prize of the day against a large number of formidable competitors, and came in first, longo intervallo; so that the race was aptly described afterwards as "Eclipse first, and the rest nowhere."

We may say the same of Shakespeare and his cotemporaries and successors. Many of them-and Ford is no exception-possessed considerable powers of imagination, poetical fire, elegance and vividness of expression. Take them by themselves, and they give us thoughts and passages of a very high order. Read one of their dramas before or after one of Shakespeare's plays, and it is hardly an exaggeration to say that there is no comparison, the difference is so great. The sustained interest, alternated with successive strokes of pathos and humour, is absent; the astonishing penetration which plumbs the depths of human nature and puts the result into what become household words, is wanting; and the characters, however interesting, are lay, not living figures. But what perhaps is the most striking deficiency is that, so to speak, clarifying process which eliminates the grossness and impurities of an old fable or story, purging out the dross by its artistic genius, and reducing a mass of rude material to order, beauty, and "a joy for ever." The Greek tragedians. could treat repulsive subjects with a delicacy of touch which prevented them from being altogether offensive, however horrible the plot or the details. Their marvellous power of handling a dreadful tale, like the Edipus Tyrannus, or the Philoctetes of Sophocles, so that we forget almost all else. except the skill of construction, and the bright, tender grace of their grand musical utterances, belonged to them, and to them alone. It is difficult to understand how any writer could dream of bringing before the public, or how any public could. tolerate, one of Ford's plays with a coarse title which is really harmless by the side of the play itself. And yet there are sentiments put into the mouths of some of the characters which are as admirable as they are forcible. A fine passage on atheism has fitly found a place in the West Country Garland, that charming little book for which we are indebted to a valued member of this Association.

"Dispute no more on this; for know, young man,
These are no school points; nice philosophy

May tolerate unlikely arguments,

But heaven admits no jest: wits that presumed
On wit too much, by striving how to prove
There was no God, with foolish grounds of art,
Discovered first the nearest way to hell;

*The Horse, p. 47.

And filled the world with devilish atheism.
Such questions, youth, are fond: far better 'tis
To bless the sun than reason why it shines;

Yet He thou talk'st of is above the sun."

For acute and learned criticisms on Ford's plays from his first tragedy, The Lover's Melancholy, printed in 1629, to the Witch of Edmonton, nothing can be pointed out better than the preface and notes in Gifford's edition. His labour doubtless was a labour of love. The work was congenial to him, and he must have felt a pleasure in bringing out the merits and beauties of one who was almost a townsman.

The play best known amongst Ford's is, I suppose, The Witch of Edmonton. It is the one which best reveals the character and feelings of the author, whose personal history has little light thrown upon it except from the internal evidence of his writings. And judging from that one play, Ford must have been before his age; for it is quite evident that he did not the least himself believe in witches or witchcraft. He represents an old, ugly, poverty-stricken woman cruelly treated, coarsely reviled, and hunted off his ground by a rough farmer as dangerous and mischievous, so that in misery and despair she assumes the power she is supposed to possess. If she can get no love, she will be feared; if every man's hand is against her, it will be some gratification for her to see that every one dreads lest her hand should be against them. Of course the accessories and machinery are open to ridicule; the familiar spirit in the shape of a black dog, with its "bow, wow, wow," and its becoming white before the execution of the witch and murderer. Such were necessary concessions to the exigencies of the stage of that day, and, after all, are not more grotesque than some of the creations of much more modern writers. Sir Walter Scott, for instance, in his Lay of the Last Minstrel, has employed a goblin page, to help out his story, who is not far advanced with his "Lost, lost, lost," beyond Ford's dog. The whole tone of the play is, I am bold to say, healthy; a protest against vice and mammonworship; and the simple, innocent, loving Susan, unwitting of her wrongs, and pouring out her heart's affection upon the wretched man who had basely pretended to marry her, is as charming a character in its way as any of Shakespeare's. Her death by the hand of her miserable husband is described with the most tender pathos, and makes one think well of him who could describe such a scene. It is so uncertain what Ford's domestic life was, and where he died, that we may perhaps be allowed to believe that he was telling the

tale of one whom he had known in the lovely neighbourhood of Bagtor, and that if he died afar off, in London or elsewhere, his last thoughts were where he had seen such fair surroundings, and known so true and good a woman. Virgil makes a like assumption when describing the fall of a warrior. He speaks of him as casting his eyes up to the sky, and in his dying agony recalling his distant, much-loved home.

"Cælumque

Adspicit, et moriens dulcis reminiscitur Argos."

And we all are conversant with the delightful touch of homely nature in Dame Quickly's account of Falstaff's death-bed:

"After I saw him fumble with the sheets, and play with flowers, and smile upon his fingers' ends, I knew there was but one way; for his nose was as sharp as a pen, and a' babbled of green fields."

Katherine,

Henry Row Ford.

Charles.

Henry.

Magdalen,

daughter of Edmund Ford,
of Harting, co. Sussex.

Sir W. Ford, of Harting.

Edmund.

John.

ON SOME OLD GRAVELS OF THE RIVER DART, BETWEEN TOTNES AND HOLNE BRIDGE.

BY W. A. E. USSHER.

By permission of the Director General of H. M. Geol. Survey.

(Read at Ashburton, July, 1876.)

THERE is a very general tendency amongst geologists to segregate their attention, as it were, to different branches of the science; and although by such a course only we can hope to master details, yet in the divisions of enquiry little facts are often disregarded, or suddenly seized upon to foster a particular theory without extraneous support.

I venture then to lay before the Association the following brief notice of certain old fluviatile deposits in this interesting neighbourhood, commencing with a quotation from that encyclopædia of Devonian and Cornish geology, “De la Beche's Report, pp. 411-12.

"While studying the gravels of the district, it is necessary to pay due attention to the evidence which appears to exist of several rivers having flowed at higher levels than they now do. This evidence consists of lines of gravel and boulders, similar to those found in the river-beds beneath, occurring at the height of several feet above their present beds. The Fig. 1

Report on Corn. and Dev., p. 411, fig. 74.

annexed is a sketch of one of these gravel banks, rising about eighty feet above the present course of the Dart, near Holne