i VILLAGE ENGLAND 



the fields and spinneys, ex officio&amp;gt; by mere residence in any 

 part of the village ; that is why ever afterwards wherever 

 in the world you might be, that village kept its place as 

 the background of your life, your constant standard of 

 comparison. Such a feeling is no accident or exception ; 

 the English village is like no other place. It is not found 

 in equal power all over Britain ; the birth and growth of 

 it belong more particularly to the South and Midlands 

 and East, and those of us who live there feel that we are 

 at home again only when we re-enter this village country. 

 The west of England is much more magnificent than the 

 east ; and the west holds many of the lovelier villages, 

 such as Weobly in Herefordshire ; but the homestead, 

 the half isolated house and farm, often fill the place which 

 is filled solely by the village or hamlet in the south and 

 east. The first National Park (in which the people will 

 own what William Rufus secured in Hampshire) will 

 probably be Snowdonia, the second perhaps in the Lakes, 

 or it may be Dartmoor ; and they will deserve this name 

 of National, that proud attribute, &quot; The cataract haunted 

 me like a passion &quot; wrote Wordsworth ; and he might 

 have felt the passion at Llanberis which is the chief gate 

 way of Snowdonia not less fully than in the Lakes. The 

 fall there and the rapids haunt the memory as Niagara 

 may in spite of their small proportions. The Devil s 

 Kitchen is like no other place ; and if the imaginative 

 traveller needs a stimulus he may find it in the quaint 

 truth that the little and lovely plant Lloydii, which grows 

 thereabouts, has no nearer abode than the Swiss Moun 

 tains from which it makes giant strides again to Caucasian 

 and Himalayan heights. The Western Islands may well 

 be hailed as Paradises &quot; which bards in fealty to Apollo 

 hold &quot; : Lundy, where the kittiwakes (who on occasion 

 migrate across the Atlantic) nest in hundreds along side 



