106 NATURE IN DOWNLAND 



have remarkably steady heads and carry their liquor 

 well. It is true that you will generally find a few 

 topers at the village inn, boozing at all hours of the 

 day, but that you will find all the country over ; and 

 it will always be the same so long as publicans are 

 permitted by the authorities to serve habitual topers 

 and half drunk men generally with liquor. We know 

 that the public-houses are now all tied, and tied very 

 strictly, and if the publican does not sell as much beer 

 as the villagers, drunk or sober, are anxious to drink, 

 he must turn out and give place to some one with a 

 better sense of what is due to the brewer. 



I was much amused one morning at a drinking 

 scene I witnessed in the village public at East Dean. 

 It was only eleven o'clock, but in the bar-room I 

 found six men, who had evidently been there drinking 

 a long time, each with a tall blue mug of beer at his 

 side. Five of them were middle-aged — all over forty 

 I should say, and all Saxons with hard red faces and 

 hard blue eyes. These were men who could drink 

 gallons of beer, then walk very steadily home ; only a 

 slight wavering in their eyes when they looked at me 

 told that they had been a long time busy with their 

 blue mugs. But the sixth was a young man of a 

 different type : he had not the breadth and depth of 

 chest of the others, and his eyes and hair were dark 

 and his face pale. And he was pretty drunk. The 

 talk, after ranging over a variety of subjects, was 

 finally all about getting up early in the morning to 



