is real name was Hamden Pye, and the Pyes were the great folk at
Farringdon. Then there's Pusey. You've heard of the Pusey horn, which
King Canute gave to the Puseys of that day, and which the gallant old
squire, lately gone to his rest (whom Berkshire freeholders turned out
of last Parliament, to their eternal disgrace, for voting according to
his conscience), used to bring out on high days, holidays, and bonfire
nights. And the splendid old cross church at Uffington, the Uffingas
town. How the whole countryside teems with Saxon names and memories!
And the old moated grange at Compton, nestled close under the hillside,
where twenty Marianas may have lived, with its bright water-lilies
in the moat, and its yew walk, "the cloister walk," and its peerless
terraced gardens. There they all are, and twenty things beside, for
those who care about them, and have eyes. And these are the sort of
things you may find, I believe, every one of you, in any common English
country neighbourhood.

Will you look for them under your own noses, or will you not? Well,
well, I've done what I can to make you; and if you will go gadding over
half Europe now, every holidays, I can't help it. I was born and bred
a west-country man, thank God! a Wessex man, a citizen of the noblest
Saxon kingdom of Wessex, a regular "Angular Saxon," the very soul of me
adscriptus glebae. There's nothing like the old country-side for me,
and no music like the twang of the real old Saxon tongue, as one gets
it fresh from the veritable chaw in the White Horse Vale; and I say with
"Gaarge Ridler," the old west-country yeoman,--

"Throo aall the waarld owld Gaarge would bwoast,
Commend me to merry owld England mwoast;
While vools gwoes prating vur and nigh,
We stwops at whum, my dog and I."

Here, at any rate, lived and stopped at home Squire Brown, J.P. for the
county of Berks, in a village near the foot of the White Horse range.
And here he dealt out justice and mercy in a rough way, and begat sons
and daughters, and hunted the fox, and grumbled at the badness of
the roads and the times. And his wife dealt out stockings, and calico
shirts, and smock frocks, and comforting drinks to the old folks with
the "rheumatiz," and good counsel to all; and kept the coal and clothes'
clubs going, for yule-tide, when the bands of mummers came round,
dressed out in ribbons and coloured paper caps, and stamped round the
Squire's kitchen, repeating in true si