ee thousand persons attended the funeral; no one was
permitted to wear any but gay clothes; and the funeral sermon was read
by a little girl of twelve, from the text, Micah vii. 8, 9.

[Sidenote: A DIGRESSION ON MILLS]

The mill of John Oliver has vanished, nothing but a depression in the
turf now indicating where its foundations stood. Too many Sussex
windmills have disappeared. Clayton still has her twain, landmarks for
many miles--I have seen them on exceptionally clear days from the
Kentish hills--and other windmills are scattered over the county; but
many more than now exist have ceased to be, victims of the power of
steam. There is probably no contrast aesthetically more to the
disadvantage of the modern substitute than that of the steam mill of
to-day with the windmill of yesterday. The steam mill is always ugly,
always dusty, always noisy, usually in a town. The windmill stands high
and white, a thing of life and radiance and delicate beauty, surrounded
by grass, in communion with the heavens. Such noise as it has is
elemental, justifiable, like a ship's cordage in a gale. No one would
paint a steam mill; a picture with a windmill can hardly be a failure.
Constable, who knew everything about the magic of windmills, painted
several in Sussex--one even at Brighton.

Brighton now has but one mill. There used to be many: one in the West
Hill road, a comelier landmark than the stucco Congregational tower that
has taken its place close by and serves as the town's sentinel from
almost every point of approach. In 1797 a miller near Brighton
anticipated American enterprise by moving his mill bodily to a place two
miles distant by the help of eighty oxen.

Another weakness of steam mills is that they are apparently without
millers--at least there is no unmistakable dominating presence in a
white hat, to whom one can confidently apply the definite article, as in
the mill on the hill. Millers' men there are in plenty, but the miller
is lacking. This is because steam mills belong to companies. Thus, with
the passing of the windmill we lose also the miller, that notable figure
in English life and tradition; always jolly, if the old songs are true;
often eccentric, as the story of John Oliver has shown; and usually a
character, as becomes one who lives by the four winds, or by water--for
the miller of tradition was often found in a water-mill too. The
water-miller's empire has been threatened less than that of the
windmill