THE END OF SUMMER 265 



HAMPSHIRE. 



To-day is fair day. The scene is a green, slightly 

 undulating common, grassy and rushy at its lower end 

 where a large pond wets the margin of the high road, 

 and at the upper end sprinkled with the dwarf and the 

 common gorse out of which rise many tumuli, green 

 or furzy mounds of earth, often surmounted by a few 

 funereal pines. The common is small; it is bounded 

 on every side by roads, and on one by a row of new 

 mean houses; there is a golf-house among the tumuli; in 

 one place a large square has been ploughed and fenced 

 by a private owner. But the slope of the sandy soil is 

 pleasant; in one place it is broken into a low cliff over- 

 hanging the water, and this with the presence of the gorse 

 give it a touch of the wildness by which it may still 

 deserve its name of " heath." Most powerful of all in 

 their effect upon the place are the tumuli. They are low 

 and smooth; one or two scarcely heave the turf; some 

 have been removed; and there is no legend attached to 

 them. Yet their presence gives an indescribable charm 

 and state, and melancholy too, and makes these few acres 

 an expanse unequalled by any other of the same size. 

 Not too far off to be said to belong to the heath, from 

 which they are separated by three miles of cultivated land 

 and a lesser beechen hill, are the Downs; among them one 

 that bears a thin white road winding up at the edge of 

 a dark wood. In the moist October air the Downs are 

 very grave and gentle and near, and are not lost to sight 

 until far beyond the turreted promontory of Chancton- 

 bury. 



