such a chap as I was at his age, and dressed just in the same sort of way, his main garment being a blue smock-frock, faded from wear, and mended with pieces of new stuff, and, of course, not faded. The sight of this smock-frock brought to my recollection many things very dear to me. This boy will, I dare say, perform his part at Billinghurst, or at some place not far from it. If accident had not taken me from a similar scene, how many villains and fools, who have been well teazed and tormented, would have slept in peace at night, and have fearlessly swaggered about by day! When I look at this little chap; at his smock-frock, his nailed shoes, and his clean, plain and coarse shirt, I ask myself, will any thing, I wonder, ever send this chap across the ocean to tackle the base, corrupt, perjured republican judges of Pennsylvania? Will this little lively, but, at the same time, simple boy, ever become the terror of villains and hypocrites across the Atlantic?"

Set off from Hambledon to go to Thursley, in Surrey, about five miles from Godalming. Here I am at Thursley, after as interesting a day as I ever spent in all my life. They say that " variety is charming," and this day I have had, of scenes and of soils, a variety indeed! To go to Thursley from Hambledon the plain way was up the Downs to Petersfield, and then along the turnpike-road through Liphook, and over Hindhead, at the north-east foot of which Thursley lies. But I had been over that sweet Hindhead, and had seen too much of turnpike-road and of heath, to think of taking another, so large a dose, of them. The map of Hampshire (and we had none of Surrey) showed me the way to Headley, which lies on the west of Hindhead, down upon the flat. I knew it was but about five miles from Headley to Thursley, and I, therefore, resolved to go to Headley, in spite of all the remonstrances of friends, who represented to me the danger of breaking my neck at Hawkley, and of getting buried in the bogs of Woolmer Forest. My route was through East-Meon, Froxfield, Hawkley, Greatham, and then over Woolmer Forest (a heath, if you please), to Headley.

Off we set over the downs (crossing the bottom sweep of Old Winchester Hill) from West-End to East-Meon. We came down a long and steep hill that led us winding round into the village, which lies in a valley that runs in a direction nearly east and west, and that has a rivulet that comes out of the hills towards Petersfield. If I had not

seen any thing further to-day, I should have dwelt long on the beauties of this place. Here is a very fine valley, in nearly an elliptical form, sheltered by high hills sloping gradually from it; and, not far from the middle of this valley, there is a hill nearly in the form of a gobletglass, with the foot and stem broken off and turned upside down. And this is clapped down upon the level of the valley, just as you would put such goblet upon a table. The hill is lofty, partly covered with wood, and it gives an air of great singularity to the scene. I am sure that East-Meon has been a large place. The church has a Saxon Tower, pretty nearly equal, as far as I recollect, to that of the cathedral at Winchester. The rest of the church has been rebuilt, and, perhaps, several times; but the tower is complete; it has had a steeple put upon it; but it retains all its beauty, and it shows that the church (which is still large) must, at first, have been a very large building. Let those, who talk so glibly of the increase of the population in Eng land, go over the country from Highclere to Hambledon. Let them look at the size of the churches, and let them observe those numerous small inclosures on every side of every village, which had, to a cer tainty, each its house in former times. But let them go to East-Meon, and account for that church. Where did the hands come from to make it? Look, however, at the downs, the many square miles of downs near this village, all bearing the marks of the plough, and all out of tillage for many, many years; yet, not one single inch of them but what is vastly superior in quality to any of those great "improvements" on the miserable heaths of Hounslow, Bagshot, and Windsor Forest. It is the destructive, the murderous paper-system, that has transferred the fruit of the labour, and the people along with it, from the different parts of the country to the neighbourhood of the all-devouring Wen. I do not believe one word of what is said of the increase of the population. All observation and all reason is against the fact; and, as to the parliamentary returns, what need we more than this: that they assert that the population of Great Britain has increased from ten to fourteen millions in the last twenty years! That is enough! A man that can suck that in will believe, literally believe, that the moon is made of green cheese. Such a thing is too monstrous to be swallowed by anybody but Englishmen, and by any Englishman not brutified by a Pitt-system.

From East-Meon, I did not go to Froxfield church, but turned off to the left to a place (a couple of houses) called Bower. Near this I stopped at a friend's house, which is in about as lonely a situation as I ever saw. A very pleasant place, however. The lands dry, a nice mixture of woods and fields, and a great variety of hill and dell.

Before I came to East-Meon, the soil of the hills was a shallow loam with flints, on a bottom of chalk; but, on the side of the valley of East-Meon, that is to say, on the north side, the soil on the hills is a deep stiff loam, on a bed of a sort of gravel mixed with chalk; and the stones, instead of being gray on the outside and blue on the inside, are yellow on the outside and whitish on the inside. In coming on further to the north, I found that the bottom was sometimes gravel and sometimes chalk. Here, at the time when whatever it was that formed these hills and valleys, the stuff of which Hindhead is composed seems to have run down and mixed itself with the stuff of which old Winchester Hill is composed. Free chalk (which is the sort found here) is excellent manure for stiff land, and it produces a complete change in the nature of clays. It is, therefore, dug here, on the north of East-Meon, about in the fields, where it happens to be found, and is laid out upon the surface, where it is crumbled to powder by the frost, and thus gets incorporated with the loam.

At Bower I got instructions to go to Hawkley, but accompanied with most earnest advice not to go that way, for that it was impossible to get along. The roads were represented as so bad, the floods so much out; the hills and bogs so dangerous; that, really, I began to doubt; and, if I had not been brought up among the clays of the Holt Forest and the bogs of the neighbouring heaths, I should certainly have turned off to my right, to go over Hindhead, great as was my objection to going that way. "Well then," said my friend, at Bower, if you will go that way, you must go down Hawkley Hanger;" of which he then gave me such a description! But, even this I found to fall short of the reality. I inquired simply, whether people were in the habit of going down it; and the answer being in the affirmative, on I went through green lanes, and bridle ways till I came to the turnpike-road from Petersfield to Winchester, which I crossed, going into a narrow and almost untrodden green-lane, on the side of which I found a cottage. Upon my asking the way to Hawkley, the woman at the

66

cottage said, "Right up the lane, sir: you'll come to a hanger presently you must take care, sir: you can't ride down; will your horses go alone?"

edge of the hanger.

On we trotted up this pretty green lane, and, indeed, we had been coming gently and generally up hill for a good while. The lane was between highish banks, and pretty high stuff growing on the banks, so that we could see no distance from us, and could receive not the smallest hint of what was so near at hand. The lane had a little turn towards the end, so that out we came, all in a moment, at the very And never in all my life was I so surprised and so delighted. I pulled up my horse, and sat and looked; and it was like looking from the top of a castle down into the sea, except that the valley was land, and not water. I looked at my servant, to see what effect this unexpected sight had upon him; his surprise was as great as mine, though he had been bred amongst the North Hampshire hills. Those who had so strenuously dwelt on the dirt and dangers of this route, had said not a word about the beauties, the matchless beau

ties, of the scenery. These hangers are woods on the sides of very steep hills. The trees and underwood hang, in some sort, to the ground, instead of standing on it. Hence these places are called hangers. From the summit of that which I had now to descend, I looked down upon the villages of Hawkley, Greatham, Selborne, and some others.

From the south-east, round, southward, to the north-west, the main valley has cross valleys running out of it, the hills on the sides of which are very steep, and in many parts covered with wood. The hills that form these cross valleys run out into the main valley like piers into the sea. Two of these promontories, of great height, are on the west side of the main valley, and were the first objects that struck my sight when I came to the edge of the hanger, which was on the south. The ends of these promontories are nearly perpendicular, and their tops so high in the air, that you cannot look at the village below without something like a feeling of apprehension. The leaves are all off, the hop-poles are in stack, the fields have little verdure; but, while the spot is beautiful beyond description even now, I must leave to imagination to suppose what it is when the trees, and hangers, and hedges are in leaf, the corn waving, the meadows bright, and the hops upon the poles.

From the south-west, round, eastward, to the north, lie the heaths, of which Woolmer Forest makes a part, and these go gradually rising up to Hindhead, the crown of which is to the north-west, leaving the rest of the circle (the part from north to north-west) to be occupied by a continuation of the valley, towards Headley, Binstead, Frensham, and the Holt Forest; so that even the contrast in the view from the top of the hanger is as great as can possibly be imagined. Men, however, are not to have such beautiful views as this without some trouble. We had had the view, but we had to go down the hanger: we had, indeed, some roads to get along as we could, afterwards, but we had to get down the hanger first. The horses took the lead, and crept down partly upon their feet and partly upon their hocks. It was extremely slippery too, for the soil is a sort of marle, or, as they call it here, maume, or mame, which is, when wet, very much like gray soap. In such a case it was likely that I should keep in the rear, which I did, and I descended by taking hold of the branches of the underwood, and so letting myself down. When we got to the bottom, I bid my man, when he should go back to Uphusband, tell the people there that Ashmansworth Lane is not the worst piece of road in the world. Our worst, however, was not come yet, nor had we by any means seen the most novel sights.

After crossing a little field and going through a farm-yard, we came into a lane, which was, at once, road and river. We found a hard bottom, however, and when we got out of the water, we got into a lane with high banks. The banks were quarries of white stone, like Portland stone, and the bed of the road was of the same stone, and the rains having been heavy for a day or two before, the whole was as clean and as white as the steps of a fundholder or dead weight door-way, in one of the squares of the Wen. Here were we, then, going along a stone road with stone banks, and yet the underwood and trees grew well upon the tops of the banks. In the solid stone beneath us there were a horse-track and wheeltracks, the former about three and the latter about six inches deep. How many ages it must have taken the horses' feet, the wheels, and the water, to wear down this stone so as to form a hollow way! The horses seemed alarmed at their situation; they trod with fear, but they took us along very nicely, and, at last, got us safe into the indescribable dirt and mire of the road from Hawkley Green to