The “country churchyard” of Stoke Poges, which has long been the shrine of the Poet Gray, which in his lifetime drew forth the language of his sweet fancy, and at his death received into its earthly keeping all that part of him that had died or could die–this doubly sanctified churchyard was to me the principal object of attraction on entering the county of Buckingham. From the Slough station on the Great Western Railway I proceeded along a pleasant road hedged on each side by thorns, clean, neat, compact, and highly creditable to the locality, when compared with the wide, unserviceable, waste-spreading fences so commonly seen in other parts. All that grew in the fields of crop-kind looked well, and all that had been taken off to barn or market was well spoken of, so far as brief conversations with farmers and work people elicited information. The generous summer had done so much for the perfection of an abundant harvest, that a passer by could not help feeling happy with the happy farmers, whether the science and industry of the latter rendered them deserving of the sympathy or not. Therefore I passed on, to reach, while the sun still brightened the tree tops, the place of the “Elegy written in a Country Churchyard.”