It Is Perhaps Equally Hard To Realise That This One Mind Of A Particular Village Is Individual, Wholly Its Own, Unlike That Of Any Other Village, Near Or Far.

For one village differs from another; and the village is in a sense a body, and this body and the mind that inhabits it, act and react on one another, and there is between them a correspondence and harmony, although it may be but a rude harmony.

It is probable that we that are country born and bred are affected in more ways and more profoundly than we know by our surroundings. The nature of the soil we live on, the absence or presence of running water, of hills, rocks, woods, open spaces; every feature in the landscape, the vegetative and animal life - everything in fact that we see, hear, smell and feel, enters not into the body only, but the soul, and helps to shape and colour it. Equally important in its action on us are the conditions created by man himself: - situation, size, form and the arrangements of the houses in the village; its traditions, customs and social life.

On that airy mirador which I occupied under (not in) the clouds, after surveying the village beneath me I turned my sight abroad and saw, near and far, many many other villages; and there was no other exactly like Burbage nor any two really alike.

Each had its individual character. To mention only two that were nearest - East Grafton and Easton, or Easton Royal.

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