HOP-GARDENS AND FARMING 83 



feelings of pride, he slips them into his pocket with the 

 smallest donation, and goes off with your tip in the 

 evening to the public-house, where he probably forgets 

 to drink your health. 



But if the circumstances of their surroundings con- 

 spire to make men poets, our parish ought to boast its 

 Clares and its Bloomfields, although we have never 

 heard that it prides itself on such worthies. We have 

 at least a score of cottages in our eye, each of them 

 absolutely enchanting at all events when admired from 

 a little distance ; such cottages as you see in the Under- 

 cliff of the Isle of Wight, so far as the luxuriance of 

 their simple gardens goes ; such cottages in form and 

 colouring as Birket Foster loves to paint. Here is one 

 held by the lord of the manor on a six hundred years' 

 least -granted by her Majesty Queen Elizabeth. It 

 stands opposite the finger-post at the corner of the 

 cross roads in its carefully defined boundaries between 

 the chart and the woodlands. It looks its age all over ; 

 yet its occupants, who are vain of its antiquity, not- 

 withstanding their habits of grumbling, will assure you 

 it is as good as new. There is a group of others within 

 rifle-shot, half-way down an almost precipitous hill, 

 facing the gravel-pit that is honeycombed by the sand- 

 martins. The venerable black oaken beams are form- 

 ing quaint patterns of tracery on the whitewashed walls, 

 while the lines and angles of the foundations and 

 ground-floors offer the most eccentric studies in per- 

 spective. We have already taken a look at the 

 cottages on the charts, and you come on others almost 



