PART II-CHAPTER VIII. 



THE DOWNES. 



WE now make our ascent to the second elevation or the hill countrey, known by the name of the 

 Downes, or Salisbury Plaines ; and they are the most spacious plaines in Europe, and the greatest 

 remaines that I can heare of of the smooth primitive world when it lay all under water. 



These downes runne into Hampshire, Berkshire, and Dorsetshire ; but as to its extent in this 

 county, it is from Red-hone, the hill above Urshfont, to Salisbury, north and south, and from Mere 

 to Lurgershall, east and west The turfe is of a short sweet grasse, good for the sheep, and delight- 

 full to the eye, for its smoothnesse like a bowling green, and pleasant to the traveller ; who wants 

 here only variety of objects to make his journey lesse tedious : for here is nil nisi campus et aer, not 

 a tree, or rarely a bush to shelter one from a shower. 



The soile of the downes I take generally to be a white earth or mawme. More south, sc. about 

 Wilton and Chalke, the downes are intermixt with boscages that nothing can be more pleasant, and 

 in the summer time doe excell Arcadia in verdant and rich turfe and moderate aire, but in winter 

 indeed our air is cold and rawe. The innocent lives here of the shepherds doe give us a resemblance 

 of the golden age. Jacob and Esau were shepherds ; and Amos, one of the royall family, asserts the 

 same of himself, for he was among the shepherds of Tecua [Tekoa] following that employment. The 

 like, by God's own appointment, prepared Moses for a scepter, as Philo intimates in his life, when 

 he tells us that a shepherd's art is a suitable preparation to a kingdome. The same he mentions in 

 his Life of Joseph, affirming that the care a shepherd has over his cattle very much resembles that 

 which a King hath over his subjects. The same St. Basil, in his Homily de St. Mamme Martyre 

 has, concerning David, who was taken from following the ewes great with young ones to feed Israel. 

 The Romans, the worthiest and greatest nation in the world, sprang from shepherds. The augury 

 of the twelve vultures plac't a scepter in Romulus's hand, which held a crook before ; and as Ovid 

 sayes : 



" His own small flock each senator did keep." 



Lucretius mentions an extraordinary happinesse, and as it were divinity in a shepherd's life: 



" Thro' shepherds' care, and their divine retreats." 



And, to speake from the very bottome of my heart, not to mention the integrity and innocence of 

 shepherds, upon which so many have insisted and copiously declaimed, methinkes he is much more 

 happy in a wood that at ease contemplates the universe as his own, and in it the sunn and starrs, 

 the pleasing meadows, shades, groves, green banks, stately trees, flowing springs, and the wanton 



