320 A Sketch of the Parish of Yatesbury. 



within itself to fall back upon ; and I therefore venture to assert 

 that a hundred years ago Yatesbury was pre-eminent in this respect 

 of isolation. 



It may here occur to some of my readers that any reference to a 

 parish only a hundred years ago deserves no place in an ai'chaeological 

 magazine : why it is but the other day, in the lifetime of our grand- 

 fathers ! it is a tale of quite modern times ! there cannot be much 

 difference between a date so recent and the present day ! But here 

 I venture to reply that such objectors scarcely realize what the 

 absence of a hard road to a village means. If I do not very much 

 mistake, it means complete banishment from the rest of the world 

 for a veiy lai'ge portion of the year: it means inaccessibility to any 

 vehicle with springs for many consecutive months at least, if not 

 altogether : and, therefore, not only is it unapproachable from with- 

 out by the world in general ; but to the majority of its inhabitants 

 there was no escape from it, and only those who had means to ride 

 on horseback or on pillion, or had strength to wade through the deep 

 mud of the lanes on foot, could leave their village home through 

 the entire winter.^ 



Under these circumstances there must have been a considerable 

 stagnation of intelligence. The inhabitants would live in a world 

 of their own, absorbed in their own and their neighbours^ every-day 

 affairs, concentrating all their hopes and fears and desires in the 

 local trifles of the village, and making their own parish the focus 

 of their political world. With their daily thoughts thus running 

 in a circle — and a very confined circle, too — there could not have 

 been much scope for the expansion of the mind. Rumours from 

 without would doubtless arrive from time to time, more or less per- 

 verted from the real facts to which they referred : exaggerated 



^ Even so lately as twenty-five years ago the labouring classes in this parish 

 had become almost rooted to the spot, the women more especially seldom left 

 their homes except to work in the fields, and several of the elder women assured 

 me they had never been so far as Devizes in their lives. That was before the 

 passion for roaming and for change, now so prevalent among all classes, had 

 seized upon the people, a passion doubtless aroused by facilities of locomotion 

 through the introduction of railroads ; but whether it is a taste which conduces 

 to their real happiness admits — as I think — of considerable doubt. 



