Yet I do not
know any of the people who live in these villages, though by dint
of going there often there are a few people by whom I am recognised
and saluted.
But let me take one village in particular, and I will not name it,
because one ought not to publish the names of those whom one loves.
What does it consist of? It straggles along a rough and ill-laid
lane, under a little wold, once a sheep-walk, now long ploughed up.
The soil of the wold is pale, so that in the new-ploughed fields
there rest soft, creamlike shadows when the evening sun falls
aslant. There are two or three substantial farmhouses of red brick,
comfortable old places, with sheds and ricks and cattle-byres and
barns close about them. And I think it is strange that the scent of
a cattle-byre, with its rich manure and its oozing pools, is not
ungrateful to the human sense. It ought to be, but it is not. It
gives one, by long inheritance, no doubt, a homelike feeling.
Then there are many plastered, white-walled, irregular cottages,
very quaint and pretty, perhaps a couple of centuries old, very ill
built, no doubt, but enchanting to look at; there is a new
schoolhouse, very ugly at present, with its smart red brick and its
stone facings--ugly because it does not seem to have grown up out
of the place, but to have been brought there by rail; and there are
a few new yellow-brick cottages, probably much pleasanter to live
in than the old ones, but with no sort of interest or charm.
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