beautiful hamlets), from rising ground near by, may be obtained truly glorious views of the west country toward Bath and Bristol and the distant Severn Sea.  A lane now turns left to Cheverell, where is a fine old mansion with an interesting courthouse and cells for prisoners, and an Early English church with a Perpendicular tower.  Within the church is a tablet to Sir James Stonehouse, of interest to those who have explored the Plain, for this was the “Mr. Johnson” of Hannah More’s Shepherd of Salisbury Plain and the cottage in which the shepherd—­David Saunders—­lived is still shown in the village.

We now approach a parting of the ways.  The Salisbury-Devizes road crosses that we have been travelling, which runs west and east from Frome to Andover.  Southwards toward Salisbury is the pleasant little town of West Lavington.  Here is a famous college for farmers known as the Dauntsey School.  It was endowed in 1895, partly from certain moneys left by Alderman Dauntsey who flourished in the fifteenth century.  The Dauntsey almshouses were also an institution associated with this benevolent merchant.  The church is an interesting building of various dates, from Norman to Perpendicular.  The Dauntsey chapel was erected on the south side in the early fifteenth century for the family of that name; another, called the Beckett chapel, stands to the south of the chancel.  A fine altar tomb, one of two in the south transept, bears a recumbent effigy of Henry Danvers.  Among other objects of interest is the memorial of Captain Henry Penruddocke, shot by soldiers of the Parliament, while asleep in one of the houses of the village.  The road through West Lavington leads to the heart of the Plain at Tilshead, passing at its highest point St. John a Gore Cross, where a chantry chapel once stood, a shrine where travellers might make their orisons before braving the terrors of the great waste.  Tilshead met with a curious misfortune in 1841, according to the inscription on one of the cottages.  A great flood, caused by a very sudden thaw which liberated some miles of snow-water on the higher portions of the Plain, tore down the narrow (and usually waterless) valley and caused great destruction in the tiny village; the old Norman church being the only building that was quite undamaged.  Market Lavington is farther east on the Pewsey road.  It was once of some importance and is one of those decayed towns that almost justify Cobbett’s claim that the population in the valleys around the Plain was very much greater in olden days.  The church here has a fine Perpendicular tower, and is partly of this style and partly Decorated.  Within will be observed a squint, an ancient credence table in the chancel, and a stoup in the vestry.

[Illustration:  PORCH HOUSE, POTTERNE.]