A JOURNAL KEPT IN THE COUNTRY. 22/ 



to us the good parts of country towns like this 

 a city not too dense for the swallows to build at 

 the eaves of the street, for lilies to look over the 

 fences in the steep closes, for breaths of the Down 

 grass to come across the inmost lanes. Let us 

 have Brighton ("a stenchy place," in Lucy Sayers' 

 compendious description after her one visit) to 

 absorb riches and civic zeal, notables, criminals, 

 and the strange woman ; let us keep a country 

 town or two as preserves for clean atmospheres of 

 body and soul, for the almost lost secret of sitting 

 still. 



The warm air, the silence, or sounds that seem a 

 part of silence, the least rustle of breeze in the dead 

 grass, the wiz-wiz-wiz of the grasshoppers, have a 

 drowsy spell. I find myself tangled in half-dreams 

 of a devolution by which, when national amenity 

 shall have become mentionable besides personal 

 pence, London shall attract to herself all the small 

 vice, as she does already most of the great, from the 

 country, all the thrusters after gain, the vulgar, 

 heavy-fingered intellects, the Progressive spouters, 

 the Bileses, the speculating brigandage, and shall 

 give us back from the foggy world of clubs and 

 cab-ranks the geniuses, the poets and painters, all 



