THE SOUTH COUNTRY n 



ible only at the end nearest the plain, where the cleft is 

 sometimes so narrow that not even a dog can enter. 



This, then, is my South Country. It covers the North 

 Downs and the South Downs, the Icknield Way and the 

 Pilgrims' Way, and the cross-roads between them and the 

 Thames and the sea, a land of hops, fruit, corn, high 

 pasture, meadow, woodland, heath and shore. But there 

 is no man of whose powers I stand more in awe than the 

 topographical writer, from Mr. A. G. Bradley or Mr. 

 E. V. Lucas downwards. I shall not attempt to compete 

 with them. I should only be showing my ignorance and 

 carelessness were I to label every piece of country which 

 I chance to mention or describe. Any one can point out 

 my omissions, my blindness, my exaggeration. Nor can 

 I bring myself to mention the names of the places where 

 I walked or sat down. In a sense this country is all 

 " carved out of the carver's brain " and has not a name. 

 This is not the South Country which measures about two 

 hundred miles from east to west and fifty from north to 

 south. In some ways it is incomparably larger than any 

 country that was ever mapped, since upon nothing less 

 than the infinite can the spirit disport itself. In other 

 ways it is far smaller as when a mountain with tracts of 

 sky and cloud and the full moon glass themselves in a 

 pond, a little pond. 



It would need a more intellectual eye than mine to 

 distinguish county from county by its physical character, 

 its architecture, its people, its unique combination of 

 common elements, and I shall not attempt it. As often 

 as not I have no doubt mingled parts of Kent with my 

 Wiltshire, and so on. And positively I cannot say to 



