at means from
Bedfordshire pretty well up to Carlisle. North-east of that again, in
Northumberland, you have delightful manners.

The Northumbrian peasant, like the Scottish, greets you as an equal,
the Wiltshire man as a superior, yet neither loses dignity thereby.
The Lancashire man treats you as his inferior, and is not himself
advantaged, whether it be so or not.

A HERMITAGE IN SIGHT

I hope that I have secured for myself a haven, a yet more impenetrable
shade than this, against the time when, having seen four generations
of men, two behind and two beyond, I may consider in silence what is
likely to be the end of it all. It is true that I am getting old, but
I am not yet prepared for a lodge in the wilderness. My present house
has a wall on the village street. The post-office is a matter of
crossing the road; the church is at the bottom of a meadow. I like all
that, because I like all my neighbours and the sound of their voices.
At eleven o'clock in the morning I can hear the children let out from
school, "as shrill as swifts in upper air." That, too, I like. But the
time will come when silence is best, and, as I say, I believe that I
have found the very place. I have had my eye upon it for years, and
seldom a month passes but I am there. A small black dog and I once saw
Oreads there, or said we did, and in print at that. This very year
the farm to which it belongs came into the market, and was sold; the
purchaser will treat with me. I have described it once, nay twice,
and won't do it again. Enough to say that it is the butt end of a deep
green combe in the Downs, that it is sheltered from every wind, faces
the south, and is below an ancient road, now a grass track, and the
remains of what is called a British village on the ordnance maps, a
great ramparted square with half a dozen gateways and two mist-pools
within its ambit. All about it lie the neolithic dead, of whose race,
as Glaucus told Diomede, "I boast myself to be."

We are all Iberians here, or so I love to believe, grounding
myself upon the learned Dr. Beddoes--a swarthy people, dark-haired,
grey-eyed, rather under than over the mean height. The aboriginal
strain has proved itself stronger than the Frisian, and the Danish
type does not appear at all. There are English names among us, of
course, such as Gurd, which is Gurth as pronounced by a Norman; but it
is understood that we are neolithic chiefly on the distaff side. The
theory that each