SUSSEX 71 



coat; his trousers of grey cord, dirty and patched with 

 drab to a weathered stone colour, fitting almost tightly 

 to his large thighs and calves and reaching not too near 

 to his small but heavily-shod feet. A prince a slave. 

 He is twenty, unmarried, sober, honest, a noble animal. 

 He goes into a cottage that stands worn and old and 

 without a right angle in its timbers or its thatch any 

 more than in its apple trees and solitary quince which all 

 but hide the lilac and massed honesty of the little garden. 

 This is a house I had almost said this is a man that 

 looked upon England when it could move men to such 

 songs as, " Come, live with me and be my love," or 



" Hey, down a down ! " did Dian sing, 



Amongst her virgins sitting ; 

 "Than love there is no vainer thing, 



For maidens most unfitting. " 

 And so think I, with a down, down derry. 



For a moment or less as he goes under the porch I seem 

 to see that England, that swan's nest, that island which a 

 man's heart was not too big to love utterly. But now 

 what with Great Britain, the British Empire, Britons, 

 Britishers, and the English-speaking world, the choice 

 offered to whomsoever would be patriotic is embarrassing, 

 and he is fortunate who can find an ideal England of 

 the past, the present, and the future to worship, and 

 embody it in his native fields and waters or his garden, 

 as in a graven image. 



The round unending Downs are close ahead, and upon 

 the nearest hill a windmill beside a huge scoop in the 

 chalk, a troop of elms below, and then low-hedged fields 

 of grass and wheat. The farms are those of the down- 



