of a quiet patriarchal life. These South Down farmers have seen little change. Revolution after revolution has passed. The London of one decennary would hardly know the London of the next, and yet in these unchanging parts are to be found men tilling the same land over which their forefathers drove the plough in the days of Queen Elizabeth.
What curious people live in these out-of-the-way places! Wandering through a village a little nearer the coast, but of the same type, I came on a farm in ruins. The last time I walked to this place it was at this spot I had talked with an old man, an ancient worthy who had fallen in every way into the sere and yellow leaf. The tide of fortune had run out with the tide of life. He had evidently gone, for his house had fallen into sad decay. The broken windows, the wilderness garden, the barns unthatched, the rafters naked, seemed to suggest some melancholy tale. Perhaps his heirs had quarrelled, perhaps he was the last of his race, and there was no one to care for his honour or his house.
Stepping across a stone stile, I lifted the latch, and found myself in a kitchen with a large old-fashioned hearth, and I looked up at the sky through its chimney, blackened with smoking many a side of fat bacon. In one corner were some rickety stairs, up which I crept into a small, low-pitched bedroom. I opened the back door, and looked upon what was once a little fruit-garden. Through another I found the dining-room, and then up the front staircase into bedrooms, sad and dreary and tenantless.
I descended, and opened an outer door, expecting the same desolation, when I found a room, bright and cheerful, paved with red bricks, clean as the cleanest floor. All around seemed tidy and furnished. An old man, with a face like a russet apple, sitting cosily by a little fire, did not seem at all surprised at the intrusion; so begging his pardon, I turned it off by asking him to whom the ruined house belonged. Laughing at the idea of its being in Chancery, he told me that it was the property of an old lady who had too much money, and therefore chose to allow her houses to go to rack and ruin rather than let them.
The cheery little man hobbled off his chair, and came and stood at the door. Amongst other things he told me that an
