Produced by Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) HERITAGE “_I was born, and learned myne English in Kente, in the Weald, where English is spoken broad and rude._” WILLIAM CAXTON. HERITAGE BY V. SACKVILLE WEST [Illustration: NEW ^GD^H YORK] GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TO MY MOTHER _Haec super arvorum cultu pecorumque canebam, Et super arboribus, Cæsar dum magnus ad altum Fulminat Euphraten bello: Carmina qui lusi pastorum, audaxque juventa, Tityre, te patulae cecini sub tegmine fagi._ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ HERITAGE PART I I Two years of my life were spent in a rough gray village of the Apennines; a shaggy village, tilted perilously up the side of the hill; a rambling village, too incoherent to form a single perspectived street, but which revolved around, or, rather, above and below, a little piazza warm with present sun, though grim with unknown, conjectured violence in the past. Here stood the massive civic palace, ancient and forbidding, with its tower poised and tremulous in the evening sky; and here the church, with its marble pietà, the work, it was said, of Mino da Fiesole. A mountain torrent poured down the village, a wild little storm of water, brown and white, spanned by a bridge, which rose abruptly to a peak, and as abruptly descended. In the evenings the youth of the village drifted towards the bridge, gossiped there, sang a snatch of song, or indolently fished. In the silent midday, stretched at length on the flat stone parapet, they slept.... The village was called Sampiero della Vigna Vecchia. If I dwell thus upon its characteristics, it is from lingering affection and melancholy memories. My sentiment is personal; irrelevant to my present purpose. I resume:—