RIVERSIDE VILLAGES 267 



They are not long rivers the Test and Itchen but 

 long enough for men with unfevered blood in their veins 

 to find sweet and peaceful homes on their margins. I 

 think I know quite a dozen villages on the former 

 stream, and fifteen or sixteen on the latter, in any one 

 of which I could spend long years in perfect content- 

 ment. There are towns, too, ancient Romsey and 

 Winchester, and modern hideous Eastleigh; but the 

 little centres are best to live in. These are, indeed, 

 among the most characteristic Hampshire villages; 

 mostly small, with old thatched cottages, unlike, yet 

 harmonising, irregularly placed along the roadside ; each 

 with its lowly walls set among gaily coloured flowers; 

 the farm with its rural sounds and smells, its big horses 

 and milch-cows led and driven along the quiet streets ; 

 the small ancient church with its low, square tower, or 

 grey shingled spire ; and great trees standing singly or in 

 groups or rows oak and elm and ash ; and often some 

 ivy-grown relic of antiquity ivy, indeed, everywhere. 

 The charm of these villages that look as natural and 

 one with the scene as chalk down and trees and green 

 meadows, and have an air of immemorial quiet and a 

 human life that is part of nature's life, unstrenuous, 

 slow and sweet, has not yet been greatly disturbed. It 

 is not here as in some parts of Hampshire, and as it is 

 pretty well everywhere in Surrey, that most favoured 

 county, the Xanadu of the mighty ones of the money- 

 market, where they oftenest decree their lordly pleasure- 

 domes. Those vast red-brick habitations of the Kubla 



