226 NATURE NEAR LONDON. 



falling. After traversing the whole field, if you return 

 you will find them exactly in the same position. 

 Some black cattle are scattered about on the high 

 ground in the mist, which thickens beyond them, and 

 fills up the immense hollow of the valley. 



In the street of booths there are the roundabouts, 

 the swings, the rifle galleries — like shooting into the 

 mouth of a great trumpet — the shows, the cakes and 

 brown nuts and gingerbread, the ale barrels in a row, 

 the rude forms and trestle tables ; just the same, the 

 very same, we saw at our first fair five and twenty 

 years ago, and a hundred miles away. It is just the 

 same this year as last, like the ploughs and hurdles, 

 and the sheep themselves. There is nothing new 

 to tempt the ploughboy's pennies — nothing fresh to 

 stare at. 



The same thing year after year, and the same 

 sounds — the dismal barrel organs, and brazen instru- 

 ments, and pipes, wailing, droning, booming. How 

 melancholy the inexpressible noise when the fair is 

 left behind, and the wet vapours are settling and 

 thickening around it ! But the melancholy is not in 

 the fair— the ploughboy likes it; it is in ourselves, 

 in the thought that thus, though the years go by, 

 so much of human life remains the same — the same 

 blatant discord, the same monotonous roundabout, the 

 same poor gingerbread. 



The ploughs are at work, travelling slowly at the 

 ox's pace up and down the hillside. The South Down 

 plough could scarcely have been invented ; it must 

 have been put together bit by bit in the slow years — 

 slower than the ox; it is the completed structure of 



