14 THE EULOGY OF RICHARD JEFFERIES. 



whose circumference stand Swindon, Barbury, 

 Liddington, Ashbourne Chase and Wan- 

 borough. 



Eichard Jefferies was the second of five chil- 

 dren, three sons and two daughters. The eldest 

 child, a daughter, was killed by a runaway 

 horse at the age of five. The Swindon people, 

 who are reported to be indifferent to the works 

 of their native author, remember his family 

 very well. They seem to have possessed quali- 

 ties or eccentricities which cause them to be 

 remembered. His grandfather, for instance, 

 who is without doubt the model for old Iden 

 in "Amaryllis," was at the same time a miller 

 and a confectioner. The mill stood near the 

 west end of the old church ; both mill and 

 church are now pulled down. It was worked 

 for the tenant by his brother, a man still more 

 eccentric than the miller. The family seems 

 to have inherited, from father to son, a dis- 

 position of reserve, a love of solitude, and a 

 habit of thinking for themselves. No grega- 

 rious man, no man who loved to sit among his 

 fellows, could possibly have written even the 

 shortest of Jefferies' papers. 



