A JOURNAL KEPT IN THE COUNTRY. 259 



sport is there than finding the buttons and broadbrims 

 in the lush pasture ?), the children of the lesser growth 

 strayed away in the fields beneath, with shouts of 

 discovery, with races and a squabble or two, perhaps, 

 for the prizes. 



From the top of the first meadow there is a favourite 

 view of mine a vista between two dark green 

 oaks in the neighbouring chase, a view which one 

 can shut out with one hand at arm's length. First 

 comes a hillside of sloping meadows and hedges, 

 rising to a cluster of red roofs among stripes of corn- 

 land dotted with sheaves ; next, woodland, ridge over 

 ridge ; beyond a dip of the woods a streak of light 

 that means the broad levels of the Weald ; last, a 

 blue hill that meets the sky twenty miles away. 

 This always seems to me an epitome of the true 

 England not dockyard forests, nor groves of chim- 

 neys, nor roaring streets ; this is the heart still, I tell 

 myself. It is for this, at bottom, that the Aldershot 

 guns are at work to-day, shaking the still air with a 

 dull abrupt thunder ; for this that Bob and Peter are 

 so soon to be sent across the world. As we rest by 

 the field-gate, the General listens to the sound of the 

 firing, thinking perhaps of the different intonation 

 which shell gives to the guns the guns to which 



