132 Recollections of the Vme Htcnt. 



where it will stop, or what amount of dust you may 

 raise ; and just so, when you set my memory trundling 

 down into a deep vale of years ; it must pursue its 

 course, and cannot fail to stir up a great deal of rubbish 

 which would otherwise have slept in obscurity. 



And yet, perhaps, I may be allowed to plead in 

 justification of what I have written, that time gives 

 a certain dignity even to trifles. I remember, indeed, 

 that Dr. Johnson somewhere speaks contemptuously 

 of those antiquaries who collect trumpery, and set an 

 imaginary value on things which * are now rare, only 

 because they were always worthless! But surely our 

 natural feelings scarcely coincide with this sarcasm. I 

 think there is something humanising, if not elevating, 

 in a curiosity which takes us a little out of the present, 

 and connects us with the past, and which seeks to 

 know what was said and done by our forefathers, even 

 though it may be nothing better or wiser than what 

 we are daily saying and doing ourselves. It is certain 

 that the most ordinary articles of domestic life acquire 

 a value if they belong to a distant age, and are dug 

 up after having been long buried ; and for some of my 

 stories I may claim a very respectable antiquity. But 

 after all, my best excuse must be, that I do not pre- 

 sume to publish this to the world, but write it only 

 for those who, like myself, are or have been members 

 of the Vine Hunt. It is presented to them, not with- 

 out a hope that my record of the manner in which 

 their country was acquired may be accepted as evi- 

 dence, if they should ever be called on to show the 

 title-deeds by which they hold it ; and with a confi- 

 dence that they will feel some interest in everything 

 which took place in their own woods and fields. The 



