STOCKBRIDGE WINCHESTER. 321 



The laboring class upon the downs have generally a quiet, 

 sleepy, stupid expression, with less evident viciousness and licen- 

 tious coarseness of character, and with more simplicity, frankness, 

 and good-nature than those we have previously been among. 

 The utter want of curiosity and intelligent observation, among a 

 people living so retired from the busy world, is remarkable. We 

 have met but two to-day whose minds showed any inclination to 

 move of their own accord : one of them was a* pensioned soldier 

 who had served at Halifax, and who made inquiries about several 

 old comrades who had deserted and escaped to " the States," and 

 whom he seemed to suppose we must have seen r as we were 

 Yankees ; the other, an old woman in Newtown-Tawney, at 

 whose cottage we stopped to get water ; she had at first taken us, 

 as we came one after the other over the stile, for a " detachment 

 of the Rifles," and on discovering her error was quite anxious to 

 know what we were after, what we carried in our knapsacks, etc. 



June 18tk. 



In the morning we walked from Wallop through Stockbridge 

 to Winchester. A down-land district still, as yesterday, but a 

 well-traveled road, with houses, inns, and guide-boards ; more 

 frequent plantations of trees and more cultivated land, yet but 

 little of it fenced, and the sheep restrained from crops by shep- 

 herds and dogs. Since we left Salisbury we have seen but three 

 cows, each of which was tethered or led by a woman or child. 

 We have seen no donkeys for the last hundred miles. 



Stockbridge is a small village of one wide street, with two clear 

 streams and a canal crossing it, the surface of the ground a dead 

 flat ; all as unlike its Massachusetts namesake as it is to a Paw- 

 nee village. We saw some fine horses near here. 



Winchester a name we remember as that of the school-place 

 of many a good man is an interesting old town in a cleft of the 

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