al disgrace, for voting according to
his conscience), used to bring out on high days, holidays, and bonfire
nights. And the splendid old cross church at Uffington, the Uffingas
town;--the whole country-side teems with Saxon names and memories! And
the old moated grange at Compton, nestled close under the hillside,
where twenty Marianas may have lived, with its bright waterlilies in the
moat, and its yew walk, "the cloister walk," and its peerless terraced
gardens. There they all are, and twenty things besides; for those who
care about them, and have eyes. And these are the sort of things you may
find, I believe, every one of you, in any common English country
neighbourhood.

Will you look for them under your own noses, or will you not? Well,
well; I've done what I can to make you, and if you will go gadding over
half Europe now every holidays, I can't help it. I was born and bred a
west-countryman, thank God! a Wessex man, a citizen of the noblest Saxon
kingdom of Wessex, a regular, "Angular Saxon," the very soul of me
"adscriptus glebe." There's nothing like the old country-side for me,
and no music like the twang of the real old Saxon tongue, as one gets it
fresh from the veritable chaw in the White Horse Vale: and I say with
"Gaarge Ridler," the old west-country yeoman,

"Throo aall the waarld owld Gaarge would bwoast,
Commend me to merry owld England mwoast:
While vools gwoes prating vur and nigh,
We stwops at whum, my dog and I."

Here at any rate lived and stopped at home, Squire Brown, J.P. for the
county of Berks, in a village near the foot of the White Horse range.
And here he dealt out justice and mercy in a rough way, and begat sons
and daughters, and hunted the fox, and grumbled at the badness of the
roads and the times. And his wife dealt out stockings, and calico
shirts, and smock frocks, and comforting drinks to the old folks with
the "rheumatiz." and good counsel to all; and kept the coal and clothes
clubs going, for yule tide; when the bands of mummers came round,
dressed out in ribbons and coloured paper caps, and stamped round the
Squire's kitchen, repeating in true sing-song vernacular the legend of
St. George and his fight, and the ten-pound Doctor, who plays his part
at healing the Saint--a relic, I believe, of the old middle-age
mysteries. It was the first dramatic representation which greeted the
eyes of little Tom, who was brought down into the kitch