" "O good my Lord and Sovereign," spake the Sheriff, "in Sherwood Forest in our own good shire of Nottingham, liveth a bold outlaw whose name is Robin Hood.

The former is hardly to be found among natives of the United States; the latter can be found nowhere else, except, possibly, in certain English shires in which the inhabitants so closely resemble the average American that when they immigrate hither they are scarcely distinguishable from men whose ancestors came two or three centuries ago.

About two months after, Raleigh was chosen Knight of the Shire for his county of Devon, and made a considerable figure in parliament, where a bill passed in confirmation of his patent for the discovery of foreign countries.

The military command in each county was vested in the county lieutenant, an officer answering in many respects to the lord lieutenant of the English shire at that period.

He is fearful of being sheriff of the shire by instinct, and dreads the assize-week as much as the prisoner.

But in the swift and terrible progresses of a king who visited the shires to north and south and west in the intervals of foreign war, a long series of experiments as to the best forms of internal government was ceaselessly carried out, and the new administration securely established.

True, a Wordsworth or a Coleridge did hesitate for hours over the problem of adjusting a horse collar, but Johnny Ragamuffin, from the slums, or Jerry Hickathrift, of some shire with the most uncouth of dialects, can adjust a slipping saddle, or, in a hand's turn, can remove a stone which is torturing a hoof.