South of England

“ NATURE OF SOUTH DOWNS them from the north, as so many do now, motoring and bicycling south from London, their steep, sharp face showing black with the daylight behind it, is the principal feature of the south-east of England. ”

“ A river is an advantage to both groups, but to the second it is of more consequence than to the first; and in South England, if we go back to the origins of our history, it is in fixed settlements that we find the first evidence of man. With every year of research the extreme antiquity of our inhabited sites becomes more apparent. And indeed the geographical nature of Southern England should make us certain of the antiquity of village life in it, even were there no archæological evidence to support that antiquity. ”

“ Yet New England is reproached with cowardice and ingratitude to her Southern benefactors! If one man were to knock another down with a broad axe, in the attempt to brush a fly from his face, and then blame him for not being sufficiently thankful, it would exactly illustrate the relation between the North and the South on this subject. ”

“ England began in the south, and Winchester was its capital. The south was still England, until mining called the north into place and power. It was not that the north-country people lacked energy or intelligence,—far from it; but they had no manufactures, and, for want of them, they were left behind in numbers, riches, civilisation, and all that confers social and political importance. ”

“ Well, the south of England is intellectual, academic, historic, highly socialized. It is rich in military, governmental, ambassadorial and titled life. The very scenery is far more lovely. The culture of the people, because of the more generally distributed wealth, is so much better. In the north of England the poor are very poor and contentious. The men of wealth are not historically wealthy or titled. ”

“ The South has been chiefly an agricultural region, and has adhered to conservative habits of thought. While various movements in theology, philosophy, and literature were stirring New England, the South pursued the even tenor of its way. Of all parts of our country, it has been most tenacious of old customs and beliefs. Before the Civil War the cultivated classes of the Southern states found their intellectual nourishment in the older English classics, and Pope, Addison, and Shakespeare formed a part of every gentleman's library. ”

“ The landscape is as unlike the finer parts of Old England as it is unlike the most carefully tended parts of New England. It has neither the intense green, the subdivisions in hedges, the bosky lanes, the picturesque cottages, the niceness of minute garden-culture, of England, nor the broken, mixed lawn gardening and neglected pastures and highways, with the sweet wild hills, of the Berkshire region. It is an open, elevated, rolling land, giving the traveller often the most extended views over wheat and clover, hemp and tobacco fields, forests and blue-grass pastures. ”

“ The settlements that were formed on the south-western coasts of England resembled on the one hand those early colonies of Teutonic people on the southern and eastern coasts in the earliest Anglo-Saxon period, and on the other the later settlements of maritime people, including Danes and Northmen, on the coasts of Wales. ”

“ The South, the truest representation of Absolutism under republican forms, is mightier in our National Councils and Policy to-day than New-England, the mother and representative of true republicanism and the whole free North. ”

“ Southeastward we have the whole level country of England, comprising the plain of York, the great central plateau, the Fen district and the eastern counties, the valley of the Thames, and the watershed of the south coast. ”

“ A good deal of the consideration which the South enjoys abroad, and especially in England, is due to the fact that in the South a governing class is recognized, which corresponds to the governing classes wherever an aristocracy or monarchism exists. ”

“ South of us, and yet more to the east, lie the nearer masses already mentioned, while in these directions the eye may detect, from some points of view, the peaked summits of the Caradoc Hills, or may rest upon the huge hog’s back of the Wrekin as it rises abruptly from the Shropshire lowland. There are few prettier districts in our country than the borderland [Pg 90] between England and Wales; and that part of which we now speak can hold its own with most others. Here and there, perhaps, the hills are a little bare, and we seldom find much boldness of outline. ”

“ The South is a prosperous and advancing region on the highway to wealth, but advancing rather more slowly than other agricultural sections of the country, and in material wealth far behind the West and farther behind the Middle states and New England. ”

“ The inhabitants of the South and the North are very different from each other in many points (See Letter X.) , and in a certain degree there are the same analogies and the same contrasts between the North and the South, as between England and France. [AJ] The South, like, France, is most distinguished for the brilliant qualities; the North, like England, for the solid; great ideas have their origin rather in the South; good execution belongs rather to the North. The North is gifted with the English perseverance, at once the pledge and the condition of success ”

“ In the beginning of time, when, as now, man lived by families, and not by tribes or nations, they were placed in a genial clime, where earth fed them untilled, and the balmy air enwrapt their reposing limbs with warmth more pleasant than beds of down. The south is the native place of the human race; the land of fruits, more grateful to man than the hard-earned Ceres of the north,—of trees, whose boughs are as a palace-roof, of couches of roses, and of the thirst-appeasing grape. We need not there fear cold and hunger.
Look at England! the grass shoots up high in the meadows ”

“ The Southern, commonly called the Western March, from its extension in that direction, included the counties of Radnor, Hereford, and Monmouth, the eastern part of Brecknock, much of Caermarthen and Cardigan, Pembroke and the whole of Glamorgan; that is to say, the country from the Teme to the Bristol Channel, and the whole seaboard of South Wales from Chepstow to Aberystwith, all which territory was thickly set with castles, the footprints of the Norman, and before him to some extent of the Englishman. ”

“ Change and grow more marked in their peculiarities with every generation, they certainly do, very obviously. “The South” has a traditional reputation for qualities and habits in [Pg 231] which I think the Southern people, as a whole, are to-day more deficient than any other nation in the world. The Southern gentleman, as we ordinarily conceive him to be, is as rare a phenomenon in the South at the present day as is the old squire of Geoffry Crayon in modern England. ”

“ There can be no one who has stood upon one of the great heights of the Downs north and south, upon Ditchling Beacon, Chanctonbury or Leith Hill, who, looking across the Weald, has not wondered what this country, lying between the two great chalk ranges, might be, what is its nature and its history and what part it has played in the great story of England. ”

“ Early Britain.—The land we call England is that part of the Island of Great Britain south of the River Tweed, with the exception of a small area on the western side, known as Wales. England covers about 50,000 square miles, and Wales a little over 7,000. Yet a great many people live in this little space, and a great many more have left its shores and settled all over the globe. ”

“ The whole coast of England is surrounded by a general “shake hands.” The coast-guard on their wintry walks do not greet each other more surely than old friends all over England do: one clasps another, and another a third, till from Dover to London and so on to York, from Yarmouth on the east to Bristol on the west, from John O’Groat’s house at the extreme north to the Land’s End, the very toe-nail of England on the south—a kindly greeting, we may be sure, will pass. ”

“ The colony of New South Wales is three times as large as England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, and as beautiful a country as this. The soil produces almost everything which this produces, together with pomegranates, oranges, lemons, figs, &c. ”

“ To induce immigration to the Southern States. The South as it really is can stand on its own merits, and is good enough for anybody, no matter what class—capitalists, cotton kings, iron masters, coal owners, farmers, or earnest, industrious artizans. The South can supply every requisite for all, from the raw material to the finished [61] product. These are a few of the facts that people here in England are ignorant of and should be informed about, whilst many of your own people in the North and Northwest are not much better informed on many points. ”

“ To such base uses all things return at last; dust unto dust, when the life has died out of them, and the living world needs their companionship no longer.
On leaving Oxford, the visitors spread over England, north, south, east, and west. We trace Legh in rapid progress through Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Lincoln, Yorkshire, and Northumberland; Leyton through Middlesex, Kent, Sussex, Hants, Somersetshire, and Devon. ”

“ I eat voraciously of the bacon that is provided for my sustenance, and I am invariably treated by my fellow-travellers of all grades with the greatest consideration and kindness. Sometimes a man remarks that it is rather "mean" of England not to recognise the South ”

“ The chrysalis (Plate 128, Fig. 1a) is dark reddish brown inclining to blackish. The moth comes out in March and April and is often a common object on tree-trunks, etc., in the London parks, squares, and gardens. Its range extends over the south of England, and northwards to Yorkshire and Cumberland, but it is nowhere so plentiful in England as throughout the Metropolitan area. It occurs in Wales, in Ireland, and in Scotland up to Inverness.
Oak Beauty (Pachys (Amphidasys) strataria) .
The fore wings of this species (Plate 127, Figs. 1-3) are white, sprinkled and cross lined with black ”

“ Considered merely by itself, it is mountainous and sterile; nature has interposed such obstacles, that it was long impossible to open regular communications between its different parts, which, indeed, in regard to the Highlands, was not effected till after the middle of the eighteenth century. [3] Finally, and this, as we shall [6] presently see, was a matter of great importance, the most fertile land in Scotland is in the south, and was, [7] therefore, constantly ravaged by the English borderers. Hence, the accumulation of wealth was hindered ”

“ We know that the Celts were light or red-haired, with blue eyes, by the evidence of history; and their descendants in Wales, and Ireland, and Scotland, still continue so. The Saxons, and Angles, and Danes, were of the same complexion. 275How is it then that the dark eyes and dark hair of the south should predominate? Could the Roman breed have been so generally extended, or, did the Spanish colony spread further than has been supposed? Climate will not account for the fact; there is not sun enough to ripen a grape ”

“ but no one can imagine the beauty of the view from any thing witnessed in England. It had never been seen before by European eyes; but scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight. ”

“ In the fifth and sixth centuries settlements began to be formed in Britain, and speedily assumed dimensions very formidable to the natives. The south-eastern coast of Britain, infested even in Roman times by the sea-rovers, and thence known as the Saxon shore, had been fortified by the Romans, but the works, intrinsically strong, were too weak in British hands to stem the progress of the foe. ”

“ For long years New South Wales remained a purely pastoral colony, and its immense plains were inhabited only by the "squatters"—the proprietors who had bought large tracts of land from the government. ”

“ We found it much the same after leaving Cardigan, though the country is distinctly better and more pleasing than the extreme south. The farm houses appear more prosperous, and well-cared-for gardens surround them. ”

“ The rambler who, for old association or other reasons, should trace the forsaken coach-road running almost in a meridional line from Bristol to the south shore of England, would find himself during the latter half of his journey in the vicinity of some extensive woodlands, interspersed with apple-orchards. ”

“ Do not think that all the danger lies in that bolted cloud which flashes in the Southern horizon. There is decay, and change, here in the North. Old New-England, that suckled American liberty, is now suckling wolves to devour it. ”

“ The moth is a lover of the woodlands, and as it flies in the daytime, especially when sunny, will be almost certainly noted on the wing by any one rambling through the woods in June, or even late May. It is generally plentiful in the south and west of England, but although its range extends through the northern parts of the country, and widely over Scotland to Sutherland, it is more or less local and often rare in the northern area indicated. In North Wales and South-west Ireland, it is local, but not uncommon. ”

“ Although it certainly appears to be less frequently seen in the south than northwards, the species is known to occur pretty well all over England and Wales. In Scotland, where it is generally commoner than in England, except perhaps in the northern counties of the latter, its range extends to the Orkneys. ”