126 AWAKENING OF ENGLAND. 



many grandchildren of his own, has brought up 

 a family of fifteen, sustaining them out of the 

 produce of his holding of eighteen acres, which 

 was originally started by his grandfather turn- 

 ing over an acre of heathland. Health and 

 fecundity seem borne upon the wings of the 

 winds which sweep across the Downs. 



Inside, on the two-feet thick clay walls of the 

 cottage, under a roof of heather thatch, is hung 

 a picture of Gladstone ; an oleograph of Queen 

 Victoria ; a lurid battle scene of Tel-el-Kebir, 

 savagely crowded with incidents of slaughter, 

 adjoining the text '* God is Love " ; and on a 

 little table under the window a Bible reposes 

 on a snow-white antimacassar. Nothing would 

 induce the old man now to leave his mud cottage, 

 where he said it was cool in the summer and 

 warm in the winter, for a red-brick, slated, 

 modern house. His son could live in one of 

 those, he said scornfully. Perhaps he felt like 

 the old gipsy whom some one tried to persuade 

 to leave the hedgerow for a brick dwelling. 

 " No," he said, " I can't play any tricks with 

 my health at my time of life by living in a 

 house." 



Our small holder, like most of his neigh- 

 bours, belonged to a thrifty, hard-working. 



