Artists have often painted village politicians in earnest confabulation in an oak-pannelled inn-parlour.  I can only say that, so far as my experience went, I found the village politician quite extinct.  The sort of talk I heard in village bar-rooms was inane and contemptible to the last degree, and it never once touched on politics.  Nor, as a rule, was there any trace of that leaven of superior intelligence which comes from a fusion of the classes.  All the landlords were practically non-resident.  They knew nothing of their tenants; and that pleasant intercourse between hall and cottage which poets and novelists depict, rarely happened.  Once a year, perhaps, and for a few weeks only, the blinds of the Hall windows were drawn up; carriages rolled through the park gates; young ladies, bright in Bond Street toilets, flashed like deities upon the village street; my Lady Bountiful left a quarter of a pound of tea at half a dozen cottages; and then the whole vision faded like an unsubstantial pageant.  The blinds were drawn down again, the lodge-keeper went to sleep, and the monotonies of life submerged everything like a wave.  The clergyman alone remained as the symbol of a fuller life, sometimes doing his duty with intelligence, sometimes not; but the case was rare where any definite attempt was made to uplift the village community by the infusion of any intellectual interest, any sense of Art, or any care for honest sport.  And here lies the whole secret of the discontent of villages; their inhabitants are conscious of unjust deprivations in their lot; and if they remain villagers, it is rather from lethargy than love.

Were I to describe all the places I visited in search of a habitation, my list would be interminable.  I have given one example in Dawes’ Farm; let me give one other, as illustrating another kind of difficulty in my quest.

On an exquisite morning in June I found myself climbing the long chalk hills that lie northward of the Thames valley.  At every step the air became more pure and sparkling; and while in the hazy lowlands not a leaf stirred, here a brisk and gusty breeze was blowing.  The road ran through high chalk banks, like a railway cutting, and I have since found that Roman soldiers used it in the days of Caesar.  At the height of three hundred feet authentic forest scenery began.  Here the elms ceased, and enormous woods of beech took their place.  The turf was of the greenest, the solitude intense, the air exhilarating; and never had I so admired the lace-like delicacy of foliage which distinguishes the beech, for never had I seen it in such mass or such perfection.  The house I sought stood at fully eight hundred feet above sea-level, on a carpet of soft turf, round which the forest rose like a wall.  Never did place look so sweetly habitable; it was a kind of green hermitage in the woods, inimitably quiet, warmed by clearest sunlight, cooled by freshest winds.  Here, said I, at last is my much sought El Dorado; nor did the cottage, when I came to it, belie my hopes.  It was a true woodland cottage, an intimate part and parcel of the scenery.  It had been recently inhabited by a man of letters, a poet and a dreamer; and a fitter spot to dream in eye never rested on.