Chapter VII: Part 7

Ashes change from almost black to a light green, then a deeper green, and again light green and yellow. Where is the foreign evergreen in the competition? Put side by side, competition is out of the question; you have only to get an artist to paint the oak in its three phases to see this. There is less to be said against the deodara than the rest, as it is a graceful tree; but it is not English in any sense.

The point, however, is that the foreigners oust the English altogether. Let the cedar and the laurel, and the whole host of invading evergreens, be put aside by themselves, in a separate and detached shrubbery, maintained for the purpose of exhibiting strange growths. Let them not crowd the lovely English trees out of the place. Planes are much planted now, with ill effect; the blotches where the bark peels, the leaves which lie on the sward like brown leather, the branches wide apart and giving no shelter to birds--in short, the whole ensemble of the plane is unfit for our country.

It was selected for London plantations, as the Thames Embankment, because its peeling bark was believed to protect it against the deposit of sooty particles, and because it grows quickly. For use in London itself it may be preferable: for semi-country seats, as the modern houses surrounded with their own grounds assume to be, it is unsightly. It has no association. No one has seen a plane in a hedgerow, or a wood, or a copse. There are no fragments of English history clinging to it as there are to the oak.

If trees of the plane class be desirable, sycamores may be planted, as they have in a measure become acclimatised. If trees that grow fast are required, there are limes and horse-chestnuts; the lime will run a race with any tree. The lime, too, has a pale yellow blossom, to which bees resort in numbers, making a pleasant hum, which seems the natural accompaniment of summer sunshine. Its leaves are put forth early.

Horse-chestnuts, too, grow quickly and without any attention, the bloom is familiar, and acknowledged to be fine, and in autumn the large sprays of leaves take orange and even scarlet tints. The plane is not to be mentioned beside either of them. Other trees as well as the plane would have flourished on the Thames Embankment, in consequence of the current of fresh air caused by the river. Imagine the Embankment with double rows of oaks, elms, or beeches; or, if not, even with limes or horse-chestnuts! To these certainly birds would have resorted--possibly rooks, which do not fear cities. On such a site the experiment would have been worth making.

If in the semi-country seats fast-growing trees are needed, there are, as I have observed, the lime and horse-chestnut; and if more variety be desired, add the Spanish chestnut and the walnut. The Spanish chestnut is a very fine tree; the walnut, it is true, grows slowly. If as many beeches as cedar deodaras and laurels and planes were planted in these grounds, in due course of time the tap of the woodpecker would be heard: a sound truly worth ten thousand laurels. At Kew, far closer to town than many of the semi-country seats are now, all our trees flourish in perfection.

Hardy birches, too, will grow in thin soil. Just compare the delicate drooping boughs of birch--they could not have been more delicate if sketched with a pencil--compare these with the gaunt planes!

Of all the foreign shrubs that have been brought to these shores, there is not one that presents us with so beautiful a spectacle as the bloom of the common old English hawthorn in May. The mass of blossom, the pleasant fragrance, its divided and elegant leaf, place it far above any of the importations. Besides which, the traditions and associations of the May give it a human interest.

The hawthorn is a part of natural English life--country life. It stands side by side with the Englishman, as the palm tree is pictured side by side with the Arab. You cannot pick up an old play, or book of the time when old English life was in the prime, without finding some reference to the hawthorn. There is nothing of this in the laurel, or any shrub whatever that may be thrust in with a ticket to tell you its name; it has a ticket because it has no interest, or else you would know it.

For use there is nothing like hawthorn; it will trim into a thick hedge, defending the enclosure from trespassers, and warding off the bitter winds; or it will grow into a tree. Again, the old hedge-crab--the common, despised crab-apple--in spring is covered with blossom, such a mass of blossom that it may be distinguished a mile. Did any one ever see a plane or a laurel look like that?

How pleasant, too, to see the clear white flower of the blackthorn come out in the midst of the bitter easterly breezes! It is like a white handkerchief beckoning to the sun to come. There will not be much more frost; if the wind is bitter to-day, the sun is rapidly gaining power. Probably, if a blackthorn bush were by any chance discovered in the semi-parks or enclosures alluded to, it would at once be rooted out as an accursed thing. The very brambles are superior; there is the flower, the sweet berry, and afterwards the crimson leaves--three things in succession.

What can the world produce equal to the June rose? The common briar, the commonest of all, offers a flower which, whether in itself, or the moment of its appearance at the juncture of all sweet summer things, or its history and associations, is not to be approached by anything a millionaire could purchase. The labourer casually gathers it as he goes to his work in the field, and yet none of the rich families whose names are synonymous with wealth can get anything to equal it if they ransack the earth.

After these, fill every nook and corner with hazel, and make filbert walks. Up and down such walks men strolled with rapiers by their sides while our admirals were hammering at the Spaniards with culverin and demi-cannon, and looked at the sun-dial and adjourned for a game at bowls, wishing that they only had a chance to bowl shot instead of peaceful wood. Fill in the corners with nut-trees, then, and make filbert walks. All these are like old story books, and the old stories are always best.

Still, there are others for variety, as the wild guelder rose, which produces heavy bunches of red berries; dogwood, whose leaves when frost-touched take deep colours; barberry, yielding a pleasantly acid fruit; the wayfaring tree; not even forgetting the elder, but putting it at the outside, because, though flowering, the scent is heavy, and because the elder was believed of old time to possess some of the virtue now attributed to the blue gum, and to neutralise malaria by its own odour.

For colour add the wild broom and some furze. Those who have seen broom in full flower, golden to the tip of every slender bough, cannot need any persuasion, surely, to introduce it. Furze is specked with yellow when the skies are dark and the storms sweep around, besides its prime display. Let wild clematis climb wherever it will. Then laurels may come after these, put somewhere by themselves, with their thick changeless leaves, unpleasant to the touch; no one ever gathers a spray.

Rhododendrons it is unkind to attack, for in themselves they afford a rich flower. It is not the rhododendron, but the abuse of it, which must be protested against. Whether the soil suits or not--and, for the most part, it does not suit--rhododendrons are thrust in everywhere. Just walk in amongst them--behind the show--and look at the spindly, crooked stems, straggling how they may, and then look at the earth under them, where not a weed even will grow. The rhododendron is admirable in its place, but it is often overdone and a failure, and has no right to exclude those shrubs that are fitter. Most of the foreign shrubs about these semi-country seats look exactly like the stiff and painted little wooden trees that are sold for children's toys, and, like the toys, are the same colour all the year round.

Now, if you enter a copse in spring the eye is delighted with cowslips on the banks where the sunlight comes, with blue-bells, or earlier with anemones and violets, while later the ferns rise. But enter the semi-parks of the semi-country seat, with its affected assumption of countryness, and there is not one of these. The fern is actually purposely eradicated--just think! Purposely! Though indeed they would not grow, one would think, under rhododendrons and laurels, cold-blooded laurels. They will grow under hawthorn, ash, or beside the bramble bushes.

If there chance to be a little pond or "fountain," there is no such thing as a reed, or a flag, or a rush. How the rushes would be hastily hauled out and hurled away with execrations!

Besides the greater beauty of English trees, shrubs, and plants, they also attract the birds, without which the grandest plantation is a vacancy, and another interest, too, arises from watching the progress of their growth and the advance of the season. Our own trees and shrubs literally keep pace with the stars which shine in our northern skies. An astronomical floral almanack might almost be constructed, showing how, as the constellations marched on by night, the buds and leaves and flowers appeared by day.

The lower that brilliant Sirius sinks in the western sky after ruling the winter heavens, and the higher that red Arcturus rises, so the buds thicken, open, and bloom. When the Pleiades begin to rise in the early evening, the leaves are turning colour, and the seed vessels of the flowers take the place of the petals. The coincidences of floral and bird life, and of these with the movements of the heavens, impart a sense of breadth to their observation.

It is not only the violet or the anemone, there are the birds coming from immense distances to enjoy the summer with us; there are the stars appearing in succession, so that the most distant of objects seems brought into connection with the nearest, and the world is made one. The sharp distinction, the line artificially drawn between things, quite disappears when they are thus associated.

Birds, as just remarked, are attracted by our own trees and shrubs. Oaks are favourites with rooks and wood-pigeons; blackbirds whistle in them in spring; if there is a pheasant about in autumn he is sure to come under the oak; jays visit them. Elms are resorted to by most of the larger birds. Ash plantations attract wood-pigeons and turtle-doves. Thrushes are fond of the ash, and sing much on its boughs. The beech is the woodpecker's tree so soon as it grows old--birch one of the missel-thrush's.

In blackthorn the long-tailed tit builds the domed nest every one admires. Under the cover of brambles white-throats build. Nightingales love hawthorn, and so does every bird. Plant hawthorn, and almost every bird will come to it, from the wood-pigeon down to the wren. Do not clear away the fallen branches and brown leaves, sweeping the plantation as if it were the floor of a ballroom, for it is just the tangle and the wilderness that brings the birds, and they like the disarray.

If evergreens are wanted, there are the yew, the box, and holly--all three well sanctioned by old custom. Thrushes will come for the yew berries, and birds are fond of building in the thick cover of high box hedges. Notwithstanding the prickly leaves, they slip in and out of the holly easily. A few bunches of rushes and sedges, with some weeds and aquatic grasses, allowed to grow about a pond, will presently bring moorhens. Bare stones--perhaps concrete--will bring nothing.

If a bough falls into the water, let it stay; sparrows will perch on it to drink. If a sandy drinking-place can be made for them the number of birds that will come in the course of the day will be surprising.

Kind-hearted people, when winter is approaching, should have two posts sunk in their grounds, with planks across at the top; a raised platform with the edges projecting beyond the posts, so that cats cannot climb up, and of course higher than a cat can spring. The crumbs cast out upon this platform would gather crowds of birds; they will come to feel at home, and in spring time will return to build and sing.

TO BRIGHTON

The smooth express to Brighton has scarcely, as it seems, left the metropolis when the banks of the railway become coloured with wild flowers. Seen for a moment in swiftly passing, they border the line like a continuous garden. Driven from the fields by plough and hoe, cast out from the pleasure-grounds of modern houses, pulled up and hurled over the wall to wither as accursed things, they have taken refuge on the embankment and the cutting.

There they can flourish and ripen their seeds, little harassed even by the scythe and never by grazing cattle. So it happens that, extremes meeting, the wild flower, with its old-world associations, often grows most freely within a few feet of the wheels of the locomotive. Purple heathbells gleam from shrub-like bunches dotted along the slope; purple knapweeds lower down in the grass; blue scabious, yellow hawkweeds where the soil is thinner, and harebells on the very summit; these are but a few upon which the eye lights while gliding by.

Glossy thistledown, heedless whither it goes, comes in at the open window. Between thickets of broom there is a glimpse down into a meadow shadowed by the trees of a wood. It is bordered with the cool green of brake fern, from which a rabbit has come forth to feed, and a pheasant strolls along with a mind, perhaps, to the barley yonder. Or a foxglove lifts its purple spire; or woodbine crowns the bushes. The sickle has gone over, and the poppies which grew so thick a while ago in the corn no longer glow like a scarlet cloak thrown on the ground. But red spots in waste places and by the ways are where they have escaped the steel.

A wood-pigeon keeps pace with the train--his vigorous pinions can race against an engine, but cannot elude the hawk. He stops presently among the trees. How pleasant it is from the height of the embankment to look down upon the tops of the oaks! The stubbles stretch away, crossed with bands of green roots where the partridges are hiding. Among flags and weeds the moorhens feed fearlessly as we roll over the stream: then comes a cutting, and more heath and hawkweed, harebell, and bramble bushes red with unripe berries.

Flowers grow high up the sides of the quarries; flowers cling to the dry, crumbling chalk of the cliff-like cutting; flowers bloom on the verge above, against the line of the sky, and over the dark arch of the tunnel. This, it is true, is summer; but it is the same in spring. Before a dandelion has shown in the meadow, the banks of the railway are yellow with coltsfoot. After a time the gorse flowers everywhere along them; but the golden broom overtops all, perfect thickets of broom glowing in the sunlight.

Presently the copses are azure with bluebells, among which the brake is thrusting itself up; others, again, are red with ragged robins, and the fields adjacent fill the eye with the gaudy glare of yellow charlock. The note of the cuckoo sounds above the rushing of the train, and the larks may be seen, if not heard, rising high over the wheat. Some birds, indeed, find the bushes by the railway the quietest place in which to build their nests.

Butcher-birds or shrikes are frequently found on the telegraph wires; from that elevation they pounce down on their prey, and return again to the wire. There were two pairs of shrikes using the telegraph wires for this purpose one spring only a short distance beyond noisy Clapham Junction. Another pair came back several seasons to a particular part of the wires, near a bridge, and I have seen a hawk perched on the wire equally near London.

The haze hangs over the wide, dark plain, which, soon after passing Redhill, stretches away on the right. It seems to us in the train to extend from the foot of a great bluff there to the first rampart of the still distant South Downs. In the evening that haze will be changed to a flood of purple light veiling the horizon. Fitful glances at the newspaper or the novel pass the time; but now I can read no longer, for I know, without any marks or tangible evidence, that the hills are drawing near. There is always hope in the hills.

The dust of London fills the eyes and blurs the vision; but it penetrates deeper than that. There is a dust that chokes the spirit, and it is this that makes the streets so long, the stones so stony, the desk so wooden; the very rustiness of the iron railings about the offices sets the teeth on edge, the sooty blackened walls (yet without shadow) thrust back the sympathies which are ever trying to cling to the inanimate things around us. A breeze comes in at the carriage window--a wild puff, disturbing the heated stillness of the summer day. It is easy to tell where that came from--silently the Downs have stolen into sight.

So easy is the outline of the ridge, so broad and flowing are the slopes, that those who have not mounted them cannot grasp the idea of their real height and steepness. The copse upon the summit yonder looks but a short stroll distant; how much you would be deceived did you attempt to walk thither! The ascent here in front seems nothing, but you must rest before you have reached a third of the way up. Ditchling Beacon there, on the left, is the very highest above the sea of the whole mighty range, but so great is the mass of the hill that the glance does not realise it.

Hope dwells there, somewhere, mayhap, in the breeze, in the sward, or the pale cups of the harebells. Now, having gazed at these, we can lean back on the cushions and wait patiently for the sea. There is nothing else, except the noble sycamores on the left hand just before the train draws into the station.

The clean dry brick pavements are scarcely less crowded than those of London, but as you drive through the town, now and then there is a glimpse of a greenish mist afar off between the houses. The green mist thickens in one spot almost at the horizon; or is it the dark nebulous sails of a vessel? Then the foam suddenly appears close at hand--a white streak seems to run from house to house, reflecting the sunlight: and this is Brighton.

"How different the sea looks away from the pier!" It is a new pleasure to those who have been full of gaiety to see, for once, the sea itself. Westwards, a mile beyond Hove, beyond the coastguard cottages, turn aside from the road, and go up on the rough path along the ridge of shingle. The hills are away on the right, the sea on the left; the yards of the ships in the basin slant across the sky in front.

With a quick, sudden heave the summer sea, calm and gleaming, runs a little way up the side of the groyne, and again retires. There is scarce a gurgle or a bubble, but the solid timbers are polished and smooth where the storms have worn them with pebbles. From a grassy spot ahead a bird rises, marked with white, and another follows it; they are wheatears; they frequent the land by the low beach in the autumn.

A shrill but feeble pipe is the cry of the sandpiper, disturbed on his moist feeding-ground. Among the stones by the waste places there are pale-green wrinkled leaves, and the large yellow petals of the sea-poppy. The bright colour is pleasant, but it is a flower best left ungathered, for its odour is not sweet. On the wiry sward the light pink of the sea-daisies (or thrift) is dotted here and there: of these gather as you will. The presence even of such simple flowers, of such well-known birds, distinguishes the solitary from the trodden beach. The pier is in view, but the sea is different here.

Drive eastwards along the cliffs to the rough steps cut down to the beach, descend to the shingle, and stroll along the shore to Rottingdean. The buttresses of chalk shut out the town if you go to them, and rest near the large pebbles heaped at the foot. There is nothing but the white cliff, the green sea, the sky, and the slow ships that scarcely stir.

In the spring, a starling comes to his nest in a cleft of the cliff above; he shoots over from the dizzy edge, spreads his wings, borne up by the ascending air, and in an instant is landed in his cave. On the sward above, in the autumn, the yellow lip of the toad-flax, spotted with orange, peers from the grass as you rest and gaze--how far?--out upon the glorious plain.

Or go up on the hill by the race-course, the highest part near the sea, and sit down there on the turf. If the west or south wind blow ever so slightly the low roar of the surge floats up, mingling with the rustle of the corn stacked in shocks on the slope. There inhale unrestrained the breeze, the sunlight, and the subtle essence which emanates from the ocean. For the loneliest of places are on the borders of a gay crowd, and thus in Brighton--the by-name for all that is crowded and London-like--it is possible to dream on the sward and on the shore.

In the midst, too, of this most modern of cities, with its swift, luxurious service of Pullman cars, its piers, and social pleasures, there exists a collection which, in a few strokes, as it were, sketches the ways and habits and thoughts of old rural England. It is not easy to realise in these days of quick transit and still quicker communication that old England was mostly rural.

There were towns, of course, seventy years ago, but even the towns were penetrated with what, for want of a better word, may be called country sentiment. Just the reverse is now the case; the most distant hamlet which the wanderer in his autumn ramblings may visit, is now more or less permeated with the feelings and sentiment of the city. No written history has preserved the daily life of the men who ploughed the Weald behind the hills there, or tended the sheep on the Downs, before our beautiful land was crossed with iron roads; while news, even from the field of Waterloo, had to travel slowly. And, after all, written history is but words, and words are not tangible.

But in this collection of old English jugs, and mugs, and bowls, and cups, and so forth, exhibited in the Museum, there is the real presentment of old rural England. Feeble pottery has ever borne the impress of man more vividly than marble. From these they quenched their thirst, over these they laughed and joked, and gossiped, and sang old hunting songs till the rafters rang, and the dogs under the table got up and barked. Cannot you see them? The stubbles are ready now once more for the sportsmen.

With long-barrelled flint-lock guns they ranged over that wonderful map of the land which lies spread out at your feet as you look down from the Dyke. There are already yellowing leaves; they will be brown after a while, and the covers will be ready once more for the visit of the hounds. The toast upon this mug would be very gladly drunk by the agriculturist of to-day in his silk hat and black coat. It is just what he has been wishing these many seasons.

"Here's to thee, mine honest friend,
Wishing these hard times to mend."

Hard times, then, are nothing new.

"It is good ale," is the inscription on another jug; that jug would be very welcome if so filled in many a field this very day. "Better luck still" is a jug motto which every one who reads it will secretly respond to. Cock-fighting has gone by, but we are even more than ever on the side of fair play, and in that sense can endorse the motto, "May the best cock win." A cup desires that fate should give

"Money to him who has spirit to use it,
And life to him who has courage to lose it."

A mug is moderate of wishes and somewhat cynical:--

"A little health, a little wealth,
A little house, and freedom;
And at the end a little friend,
And little cause to need him."

The toper, if he drank too deep, sometimes found a frog or newt at the bottom (in china)--a hint not to be too greedy. There seem to have been sad dogs about in those days from the picture on this piece--one sniffing regretfully at the bunghole of an empty barrel:--

"This cask when stored with gin I loved to taste,
But now a smell, alas! must break my fast."

Upon a cup a somewhat Chinese arrangement of words is found:--

More beer score Clarke
for my the his
do trust pay sent
I I must has
shall if you maltster
what for and the

These parallel columns can be deciphered by beginning at the last word, "the," on the right hand, and reading up. With rude and sometimes grim humour our forefathers seem to have been delighted. The teapots of our great grandmothers are even more amusingly inscribed and illustrated. At Gretna Green the blacksmith is performing a "Red-Hot Marriage," using his anvil for the altar.

"Oh! Mr. Blacksmith, ease our pains,
And tie us fast in wedlock's chains."

The china decorated with vessels and alluding to naval matters shows how popular was the navy, and how deeply everything concerning Nelson's men had sunk into the minds of the people. Some of the line of battleships here represented are most cleverly executed--every sail and rope and gun brought out with a clearness which the best draughtsman could hardly excel. It is a little hard, however, to preserve the time-honoured imputation upon Jack's constancy in this way on a jug:--

"A sailor's life's a pleasant life,
He freely roams from shore to shore;
In every port he finds a wife--
What can a sailor wish for more?"

Some enamoured potter having produced a masterpiece as a present to his lady destroyed the design, so that the service he gave her might be unique. After gazing at these curious old pieces, with dates of 1754, 1728, and so forth, the mind becomes attuned to such times, and the jug with the inscription, "Claret, 1652," seems quite an easy and natural transition.

From the Brighton of to-day it is centuries back to 1754; but from 1754 to 1652 is but a year or two. And after studying these shelves, and getting, as it were, so deep down in the past, it is with a kind of Rip Van Winkle feeling that you enter again into the sunshine of the day. The fair upon the beach does not seem quite real for a few minutes.

Before the autumn is too far advanced and the skies are uncertain, a few hours should be given to that massive Down which fronts the traveller from London, Ditchling Beacon, the highest above the sea-level. It is easy of access, the train carries you to Hassock's Gate--the station is almost in a copse--and an omnibus runs from it to a comfortable inn in the centre of Ditchling village. Thence to the Down itself the road is straight and the walk no longer than is always welcome after riding.

After leaving the cottages and gardens, the road soon becomes enclosed with hedges and trees, a mere country lane; and how pleasant are the trees after the bare shore and barren sea! The hand of autumn has browned the oaks, and has passed over the hedge, reddening the haws. The north wind rustles the dry hollow stalks of plants upon the mound, and there is a sense of hardihood in the touch of its breath.

The light is brown, for a vapour conceals the sun--it is not like a cloud, for it has no end or outline, and it is high above where the summer blue was lately. Or is it the buff leaves, the grey stalks, the dun grasses, the ripe fruit, the mist which hides the distance that makes the day so brown? But the ditches below are yet green with brooklime and rushes. By a gateway stands a tall campanula or bell-flower, two feet high or nearly, with great bells of blue.

A passing shepherd, without his sheep, but walking with his crook as a staff, stays and turns a brown face towards me when I ask him the way. He points with his iron crook at a narrow line which winds up the Down by some chalk-pits; it is a footpath from the corner of the road. Just by the corner the hedge is grey with silky flocks of clematis; the hawthorn is hidden by it. Near by there is a bush, made up of branches from five different shrubs and plants.

First hazel, from which the yellow leaves are fast dropping; among this dogwood, with leaves darkening; between these a bramble bearing berries, some red and some ripe, and yet a pink flower or two left. Thrusting itself into the tangle, long woody bines of bittersweet hang their clusters of red berries, and above and over all the hoary clematis spreads its beard, whitening to meet the winter. These five are all intermixed and bound up together, flourishing in a mass; nuts and edible berries, semi-poisonous fruit, flowers, creepers; and hazel, with markings under its outer bark like a gun-barrel.

This is the last of the plain. Now every step exposes the climber to the force of the unchecked wind. The harebells swing before it, the bennets whistle, but the sward springs to the foot, and the heart grows lighter as the height increases. The ancient hill is alone with the wind. The broad summit is left to scattered furze and fern cowering under its shelter. A sunken fosse and earthwork have slipped together. So lowly are they now after these fourteen hundred years that in places the long rough grass covers and conceals them altogether.

Down in the hollow the breeze does not come, and the bennets do not whistle, yet gazing upwards at the vapour in the sky I fancy I can hear the mass, as it were, of the wind going over. Standing presently at the edge of the steep descent looking into the Weald, it seems as if the mighty blast rising from that vast plain and glancing up the slope like an arrow from a tree could lift me up and bear me as it bears a hawk with outspread wings.

A mist which does not roll along or move is drawn across the immense stage below like a curtain. There is indeed, a brown wood beneath; but nothing more is visible. The plain is the vaster for its vague uncertainty. From the north comes down the wind, out of the brown autumn light, from the woods below and twenty miles of stubble. Its stratum and current is eight hundred feet deep.

Against my chest, coming up from the plough down there (the old plough, with the shaft moving on a framework with wheels), it hurls itself against the green ramparts, and bounds up savagely at delay. The ears are filled with a continuous sense of something rushing past; the shoulders go back square; an iron-like feeling enters into the sinews. The air goes through my coat as if it were gauze, and strokes the skin like a brush.

The tide of the wind, like the tide of the sea, swirls about, and its cold push at the first causes a lifting feeling in the chest--a gulp and pant--as if it were too keen and strong to be borne. Then the blood meets it, and every fibre and nerve is filled with new vigour. I cannot drink enough of it. This is the north wind.

High as is the hill, there are larks yonder singing higher still, suspended in the brown light. Turning away at last and tracing the fosse, there is at the point where it is deepest and where there is some trifling shelter, a flat hawthorn bush. It has grown as flat as a hurdle, as if trained espalierwise or against a wall--the effect, no doubt, of the winds. Into and between its gnarled branches, dry and leafless, furze boughs have been woven in and out, so as to form a shield against the breeze. On the lee of this natural hurdle there are black charcoal fragments and ashes, where a fire has burnt itself out; the stick still leans over on which was hung the vessel used at this wild bivouac.

Descending again by the footpath, the spur of the hill yonder looks larger and steeper and more ponderous in the mist; it seems higher than this, a not unusual appearance when the difference in altitude is not very great. The level we are on seems to us beneath the level in the distance, as the future is higher than the present. In the hedge or scattered bushes, half-way down by the chalk-pit, there grows a spreading shrub--the wayfaring tree--bearing large, broad, downy leaves and clusters of berries, some red and some black, flattened at their sides. There are nuts, too, here, and large sloes or wild bullace. This Ditchling Beacon is, I think, the nearest and the most accessible of the southern Alps from London; it is so near it may almost be said to be in the environs of the capital. But it is alone with the wind.

THE SOUTHDOWN SHEPHERD

The shepherd came down the hill carrying his greatcoat slung at his back upon his crook, and balanced by the long handle projecting in front. He was very ready and pleased to show his crook, which, however, was not so symmetrical in shape as those which are represented upon canvas. Nor was the handle straight; it was a rough stick--the first, evidently, that had come to hand.

As there were no hedges or copses near his walks, he had to be content with this bent wand till he could get a better. The iron crook itself he said was made by a blacksmith in a village below. A good crook was often made from the barrel of an old single-barrel gun, such as in their decadence are turned over to the bird-keepers.

About a foot of the barrel being sawn off at the muzzle end, there was a tube at once to fit the staff into, while the crook was formed by hammering the tough metal into a curve upon the anvil. So the gun--the very symbol of destruction--was beaten into the pastoral crook, the emblem and implement of peace. These crooks of village workmanship are now subject to competition from the numbers offered for sale at the shops at the market towns, where scores of them are hung up on show, all exactly alike, made to pattern, as if stamped out by machinery.

Each village-made crook had an individuality, that of the blacksmith--somewhat rude, perhaps, but distinctive--the hand shown in the iron. While talking, a wheatear flew past, and alighted near the path--a place they frequent. The opinion seems general that wheatears are not so numerous as they used to be. You can always see two or three on the Downs in autumn, but the shepherd said years ago he had heard of one man catching seventy dozen in a day.

Perhaps such wholesale catches were the cause of the comparative deficiency at the present day, not only by actual diminution of numbers, but in partially diverting the stream of migration. Tradition is very strong in birds (and all animated creatures); they return annually in the face of terrible destruction, and the individuals do not seem to comprehend the danger. But by degrees the race at large becomes aware of and acknowledges the mistake, and slowly the original tracks are deserted. This is the case with water-fowl, and even, some think, with sea-fish.

There was not so much game on the part of the hills he frequented as he had known when he was young, and with the decrease of the game the foxes had become less numerous. There was less cover as the furze was ploughed up. It paid, of course, better to plough it up, and as much as an additional two hundred acres on a single farm had been brought under the plough in his time. Partridges had much decreased, but there were still plenty of hares: he had known the harriers sometimes kill two dozen a day.

Plenty of rabbits still remained in places. The foxes' earths were in their burrows or sometimes under a hollow tree, and when the word was sent round the shepherds stopped them for the hunt very early in the morning. Foxes used to be almost thick. He had seen as many as six (doubtless the vixen and cubs) sunning themselves on the cliffs at Beachy Head, lying on ledges before their inaccessible breeding-places, in the face of the chalk.

At present he did not think there were more than two there. They ascended and descended the cliff with ease, though not, of course, the straight wall or precipice. He had known them fall over and be dashed to pieces, as when fighting on the edge, or in winter by the snow giving way under them. As the snow came drifting along the summit of the Down it gradually formed a projecting eave or cornice, projecting the length of the arm, and frozen.

Something like this may occasionally be seen on houses when the partially melted snow has frozen again before it could quite slide off. Walking on this at night, when the whole ground was white with snow, and no part could be distinguished, the weight of the fox as he passed a weak place caused it to give way, and he could not save himself. Last winter he had had two lambs, each a month old, killed by a fox which ate the heads and left the bodies; the fox always eating the head first, severing it, whether of a hare, rabbit, duck, or the tender lamb, and "covering"--digging a hole and burying--that which he cannot finish. To the buried carcase the fox returns the next night before he kills again.

His dog was a cross with a collie: the old sheep-dogs were shaggier and darker. Most of the sheep-dogs now used were crossed with the collie, either with Scotch or French, and were very fast--too fast in some respects. He was careful not to send them much after the flock, especially after feeding, when, in his own words, the sheep had "best walk slow then, like folk"--like human beings, who are not to be hastened after a meal. If he wished his dog to fetch the flock, he pointed his arm in the direction he wished the dog to go, and said, "Put her back." Often it was to keep the sheep out of turnips or wheat, there being no fences. But he made it a practice to walk himself on the side where care was needed, so as not to employ the dog unless necessary.

There is something almost Australian in the wide expanse of South Down sheepwalks, and in the number of the flocks, to those who have been accustomed to the small sheltered meadows of the vales, where forty or fifty sheep are about the extent of the stock on many farms. The land, too, is rented at colonial prices, but a few shillings per acre, so different from the heavy meadow rents. But, then, the sheep-farmer has to occupy a certain proportion of arable land as well as pasture, and here his heavy losses mainly occur.

There is nothing, in fact, in this country so carefully provided against as the possibility of an English farmer becoming wealthy. Much downland is covered with furze; some seems to produce a grass too coarse, so that the rent is really proportional. A sheep to an acre is roughly the allowance.

From all directions along the roads the bleating flocks concentrate at the right time upon the hillside where the sheep-fair is held. You can go nowhere in the adjacent town except uphill, and it needs no hand-post to the fair to those who know a farmer when they see him, the stream of folk tender thither so plainly. It rains, as the shepherd said it would; the houses keep off the drift somewhat in the town, but when this shelter is left behind, the sward of the hilltop seems among the clouds.

The descending vapours close in the view on every side. The actual field underfoot, the actual site of the fair, is visible, but the surrounding valleys and the Downs beyond them are hidden with vast masses of grey mist. For a moment, perhaps, a portion may lift as the breeze drives it along, and the bold, sweeping curves of a distant hill appear, but immediately the rain falls again and the outline vanishes. The glance can only penetrate a few hundred yards; all beyond that becomes indistinct, and some cattle standing higher up the hill are vague and shadowy.

Like a dew, the thin rain deposits a layer of tiny globules on the coat; the grass is white with them hurdles, flakes, everything is as it were the eighth of an inch deep in water. Thus on the hillside, surrounded by the clouds, the fair seems isolated and afar off. A great cart-horse is being trotted out before the little street of booths to make him show his paces; they flourish the first thing at hand--a pole with a red flag at the end--and the huge frightened animal plunges hither and thither in clumsy terror. You must look out for yourself and keep an eye over your shoulder, except among the sheep-pens.

There are thousands of sheep, all standing with their heads uphill. At the corner of each pen the shepherd plants his crook upright: some of them have long brown handles, and these are of hazel with the bark on; others are ash, and one of willow. At the corners, too, just outside, the dogs are chained, and, in addition, there is a whole row of dogs fastened to the tent pegs. The majority of the dogs thus collected together from many miles of the Downs are either collies, or show a very decided trace of the collie.

One old shepherd, an ancient of the ancients, grey and bent, has spent so many years among his sheep that he has lost all notice and observation--there is no "speculation in his eye" for anything but his sheep. In his blue smock frock, with his brown umbrella, which he has had no time or thought to open, he stands listening, all intent, to the conversation of the gentlemen who are examining his pens. He leads a young restless collie by a chain; the links are polished to a silvery brightness by continual motion; the collie cannot keep still; now he runs one side, now the other, bumping the old man, who is unconscious of everything but the sheep.

At the verge of the pens there stand four oxen with their yokes, and the long slender guiding-rod of hazel placed lightly across the necks of the two foremost. They are quite motionless, except their eyes, and the slender rod, so lightly laid across, will remain without falling. After traversing the whole field, if you return you will find them exactly in the same position. Some black cattle are scattered about on the high ground in the mist, which thickens beyond them, and fills up the immense hollow of the valley.

In the street of booths there are the roundabouts, the swings, the rifle galleries--like shooting into the mouth of a great trumpet--the shows, the cakes and brown nuts and gingerbread, the ale-barrels in a row, the rude forms and trestle tables; just the same, the very same, we saw at our first fair five-and-twenty years ago, and a hundred miles away. It is just the same this year as last, like the ploughs and hurdles, and the sheep themselves. There is nothing new to tempt the ploughboy's pennies--nothing fresh to stare at.

The same thing year after year, and the same sounds--the dismal barrel organs, and brazen instruments, and pipes, wailing, droning, booming. How melancholy the inexpressible noise when the fair is left behind, and the wet vapours are settling and thickening around it! But the melancholy is not in the fair--the ploughboy likes it; it is in ourselves, in the thought that thus, though the years go by, so much of human life remains the same--the same blatant discord, the same monotonous roundabout, the same poor gingerbread.

The ploughs are at work, travelling slowly at the ox's pace up and down the hillside. The South Down plough could scarcely have been invented; it must have been put together bit by bit in the slow years--slower than the ox; it is the completed structure of long experience. It is made of many pieces, chiefly wood, fitted and shaped and worked, as it were, together, well seasoned first, built up, like a ship, by cunning of hand.

None of these were struck out--a hundred a minute--by irresistible machinery ponderously impressing its will on iron as a seal on wax--a hundred a minute, and all exactly alike. These separate pieces which compose the plough were cut, chosen, and shaped in the wheelwright's workshop, chosen by the eye, guided in its turn by long knowledge of wood, and shaped by the living though hardened hand of man. So complicated a structure could no more have been struck out on paper in a deliberate and single plan than those separate pieces could have been produced by a single blow.

There are no machine lines--no lines filed out in iron or cut by the lathe to the draughtsman's design, drawn with straight-edge and ruler on paper. The thing has been put together bit by bit: how many thousand, thousand clods must have been turned in the furrows before the idea arose, and the curve to be given to this or that part grew upon the mind as the branch grows on the tree! There is not a sharp edge or sharp corner in it; it is all bevelled and smoothed and fluted as if it had been patiently carved with a knife, so that, touch it where you will, it handles pleasantly.

In these curved lines and smoothness, in this perfect adaptability of means to end, there is the spirit of art showing itself, not with colour or crayon, but working in tangible material substance. The makers of this plough--not the designer--the various makers, who gradually put it together, had many things to consider. The fields where it had to work were, for the most part, on a slope, often thickly strewn with stones which jar and fracture iron.

The soil was thin, scarce enough on the upper part to turn a furrow, deepening to nine inches or so at the bottom. So quickly does the rain sink in, and so quickly does it dry, that the teams work in almost every weather, while those in the vale are enforced to idleness. Drain furrows were not needed, nor was it desirable that the ground should be thrown up in "lands," rising in the centre. Oxen were the draught animals, patient enough, but certainly not nimble. The share had to be set for various depths of soil.

All these are met by the wheel plough, and in addition it fulfils the indefinite and indefinable condition of handiness. A machine may be apparently perfect, a boat may seem on paper, and examined on principles, the precise build, and yet when the one is set to work and the other floated they may fail. But the wheel plough, having grown up, as it were, out of the soil, fulfils the condition of handiness.

This handiness, in fact, embraces a number of minor conditions which can scarcely be reduced to writing, but which constantly occur in practice, and by which the component parts of the plough were doubtless unconsciously suggested to the makers. Each has its proper name. The framework, on wheels in front--the distinctive characteristic of the plough--is called collectively "tacks," and the shafts of the plough rest on it loosely, so that they swing or work almost independently, not unlike a field-gun limbered up.

The pillars of the framework have numerous holes, so that the plough can be raised or lowered, that the share may dig deep or shallow. Then there is the "cock-pin," the "road-bat" (a crooked piece of wood), the "sherve-wright" (so pronounced)--shelvewright (?)--the "rist," and spindle, besides, of course, the usual coulter and share. When the oxen arrive at the top of the field, and the first furrow is completed, they stop, well knowing their duty, while the ploughman moves the iron rist, and the spindle which keeps it in position, to the other side, and moves the road-bat so as to push the coulter aside. These operations are done in a minute, and correspond in some degree to turning the rudder of a ship. The object is that the plough, which has been turning the earth one way, shall now (as it is reversed to go downhill) continue to turn it that way. If the change were not effected when the plough was swung round, the furrow would be made opposite. Next he leans heavily on the handles, still standing on the same spot; this lifts the plough, so that it turns easily as if on a pivot.

Then the oxen "jack round"--that is, walk round--so as to face downhill, the framework in front turning like the fore-wheels of a carriage. So soon as they face downhill and the plough is turned, they commence work and make the second furrow side by side with the first. The same operation is repeated at the bottom, and thus the plough travels straight up and down, always turning the furrow the same way, instead of, as in the valleys, making a short circuit at each end, and throwing the earth in opposite directions. The result is a perfectly level field, which, though not designed for it, must suit the reaping-machine better than the drain furrows and raised "lands" of the valley system.

It is somewhat curious that the steam plough, the most remarkable application of machinery to agriculture, in this respect resembles the village-made wheel plough. The plough drawn by steam power in like manner turns the second furrow side by side into the first, always throwing the earth the same way, and leaving the ground level. This is one of its defects on heavy, wet land, as it does not drain the surface. But upon the slopes of the Downs no drains or raised "lands" are needed, and the wheel plough answers perfectly.

So perfectly, indeed, does it answer that no iron plough has yet been invented that can beat it, and while the valleys and plains are now almost wholly worked with factory-made ploughs, the South Downs are cultivated with the ploughs made in the villages by the wheelwrights. A wheelwright is generally regularly employed by two or three farms, which keep him in constant work. There is not, perhaps, another home-made implement of old English agriculture left in use; certainly, none at once so curious and interesting, and, when drawn by oxen, so thoroughly characteristic.

Under the September sun, flowers may still be found in sheltered places, as at the side of furze, on the highest of the Downs. Wild thyme continues to bloom--the shepherd's thyme--wild mignonette, blue scabious, white dropwort, yellow bedstraw, and the large purple blooms of greater knapweed. Here and there a blue field gentian is still in flower; "eggs and bacon" grow beside the waggon tracks. Grasshoppers hop among the short dry grass; bees and humble-bees are buzzing about, and there are places quite bright with yellow hawkweeds.

The furze is everywhere full of finches, troops of them; and there are many more swallows than were flying here a month since. No doubt they are on their way southwards, and stay, as it were, on the edge of the sea while yet the sun shines. As the evening falls the sheep come slowly home to the fold. When the flock is penned some stand panting, and the whole body at each pant moves to and fro lengthways; some press against the flakes till the wood creaks; some paw the dry and crumbling ground (arable), making a hollow in which to lie down.