A JOURNAL KEPT IN THE COUNTRY. 9 1 



sawmill at Blackhatch, you can hear it all day ; only 

 it doesn't matter so much, because it sounds just 

 like the baa of a Spring lamb. And your blessed 

 metropolis of a village, with its progressive tastes ! 

 I was out in the woods last night, to hear the 

 nightingales no, not sonnetteering and there was 

 an infernal steam-circus with an organ in full blast 

 down on the Green, and a rifle gallery. The wind 

 was that way, and a damnable waltz with a wrong 

 note every third bar got into my head ; and I had 

 to give up the nightingales and go home to bed. 

 A man who wants to put nature English nature 

 into verse, must shut one eye and ear at least. At 

 the present rate of things, we shall have to stick to 

 classical models before long, and take to Pope 

 again." 



After this we slip away into Oxford matters ; the 

 Dean, a certain Proctor, Vincent's, Mr. Spooner's 

 latest, Abel Beesley, some new skiff-riggers, Mesopo- 

 tamia ; and come back to a light-hearted comparison 

 of Horace with Catullus as a metrist ; when Gervase 

 finds it is perilously near dinner-time, and rushes 

 away in the midst of 



" Saltuumque reconditorum 

 Amniumque sonantum." 



I am left to go over my far-off terms, touched into 



