300 WAYFARING NOTIONS 



months, let the bourne be bank-full In flood or dry- 

 as the turnpike road. But in summer what a 

 range for a lucky holiday-maker to strike, ten 

 thousand miles it might be from busy town life ! 

 As everyone knows, you have a chain of pretty 

 villages all along the valley. Away on the high 

 lands is some of the most lovely down I have 

 come across so far, with fine scope for training, 

 but a desert in the matter of population, and 

 mighty convenient for losing yourself. Lam- 

 bourne and Wantage have their colonies of 

 trainers, so has Foxhill and Lyddington in a way ; 

 Kingclere's stables are within the village's bounds, 

 but some of the quarters I visited last week near 

 the line of the Lambourne are detached, outlying, 

 adapted, solitary farm buildings, where, save for 

 touting purposes, never a soul might casually 

 come from one year's end to another. 



One thing visitors to Newbury for the racing 

 can do if they please, and that is, after liking the 

 sporting pickles, try the local sauce — that is to 

 say, sample the environs. A rare old-world 

 district this is, with its water meadows and 

 remnants of what must have been fens ; a well- 

 to-do corner, where everyone went in slow time 

 about business, and I guess took long over meals 

 and plenty of sleep. Artistic authority rules 

 that any landscape is better for water in the 

 foreground. Dr Johnson, who declared on his 

 word as lexicographer that he never recognised 

 a likeness in painting, or drawing, held, as we 

 know, more material views, and went for a fully- 

 licensed house, or words to that effect, in place of 

 the water. I should be sorry to run counter to 

 the art interest, but the Doctor is in the instance 

 quoted very sound, and if I had my choice I 



