At Eight O'clock Cobbett Would Say Good Night And Go To Bed,
And Early Next Morning Write Down What He Had Said To His
Friend, Or Some Of It, And Send It Off To Be Printed In His
Paper.
That, I take it, is how Rural Rides was written, and
that is why it seems so fresh to
Us to this day, and that to
take it up after other books is like going out from a
luxurious room full of fine company into the open air to feel
the wind and rain on one's face and see the green grass.
But I very much regret that Cobbett tells us nothing of his
farmer friend. Blount, I imagine, must have been a man of a
very fine character to have won the heart and influenced such
a person. Cobbett never loses an opportunity of vilifying the
parsons and expressing his hatred of the Established Church;
and yet, albeit a Protestant, he invariably softens down when
he refers to the Roman Catholic faith and appears quite
capable of seeing the good that is in it.
It was Blount, I think, who had soothed the savage breast of
the man in this matter. The only thing I could hear about
Blount and his "queer notions" regarding the land was his idea
that the soil could be improved by taking the flints out.
"The soil to look upon," Cobbett truly says, "appears to be
more than half flint, but is a very good quality." Blount
thought to make it better, and for many years employed all the
aged poor villagers and the children in picking the flints
from the ploughed land and gathering them in vast heaps. It
does not appear that he made his land more productive, but his
hobby was a good one for the poor of the village; the stones,
too, proved useful afterwards to the road-makers, who have
been using them these many years. A few heaps almost clothed
over with a turf which had formed on them in the course of
eighty years were still to be seen on the land when I was
there.
The following day I took no ride. The weather was so
beautiful it seemed better to spend the time sitting or
basking in the warmth and brightness or strolling about.
At all events, it was a perfect day at Hurstbourne Tarrant,
though not everywhere, for on that third of November the
greatest portion of Southern England was drowned in a cold
dense white fog. In London it was dark, I heard. Early in
the morning I listened to a cirl-bunting singing merrily from
a bush close to the George and Dragon Inn. This charming bird
is quite common in the neighbourhood, although, as elsewhere
in England, the natives know it not by its book name, nor by
any other, and do not distinguish it from its less engaging
cousin, the yellowhammer.
After breakfast I strolled about the common and in Doles Wood,
on the down above the village, listening to the birds, and on
my way back encountered a tramp whose singular appearance
produced a deep impression on my mind.
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