Wheat-sowing is yet going on on the Wold; but the greater part of it is sown, and not only sown, but up, and in some places, high enough to “hide a hare.” What a difference! In some parts of England, no man thinks of sowing wheat till November, and it is often done in March. If the latter were done on this Wold there would not be a bushel on an acre. The ploughing and other work, on the Wold, is done, in great part, by oxen, and here are some of the finest ox-teams that I ever saw.
All the villages down to Fairford are pretty much in the same dismal condition as that of Withington. Fairford, which is quite on the border of Gloucestershire, is a very pretty little market-town, and has one of the prettiest churches in the kingdom. It was, they say, built in the reign of Henry VII.; and one is naturally surprised to see, that its windows of beautiful stained glass had the luck to escape, not only the fangs of the ferocious “good Queen Bess;” not only the unsparing plundering minions of James I.; but even the devastating ruffians of Cromwell.
We got in here about four o’clock, and at the house of Mr. Iles, where we slept, passed, amongst several friends, a very pleasant evening. This morning, Mr. Iles was so good as to ride with us as far as the house of another friend at Kempsford, which is the last Gloucestershire parish in our route. At this friend’s, Mr. Arkall, we saw a fine dairy of about 60 or 80 cows, and a cheese loft with, perhaps, more than two thousand cheeses in it; at least there were many hundreds. This village contains what are said to be the remnants and ruins of a mansion of John of Gaunt. The church is very ancient and very capacious. What tales these churches do tell upon us! What fools, what lazy dogs, what presumptuous asses, what lying braggarts, they make us appear! No people here, “mon, teel the Scots cam to seevelize” us! Impudent, lying beggars! Their stinking “kelts” ought to be taken up, and the brazen and insolent vagabonds whipped back to their heaths and their rocks. Let them go and thrive by their “cash-credits,” and let their paper-money poet, Walter Scott, immortalize their deeds. That conceited, dunderheaded fellow, George Chalmers, estimated the whole of the population of England and Wales at a few persons more than two millions, when England was just at the highest point of her power and glory, and when all these churches had long been built and were resounding with the voice of priests, who resided in their parishes, and who relieved all the poor out of their tithes! But this same Chalmers signed his solemn conviction, that Vortigern and the other Ireland-manuscripts, which were written by a lad of sixteen, were written by Shakspeare.
In coming to Kempsford we got wet, and nearly to the skin. But our friends gave us coats to put on, while ours were dried, and while we ate our breakfast. In our way to this house, where we now are, Mr. Tucky’s, at Heydon, we called at Mr. James Crowdy’s, at Highworth, where I was from the 4th to the 9th of September inclusive; but it looked rainy, and, therefore, we did not alight. We got wet again before we reached this place; but, our journey being short, we soon got our clothes dry again.
Burghclere (Hampshire),
Monday, 2nd October.
Yesterday was a really unfortunate day. The morning promised fair; but its promises were like those of Burdett! There was a little snivelling, wet, treacherous frost. We had to come through Swindon, and Mr. Tucky had the kindness to come with us, until we got three or four miles on this side (the Hungerford side) of that very neat and plain and solid and respectable market town. Swindon is in Wiltshire, and is in the real fat of the land, all being wheat, beans, cheese, or fat meat. In our way to Swindon, Mr. Tucky’s farm exhibited to me what I never saw before, four score oxen, all grazing upon one farm, and all nearly fat! They were, some Devonshire and some Herefordshire. They were fatting on the grass only; and, I should suppose, that they are worth, or shortly will be, thirty pounds each. But the great pleasure, with which the contemplation of this fine sight was naturally calculated to inspire me, was more than counterbalanced by the thought, that these fine oxen, this primest of human food, was, aye, every mouthful of it, destined to be devoured in the Wen, and that, too, for the far greater part, by the Jews, loan-jobbers, tax-eaters, and their base and prostituted followers, dependents, purveyors, parasites and pimps, literary as well as other wretches, who, if suffered to live at all, ought to partake of nothing but the offal, and ought to come but one cut before the dogs and cats!
Mind you, there is, in my opinion, no land in England that surpasses this. There is, I suppose, as good in the three last counties that I have come through; but better than this is, I should think, impossible. There is a pasture-field, of about a hundred acres, close to Swindon, belonging to a Mr. Goddard, which, with its cattle and sheep, was a most beautiful sight. But everything is full of riches; and, as fast as skill and care and industry can extract these riches from the land, the unseen grasp of taxation, loan-jobbing and monopolizing takes them away, leaving the labourers not half a belly-full, compelling the farmer to pinch them or to be ruined himself, and making even the landowner little better than a steward, or bailiff, for the tax-eaters, Jews and jobbers!
Just before we got to Swindon, we crossed a canal at a place where there is a wharf and a coal-yard, and close by these a gentleman’s house, with coach-house, stables, walled-in-garden, paddock orné, and the rest of those things, which, all together, make up a villa, surpassing the second and approaching towards the first class. Seeing a man in the coal-yard, I asked him to what gentleman the house belonged: “to the head un o’ the canal,” said he. And, when, upon further inquiry of him, I found that it was the villa of the chief manager, I could not help congratulating the proprietors of this aquatic concern; for, though I did not ask the name of the canal, I could readily suppose, that the profits must be prodigious, when the residence of the manager would imply no disparagement of dignity, if occupied by a Secretary of State for the Home, or even for the Foreign, department. I mean an English Secretary of State; for, as to an American one, his salary would be wholly inadequate to a residence in a mansion like this.
From Swindon we came up into the down-country; and these downs rise higher even than the Cotswold. We left Marlborough away to our right, and came along the turnpike road towards Hungerford, but with a view of leaving that town to our left, further on, and going away, through Ramsbury, towards the northernmost Hampshire hills, under which Burghclere (where we now are) lies. We passed some fine farms upon these downs, the houses and homesteads of which were near the road. My companion, though he had been to London, and even to France, had never seen downs before; and it was amusing to me to witness his surprise at seeing the immense flocks of sheep, which were now (ten o’clock) just going out from their several folds to the downs for the day, each having its shepherd, and each shepherd his dog. We passed the homestead of a farmer Woodman, with sixteen banging wheat-ricks in the rick-yard, two of which were old ones; and rick-yard, farm-yard, waste-yard, horse-paddock, and all round about, seemed to be swarming with fowls, ducks, and turkeys, and on the whole of them not one feather but what was white! Turning our eyes from this sight, we saw, just going out from the folds of this same farm, three separate and numerous flocks of sheep, one of which (the lamb-flock) we passed close by the side of. The shepherd told us, that his flock consisted of thirteen score and five; but, apparently, he could not, if it had been to save his soul, tell us how many hundreds he had: and, if you reflect a little, you will find, that his way of counting is much the easiest and best. This was a most beautiful flock of lambs; short legged, and, in every respect, what they ought to be. George, though born and bred amongst sheep-farms, had never before seen sheep with dark-coloured faces and legs; but his surprise, at this sight, was not nearly so great as the surprise of both of us, at seeing numerous and very large pieces (sometimes 50 acres together) of very good early turnips, Swedish as well as White! All the three counties of Worcester, Hereford and Gloucester (except on the Cotswold) do not, I am convinced, contain as great a weight of turnip bulbs, as we here saw in one single piece; for here there are, for miles and miles, no hedges, and no fences of any sort.
Doubtless they must have had rain here in the months of June and July; but, as I once before observed (though I forget when) a chalk bottom does not suffer the surface to burn, however shallow the top soil may be. It seems to me to absorb and to retain the water, and to keep it ready to be drawn up by the heat of the sun. At any rate the fact is, that the surface above it does not burn; for there never yet was a summer, not even this last, when the downs did not retain their greenness to a certain degree, while the rich pastures, and even the meadows (except actually watered) were burnt so as to be as brown as the bare earth.