A Cotswold Village | Page 6

a
greasy pole for a leg of mutton," its race for a pig and a cheese; and,
oddly enough, the previous scouring had taken place in the year of the
Queen's accession, sixty-one years ago. It would be enough to make
poor Tom Hughes turn in his grave if he knew that the old White Horse
had been turned out to grass, and left to look after himself for the rest
of his days!
Those were grand old times when the Berkshire; Gloucestershire, and
Somersetshire men amused themselves by cracking each other's heads

and cudgel-playing for a gold-laced hat and a pair of buckskin breeches;
when a flitch of bacon was run for by donkeys; and when, last, but not
least, John Morse, of Uffington, "grinned agin another chap droo hos
[horse] collars, a fine bit of spwoart, to be sure, and made the folks
laaf." I here quote from Tom Hughes' book, "The Scouring of the
White Horse," to which I must refer my readers for further interesting
particulars.
There are some days during summer when the sunlight is so beautiful
that every object is invested with a glamour and a charm not usually
associated with it. Such a day was that of which we write. As we were
gliding out of Swindon the sun was beginning to descend. From a Great
Western express, running at the rate of sixty miles an hour through
picturesque country, you may watch the sun setting amidst every
variety of scenery. Now some hoary grey tower stands out against the
intense brightness of the western sky; now a tracery of fine trees shades
for a time the dazzling light; then suddenly the fiery furnace is revealed
again, reflected perhaps in the waters of some stream or amid the reeds
and sedges of a mere, where a punt is moored containing anglers in
broad wideawake hats. Gradually a dark purple shade steals over the
long range of chalk hills; white, clean-looking roads stand out clearly
defined miles away on the horizon; the smoke that rises straight up
from some ivy-covered homestead half a mile away is bluer than the
evening sky--a deep azure blue. The horizon is clear in the south, but in
the north-west dark, but not forbidding clouds are rising; fantastic
cloudlets float high up in the firmament; rooks coming home to roost
are plainly visible several miles away against the brilliant western sky.
This Great Western Railway runs through some of the finest bits of old
England. Not long ago, in travelling from Chepstow to Gloucester, we
were fairly amazed at the surpassing beauty of the views. It was
May-day, and the weather was in keeping with the occasion. The sight
of the old town of Chepstow and the silvery Wye, as we left them
behind us, was fine enough; but who can describe the magnificent
panorama presented by the wide Severn at low tide? Yellow sands,
glittering like gold in the dazzling sunshine, stretched away for miles;
beyond these a vista of green meadows, with the distant Cotswold Hills

rising out of dreamy haze; waters of chrysolite, with fields of malachite
beyond; the azure sky overhead flecked with clouds of pearl and opal,
and all around the pear orchards in full bloom.
While on the subject of scenery, may I enter a protest against the
change the Great Western Railway has lately made in the photographs
which adorn their carriages? They used to be as beautiful as one could
wish; lately, however, the colouring has been lavished on them with no
sparing hand. These "photo-chromes" are unnatural and impossible,
whereas the old permanent photographs were very beautiful.
At Kemble, with its old manor house and stone-roofed cottages, we say
good-bye to the Vale of White Horse; for we have entered the
Cotswolds. Stretching from Broadway to Bath, and from Birdlip to
Burford, and containing about three hundred square miles, is a vast
tract of hill country, intersected by numerous narrow valleys. Probably
at one period this district was a rough, uncultivated moor. It is now
cultivated for the most part, and grows excellent barley. The highest
point of this extensive range is eleven hundred and thirty-four feet, but
the average altitude would not exceed half that height. Almost every
valley has its little brook. The district is essentially a "stone country;"
for all the houses and most of their roofs are built of the local limestone,
which lies everywhere on these hills within a few inches of the surface.
There is no difficulty in obtaining plenty of stone hereabouts. The chief
characteristics of the buildings are their antiquity and Gothic quaintness.
The air is sharp and bracing, and the climate, as is inevitable on the
shallow, porous soil of the oolite hills, wonderfully dry and
invigorating. "Lands of gold have been found,