It is quite possible for the eye to light upon hamlets in the more retired nooks and crannies of England that have undergone but little change during even the last six centuries, hamlets of which we could say with Goldsmith:—
How often have I paused on every charm,
The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm,
The never-failing brook, the busy mill,
The decent church that topped the neighbouring hill,
The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade,
For talking age and whispering lovers made.
I have seen, or I at least imagined I have seen, such a picture as this; but if there be, this of all times is that in which we must be prepared for a revolution. Our railways are every day but connecting us with the more inaccessible districts, following as they do the curves of our valleys, winding alongside our streams, like nature and art in parallel. As they thus increase they bear with them equally increased facilities for carrying the modernized surroundings and accessories of life on this, on that, and on every hand. Thus usage is everywhere fast giving way before utility, and thus in proportion as art and invention get elbow-room, so does the primitive poetry of our existence fade from view. We can remember villages—there are still such—around which time had flung a halo of so simple aspect, villages whose steads were grouped with so exquisite a quaintness, so utterly and beautifully irregular, so full of unexpected joints and curves, and all so thatched, and embrowned, and trellised, that with the loss of them we have lost a pastoral. There may be indeed a certain poetry in model villas of undeviating line and exact altitude; there may be a beauty in an erection which reminds you in perpetuity of the great Euclidian truth that a straight line is that which lies evenly between its extreme points, but at times it puts one in sober mood to think all the touches of a past time are to fade away, and these be in their stead. How different the tale nomenclature tells us of former rusticity and simpler tastes.
The early husbandman required but little decorative refinement for his homestead. To keep out the cold blast and the driving rain, to have a niche by the fireside comfortable and warm, this was all he asked or wished for. His roof was all but invariably composed of thack or thatch, and every village had its ‘thatcher.’ Busy indeed would he be as the late autumn drew nigh, and stack and stead must be shielded from the keen and chilling winter. The Hundred Roll forms of the surname are ‘Joan le Thaccher’ and ‘Thomas le Thechare;’ the Parliamentary Writs ‘John le Thacher;’ while the more modern directory furnishes us with such changes rung upon the same as ‘Thatcher,’ ‘Thacker’[[235]] (still a common provincialism for the occupation), and ‘Thackery,’ or ‘Thackeray,’ or Thackwray.’[[236]] These latter are of course but akin to the old ‘John le Fermery,’ or ‘Richard le Vicary,’ the termination added being the result of popular whim or caprice. Our ‘Readers’ had less to do with book lore than we might have supposed, being but descendants of the mediæval ‘William le Redere,’[[237]] another term for the same kind of labour. The old ‘Hellier,’ or ‘Helier,’ carries us back to a once well-known root. To ‘hill,’ or ‘hele,’ was to cover, and a ‘hilyer’ was a roofer.[[238]] Sir John Maundville says with regard to the Tartars, ‘the helynge of their houses, and ... the dores ben alle of woode;’ and John of Trevisa speaks of the English ‘whyt cley and red’ as useful ‘for to make crokkes and other vessels, and barned tyyl to hele with houses and churches.’ Gower, too, uses the word prettily, but perfectly naturally, when he says—
She took up turves (turfs) of the lond,