THE PEACE OF CENTURIES 335 



myriad changes and chances, with their ceaseless 

 ebb and flow, with the racket and the turmoil of 

 all their half-realised hopes and fears, leaving it 

 unchanged one would almost say, unchangeable. 

 Thus, like the most venerable of our colleges at 

 Oxford and Cambridge, it seems to typify not the 

 leaps and bounds, not the feverish progress, but 

 what is more attractive, and at least equally valu- 

 able the quiet continuity of English country life 

 and of English history. It is eleven miles, as the 

 saying is, from " anywhere " eleven miles, that is, 

 from the bustle of any market town, Dorchester, 

 or Blandford, or Sturminster Newton, and from 

 the intermittent rush of any railway station. Few 

 places in England, at the present day, can say as 

 little or as much for themselves as that. The 

 shriek of the locomotive never has been, never pro- 

 bably will be, heard in its sleepy hollow. 



Let me endeavour, in this chapter, first, to 

 describe, in outline, the Manor House itself and its 

 surroundings ; and then to say something of its wild 

 animals, and of the character, the mode of life, the 

 traditions, and the beliefs of the manly and simple- 

 minded people who inhabit the neighbourhood. Its 

 birds I reserve for a separate and concluding 

 chapter. 



