way, but I think the Supreme Being has done this for the benefit of poor men." Railways it was a mistake to suppose took up much of the country; it was gentlemen's estates, where they enclosed the best land, and planted it with shrubs, that he disliked to see. "Vanity pleasures," the old labourer called them.
Of Saturday night in a village inn be warned, ye pedestrians, especially if it be haymaking or harvesting. It was not Saturday night when I tried to sleep at the inn at Findon; but it was the haymaking season. Hour after hour passed away in songs, always followed by the delighted thumping of hob-nailed boots. As the small hours drew nigh the riot seemed to grow worse. Forms were knocked down, and, as batch after batch turned out with yells and fearful whoops, I thought of Comus and his rout:—
"Midnight song and revelry,
Tipsy dance and jollity."
Next morning, as I ascended the hill-side, I met a group of children. One, an honest-faced little maid, with a good-natured snub, had been picking totter-grass with her chubby-faced baby brother. I spoke to them, and admired their little sheaf of grass. Sally put out her hand in an uncouth way. "Oo," she said; but it was courteously meant, and I never felt more pleasure in receiving any present than I did this.
The night before I met a gentle little fellow in the village, with blue eyes, high narrow forehead, and delicate complexion—just such a boy as John Clare might have been. His sleeves were tucked up to his elbows, and he was wheeling a barrow, but courtesy was inbred, and every time he spoke he touched his hat. He worked during summer, and went to school in winter; rose at six, and worked away from seven or eight until nine or ten in the evening—let us hope with plenty of time to play about a bit, as well as to eat his meals.
Higher and higher I mount over the soft green sward, until I reach my goal—Chanctonbery Ring. As I wandered round its base a panorama such as one sees nowhere else lay spread out before my eyes. Here, like a living map, the verdant weald, intersected by a thousand hedgerows, stretched for many a mile,
