And like armed men, come want and care,
Know, my boys, that God's curse
Will not make matters worse,
How little soever you have.

"The son that would sit in my old oak chair,
And set foot on his father's spade,
Must be of his father's spirit heir,
And know that God's blessing
Is still the best dressing,
Whatever improvements are made."

And he sat no more in his old oak chair;
And a scape-thrift laid his hand
On his father's plough, and he cursed the air,
And he cursed the soil,
For he lost his toil,
But the fault was not in the land.

And another set in his father's chair,
And talked, o'er his liquor, of laws,
Of the tyranny here and the knavery there,
'Till the old bit of oak
And the drunkard broke,
But the times were not the cause.

But I have redeemed the old ricketty chair,
And trod in my father's ways;
Have turned the furrow with humble prayer
To profit my neighbours,
And prosper my labours;
And find my sheaves with praise.

Cruikshank draws the scape-thrift roystering over punch and
churchwardens' pipes. The careful and thrifty farmer is in another
picture. He has no pipe, and he talks kindly to his wife, and dandles
his son on his knee. There is a large ale-jug on the table, and he has
had a capital dinner.

Titsey, a mile and a half away under the downs, is not a village at all;
just a modern church outside Titsey Park, and a cottage opposite the
church which was once an inn, and could swing a sign now if it wished;
the frame is there. Once the church stood inside the park. That was when
Titsey Place belonged to the Greshams, the ancestors of its later
owners, the Leveson-Gowers. Sir John Gresham, looking one day in 1776 at
the old church, decided that it was too near his house: it was only
thirty-five feet distant. With the insolence of the day, he knocked it
down, and the modern church stands obediently outside the gates. But
Titsey Park has made amends. When the late Mr. Granville Leveson-Gower
was at Titsey he brought to light, and described in the _Surrey
Archaeological Collections_, the foundations of a Roman villa discovered
in the Park, almost touching the old road used by the pilgrims on their
way to Canterbury. The foundations were interestingly complete, and from
the ground near were