2 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 



and Wootton Bassett, Purton, Malmesbury, Cirencester, 

 and Fairford — all of which he knew, with their surrounding 

 fields ; but to reach them was to leave the Downs for the 

 rich, sluggish, dairy country of elms, that is seldom 

 roused to the energy of hills. Fair as that part of Wilt- 

 shire is, it has left few marks upon his books ; and even in 

 his youthful chapters on the Swindon neighbourhood, 

 where he might have thought it his business to set his 

 affection aside, he seldom betrays much knowledge of the 

 northward land, of whose people Aubrey wrote that they 

 ' speak drawling,' are ' dull and heavy of spirits,' ' feed 

 chiefly on milk meats, which hurts their inventions,' are 

 ' melanchol}^ contemplative, malicious, by consequence 

 whereof come more lawsuits — at least double those in 

 the southern parts,' and are ' more apt to be fanatic' 

 Roughly speaking, the Wiltshire and Berkshire Canal, in its 

 course from near Wantage, past Uffington, Stratton St. 

 Margaret, Swindon, Wootton Bassett, and Dauntsey, was 

 Jefferies' northern boundary. That boundary at least 

 in winter he loved, for the frosts turned it into an incom- 

 parable track for his skates, and it is as a skater only that 

 he is respectfully remembered in those parts. The canal 

 has now relapsed into barbarism ; its stiffened and weedy 

 waters are stirred only by the moorhen, who walks more 

 than she swims across them. 



For Jefferies at Coate, the summer sun rose over White- 

 horse Hill, eight miles off in Berkshire, with the ancient 

 entrenchment above and the westward-ramping white 

 horse below ; and to reach the hill meant a long, lonely 

 walk on the Ridgeway through the high corn-land and past 

 Wayland Smith's cave, or along the more frequented 

 parallel road below, through Wanborough, Little Hinton, 

 Bishopston, Ashbury, and Compton Beauchamp. At 

 Bishopston stood the old mansion — used as a Grammar 

 School — which he has celebrated in ' Wild Life in a 

 Southern County,' in ' An Extinct Race,' and in his early 

 chapter on the London and Faringdon road. At Hinton 

 and Bishopston there are fine farmhouses with lime- 



