228 IDLEHURST : 



the nice and witty and pretty people, to make towns 

 such as this, conserved and purified, into country- 

 side Athenses ; to form distinct schools of letters and 

 art, individual growths, not that universal Cockney 

 mind, smoke-ingrained, stage-ridden, convention- 

 throttled, which now masquerades under the forms 

 of every clime and dialect within reach of a tourist- 

 ticket. 



Towards which state of things may County Coun- 

 cillors, not the least my three friends (whom I meet 

 on my way back through the town, fiincti officio, 

 smoking well-deserved Regalias), help to bring us. 

 Of late they have shown signs of appreciating the 

 worth of natural beauty ; a trifle, indeed, in face of the 

 coming Light Railways and the prevailing estimate 

 of protests against a three per cent. Vandalism as 

 maudlin affectation ; but a beginning that may grow. 

 A little more education, and the state of the Kaffir 

 market, or the registrations, or the birds, may still 

 leave our C.C.'s leisure to be conservative in a sense 

 posterity will conspire to praise. Yet a little more, 

 and Mr. Biles the educationalist may read Plato, 

 abjure Macaulay, and ultimately throw over his dis- 

 torted dream of Progress, four-fifths Bumble and the 

 rest Sansculotte, for service of his generation holding 



