244 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE 



and " the branches of a vine " still trail above the 

 parlour window. The interior of the cottage remains 

 in almost the same condition as when the " good 

 dairyman " lived there. The two corner cupboards 

 occupy their old position in the parlour, and the door 

 of the dairy with the original open lattice-work still 

 swings on its ancient hinges. Upstairs, the room in 

 which the daughter died, with the great brick chimney- 

 stack standing out against the wall, is but slightly 

 altered since the early summer of 1801. The present 

 occupier of the cottage shows with pride a length of 

 iron chain which formerly belonged to old Wallbridge, 

 and the original chimney-rack from which his bacon 

 was suspended. Hard by the cottage a Wesleyan 

 Methodist church, known as "The Dairyman's 

 Daughter's Memorial Chapel," now stands, built — in 

 part, at least — with the offerings of strangers, whose 

 interest in Legh Richmond's story had led them to 

 make a pilgrimage to the cottage. Numbers of 

 persons still continue to visit the grave of the dairy- 

 man's daughter in Arreton churchyard, marked by a 

 headstone bearing an epitaph of much simple beauty 

 from the pen of her pious biographer. Legh Rich- 

 mond himself officiated at her funeral, and as the 

 procession filed into the church, he mentions that, 

 looking upwards, he observed a dial — one of the few 

 ancient sundials now remaining in the Isle of Wight — 

 on the church wall, which brought to his mind the 

 Psalmist's words, " Our days on the earth are as a 

 shadow, and there is none abiding." 



Some two miles from the cottage there stood in 

 Legh Richmond's time " a large and venerable 

 mansion, situated in a beautiful valley at the foot 

 of a high hill." This was Knighton, the house where 



