ne turnip-fields, or bean-fields;
anything rather than waste land. The heather on the hills might glow to
crimson, and the bracken fade from emerald to bronze, without touching a
chord in that sturdy farmer's heart. Hindhead, you read, "is certainly
the most villainous spot that God ever made," and Cobbett will have
nothing to do with it.

The last fifty years have altered and enlarged Thursley church, but it
still retains the distinction, unique in Surrey, of its timber tower and
steeple rising from the centre of the nave. Other churches in the
county--Dunsfold and Alfold in the neighbourhood--carry their
bell-turrets on ingenious constructions of timber, but there is no such
collection in any other Surrey church of such superb beams as are to be
seen at Thursley. The effect of these dark and majestic pillars of oak,
some of them thirty inches square, with their great crossbeams, and
their arches springing from the pillars across the nave, is one of
astonishing splendour and power. Outside, the shingled turret tells the
time with, instead of a clock, a fine old sundial.

To the north of the church stands a thing of terror. The full story of
the murder of the "unknown sailor" belongs to Hindhead; but Thursley has
his grave. It lies apart, in the centre of a stretch of green grass;
above it, a stone too tall for quietness; no other grave shares that
lonely lawn. Here is the queer, mis-spelt epitaph:--

When pitying Eyes to see my Grave shall come,
And with a generous Tear bedew my Tomb;
Here shall they read my melancholy Fate,
With Murder and Barbarity complete.
In perfect Health, and in the Flower of Age,
I fell a Victim to three Ruffians Rage;
On bended Knees I mercy strove t' obtain,
Their Thirst of Blood made all Entreaties vain.
No dear Relation, or still dearer Friend,
Weeps my hard Lot, or miserable End;
Yet o'er my sad Remains, (my Name unknown,)
A generous Public have inscrib'd this Stone.

Above the epitaph a rough carving shows the sailor kneeling to his
murderers. Mr. Baring-Gould, in the _Broom Squire_ makes Iver Verstage,
the artist, laugh at the crudely drawn figures. But the horror of this
grave, from which all the other quieter graves are gathered apart, has
very little laughter in it.

Thursley Common once rang with the picks and hammers of an iron mine; it
was one of the centres of a great industry of the Weald. The surface of
the common is scarr