THE DOWNS 117 



Everything has an air of being made snug in case of 

 the worst, all top hamper is dispensed with as far as 

 may be ; the very flocks of geese seem to be on the 

 outlook for dirty weather, and never to be happy far 

 away from home. Yet, withal, for picturesque comfort, 

 give us these farms before any we have admired else- 

 where in the British Isles. We would rather not 

 speculate on the condition of their inmates in the short 

 days of a sloppy winter, but no human lot is perfect. 

 Then there are their long, low churches, with their 

 squat, square-set towers, older, more massive, and 

 more weather-worn than the homesteads everything 

 is long-lived here, man among the rest, as you may 

 gather from the inscriptions on the bleached tomb- 

 stones the heavily buttressed little bridges, the 

 wrinkled ivy stems beaten right into the cement and 

 stone work, while where the ivy leaves would droop 

 naturally below the arch the wind has done the work 

 of the pruning knife ; the cottages cowering under the 

 bank by some deep-grooved chalk lane, finding in their 

 humility such comparative shelter, that strange species 

 of hardy creepers hang in tough masses from their 

 gables. Except for a colony of rabbits you send 

 scuttling off to their quarters in a furzy sand-bank, 

 or some wiry hare who goes lolloping up the slopes in 

 his perfect training, shaking his fud at you in light- 

 hearted defiance, anything like game is infrequent. 

 Bustards vanished generations ago, and the curlews 

 we may suppose have followed them. The rarity of 

 graceful birds of prey, so far as our observation has 



