CHICHESTER 259 



persons who do not go to bars. To provide this village 

 population with drink there are seventy public-houses, 

 besides several wine and spirit merchants, and grocers 

 with licences. To keep all these houses open, all these 

 taps perpetually running, there must be an immense 

 quantity of liquor consumed. At eight o'clock in the 

 morning you will find men at all the bars, often in 

 groups of three or four or half-a-dozen, standing, pipe 

 in mouth and tankard in hand ; and at eleven at night, 

 when closing time comes, out of every door a goodly 

 crowd of citizens are seen stumbling forth, surprised 

 and sorry, no doubt, that the day has ended so soon. 

 In the streets, near the railway station, at the Market 

 Cross, and at various corners, you will see groups of 

 the most utterly drink-degraded wretches it is possible 

 to find anywhere in the kingdom — men with soulless 

 bloated faces and watery eyes, dressed like tramps — 

 standing idle with their hands in their pockets. But 

 there is not a penny there, or they would not be stand- 

 ing in the mud and rain ; and as for doing any work, 

 they are past' that. Here that rare spectacle, a man 

 without a shirt, has met my sight, not once nor twice, 

 but several times, the naked flesh showing through 

 the rents of a ragged jacket buttoned or pinned up to 

 the neck. These loathly human objects are strangely 

 incongruous at that spot, under the great spire, in 

 sight of the green open healthy downs, in perhaps the 

 richest agricultural district in England. 



But, it may be said, even allowing that every adult 



