APPENDIX. 



A GLANCE AT THE PAST. 



SOME PICTURES OF 1873. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

 ROMANCE AND REALITY. 



ONE of my first rambles into peasant land, in my tour 

 from village to village in 1873, took me to one of the 

 prettiest parts of the green and smiling West Country. 

 I was fully prepared, by previous acquaintance, for 

 what I should find ; but my recollections were general 

 ones. Pencil and notebook in hand, however, I deter- 

 mined not to draw upon memory or imagination, but to 

 sketch only what was before my eyes : and here is the 

 sketch made at once before the visual and mental im- 

 pressions could fade : 



lf My path wound away from the town ; it gracefully 

 bent to right and to left through an amphitheatre of beauti- 

 ful hills ; now sinking between high hedges surpassingly 

 rich in their verdant clothing, which, in the fulness of its 

 early summer glory, blotted out all but the blue sky over- 

 head ; and now passing into soft gloom as it found its way 

 under a natural archway of trees. I had proceeded some 

 little distance in my ramble, when, at a turn in the road, I 

 came upon a little scene, the like of which is rarely to be 

 met with. Away from the main road, a lane led up to the 

 right, and a peep over the hedge revealed just a glimpse 

 of the whitewashed walls and the low thatched roof of a 

 cottage. It was impossible to resist the temptation to 



181 



