Reading.  The house stands some three hundred yards from the road, facing due south, with a background of noble timber behind it, and in front a gentle slope of fine green turf, on which the deer seem to delight in grouping themselves at the most picturesque points.  Miss Kendrick is said to have been beautiful and accomplished, and it is certain that she was an eccentric young person, who turned a deaf ear to the suits of many wooers, for, as the ballad quoted by your contributor says—­

  Many noble persons courted
  This young lady, ’tis reported;
  But their labor was in vain: 
  They could not her love obtain.

This metrical version of the story is, I fear, lost except the fragments which I shall quote; at least I have sought for it in vain in all likely quarters since reading Lady Blanche’s article.