206 
NATURE NOTES 
“ Rocks and sands, and barren lands, 
A church without a steeple, 
Houses built of shipwrecked wood, 
And most imposing people.” 
The Scillonians resent the last line, and substitute the word 
hospitable.” Agricultural rhymes are often very apt and very 
true. An old one of the time of Charles II., or earlier, occurs 
in Thomas Baskerville’s “ Journeys,” a book compiled in that 
reign, and preserved among the Duke of Portland’s MSS. at 
Welbeck. It runs : — 
“ Dorsetshire ewes for the early lambs, 
And Warwickshire breeds most excellent rams.” 
Another ancient piece of doggerel is quoted by Leland : — 
“ Essex full of good house wifes, 
Middlesex full of strifes, 
Kentshire hot as fire, 
Sussex full of dirt and mire.” 
The reference to the despicable roads on the Weald clay is 
particularly accurate, and the fiery traditions of Kent are 
justified by the various revolts of its sturdy yeomen. A pic- 
ture of prosperity and wealth is portrayed in the lines : — 
“ With wholesome fare our villa’s stored, 
Our lands the best of corn afford, 
Not Hertford wheat, nor Derby rye, 
Nor Ipswich pease, can ours outvye. 
The largest ox in England bred 
Was in our verdant pasture fed.” 
It is a curious fact that some counties are little heard of, 
even after allowance has been made for their small size and popu- 
lation. How rarely in conversation does one hear of Hunting- 
donshire or Bedfordshire, yet the former is connected with the 
name of Oliver Cromwell, and the latter with that of John 
Bunyan. Westmoreland is in the same predicament, and to 
take a more important county, Cornwall suffers the penalty of 
its remoteness from the centre. But here literature has its 
influence. Devon and Cornwall have been made known to 
many who have never visited them through the writings of 
Robert Stephen Hawker, Baring-Gould, and Charles Kingsley, 
Kingsley, too, has revealed the charms of the mud flats of 
Essex and the morasses of Hereward’s fens. The beauties of 
Wessex are familiar to all readers of Thomas Hardy and Richard 
Jefferies. George Elliot has immortalised parts of Warwick and 
Derby. John Clare wrote lovingly of his native Hampshire: 
George Crabbe’s Suffolk town of Aldborough is the constant 
theme of his poems : Cowper has eulogised the gentle scenery of 
the Great Ouse. The Lincoln Wolds and marshes influenced 
not only the earlier but the later poems of Tennyson. Barnes 
has given us a knowledge of the Dorset dialect. Of the scat- 
