fields all of a transparent emerald flicker with the
thin curling tender blades of spring wheat, among
which strut, and plume themselves, and hover, and
flutter, the rooks, engaged in entomological
researches, and large and glossy as black kittens!
They have stirred lazily as the cart approached,
have thrown out their pendent legs behind them,
have worked up and down their wings ragged at
the edge, and have resumed their studies almost
before the cart has well jogged past the milestone,
orange and black with twenty years' lichens.
Young orchards, where tiles are hung to the top
boughs to bend them over to a basket shape;
fields spotted with flint heaps; folds full of the
voices of the sheep waiting to be fed, has the
cart passed by. Many long processions of
waggons, baled with hay, or dark with fagots, has
it passed, many horses proud of the crimson
and yellow shaving-brushes on their heads, and
of the sharp tingling bells upon their harness that
chime far along the glaring white road along
which they trample smokingly, the boiling dust-
clouds following them as if said roads were on
fire.

But let the egg-shell jog on the pleasant road,
dappled as it passes under the Deveril Park trees,
and let me sketch a Downshire village with its
russet thatch roofs, and here and there, at the
post-office or the farrier's, a blue slate or a red tile
one, for the thin blue plumes of wood-fire smoke
to feather over. There is something to my mind
specially sheltering and cozy in the look of
thatch, cut away over the windows, level yet
spiky like a rustic's hair on a fair-day or holiday;
I like it none the less if it be sponged and padded
here and there with green crystalled moss. Greek
and Roman workers are all very well, but they
seem fools, in my Downshire mind, to the brave
souls that devised those hearty lovable Tudor
cottages, built of stone, warm and lasting, scornful
of the weather, that mellows them to the exact
tone and crustiness of the outside of a Stilton,
and covers them with lichens all in orange blots,
and frosty patches, and grey scales and shadings,
to the top ridge of the breathing chimney where
the starlings chatter and twist their glistening
necks in a coquettish and fantastic way. I honour
those wise and comfortable thinkers in ruffs and
doublets, who devised the Tudor cottages of
Ramshire, with their porches so hospitable and
kindly in cold and rain, and their strong
mullioned windows so free to the air and light yet so
lordly-looking, and so good for children to look out
of, and old men to bask in. I like to see the little
cottage beehives in the garden, among the cloves,
carnations, and roses, with their little bee
merchants dragging down all the flowers around. I
like to hear, in the evenings when the moon has
a golden halo round it, as if it were melting into
shapeless brightness, the drag and tinkle of the
spades at work in the cottage garden, just
beyond the vicar's laureIs, where the thrushes are
rehearsing for their daybreak concert.

The high downs, too, are my special delight; not
those that rise in broad green shoulders on either
side the road, shutting out all horizon; not those,
though they are in places as high as sea cliffs, or
sown and bunched with thousands of primroses,
and pendent with long deer's-tongue or the
branching feathers of fern, where the twisted
beech-roots are velveted with green moss, and
where the violets carpet the ground under the
pied hazel-boughs which just now are tasselled
with catkins. No! these are the low downs that
rapidly turn into the trim fields and cattle-dappled
pastures of ordinary civilisation, and from them,
down in the low country, you may in the distance
see the train, which four hours hence will be in
London, passing along, with a running smoke of steam
like fire running along a train of gunpowder. I
like the high downs where the horizon is a dim
blue one of twenty miles' distance, far as a ship
can be seen at sea. I like the prairie grasp and
comprehension of those high Ramshire Downs,
black with furze, lined with plantations, studded
with sheep, alive with rabbits; the keen, thin
blue air vocal with plovers and blithe choruses
of larks.

You are not in solitude or uncheered there, for
on the high roads yon meet the Autolychus
tramp on his eleemosynary progress from Deveril
to Todminster; now and then, some soldiers on
leave, with their wallets behind them; carriers
and flour-waggons, and that scarlet-runner, the
reckless mail cart; not to mention chance
travellers, clergymen on their rounds, and, in the
season, red scuds of fox-hunters on their way
to covert—to Railton-Spinney, or Waterdyke
Corner. Nor can you go half a mile without
some dozens of rabbits charging with timid
temerity across the road, so swiftly that you see
little but a flirt of white tail near the furzebrush,
as they disappear like Roderick Dhu's
clansmen. You know that every thorn-bush
you pass, is peopled. Then the blackbirds
run like rats about the thorn-bushes, or break
out with a chink and fluster, as if in their conceit
each bird thought the whole world specially
in pursuit of him. Or perhaps, if you tread
softly on the turf, you will be amused by coming
on one of those blind diplomatists, the mole, like
a little roll of black velvet. Then, on the fallows
beyond the downs, you will see the crested plover,
with his white belly and dark wings, swooping
about, and making signals of distress with that
strange "peewit" note which I think I could
imitate on the violin; and then, like a dark star, falls
the lark from heaven, or rises, trembling, to the
cloud; while the new-come cuckoo echoes his
own name in the fir wood that pulses with the
lulling murmurs of the wild doves, where the
squirrel curls in his nest, and the great black
raven tolls out his sullen croak, as if a friendly
lamb were seriously ill in the neighbourhood,
and his benevolent mind were troubled by his
friend's indisposition.

But these are all episodical pleasures of the
high downs, for the standing dish of delight is
the incomparable glory of the far distance, with
its heavenly radiance of cloudy blue, and its