THE VILLAGE. 



289 



Nor is it hard to believe in the smugglers and their strings 

 of pack-horses making their way up from the lawless old 

 villages of the Weald, of which the memory still existed 

 when my father settled in Down. The village stands on 

 solitary upland country, 500 to 600 feet above the sea, — a 

 country with little natural beauty, but possessing a certain 

 charm in the shaws, or straggling strips of wood, capping the 

 chalky banks and looking down upon the quiet ploughed 

 lands of the valleys. The village, of three or four hundred 

 inhabitants, consists of three small streets of cottages meeting 

 in front of the little flint-built church. It is a place where 

 new-comers are seldom seen, and the names occurring far 

 back in the old church registers are still well known in the 

 village. The smock-frock is not yet quite extinct, though 

 chiefly used as a ceremonial dress by the "bearers " at funer- 

 als : but as a boy I remember the purple or green smocks of 

 the men at church. 



The house stands a quarter of a mile from the village, and 

 is built, like so many houses of the last century, as near as 

 possible to the road — a narrow lane winding away to the 

 Westerham high-road. In 1842, it was dull and unattractive 

 enough : a square brick building of three storeys, covered 

 with shabby whitewash and hanging tiles. The garden 

 had none of the shrubberies or walls that now give shelter ; 

 it was overlooked from the lane, and was open, bleak, and 

 desolate. One of my father's first undertakings was to lower 

 the lane by about two feet, and to build a flint wall along that 

 part of it which bordered the garden. The earth thus exca- 

 vated was used in making banks and mounds round the 

 lawn : these were planted with evergreens, which now give 

 to the garden its retired and sheltered character. 



The house was made to look neater by being covered with 

 stucco, but the chief improvement effected was the building 

 of a large bow extending up through three storeys, This 

 bow became covered with a tangle of creepers, and pleasantly 

 varied the south side of the house. The drawing-room, with 

 its verandah opening into the garden, as well as the study in 

 H 



