4 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 



and corn-land ; the tumuli, in one place seven together, 

 give a solemn tone to so much sweetness and space. 

 Between Baydon and Aldbourne, and about Sugar Hill, 

 the country is more park-like. There is a green and 

 hedgeless turf, with knots and trains of beeches and thorns, 

 and many little undulations and barbaric, winding tracks, 

 startled and sundered by the straight Roman road. 

 Thence the eyes enjoy Martinsell Hill, gentle and large, 

 above standing and reaped corn and the trees of Ald- 

 bourne. The road from Baydon to Aldbourne is notable 

 for its passage through one of the finest hollows in the 

 Downs. The unbroken undulations are long, and the 

 mind floats with them and sleeps in the melody which they 

 make : there is grass, mangolds, wheat in leaning shocks, 

 solid beech clusters, and, far away, on the edge of the 

 bowl, Liddington clump ; nor is there a house visible 

 among the trackways, the haystacks, the sheep, and the 

 corn, this side of the embowered Aldbourne church tower. 

 More south and less east from Coate, the Swindon and 

 Hungerford road goes through Liddington to Aldbourne, 

 again over the Downs, with four barrows on one hand, 

 making different harmonies together as the vision shifts, 

 and on the other the rectangular imprints of a British 

 village at Upper Upham. Untrodden but indelible old 

 roads, worn by hoofs and the naked feet and the trailing 

 staves of long-dead generations, cross and join one another 

 over the short grass of the chalk slopes. Aldbourne is 

 white-washed, thatched, and tiled, with many turnings, 

 and the traveller feels always as if he is in someone's 

 yard, because the houses, with their flowers and open doors, 

 look so frankly on the road ; as at Ogbourne St, George, 

 close by, old millstones are used as paving for paths. The 

 bells of the neighbourhood were once cast here. The 

 village was famous from Aubrey's to Jefferies' day for 

 rabbits ; and between here and Ogbourne St. George are 

 Chase Woods and Aldbourne Chase, where, in Jefferies' 

 youth, they found a cannon-ball that had lain there since 

 the brush between Rupert and Essex, before the first 



