148 AN AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



The labouring class upon the downs have generally a quiet, 

 sleepy, stupid expression, with less evident viciousness and 

 licentious coarseness of character, and with more simplicity, 

 frankness, and good-nature, than those we have previously 

 been among. The utter want of curiosity and intelligent 

 observation, among a people living so retired from the busy 

 world, is remarkable. We have met but two to-day whose 

 minds showed any inclination to move of their own accord : 

 one of them was a pensioned soldier who had served at Hali 

 fax, and who made inquiries about several old comrades who 

 had deserted and escaped to &quot; the States,&quot; and whom he 

 seemed to suppose we must have seen as we were Yankees ; 

 the other, an old woman in Newtown-Tawney, at whose cottage 

 we stopped to get water ; she had at first taken us, as we 

 came one after the other over the stile, for a &quot; detachment of 

 the Rifles,&quot; and on discovering her error was quite anxious 

 to know what we were and what we were after, what we 

 carried in our knapsacks, &c. 



June \$th. 



In the morning we walked from Wallop through Stock- 

 bridge to Winchester. A down-land district still, as yester 

 day, but a well-travelled road, with houses, inns, and guide- 

 boards ; more frequent plantations of trees and more culti 

 vated land, yet but little of it is fenced, and the sheep are 

 restrained from crops by shepherds and dogs. Since we left 

 Salisbury we have seen but three cows, each of which was 

 tethered or tied to a woman or child. We have seen no don 

 keys for the last hundred miles. 



Stockbridge is a small village of one wide street, with two 

 clear streams and a canal crossing it, the surface of the ground 

 a dead flat ; all as unlike its Massachusetts namesake as it is 

 to a Pawnee village. We saw some fine horses near here. 



Winchester a name we remember as that of the school- 



