2 IDLEHURST: 



would end your days there, you so far failed from 

 your old vagrant principles (or was it that the old 

 country had now become the stranger land ?) as 

 to look back to England, and to ask me for some 

 account of our country life at home. You were 

 pleased with the idea of a little chronicle of our 

 Arnington days which I proposed to make you, as 

 the readiest way I could find of presenting our 

 country and people. Before my summer's journal 

 is well ended, here you are in England again ! But 

 since you are tied in London, where a man is merged 

 and lost, for sure, as wholly as he can be in Sarawak 

 in London that seems farther from Arnington 

 quietude than your eastern isles I think you may 

 still entertain my compilation. It may serve in 

 some measure to bring before you in Hampstead the 

 life of the Weald a life, I am afraid, that is un- 

 distinguished, commonplace enough ; and yet the 

 length between that and the pattern-moulded world 

 you look down upon from the Heath ! Being so little 

 a traveller, I owe my knowledge of considerable 

 portions of rural England to modern novels ; and 

 I learn from this source that Titanic passions, salient 

 immorality, and an unintelligible dialect distinguish, 

 singly or in combination, the peasantry of various 

 parts of the British Isles with which I happen to be 



