Preface 
portant characteristics he was a mirror, a glass, in 
which ages of England’s life could be seen and 
loved. To know him was to know the sort of 
man Shakespeare knew, “* whose thews were made 
in England”; and it was a continual enrichment 
of the whole outlook when, thanks to John Smith, 
I was more and more able to appreciate the time- 
honoured Sturdy life still going on in every other 
farm throughout the southern counties. Verily 
the English were no parvenus! During centuries 
of silent and good-tempered endeavour just like 
my uncle’s, there had been a give-and-take of 
character between them and the heaths, them 
and the pastures and streams and hills and woods 
and trades. I began to feel (and that was better 
than knowing intellectually) the meaning of 
the lanes and hedges, the crops and hamlets. 
Through long ages men like John Smith had 
willed to have these things so. 
Yet it must nowise be thought that this uncle 
of mine had no singularities of his own. Of all 
the farmers I have known he was perhaps the 
- least grasping; not so much because he did not 
care for money, as because he cared for other 
things more. His duty to his fields fascinated 
him. He showed also what seemed to me an 
excessive zeal for his landlord’s interests. So, 
one way and another, he never made money, 
never kept his gig; but was respectable in a less 
Xiil 
