At one spot we dropped down to a sheltered and wooded hollow where we espied a lonely, half-timbered, and rambling farmstead, such as painters put in their pictures--pictures that the wealthy man of taste hangs on the walls of his mansion purely for the pleasure of looking at them, though I am afraid few men realise the subtle charm of such old buildings until an artist has translated it on paper or canvas. They see their beauties through other eyes, for there is an art in seeing and discovering beauty not cultivated by the many. I was tempted to take a photograph of this ancient farmhouse, but could only secure a poor end view owing to the slope of the ground and obstructing trees. It would have made a delightful water-colour sketch, only had I stopped to sketch every pleasing spot by the way, my journey might have been prolonged to the winter. I had no trouble in finding subjects for the brush or camera; I came upon them in endless succession. So does rural England abound in beauty. My trouble was what to select out of the profusion of good things presented to me. I felt like one going through a vast picture-gallery of lovely landscapes, only the landscapes were real and living, and so the more delightful. [Illustration: A SUSSEX FARMSTEAD.] The old-fashioned, age-mellowed farmsteads built in the spacious days gone by, when every yard of ground and inch of space was not considered, what pleasantly familiar features they form in the landscape, with their suggestion of contentment, and you come upon them everywhere. Familiar, and essentially English, but how unobtrusive they are, they seem like a natural growth and truly to belong to the soil; remove them from the countryside, and the eye, perhaps hardly knowing why, would feel that there was something missing. Times of late years have not been prosperous for the agriculturist, and I noticed during the journey at more than one picturesque and pleasantly situated old farmhouse a board displayed with "Apartments to let" thereon. From a passing glance they appeared very desirable quarters for those who love retirement, quietude, and purely rural surroundings. "It's an ill wind that blows nobody good." Probably in more prosperous times farmers would not dream of letting lodgings, but now here is an opportunity offering for hard-worked paterfamilias (whose purse is limited, and who is in search of pure air, change of scene, and fresh surroundings for his youngsters) to spend his holiday in the real country far from crowds, where the children are free to wander over the fields, romp in the meadows, climb trees, play at haymaking, go a-blackberrying, a-bird-nesting, or whatever rural doing may at the moment take their fancy, when not intent upon watching the constant, interesting, and varied life about a farmstead.