A hasty breakfast, and a walk, drive, or ride to
the tram, a long fatiguing day in London, and a
walk or ride from the station to our homes, a
late dinner, and a short evening, make up the
work-a-day lives of most of us. We have heavy
dinner-parties, at which the village greengrocer
supplements the domestic service of each
establishment, and waits upon his employer of yesterday,
with a polite assumption of never having
seen him before. We have penny readings, too,
where we declaim poetry, and recite humorous
prose from a gusty platform, nominally for
the edification of our brother the working
man in the hall below, really to our sisters
the fashionable ladies in the gallery above.
These are almost the only occasions we see
each other, except in the train and in church;
and our suburban life was pre-eminently placid,
decorous, and quiet, for a far longer period
than falls to the lot of many villages so
near London, after the railway whistle has
once invaded them. But the bare thought
of losing our common, of being marshalled
like school-children where we could now
wander at will, of seeing flower-beds and
ornaments where it was our glory to know game
was not unfrequently shot; of being outraged by
twopenny peepshows, refreshment-stalls,
circuses, swings, and peripatetic theatres being
invited to hold saturnalia at so much a head,
stung us to the quick. The whole district was
in a ferment, and the very railway platform
became a forum for discussion.

The short daily journey to and from London
was one uninterrupted debate, and "To be
continued in our next," applied to conversation
at all times and in every place. Public meetings
were called, and private conclaves
commencing with soup and fish, and ending with
olives and choice claret, were inaugurated.
Our numerous resident lawyers supplemented
with personal interest their professional skill;
the proposed "protectorate " was voted an
aggressive nuisance, the proposition to sell
for building purposes the glades and dells now
full of wild luxuriance and picturesque beauty,
was vigorously, almost fiercely denounced; and
eventually, such alterations were promised in
the measure then before the House, as would
have made it a benefit instead of an undoubted
injury. The bill, as proposed to be amended,
would have provided for the maintenance of
the common in its present wild state, and
would have placed in the hands of trustees the
task of suppressing the trivial nuisances to be
found on it. The Inclosure Commissioners, and
the Commissioners of Woods and Forests, would
each have had the appointing of a trustee, and
the lord of the manor, instead of being an
irresponsible dictator, would have been merely the
third trustee. The clauses providing for high
fences, lodges, and gates; for creating formal
rides, drives, and walks, were erased, and the
word "trustees" substituted for "protector"
throughout. It was only after many conferences,
proposals, and compromises that we
succeeded in obtaining the promise that these
important alterations should be made. It would
be idle to enter into the arguments used, or
to boast of the determined front displayed.
Resolute on maintaining our rights, and on keeping
the common open for the public, we should,
but for the concessions made, have fought the
bill stage by stage, and our advisers were
confident of success. Just as we were
congratulating ourselves upon having secured justice;
just when the morning assemblages at the little
railway station became most jubilant; just
when we were all counting upon the security
the amended measure would give us, we learnt
that the lord of the manor had withdrawn his
proposals altogether. The dubious rights of
lords and commoners were to be left in abeyance,
but meanwhile our common was to be
untouched. We were puzzled at our own
success. Some cynical spirits averred that
we were premature in our jubilations, and that
the apparent yielding would be found to have
only heralded aggression in another form. By
handing over the vague and undefined rights
pertaining to a lord of the manor to independent
trustees, and by accepting such portions of the
original bill as provided for the preservation
and maintenance of the common, we should, it
was argued, have made other attempts at enclosure
and encroachment impossible, and have
prevented much heart-burning for the future.
We had now no guarantee that the public good
would not again be made the plea for cutting
up and selling portions of our land, or that
the lord of the manor would not show his
displeasure at being thwarted in various unpleasant
ways. Still, we were victorious, and, despite a
few forebodings, exulted on having preserved
our common from the threatened invasion and
confiscation. We appointed a local committee
to watch our interests; some of us joined the
COMMONS PRESERVATION SOCIETY, which aims
at keeping open all commons within fifteen miles
of London; and are all firm in our resolution
to uphold our just rights by law. Unhappily,
there is great difficulty in ascertaining precisely
what these rights are. The whole tenor of
legislation from the time of Henry the Third
downwards has been in favour of enclosing waste
lands. Our forefathers never contemplated these
feverish over-crowded times, when a tract of
uncultivated land is infinitely more precious
to the community than any number of tilled
acres in the same locality; and our best lawyers
differ as to the exact rights of lords of manors,
and the other holders or occupiers of land.
The result is eminently unsatisfactory, as the
most cursory inspection of our common will
show.

Manure-heaps, rubbish, stones, dead animals,
and garbage, are crammed together at the corner
leading from the village to the rifle-butts,
making that part of it an eyesore and a
nuisance; turf has been peeled off it almost by the
acre; the gorse and heather, of which we were so
proud, is being rapidly sacrificed; huge yawning
chasms are dug across its principal road, and in
the centre of a picturesque dell, which was,