100 IDLEHURST : 



legs on a warm hedge bank, and fumbling for his 

 bread and cheese and flat bottle. All reprove my 

 otiose mood. I move so as to get a better view of 

 the patches of colour in the garden, seen between the 

 fir-trunks ; and while I look at the smiling oasis I 

 count seven of the tufted parachutes of the dandelion 

 sail by me from the meadows, which of late were 

 golden all over with the flowers, into the parterre and 

 the herbarium. To-day the feathery globes are 

 scattering far and wide, pledges to the gardener that 

 wholesome work in grubbing of leathery taproots 

 shall not fail him hereafter. To-morrow I will cer- 

 tainly have a turn with the spud ; to-day is sacred 

 to the contemplative life. 



In the afternoon I made a visit to the master of 

 Lycetts Farm, one John Avery, an agriculturist of 

 seventy-five, roundly prosperous in the midst of the 

 decaying industry ; with whom I have occasional 

 commerce of poultry-sittings or cider, and also, I think, 

 of feeling, in our common, well-developed natural Con- 

 servatism. Lycetts Farm stands low and close, as 

 do nearly all the old foundations in our country ; you 

 hardly see, till the last turn of the green cart-road 

 opens out the farmstead clearing, its four fine 

 chimney stacks, warm red-brick walls, and long roof 

 of " Horsham slate," the flat cleft sandstone, graduated 



